Google turns over less user data as government requests rise

Google's transparency report for the second half of 2013 shows requests are up, but less data is being handed over.Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET

Google's latest transparency report shows that the company is handing over less user data, even though government requests are up 120 percent since 2009.

The transparency report for the second half of 2013 shows that requests for user data continue to rise, albeit more slowly than before. There were 27,477 requests for user data for the period between July and December 2013, compared with 25,879 in the first half of last year and 12,539 in 2009.

"Though our number of users has grown throughout the time period, we're also seeing more and more governments start to exercise their authority to make requests," Richard Salgado, Google's legal director for Law Enforcement and Information Security, said in a blog post on Thursday.

Google says in its Transparency Report FAQ that government agency requests for user data include investigating criminal activity, courts, administrative agencies, and unspecified "others."

The United States had the highest number of requests of any country, at 10,574 for 18,254 accounts, far surpassing France, the second-highest country at 2,750 requests for 3,378 accounts; Germany's 2,660 requests for 3,255 accounts; India's 2,513 requests for 4,401 accounts; the United Kingdom's 1,397 requests for 3,142 accounts; and Brazil's 1,085 requests for 1,471 accounts.Google produced at least some of the user data requested in 64 percent of those requests during the second half of last year, down from 65 percent in the first half of 2013 and 76 percent in the second half of 2010, the first time the metric was reported. The number of overall user accounts where data was supplied was up slightly, to 42,648 from 42,500 in the previous reporting period.

The United States and Malta were tied for second-highest percentage of cases where requests produced some data, at 83 percent. Finland had the highest success rate for requested data, at 92 percent.

However, as before, the report is merely an overview and lacks nuance. It does not reveal the circumstances of the requests, or which governments request data.

A request for comment by Google on the impact of the transparency report was not immediately returned. CNET will update the story when we hear back.

Yahoo updates methodology in new transparency report

Yahoo's second Transparency Report separates US National Security Requests from the bulk of the data.Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET

Yahoo may have been late to the transparency report game, but it's taking steps to be upfront about its moves to protect user data.

The second Yahoo Transparency Report, released Thursday, at first blush appears to detail a drop in US government requests for user account data between the first and second half of 2013. In fact, there are several reasons why the US government requests in the two reports are not comparable.

Ron Bell, Yahoo general counsel, said in a blog post announcing the new report that the company is pursuing a "user first" approach to transparency.

The most notable change is that Yahoo separately detailed US government National Security Requests in the second report. This follows a February blog post by Yahoo general counsel Ron Bell and associate general counsel Aaron Altschuler that explained changes in US government policy that allowed for slightly more detailed reporting of National Security Requests.

A Yahoo spokesperson said that the company informs its users when a government has requested their data before it hands it over, and has been doing so since July 2013.The Yahoo Transparency Report for the second half of 2013 shows 6,587 US government requests for user data, with 11,795 affected user accounts. Eight percent of those were rejected for either some kind of defect in the request, such as the law enforcement agency not having the jurisdiction to request the data or a user successfully contesting the government's demand. An additional 9 percent were rejected because no data was found.

"When Yahoo Inc. receives a request for user data from a law enforcement agency, we inform the agency that we reach out to our users to let them know of the government request," the spokesperson said. "We've noted that law enforcement agencies frequently choose to withdraw their request once we inform them of our user notification policy."

The notification policy, said the spokesperson, has led to users "in multiple cases" finding "legitimate reasons...for not complying with the demand."

Yahoo also breaks out information such as requests for "non-content data," which is basically metadata including "alternate e-mail address, name, location, and IP address, login details, billing information, and other transactional information (e.g., "to," "from," and "date" fields from email headers)." Sixty-four percent of US government requests resulted in non-content data disclosures, while another 19 percent resulted in disclosures that included content.

Other countries that made more than 1,000 requests for data from Yahoo in the second half of 2013 included the United Kingdom, India, Italy, France, Germany, and Taiwan.

HTC One M8 specs versus Samsung Galaxy S5, iPhone 5S

The HTC One M8 beckons you with its gleaming good looks, but its features are also top-shelf.Andrew Hoyle/CNET

There's no question that the visually-refined HTC One M8 is one fancy piece of hand candy. Luckily, its prowess isn't just chassis-deep. The 5-inch screen is bright and sharp, the 4-'ultrapixel' camera produces pleasing photos, and the phone's quad-core processing power is one of the fastest there is.

Although we spent a lot of time with the GS5 at its launch in Spain several weeks back, we still won't know which of these two Android phones comes out on top, and how they both also compare to the iPhone 5S, until we can review the Galaxy S5.On paper at least, the HTC One M8 more than stands up to its fiercest competitors, the Samsung Galaxy S5 and iPhone 5S. Pay close attention to the M8's expandable storage option; HTC's inclusion of this slot knocks out one Samsung's major benefits over the original HTC One.

Until then, here's how the three superphones' specs compare, side by side.

