Snowden Leaks Have Hurt American Companies, Tech Executive Says - TIME

http://time.com/2849760/edward-snowden-nsa-leaks-symantec/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29\\

• Becca Stanek
 

June 9, 2014

    

“Every time a new Snowden revelation trickles out, it’s another chip away at U.S. business,” said Cheri McGuire, vice president of Symantec Corp

The revelations of mass surveillance activities by the National Security Agency has made it harder for American companies to conduct business overseas, a tech executive said Monday.

Cheri F. McGuire, a Symantec Corporation vice president, made the comments during a panel discussion marking one year since disclosures from former NSA contractor turned leaker Edward Snowden first rocked the global debate about surveillance and personal privacy. The fight to regain secrecy and privacy since then has plagued many American software companies, including Symantec, McGuire said.

“Every time a new Snowden revelation trickles out, it’s another chip away at U.S. business,” McGuire said during the panel hosted by the Atlantic Council and held at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security in Washington, D.C.

Almost every day, McGuire said, the company faces questions about backdoors within its products that might be available to intelligence agencies, along with requests for specific contractual guarantees of privacy. Companies now face a new environment, McGuire said, one that is filled with “sticky contractual and corporate citizenship issues that were not there before.”

But people in both the U.S. and elsewhere are holding American companies to a higher standard than those in the rest of the world, McGuire said, noting the lack of intelligence oversight around the world. McGuire said the leaks have actually harmed cybersecurity by making companies less willing to share information with other companies and technological innovators.

“We need to get through—I hate to say it—this hyperbole we hear today of privacy outweighing everything else,” McGuire said. “A balance needs to be struck because the situation would be much worse if there was no security equation.”

The Government Wants to Regulate How You Use Google Maps - TIME

http://time.com/2883558/google-maps-regulation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Victor Luckerson @VLuck
 

June 16, 2014

    

In your car at least

The U.S. Department of Transportation is taking aim at the way drivers use navigation tools such as Google Maps. A proposed bill would grant the National Highway Safety Administration the right to issue guidelines on the functionality of navigation apps that could potentially be a threat to driver safety and force changes to apps that don’t comply with the guidelines, the New York Times reports.

The Department of Transportation has been grappling with the increased use of technology in the car for the last several years. In 2013 the agency issued guidelines on the use of in-car navigation systems, advising that no task on the devices should require more than a two-second glance and 12 seconds total to accomplish. The newly proposed bill, though, would also apply to smartphone apps, like the popular maps software Google and Apple develop. Such apps currently reside in a murky area when it comes to laws that ban calling and texting while driving. A California man faced a $165 fine for using his phone as a navigation aid because other uses of a phone, such as talking while driving, are banned in the state. An appeals court later overturned the decision, according to the Times.

Critics of the proposed measure say it would be impractical for the government to monitor the vast number of navigation apps and whether people are using them while driving or not. But with injuries from car accidents involving a distracted driver on the rise, it’s likely the National Highway Safety Administration will continue to seek ways to regulate the ways people use electronics while behind the wheel. The bill, a wide-ranging piece of legislation regarding transportation, is expected to pass in Congress in some form by the end of the year.