My Way News - China blocks websites as Internet meeting begins
My Way News reports: "Chinese censors have newly blocked access to several popular websites as they target content delivery networks that serve much of the Internet, according to a U.S. Internet service company. The action comes as China hosts the World Internet Conference, which brings together many of the world's top technology companies."

My Way News - Will Apple Pay be the next iRevolution?
My Way News reports: "Mobile pay isn't new; rival tech companies and the banking industry have worked on such systems for years. But Apple is launching its new service at an ideal time, says Gartner tech analyst Van Baker. Consumers are increasingly worried about the security of traditional credit and debit cards and U.S. merchants are facing new mandates to switch to safer chip-based cards or other payment systems."

My Way News - South Korea identity thefts forces ID overhaul
My Way News reports: "After an avalanche of data breaches, South Korea's national identity card system has been raided so thoroughly by thieves that the government says it might have to issue new ID numbers to every citizen over 17 [...] ID numbers and personal details of an estimated 80 percent of South Korea's 50 million people have been stolen from banks and other targets since 2004, according to experts. Those numbers stay with South Koreans for life and, instead of being picked randomly, are based on their age, sex and other details. They are used to confirm identity, get a job or government services and even to buy cigarettes."

Comment: Not the Mark, but a good example of how mandatory identification systems can be imposed by governments...and how they can go awry.

Your phone is your next credit card - CNN.com
CNN reports: "More than 70% of U.S. adults have smartphones, and more than one in five have already used a 'mobile wallet' in the past 90 days, according to Mary Monahan, executive vice president and research director at Javelin Strategy. More than half of mobile purchasers bought physical goods with their phones. The trend lines are clear. And as more apps and smartphones push mobile payments, consumers will become increasingly willing to ditch plastic for their phones."

My Way News - Twitter sues FBI, DOJ to release NSA request info
My Way News reports: "Twitter is suing the FBI and the Department of Justice to be able to release more information about government surveillance of its users. The social media company filed a lawsuit Tuesday in a California federal court to publish its full 'transparency report,' which documents government requests for user information. Twitter Inc. published a surveillance report in July but couldn't include the exact number of national security requests it received because Internet companies are prohibited from disclosing that information, even if they didn't get any requests."

My Way News - License plate scanner networks capture movements
My Way News reports: "A rapidly expanding digital network that uses cameras mounted to traffic signals and police cruisers captures the movements of millions of vehicles across the U.S., regardless of whether the drivers are being investigated by law enforcement."

My Way News - Apple locks itself out of devices with passwords
My Way News reports: "Apple has tightened its technological security so not even the company can pry into a password-protected iPhone or iPad, a move meant to reassure the millions of people who are increasingly storing vital pieces of their lives on the devices. [...] Like other technology companies, Apple is trying to depict itself as a trustworthy steward of people's information after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing government spies' efforts to snoop on emails and other personal information as part of an effort to identify potential terrorists. Apple, like its peers, has lashed out at the U.S. government's digital surveillance programs and stressed that it isn't cooperating with any of the spying."

My Way News - Apple pushes digital wallet with Apple Pay
My Way News reports: "The technology company on Tuesday introduced a new digital wallet service called Apple Pay that is integrated with its Passbook credential-storage app and its fingerprint ID security system. [...] So-called mobile proximity payments are expected to grow exponentially over the next few years. [...] Apple said department stores like Macy's and Bloomingdales, drugstores including Walgreen's and Duane Reade, and other stores including McDonald's, Staples, Subway and Whole Foods are participating in Apple Pay."

Comment: It will be interesting to see if this becomes a popular method of payment or merely a novelty for trendy urban hipsters. It could certainly be an important milestone on the way to a cashless society. One important thing to note, for our purposes, it's just a domestic product, U.S. only, not an international product. That could change, of course, and I'm sure Apple would love that. Critics would probably point out that that consumers in Asia (particularly Japan and South Korea) have been paying with their phones for quite some time, so you could say the U.S. is finally catching up. Still, there is no global standard for NFC and mobile payments and that's really what we are looking for.

Ecuador heralds digital currency plans
AP reports: "Ecuador is planning to create what it calls the world's first digital currency issued by a central bank, which some analysts believe could be a first step toward abandoning the country's existing currency, the U.S. dollar."

Comment: It's always interesting when the world gets a new payment system, but this is a very new development, it will need lots of work to be implemented and become trusted by the people of Ecuador. Still, if it works, promoting digital currencies could be an attractive nationalist alternative to developing countries chafing at the restrictions placed on them by the current international financial system.

My Way News - Amazon debuts mobile payment app and card reader
My Way News reports: "Amazon is taking direct aim at mobile payment systems such as Square by introducing the Amazon Local Register, a credit-card processing device and mobile app designed to help small business owners accept payments through their smartphones and tablets. The move places the largest U.S. e-commerce retailer in competition with Square and other established mobile payment processing systems such as PayPal Here and Intuit's GoPayment."

