Google launched a page for users to sign an online petition to “Demand real surveillance reform” (http://bit.ly/U7Cyma). The page, launched over the weekend, argues the “bulk collection” of Internet data such as names of email correspondents “runs counter to our democratic principles.” It points to the USA Freedom Act (HR-3361), which passed the House (CD May 23 p9), but with language “watered down so badly that it will not prevent bulk Internet data collection.” As the bill moves to the Senate “it is critical that this loophole be closed,” the page says.

Government agencies need to respond better to cyber incidents, the GAO said in a report released Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1kqruFm). “Based on a statistical sample of cyber incidents reported in fiscal year 2012, GAO projects that these agencies did not completely document actions taken in response to detected incidents in about 65 percent of cases (with 95 percent confidence that the estimate falls between 58 and 72 percent),” the report said of its review of 24 major federal agencies. It said even with plans and policies in place, agencies weren’t always comprehensive or consistent with federal obligations. The CyberStat reviews from the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Homeland Security “have not addressed agencies’ cyber incident response practices,” GAO said. “Without complete policies, plans, and procedures, along with appropriate oversight of response activities, agencies face reduced assurance that they can effectively respond to cyber incidents.”

While it looks to boost advertising revenue, Pandora “won’t ever need to get to the level of terrestrial radio,” said Vice President Dominic Paschel on a webcast from the Cowen and Company Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in New York Wednesday. In the car in particular, terrestrial radio has “abused the consumer … because there was nothing else for them to really listen to, and they chased every last dollar down,” Paschel said. Pandora began in-car advertising in January and is sold out for the rest of the year, he said, but the company can draw on ad revenue from other segments of the business. Paschel said the maximum number of ads Pandora serves per hour is six -- and fewer in the car -- compared to roughly 15 minutes of ads per hour for terrestrial radio. “You don’t race from zero to six … all of a sudden,” he said. The ad load is being gradually increased on Sonos and other embedded platforms, he said. On the desktop PC, Pandora can monetize visually as well when consumers look at the screen to press thumbs-up and -down features, skip tracks and change stations -- and they do so about seven times an hour, which translates into seven digital advertising opportunities, he said. In the car, without the visual benefit, Pandora has an average load of two-and-a-half to three ads per hour, up from two to two-and-a-half in 2012, and it expects the number of spots to increase during the year to three to three-and-a-half on average this year. About 20 percent of Pandora’s ad load is local, Paschel said. Pandora can compete with terrestrial radio with fewer ads per hour because it can leverage RPMs (revenue per 1,000 listener hours) that “easily rival” those of terrestrial radio “because we have other methodologies to monetize,” he said. Pandora is targeting what Paschel called the “hyper-local” market, where a few local ads could add up to an RPM that could rival broadcast rates, “if not higher,” he said. On future expansion, Paschel said, the company is looking at international opportunities and other forms of content to be viewed as “radio,” not just music radio. Pandora will look to enter the sports market if it can be accretive to shareholders “soon” and not “10 years down the line,” he said. Pandora was international before it invested in IP-blocking technology in 2007, he said. Company research indicates Pandora would be approaching a 1 billion user database, he said, if it hadn’t started blocking IP addresses from outside of the U.S. Progress in its only international markets -- Australia and New Zealand -- has been strong, he said, but rights costs are an issue with additional international expansion. He cited recently published reports on Canadian sound recording royalty rates that are a tenth of the U.S. rates for that portion of the rights picture, but remaining Canadian royalty fees will determine whether Pandora will ultimately enter that market, he said.

The Internet of Things technology and application market value is expected to be $1.42 trillion by 2020, said a report by business research firm MarketsandMarkets, said a company news release (http://bit.ly/1tKXY4J) Monday. The market value for the IoT tech and applications was $1 trillion in 2013, it said. Applications such as smart meters, smart plugs, connected cars and “wearable technology” will encourage IoT growth, it said.

Amazon is offering select Amazon Prime customers a free 30-day trial of Fire TV, said BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield, who was offered the trial in an email Thursday. Amazon is shipping the box gratis and customers who choose not to keep the product may return it at no cost. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to our request for information. Greenfield noted in a blog post that 30-day free trials are commonplace in the software/premium content space, citing similar promos offered by HBO and Showtime. Netflix has a similar promotion for new customers. In the technology hardware world, though, they're less common, said Greenfield, and he sees Amazon’s offer as a way to stimulate sales of IP-based TVs. The shift toward IP-based, on-demand, ad-free TV is primed to “notably accelerate over the next two years,” Greenfield said. Not only will it be more challenging for content providers in the linear TV model to break successful new live TV shows as the reach of IP-streaming devices expands, “but convincing consumers to endure 20 minutes of untargeted commercials will be infinitely harder,” he told us. Citing Google’s Chromecast for $35, Roku’s efforts to build its software directly into TVs and Amazon’s becoming more aggressive with Fire TV marketing, “We wonder if a price-cut heading into the 2014 holiday season will occur to drive penetration even faster,” Greenfield said.

