Net neutrality legal challenge launched

Pro-net neutrality campaigners said they were fighting against priority internet access for those able to pay

The industry body's president, Walter McCormick, said its members supported the enactment of "open internet" principles into law, but not using the new regulatory regime chosen by the FCC.

"We do not believe the Federal Communications Commission's move to utility-style regulation... is legally sustainable," he said.

USTelecom's case was brought in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which has rejected net neutrality regulations proposed by the FCC twice already.

Alamo challenged the new rules in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, making a similar argument to that made by USTelecom.

Challenges

According to the Reuters news agency, industry sources have previously said USTelecom and two other trade groups - CTIA - The Wireless Association, which represents the wireless communications industry, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which acts for the US cable television industry - were expected to lead legal challenges.

Verizon Communications Inc, which won a 2010 case against the FCC, was unlikely to mount its own legal challenge this time around, an industry source familiar with Verizon's plan told the agency.

The FCC said the legal challenges were "premature and subject to dismissal."

Officials added they had been prepared for legal action and the new rules were on much firmer legal ground than previous iterations.

The FCC's rules have yet to be published in the Federal Register and formally go into effect.

USTelecom, in its legal action, said it had filed the challenge on Monday in case the rules were construed to be final on the date of issue.

Priority access

In a blogpost, the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology - a free-market group - said the FCC's net neutrality rules were ideological and removed from the "real internet... [where] congestion is commonplace and the interests of content owners are divergent".

It referred to a Wall Street Journal report that major streaming networks were already seeking to separate their services from the public internet in search of higher speeds.

In Europe, regulators have also proposed allowing services other than those used to access the public internet a fast lane if they require a higher quality connection to function.

However, they sought to avoid a detrimental effect on the quality of service to internet users.

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Bee behaviour mapped by tiny trackers

The tiny trackers measure have a range of up to 2.5m (8.2ft)

A tiny new tracker designed to monitor bee behaviour is being tested by ecologists at Kew Gardens in London.

It is made from off-the-shelf technology and is based on equipment used to track pallets in warehouses, said its creator Dr Mark O'Neill.

Readers, used to pick up a signal from the kit, are connected to Raspberry Pi computers, which log the readings.

The device has a reach of up to 2.5m (8.2ft). Previously used models were restricted to 1cm (0.4in).

The tracker consists of a standard RFID (radio frequency identification) chip and a specially designed aerial, which Dr O'Neill has created to be thinner and lighter than other models used to track small insects, allowing him to boost the range.

The engineer, who is technical director at the Newcastle-based tech firm Tumbling Dice, is currently trying to patent the invention.

"The first stage was to make very raw pre-production tags using components I could easily buy", he said.

"I want to make optimised aerial components which would be a lot smaller."

"I've made about 50 so far. I've soldered them all on my desk - it feels like surgery."

The average "forage time" for a worker bee is around 20 minutes, suggesting they have a forage range of around 1km (0.6 miles) , Dr O'Neill explained.

The idea is to have readers dotted around a hive and flower patch in order to track the signals as the bees move around freely in the wild.

Chilled bees

The tiny trackers, which are just 8mm (0.3in) high and 4.8mm (1.9in) wide, are stuck to the bees with superglue in a process which takes five to 10 minutes. The bees are chilled first to make them more docile.

"They make a hell of a noise," acknowledged Dr O'Neill.

He told the BBC he hoped that the trackers - which weigh less than a bee and are attached at their centre of gravity so as not to affect their flight - would remain attached for their three-month expected lifespan.

The bees are chilled before the trackers are attached.

They have only been fitted to worker bees, which do not mate.

"If an animal ate one, I guess it would have a tracker in its stomach," Dr O'Neill said.

"But the attrition rate for field worker bees is very low. Most die of old age - they are very competent, and good at getting out of the way."

Dr Sarah Barlow, a restoration ecologist from Kew Gardens, was involved in testing the as-yet unnamed trackers.

"These tags are a big step forward in radio technology and no one has a decent medium to long range tag yet that is suitable for flying on small insects," she said.

"This new technology will open up possibilities for scientists to track bees in the landscape.

"This piece of the puzzle, of bee behaviour, is absolutely vital if we are to understand better why our bees are struggling and how we can reverse their decline."

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Facebook data row reaches top Euro court

Max Schrems has long campaigned against Facebook's data practices

The future of how Europeans' data is shared with US companies such as Facebook and Google is set to be considered by the EU's highest court.

Lawyer and activist Max Schrems said revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden showed agreed privacy practices were being ignored by Facebook and others.

He called for the current Safe Harbour deal, which allows the transfer of data to US firms, to be scrapped.

Facebook has not commented on the case.

At a hearing in Luxembourg on Tuesday the European Court of Justice's (ECJ) Advocate General said he would give his final opinion on 24 June - the ECJ will make its final decision thereafter.

Privacy principles

The result of the proceedings could have wide implications for all US firms dealing with Europeans' data, including the likes of Twitter, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

It centres around the Safe Harbour agreement, in place since 2000, which allows US firms to collect data on their European users as long as certain principles around storage and security are upheld.

It means user data gathered in Europe can easily be stored legally in data centres within the US.

Those principles include giving adequate notice to users that their data is being collected, and suitable transparency over how it can be accessed and by whom.

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook said it only complies with requests for data when forced to by law

The ECJ is considering whether the Safe Harbour agreement is effective in the wake of the Snowden leaks.

Mr Snowden alleged that Facebook and others were complicit in Prism, a surveillance system launched in 2007 by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Euro data

A complaint against Facebook - which bases its European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland - was filed by Mr Schrems last year.

He said the network should be investigated over the alleged co-operation with US intelligence agencies in handing over user data from Europeans.

Mr Schrems said Facebook had acted against the Safe Harbour rules, and that local regulators should step in to protect Europeans' data.

The ECJ's decision could mean US firms are forced to open more data centres in Europe

The Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) said it would not investigate the claims, a decision that was challenged by Mr Schrems in the Irish High Court.

Judge Duncan Hogan then referred the wider matter of whether Safe Harbour was effective to the ECJ.

'Serious effects'

The ECJ's eventual decision could have a dramatic impact on the business practices of Facebook and other US firms.

Scrapping the Safe Harbour agreement would make it much more difficult to transfer data from Europe to the US to be stored in data centres.

While Facebook has not made a formal statement on the case, the BBC understands that the firm would be likely to welcome updating the Safe Harbour rules in light of the Snowden revelations.

Some companies, such as Twitter, have said they would need to build new data centres in Europe to handle information, needlessly duplicating resources they already have in the US.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a spokesman for the UK data regulator said in court that scrapping Safe Harbour would "have quite serious effects... risking disruption of trade that carries significant benefit for the EU and its citizens".

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