My Way News - Visa launches new service to pay online
My Way News reports: "As more customers shop on smaller screens like smartphones and tablets, the hassle of entering in credit card numbers and billing addresses is becoming a sticking point and payment processors have been working to find ways to simplify the process. Beginning Wednesday, users can sign up with Visa credit and debit cards, as well as other branded cards, and enter their card information just once. Then they will be able pay for things via Visa by only entering their username and password at participating sites. The service is currently being offered in the U.S., Canada and Australia, Visa Checkout joins similar services like eBay's PayPal, MasterCard's MasterPass, Amazon's one-click checkout and others."

My Way News - Privacy board: NSA's Internet monitoring is legal
My Way News reports: "The National Security Agency programs that collect huge volumes of Internet data within the United States pass constitutional muster and employ 'reasonable' safeguards designed to protect the rights of Americans, an independent privacy and civil liberties board has found."

My Way News - 'Get a warrant' to search cellphones, Justices say
My Way News reports: "In an emphatic defense of privacy in the digital age, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police generally may not search the cellphones of people they arrest without first getting search warrants. [...] By ruling as it did, the court chose not to extend earlier decisions from the 1970s— when cellphone technology was not yet available — that allow police to empty a suspect's pockets and examine whatever they find to ensure officers' safety and prevent the destruction of evidence."

NYTimes.com - Workplace Surveillance Sees Good and Bad
The New York Times reports: "Advanced technological tools are beginning to make it possible to measure and monitor employees as never before, with the promise of fundamentally changing how we work — along with raising concerns about privacy and the specter of unchecked surveillance in the workplace."

My Way News - Judge: Warrantless bulk surveillance is legal
My Way News reports: "A federal judge has affirmed the legality of the U.S. government's bulk collection of phone and email data from foreign nationals living outside the country — including their contact with U.S. citizens — in denying a man's motion to dismiss his terrorism conviction."

My Way News - Google to show off smart home gadgets, wearables
My Way News reports: "Google is also likely to unveil some advances in wearable technology. In March, Google released "Android Wear," a version of its operating system tailored to computerized wristwatches and other wearable devices. Although there are already several smartwatches on the market, the devices are more popular with gadget geeks and fitness fanatics than regular consumers. But Google could help change that with Android Wear. Android, after all, is already the world's most popular smartphone operating system. Google may also have news about Glass, including when the company might launch a new and perhaps less expensive version of the $1,500 Internet-connected eyewear. Google will likely have to lower the price if it wants Glass to reach a broader audience. "

My Way News - UK says cyber-spies monitor Facebook, Google use
My Way News reports: "The U.K.'s electronic spy agency is legally allowed to track the online activities of millions of Britons who use U.S.-based platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, Britain's top counterterrorism official has said."

My Way News - Report: Chinese phone comes preloaded with spyware
My Way News reports: "A cheap brand of Chinese-made smartphones carried by major online retailers comes preinstalled with espionage software, a German security firm said Tuesday. [...] G Data said the spyware it found on the N9500 could allow a hacker to steal personal data, place rogue calls, or turn on the phone's camera and microphone. G Data said the stolen information was sent to a server in China."

My Way News - Pakistan pulls top news station off air amid spat
My Way News reports: "Pakistan's media regulators pulled the nation's leading news channel off the air on Friday, the latest development in a spat between the broadcaster and the military's powerful spy agency that has focused attention on media freedoms in the country."

My Way News - Cellphone operator reveals scale of gov't snooping
My Way News reports: "Government snooping into phone networks is extensive worldwide, one of the world's largest cellphone companies revealed Friday, saying that several countries demand direct access to its networks without warrant or prior notice. The detailed report from Vodafone, which covers the 29 countries in which it operates in Europe, Africa and Asia, provides the most comprehensive look to date at how governments monitor mobile phone communications. [...] the most explosive revelation in Vodafone's report is that in six countries, authorities require direct access to an operator's network — bypassing legal niceties like warrants and eliminating the need to get case-by-case cooperation from phone-company employees."

My Way News - Volume of encrypted email rising amid spying fears
My Way News reports: "The volume of email cloaked in encryption technology is rapidly rising as Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other major Internet companies try to shield their users' online communications from government spies and other snoops. Google and other companies are now automatically encrypting all email, but that doesn't ensure confidentiality unless the recipients' email provider also adopts the technology."

My Way News - Visa, MasterCard renew push for chip cards
My Way News reports: "Retailers have long balked at paying for new cash registers and back office systems to handle the new cards. There have been clashes between retailers, card issuers and processors over which processing networks will get access to the new system and whether to stick with a signature-based system or move to one that requires a personal identification number instead."