	HTC One M8	Samsung Galaxy S5	Apple iPhone 5S
Size	5.76 x 2.78 x 0.37 inches; 6.3 oz.	5.5 x 2.9 x 0.31 inches; 5 oz.	4.9 x 2.3 x 0.30 inches; 4 oz.
Screen	5 inches; 1,920x1,080; 441ppi	5.1 inches; 1,920x1,080 pixels; 431ppi	4 inches; 1,136x640 pixels; 326ppi
OS	Android 4.4; Sense 6.0 UI	Android 4.4; TouchWiz UI	iOS 7
Processor	2.3GHz quad-core; Qualcomm Snapdragon 801	2.5GHz quad-core; Qualcomm Snapdragon 801	Proprietary A7 (64-bit) with M7 motion processor
Rear camera and recording	4-'Ultrapixel'; 1080p HD	16-megapixel; 1080p HD	8-megapixel; 1080p HD
Front-facing camera	5-megapixel; 1080p HD video	2-megapixel; 1080p HD video	1.2-megapixel; 720p HD video
Capacity	16GB, 32GB	16GB, 32GB	16GB, 32GB, 64GB
RAM	2GB	2GB	N/A
Expandable storage	Up to 128GB	Up to 128GB	None
Battery	2,600mAh battery; embedded	2,800mAh; removable	Embedded; Up to 10 hours on 4G LTE; standby time up to 10 days
4G LTE	Yes	Yes	Yes
Wi-Fi	802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4, 5GHz)	802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4, 5GHz)	802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4, 5GHz)
NFC	Yes	Yes	No
Bluetooth	4.0 Low energy	4.0 Low energy	4.0 Low energy
IR Blaster	Yes	Yes	No
Notable extras	BlinkFeed, BoomSound	Fingerprint scanner, heart rate monitor	Touch ID scanner
Color choices	Gray, silver, rose gold	Black, white, blue, copper	Gray, white, gold
US carriers	AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon	AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, MetroPCS, and U.S. Cellular	AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and global

To dig in a little more, be sure to check out why I think that HTC's One M8 gives Samsung's Galaxy S5 a run for its money.

Facebook to buy Oculus for $2 billion

The social network is looking toward the future by buying the maker of the virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift.

The Oculus Rift headsetJames Martin/CNET

Facebook announced Tuesday that it has agreed to buy the virtual reality technology company Oculus VR, which makes the Oculus Rift headset, for about $2 billion in cash and stock.

The 18-month-old Oculus is at the forefront of the emerging VR industry, getting its start on Kickstarter, and has made an open-source sweetheart out of the Oculus Rift. The company just announced its final development kit for the Rift last week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, ahead of its official release, the date of which is unknown.

Facebook said that with the acquisition, it plans to extend Oculus' virtual reality capabilities beyond gaming into areas such as communications, media, entertainment, and education. Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, views virtual reality as the next big thing in social.

"Mobile is the platform of today, and now we're also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow," Zuckerberg said in a statement. "Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play, and communicate."

The deal, valued at about $2 billion based on a Facebook stock price of $69.35, includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock, and allows for an additional $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on milestones. The purchase also marks Facebook's first major consumer-facing hardware play for the usually software-oriented company.

Oculus is based in Irvine, Calif., and was founded by 21-year-old Palmer Luckey in 2012. The company launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund development and raised more than $2.4 million from online backers. Oculus will remain in its current location and continue to work on the Oculus Rift.

Facebook's latest billion-dollar buy closely follows its deal to purchase messaging application WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock. The social network also made headlines two years ago when it picked up Instagram for about $1 billion. The photo and video app has ballooned to 200 million monthly active users under Facebook's care.

The $2-billion deal for Oculus is expected to close in the second quarter of this year.

Lab-made mini human to screen drugs, toxins

Work begins on Athena, a $19 million project that seeks to create artificial organs that work in concert inside a human-like test dummy that could reduce reliance on animal testing.

There are huge benefits in developing drug and toxicity analysis systems that can mimic the response of actual human organs.Los Alamos National Laboratory

Something called the Advanced Tissue-engineered Human Ectypal Network Analyzer project might sound like a secret weapon being developed by S.H.I.E.L.D. In fact, it's a project being developed here in the real would that could change the way new drugs and toxic agents are screened.

Led by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Athena project aims to create mini versions of four artificial organs -- liver, lung, heart, and kidney -- that can be connected inside an artificial torso. Each organ will be about the size of a smartphone screen, according to LANL, and be connected by tubing filled with artificial blood. All together, the Athena "body" should be small enough to sit on a desk.

"By developing this 'homo minutus,' we are stepping beyond the need for animal or Petri dish testing: There are huge benefits in developing drug and toxicity analysis systems that can mimic the response of actual human organs," Rashi Iyer, a senior scientist at LANL leading the Athena organ project, said in a statement.

The artificial mini human will be built over the five-year course of the project, which has a budget of $19 million and is supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a subdivision of the Department of Defense (not quite S.H.I.E.L.D., but it's the best we got).

