International governments are set to agree a new information and communications treaty next month.

 Reports in the Russian press have suggested the Kremlin and others wanted control of key internet systems passed to a UN agency. Internet control currently lies largely with US-based groups such as Icann, which regulates the web address system. The European Parliament has said the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) was "not the appropriate body" to have authority. The ITU has said a new treaty was needed to ensure "the free flow of information around the world, promoting affordable and equitable access for all and laying the foundation for ongoing innovation and market growth". The UN agency is hosting the conference to draw up the treaty between 3 and 14 December in Dubai. Members of the European Parliament backed a resolution which urged member states to reject changes to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR) which would "negatively impact the internet, its architecture, operations, content and security, business relations, internet governance and the free flow of information online". 'Equal rights' The ITRs are designed to ensure interoperability of telecoms equipment and services across the world.

 The last major revision was in 1988. The negotiation process surrounding a new treaty has been criticised for being conducted largely out of the public's eye. However, a site called Wcitleaks, run by researchers at George Mason University, has published several document's relating to the new treaty. Among them was a proposal from Russia suggesting that the US should have less control over the internet's operation. "Member states shall have equal rights to manage the internet, including in regard to the allotment, assignment and reclamation of internet numbering, naming, addressing and identification resources and to support for the operation and development of basic internet infrastructure," it said in a document submitted on 17 November. 'Limited access' The European Parliament's objection follows loud opposition from search giant Google, which has invited concerned internet users to sign a petition. "The International Telecommunication Union is bringing together regulators from around the world to renegotiate a decades-old communications treaty," the company wrote. "Some proposals could permit governments to censor legitimate speech - or even allow them to cut off internet access. "Other proposals would require services like YouTube, Facebook, and Skype to pay new tolls in order to reach people across borders. This could limit access to information - particularly in emerging markets." ITU secretary-general Dr Hamadoun Toure has signalled that if there were any serious disagreements he would try to avoid putting an issue to a majority vote. "We never vote because voting means winners and losers and you can't afford that," he told the BBC in July. "Whatever one single country does not accept will not pass."













 22 November 2012 Last updated at 18:26
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20445637

In an email to all members, Facebook said it wanted a "more meaningful" way for users to give feedback. The site has also proposed combining information across its other services, such as photo-sharing app Instagram. Facebook said a vote into the changes could take place, but more than 300m users would need to participate. Under the site's rules, votes have an effect only if 30% of the user base has taken part. The site recently announced its one billionth sign-up. A campaign opposing the changes and calling for more transparency has been launched. The Our-Policy.org website is urging users to comment on the announcement in order to trigger a user vote on Facebook's plans. Under current rules, if there are 7,000 comments on an issue it will be voted upon. At the time of writing, 3,000 members had commented. 'Accountable' In explaining the changes, Facebook said it was looking for ways to more "effectively engage" with its users over changes to the network. "That commitment guided our decision in 2009 to launch an unprecedented process for user feedback," wrote Elliot Schrage, a vice-president of communications. "When we held our second global site governance vote in June, we indicated that we would review our site governance process in light of the growth of both our community - to over one billion users - and our company, which is now publicly traded and accountable to regulators around the world.

" Mr Schrage said the review of the procedure highlighted issues which required a restructuring of the feedback process. "We found that the voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments, actually resulted in a system that incentivised the quantity of comments over their quality. "Therefore, we're proposing to end the voting component of the process in favour of a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement." Data merge The new proposals also outlined details of Facebook's plans to combine information across various services it owns. This could potentially include Instagram, the photo-sharing app which the social network acquired for £440m ($700m) earlier this year. As well as a vast library of user-uploaded photographs, Instagram also holds location data on its users - a highly valuable resource. The Reuters news agency has speculated that Facebook intended to unify user data profiles in a way similar to Google's controversial policy changes which took place earlier this year. The move made it easier for Google to serve targeted advertising to its users. The search giant was heavily criticised by EU data regulators, and told that it must do more to explain to users how their information was being used. Facebook has told the BBC that there are currently no plans to merge its services in this way - but did not rule it out from happening in the future. Aside from the privacy-related changes, Facebook also told users it plans to: Add new tools for filtering incoming messages, in response to user complaints that messages from friends were being lost in the "Other" folder. Give better indicators of where posts can be viewed - and by whom. Offer more guidance on managing profiles, including how to request deletion of posts a user has been "tagged" in by a friend. As part of a lengthy list of demands, the Our Policy website criticises the proposal as being too vague. "We want Facebook to use clear and understandable language," the group says. "We oppose that Facebook is using 'like', 'may' or 'could' instead of clear statements. This makes it impossible to clearly know what we consent to."
















