Time Warner Cable says 'me too,' issues first transparency report

Not to be outdone by its competitors (or future owner), Time Warner Cable has released a transparency report of its own. From January to June last year, the telco obeyed some 12,000 information requests from the government that break down as such. Of the legal requests, 82 percent were for subpoenas, 12 percent were for court orders and four percent related to search warrants. Seventy-seven percent of the time that data was requested, it was subscriber and transactional info that was disclosed, 20 percent resulted in no data shared at all and three percent of the time, content information was disclosed. Because the report doesn't give exact numbers, though, comparing the precise amount of requests that TWC handled with its competitors isn't exactly easy.

Time-Warner releases first Transparency Report. http://t.co/xeL8x0XiXr Keep 'em coming!

- Kurt Opsahl (

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Weekly Roundup: the Moto 360, Sony's Project Morpheus, NSA transparency reports and more!

You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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The NSA may release its own transparency reports

The NSA has been on the offensive lately, first claiming that Google, Facebook and others are fully aware of its data-collecting practices, and now hinting that it'll nip criticism in the bud by releasing its own transparency reports. NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett, defending the agency's surveillance activities in a video interview today, said the following:

The vulnerabilities we find, the overwhelming majority we disclose to the people who are responsible for manufacturing or developing those products. We're actually working on a proposal right now to be transparent and to publish transparency reports in the same way the internet companies do.

This isn't exactly out of the blue. Apple, Facebook, Google and several other web giants have long expressed frustration at the NSA's lack of openness in the wake of Edward Snowden's PRISM leaks. Most recently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke with President Obama about the need for "trust in the internet," and a handful of high-profile companies successfully sued for the right to share more specifics about national security requests. Releasing its own transparency reports could help change public perception of an agency that's secretive by design, but it's likely the NSA's reports wouldn't be too revealing if they do indeed get published. Stay tuned.

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Source: Re/code

Tags: nsa, privacy, richard ledgett, surveillance, transparency, TransparencyReport Next: SEC investigation of Bitcoin-based stock sale could lead to broader regulation .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Comcast's first transparency report reveals over 25,000 government data requests

Comcast must not want to feel left out as telcos begin publishing regular government data request statistics -- the cable giant has just posted its first transparency report. The document reveals that Comcast obeyed more than 25,000 government demands for info during 2013, including 24,698 criminal requests (such as warrants) and 961 emergency requests. There isn't as much detail for national security requests due to federal rules, but the report shows that Comcast isn't under quite as much scrutiny as its peers. The provider received less than 1,000 national security letters last year, while Verizon reported between 1,000 and 1,999; AT&T says it got between 2,000 and 2,999. The differences aren't surprising when Comcast has no cellular customers these days. However, those numbers are bound to grow if Comcast succeeds in buying Time Warner Cable.

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Via: The Verge

Source: Comcast (1), (2, PDF)

Tags: comcast, fisa, hdpostcross, internet, isp, nationalsecurityletter, privacy, security, surveillance, television, transparency, transparencyreport, tv Next: Twitter now shows you video previews inside its mobile apps .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Daily Roundup: 2013 Engadget Readers' Choice Awards, NSA transparency reports and more!

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Study: Copycatting, Diverse Teams, And Transparency Are Keys To Innovation

A fascinating new study explores, in exquisite detail, the hidden secrets of innovation. Rampant copycats, the authors find, are a surprising key to discovering creative solutions. Imitators must, however, be supported with diverse teams and transparency of success.

“You benefit when other people imitate you because they help you explore multiple variations around your solution that you couldn’t possibly pursue on your own,” the authors from Indiana University conclude.

To put the causal path of innovation under a microscope, they did what any good university researcher would do: bribe undergraduates with easy college credit to perform a task. The game — which is described as similar to fantasy football — gauged how well students could rack points up in-game..

Unexpectedly, the researchers found that imitation was beneficial. Or, in academic speak, “the substantial proportion of imitation present in improvements shows that imitated guesses were often the basis for further productive exploration.” In other words, imitation is never identical and the micro-experiments help increase the possibilities explored, ultimately leading to better performance.

Notably, if performance scores were hidden, “participants searched more broadly and randomly, and both quality and equity of exploration suffered.” That is, when we hide our successes, imitators have to experiment blindly.

As ScienceDaily explained, “the longer people played the game, the less they imitated others. The more players there were in a game, the higher the scores. The diversity of solutions decreased over the rounds, and scores increased.” Networks of innovation do learn, and unsuccessful strategies fall off like a vestigial limb.

As our friends at TechDirt note, this has crucial policy implications, because the government has an interest in promoting copycats. Open source-friendly innovation policies help the wide variety of radically transparent imitation that has helped make the foundations of the Internet so pervasive.

For more info, read the full study here (pdf).

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