"The ultimate goal is to build a lung that breathes, a heart that pumps, a liver that metabolizes, and a kidney that excretes -- all connected by a tubing infrastructure much akin to the way blood vessels connect our organs," Iyer added. "While some skeptics might believe that this is a utopian dream... the team is confident that this is indeed achievable."

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The team she mentions consists of scientists working at universities in the US and Germany to create the various components of Athena.

The lungs and kidneys are being developed at LANL by Iyer; the heart is begin worked on at Harvard by Professor Kevin Kit Parker; and the liver is being developed at the Charite Universitätsmedizin in Berlin by Katrin Zeilinger, head of the Bioreactor Group, and colleagues. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco and Vanderbilt are working on the kidneys.

Co-principal investigator John Wikswo at Vanderbilt University, who is building the hardware that will run the Athena system, will present information about the development of the ATHENA system at the Society of Toxicology meeting this week in Phoenix.

"We spent a bit of time analyzing the challenges in building miniature human organ constructs, and we believe we've figured out how to capture the key features we need," Wikswo said in a statement. "There are a lot of trade-offs, and we're not trying to build an exact replica of a human liver, but an in vitro model that allows us to measure human liver responses to drugs and toxins that cannot be replicated by a layer of cells growing on plastic."

Vanderbilt is also collaborating with the LANL to create an artificial blood that will flow through the four mechanical organs.

While the researchers say that Athena, dubbed "homo minutus," will be small enough to fit on your desk, I'm not so sure I'd want a breathing, heart-beating, liver-and-kidney-squishing robot staring at me while I worked. How about you

Sobriety app with panic button helps addicts stay on the wagon

The app includes a panic button and an alarm that sounds if the user gets too close to a favorite bar or liquor store.Flickr, Ricardo Liberato

If you're inclined to agree with that old Alcoholics Anonymous saying, "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic," you just might be encouraged by a new app being developed at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, that aims to help -- as actively and even annoyingly as possible -- recovering addicts from falling off the wagon well after leaving treatment.

Called A-CHESS (short for Addiction-Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System), the app, which is being developed with federal funding at the school's Center for Health Enhancement System Studies, is the first of its kind to be put to the test in a large-scale, randomized clinical trial.

The app, which can be thoroughly customized to know a person's drinking patterns right down to their favorite pub, aims to be that unwavering friend or counselor who keeps someone on the straight and narrow -- only, the fact that it's a smartphone app means it's always along for the ride.

To study the effects of the app, researchers followed 350 people who had completed treatment programs in one of five centers in the Northeast and Midwest. A week before their release, half those participants were given a smartphone with the app and a tutorial with a counselor to help understand how to use and customize the app; the other half completed the normal course of treatment but left without any additional support.

Over the course of the year, the app would come alive anytime the user was in a high-risk situation -- think of lingering near a liquor store and suddenly hearing your young child begging you not to drink. Users also had a panic button at their disposal if they needed additional support -- akin to a sponsor always being one touch away.

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At the end of that year, 52 percent of the study participants who had successfully completed treatment and left with the app spent that year alcohol-free, compared with 40 percent of the people without the app. The former group also experienced half the number of risky days (1.4) than the control group did (2.75).

Researchers say they're currently forming a company that can commercialize the app, and hope to have it available online through Android and Apple stores soon.

Meanwhile, they're continuing to study a range of relapse prevention tools on mobile devices to help ease some of the burden drug addiction adds to the health care system and beyond. Ultimately, they say, the A-CHESS app could be part of a larger system called Seva (Hindi for selfless caring), which will join cognitive behavioral therapy with mobile social support to hep prevent not just relapses but also the spread of STDs such as HIV and hepatitis.

Ring around the asteroid: Scientists make surprise discovery

This is an artist's interpretation of the asteroid Chariklo.ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger

A faraway asteroid named Chariklo is traveling through space with two unusual companions: a couple of dense, narrow rings. The discovery came as quite a surprise. Multiple sites around South America, including the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile, observed the extraordinary feature.

"This is the smallest object by far found to have rings, and only the fifth body in the Solar System -- after the much larger planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune -- to have this feature," the European Southern Observatory noted in a release about the find. There is no definitive answer as to how the rings got there, but scientists speculate they may have been created from a debris field caused by an impact, along with ice.

Icy Chariklo orbits the sun between Saturn and Uranus. One of its rings is just over four miles wide, while the other ring is just under two miles wide, making them quite slim. The rings were found during a routine observation as the asteroid passed in front of a star.

Chariklo is named for a mythological nypmh who was married to a centaur. The rings have been given their own nicknames, Oiapoque and Chuí, after two rivers located in Brazil. The presence of the rings may indicate the asteroid also has a small moon, or that the rings could eventually form into a moon. It's likely Chariklo isn't done surprising us yet."We weren't looking for a ring and didn't think small bodies like Chariklo had them at all, so the discovery -- and the amazing amount of detail we saw in the system -- came as a complete surprise!" says Felipe Braga-Ribas, the lead author of a paper on the find published in the journal Nature.

This artist's rendering shows what the view from inside the asteroid's rings might look like.