The Internet Security Alliance (ISA) praised the White House Friday for agreeing with federal agencies’ analyses that their existing regulatory authority and voluntary measures instituted through President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity executive order are collectively enough to improve critical infrastructure sectors’ cybersecurity. “Especially when viewed in the context of the world-wide policy debate as to how to deal with the cyber threat, the Obama Administration’s understanding of cyber security is clearly the most sophisticated,” said ISA President Larry Clinton. Current adversaries “are too sophisticated and the technologies and threat vectors change too rapidly for the traditional regulatory model to cope with a dynamic issue like cyber security,” he said. “We need to be as creative as the attackers and find more dynamic mechanisms to answer the threat and finding a way to use the market is probably the best alternative.” The White House released reports Thursday from the Environmental Protection Agency and Health and Human Services and Homeland Security departments on how their regulatory powers could be better aligned with the cybersecurity executive order. The executive order had mandated the three agencies submit those reports. The White House will continue to streamline and harmonize regulations, but these analyses mean “agencies with regulatory authority have determined that existing regulatory requirements, when complemented with strong voluntary partnerships, are capable of mitigating cyber risks to those systems,” said White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel in a blog post Thursday. “Over the next two years, these departments and agencies will jointly investigate and leverage opportunities to improve the efficiency, clarity, and coordination of existing regulations” (http://1.usa.gov/1tpPu2U).

A new Application Developers Alliance working group will aim to “develop best practices for transparent and secure collection, analysis, storage, sharing, and use of consumer data,” said an alliance release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1nvSRS9). Communications technology company Ericsson is chairing the group, and other members include AT&T, Google, Sprint and Yahoo, the alliance said. The group will also have a policy focus, trying to “shape global public policies that are balanced and protect innovative data use,” the alliance said. In a statement, Application Developers Alliance President Jon Potter said, “Developers are using data to build products that make us smarter, healthier and more efficient, but with these innovations comes the need to ensure data collection is transparent and secure."

HBO programming is available on Amazon Prime Instant Video. U.S. users of the service can access a collection of popular HBO shows for unlimited streaming, Amazon said Wednesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1j8f192). Programs available include The Sopranos, The Wire and True Blood, it said.

Pandora faces a “challenge” to make it as easy for listeners to access its service in cars as it is to access AM and FM radio there, Tim Westergren, the company’s founder, told a J.P. Morgan investor conference webcast from Boston Wednesday. Half of all radio listening is done in cars, so that’s an “enormous category for us,” he said. It would be ideal if listeners just had to press one button to hear Pandora in their cars, he said. “We're still a little ways away from that.” Users must now typically use a mobile phone to access Pandora in their cars, he said. In contrast, it’s almost as easy for listeners to access Pandora as traditional radio in their offices, he said. “At some point, we will be as easy to use in the car, and I'm pretty bullish about what’s going to happen then.” It won’t be a “quick transition,” he said. The “ultimate vision is a connected car” that, just as with AM or FM radio now, would play Pandora automatically when the car was turned back on if it had been the last thing playing when shut off, he said. That’s a “multiyear process,” he said. Pandora is also eyeing an expansion of its content offerings beyond music, he said. Talk radio including news, sports and weather makes up about 15 percent of broadcast radio now, and it “makes a lot of sense” for Pandora users to be able to have “personalized sports woven into” their listening options, he said. “It’s kind of a question of when, I think, not if” Pandora will offer that additional content, he said.

NTIA’s transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and ICANN’s accountability review received the support of the Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms, in its final report (http://bit.ly/RUMkGB) released Tuesday. The panel was chaired by Toomas Ilves, president of Estonia, and included ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade and Vint Cerf, Google chief Internet evangelist (CD Nov 19 p17). The panel supports “broad multistakeholder alliances” and “urgently needed sustainable funding and resource models” to develop Internet governance access and growth, it said. The panel also endorsed the principles in the multistakeholder document (http://bit.ly/1nLhMBC) produced at Internet governance conference NETmundial in Sao Paulo, Brazil (CD April 28 p13).