 22 November 2012 Last updated at 13:26
 By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20444678

Twitter resets 'hacked' passwords after being compromised

 Some accounts had been compromised, but other users had received the emails after Twitter had unintentionally reset unaffected passwords, the company said. The mass email coincided with incidents involving several high-profile accounts, including at least one account belonging to the BBC. Other media organisations, such as the TechCrunch blog, reported being warned. Twitter gave no indication of the cause or source of the compromise, and would not share details of the size of the issue. In a statement, it said: "When we believe an account may have been compromised, we reset the password and send an email letting the account owner know this has happened along with information about creating a new password. This is a routine part of our processes to protect our users. "In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised.

"We apologise for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused." Deletions and spam Some users who received the email noticed that some of their tweets had been deleted, while others said spam links had been posted without their knowledge - a typical characteristic of a compromised account. The Twitter account belonging to BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier told followers it was "trying to get to the bottom" of problems relating to their feed. Other BBC accounts have received the warning email - but it is not yet clear if any more were compromised. Comedian David Mitchell tweeted that he had received the email, and that a tweet he had written publicising his column in the Observer newspaper had been removed. Some users criticised Twitter's email, suggesting it looked like a "phishing scam" - a message that impersonates an official email in an attempt to trick users into giving up personal details.










8 November 2012 Last updated at 17:48
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20256682

Software that can translate spoken English into spoken Chinese almost instantly has been demonstrated by Microsoft.

The software preserves intonation and cadence so the translated speech still sounds like the original speaker. Microsoft said research breakthroughs had reduced the number of errors made by the instant translation system. It said it modelled the system on the way brains work to improve its accuracy. Details about the project were given by Microsoft research boss Rick Rashid in a blogpost following a presentation he gave in Tianjin, China, in late October that had, he said, started to "generate a bit of attention". In the final few minutes of that presentation the words of Mr Rashid were almost instantly turned into Chinese by piping the spoken English through Microsoft's translation system. In addition, the machine-generated version of his words maintained some of his spoken style.

'Dramatic change' This translation became possible, he said, thanks to research done in Microsoft labs that built on earlier breakthroughs. That earlier work ditched the pattern matching approach of the first speech translation systems in favour of statistical models that did a better job of capturing the range of human vocal ability. Improvements in computer technology that can crunch data faster had improved this further but error rates were still running at about 20-25%, he said. In 2010, wrote Mr Rashid, Microsoft researchers working with scientists at the University of Toronto improved translation further using deep neural networks that learn to recognise sound in much the same way as brains do. Applying this technology to speech translation cut error rates to about 15%, said Mr Rashid, calling the improvement a "dramatic change". As the networks were trained for longer error rates were likely to fall further, he said. The improved speech recognition system was used by Mr Rashid during his presentation. First, the audio of his speech was translated into English text. Next this was converted this into Chinese and the words reordered so they made sense. Finally, the Chinese characters were piped through a text-to-speech system to emerge sounding like Mr Rashid. "Of course, there are still likely to be errors in both the English text and the translation into Chinese, and the results can sometimes be humorous," said Mr Rashid in the blogpost. "Still, the technology has developed to be quite useful." Many different technology companies, including AT&T and Google, have similar projects under way that are attempting to do simultaneous translation. NTT Docomo has shown off a smartphone app that lets Japanese people call foreigners and lets both speak in their native tongue.










9 November 2012 Last updated at 11:10
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20266427