My Way News - European court: Google must yield on personal info
My Way News reports: "Embracing what has come to be called 'the right to be forgotten,' the Court of Justice of the European Union said people should have some say over what information comes up when someone Googles them. The decision was celebrated by some as a victory for privacy rights in an age when just about everything — good or bad — leaves a permanent electronic trace. "

My Way News - Turkish court backs Twitter but site still blocked:
My Way News reports: "Turkey last week suspended access to Twitter, which has been a conduit for links to recordings suggesting corruption by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, which faces local elections on Sunday. The government then blocked access to YouTube following the leak of an audio recording of a top security meeting where officials allegedly discussed a military intervention in neighboring Syria."

My Way News - Turkish attempt to ban Twitter appears to backfire:
My Way News reports: "Turkey's attempt to block access to Twitter appeared to backfire on Friday with many tech-savvy users circumventing the ban and suspicions growing that the prime minister was using court orders to suppress corruption allegations against him and his government."

My Way News - Google redesigns Android to power smartwatches
My Way News reports: "Smartwatches and Google Glass are just two of the first examples of how computing devices increasingly are expected to become like appendages to the human body as technology advances and connecting to the Internet becomes as reflexive as breathing. Google executives have even openly talked about day when it might be possible to help people live longer and more enjoyable lives by planting chips in their heads or under their skin."

My Way News - NSA collects all phone calls in a foreign country
My Way News reports: "The National Security Agency has been recording all of a foreign country's phone calls, then listening to the conversations up to a month later, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. At the request of U.S. officials, the Post said it would not identify the targeted country or other countries where the program's use was envisioned by officials."

My Way News - Incentives are coming for payments by phones
My Way News reports: "A variety of mobile wallet systems store credit or debit card information on phones in encrypted form, offering more security than standard plastic cards with magnetic stripes. To make a purchase, simply tap the phone on a card reader or wave a bar code over a scanner. There's convenience in not having to fish out your card. Yet most people still prefer plastic."

My Way News - Report: UK spies intercept webcam pics, nudity
My Way News reports: "Britain's signals intelligence division is stealing screenshots from hundreds of thousands of innocent Yahoo users' webcam videos, according to the Guardian newspaper, which also reported that the years-long operation has swept up a huge haul of intimate photographs."

My Way News - US network to scan workers with secret clearances
My Way News reports: "Intelligence officials have long wanted a computerized system that could monitor employees, in part to foil leakers like former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden, whose revelations bared massive U.S. surveillance operations. Such a system might also detect troubling signs in those who already hold security clearances, such as the shooter in last year's mass killings at Washington's Navy Yard. Many of the nearly 4 million government employees who hold secret clearances would be scanned by the new system, officials say."

My Way News - What's a bitcoin? A look at the digital currency
My Way News reports: "Early Tuesday, the world's most established exchange for bitcoin disappeared from the Internet, sending the price of the virtual currency tumbling and prompting fears that the world's biggest experiment in electronic cash could soon be strangled by fraud or regulation."

My Way News - Turkey approves Internet restrictions
My Way News reports: "Turkey's Parliament has approved legislation that would tighten government controls over the Internet. With a show of hands, the legislators late Wednesday endorsed allowing Turkey's telecommunications authority to block websites for a privacy violation without a prior court decision. The legislation also would force Internet providers to keep records on Web users' activities for two years and make them available to authorities when requested, without notifying the users."

My Way News - Internet firms release data on NSA spy requests
My Way News reports: "The data releases by the five major tech firms offered a mix of dispassionate graphics, reassurances and protests, seeking to alleviate customer concerns about government spying while pressuring national security officials about the companies' constitutional concerns. The shifting tone in the releases showed the precarious course that major tech firms have had to navigate in recent months, caught between their public commitments to Internet freedom and their enforced roles as data providers to U.S. spy agencies."

My Way News - Some Obama spy changes hampered by complications
My Way News reports: "Several of the key surveillance reforms unveiled by President Barack Obama face complications that could muddy the proposals' lawfulness, slow their momentum in Congress and saddle the government with heavy costs and bureaucracy, legal experts warn."

Comment: In other words, nothing much will change. One could say that his proposals were artfully designed to appear sincere even as they were crafted to encounter resistance that would render them ineffective.  

My Way News - Obama tightens reins on surveillance programs
My Way News reports: "Tightening the reins on the nation's sweeping surveillance operations, President Barack Obama on Friday ordered new limits on the way intelligence officials access phone records from hundreds of millions of Americans - and moved toward eventually stripping the massive data collection from the government's hands. But Obama's highly anticipated intelligence recommendations left many key details unresolved, most notably who might take over as keeper of the vast trove of U.S. phone records."

My Way News - PayPal testing easier checkout for online shoppers
My Way News reports: "EBay's payments service PayPal has redesigned its online checkout process to let shoppers complete their payment on merchants' websites, rather than go to a separate PayPal site. [...] PayPal said it will make its 'payment code' feature available to merchants that accept Discover cards or use Micros payments systems, starting in February. The feature lets shoppers pay for purchases using their smartphones, using either a four-digit code or a QR-code, which is a newer version of the classic bar code."