Apple will spend 1.7 billion euros ($1.93 billion) to build and operate two new data centers in Denmark and Ireland that will be 100 percent powered by renewable energy, the company said Monday. The facilities will run Apple’s online services, including the iTunes Store and the App Store, for customers across Europe, it said. “Apple will also work with local partners to develop additional renewable energy projects from wind or other sources to provide power in the future.” Both facilities are expected to begin operations in two years, Apple said.

The FCC Media Bureau requested comments on a rulemaking on expanding to broadcast radio licensees, cable operators, satellite radio licensees and satellite TV providers the requirement for public inspection files to be posted on the commission's online database, the bureau said in a public notice Monday. Comments are due March 16, replies April 14.

The day after NSA Director Mike Rogers said again that technology companies have a responsibility to create a “framework” that would let the agency access data and communications, even if encrypted, the Electronic Frontier Foundation questioned whether President Barack Obama’s administration truly believes the rule of law is important. During a cybersecurity conference at the New America Foundation on Monday, Rogers said the tech community should allow the NSA access, despite repeated warnings from security experts that limiting “backdoor” access to only “good guys” is not actually possible. A blog post Tuesday by EFF Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo and EFF Global Policy Analyst Eva Galperin said that “once you build a backdoor (even if you call it something else) you can't be sure who will walk through it. And there's plenty of evidence that governments, especially the Chinese government, target law enforcement backdoors in technology products in order to gain the same level of access to user data (without legal oversight) that the NSA is so keen to get for itself.” Yahoo Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos asked Rogers during Monday’s panel discussion whether the tech company, which has 1.3 billion users worldwide, also should create a backdoor for the Chinese, Russian, Saudi Arabian, Israeli and French governments as well. Rogers acknowledged the “international implications” but said, “I think we can work our way through this.” Why should "we believe that other countries would follow that legal framework and not simply ignore that framework and attack the law enforcement access point?” EFF asked. “If the rule of law is as important as we all apparently agree, this is a great opportunity for the Obama Administration to tell the courts here that intercepts may only be accomplished with actual legal process,” EFF said. “Until then, it's hard to take seriously the Administration's magical thinking: that a technological security hole -- as Stamos put it, ‘like drilling a hole in the windshield’ -- can be protected by a ‘framework.’ The only thing we can trust is math, and the strong encryption that implements it.” The White House had no immediate comment.

Enterprise adoption of the Internet of Things is still "relatively low" but “starting to gain momentum,” said an ABI Research report commissioned by Verizon Enterprise Solutions. The number of business-to-business IoT connections will quadruple between 2014 and 2020, rising to 5.4 billion connections globally, said the report. Social media and mobile technology are transforming consumer and citizen expectations about IoT, and the dropping costs of sensors, connectivity and processing power are making IoT a more viable proposition to a broader set of organizations, it said. An improving economy has brought new entrants in the enterprise market that are using IoT as a “roadmap to improve their customers' experiences, accelerate growth and create new business models that are driving societal innovation,” said Mark Bartolomeo, Verizon vice president-IoT Connected Solutions. In the automotive industry, 14 car manufacturers with 80 percent of the worldwide market have a connected car strategy, Verizon said. More than 13 million health and fitness tracking devices will be introduced in the workplace by 2018 as part of employer-sponsored wellness programs to help reduce the cost of healthcare, it said, and by 2025 smart cities capabilities will become a “critical consideration” for companies deciding where to invest and open facilities, “due to their impact on operating costs and talent availability." Verizon saw 45 percent year-over-year revenue growth in its IoT business in 2014, with 4G LTE activations growing 135 percent, the company said. Verizon estimates just 10 percent of enterprises have deployed IoT technologies extensively. That indicates many organizations “are in a pilot phase or are waiting for more insights from early adopters,” said the company, including the automotive market. More than 600 million vehicles worldwide aren't connected to a network, according to Verizon data. While the core technologies powering IoT -- sensors, cloud computing and intelligent networking -- are familiar to most businesses and public sector organizations, formulating a viable strategy and developing IoT solutions can be highly complex, said Bartolomeo. "There's still a lot more work to be done” in creating and ratifying standards, he said. "As machine-to-machine technology adoption continues to move downstream with millions of endpoints connected, it will change how we see cybersecurity and privacy." Verizon’s role is to “help key decision makers tackle complexities like security head-on by encouraging a more proactive posture in order to create value for their organizations while reducing potential risk," the company said.

Zayo completed its $675 million acquisition of Latisys's operating units Monday, said the acquirer in a news release. The deal adds eight facilities to Zayo’s data center strategic product group, zColo, and gives it presence in four new markets in Ashburn, Virginia; Denver; Orange County, California; and London.

Verizon invested $17.2 billion in network infrastructure in 2014, putting the company near the top of the list of private investors in U.S. technology, said the carrier in a news release Monday. Over the past three years, the company made more than $50 billion in such investments, and information on these and other figures is in the company's latest 10-K SEC form.

Fourteen companies and organizations of all sizes and specialties across the tech and telecom industry landscape joined the Telecommunications Industry Association, a TIA news release said Friday. The new members include: Asociar; Burns & McDonnell; Contra Costa Transportation Authority; Engineered Tower Solutions; iFast; Infinera; Network Technology Solutions; Power of Design Group; PTI Solutions; Schnabel DC Consultants India; Shenandoah Tower Service; Sioux Falls Tower & Communications; Texas A&M Transportation Institute; and Vertical Solutions. “As the industry faces rapidly developing technologies, new regulatory environments, and shifting business models,” becoming a member of TIA “gives companies a strong voice in charting the future of the network,” said TIA CEO Scott Belcher.

The State Department now requires U.S. companies and foreigner end users to sign and submit an addendum to the DSP-83 nontransfer and use certificate form at the time of application for a permanent export license for unmanned aerial systems (UAS), known commonly as drones. Temporary UAS exports, for marketing and other purposes, won't require the addendum, State said last week. State included the necessary addendum format with its statement. The department recently outlined a new policy for UAS trade, in a separate announcement (see 1502170065), shortly after the Federal Aviation Administration unveiled plans to propose rules for commercial drones and President Barack Obama asked agencies to look at drone privacy issues (see 1502160003).

In an ending of the ill-fated Redbox Instant by Verizon streaming video service, which shut down Oct. 7, the venture’s attempt at closure with its customers hit a snag Wednesday when subscribers tried to follow an email invitation to switch their purchased content to M-GO. We were one of the Redbox Instant by Verizon pioneers who jumped on instructions in the “friendly reminder” it offered by email Wednesday to “provide access at NO COST to you for movies you purchased from us” through an agreement with M-GO. If movies we had purchased couldn’t be transferred to M-GO, we were to qualify for credit in the M-GO store for the price we originally paid for the movie, the venture said. As a bonus, we were to receive a $5 welcome credit from M-GO. We followed instructions to visit the M-GO page, where we were instructed to enter our email address. But a system glitch prevented subscribers from entering email addresses and completing the process, which included access to the names of movies that subscribers had purchased from Redbox Instant by Verizon. Wednesday and again Thursday, Redbox Instant by Verizon sent out an apology email: “You recently received an email from us reminding you to act by March 20, 2015 if you wished to establish an account with M-GO to access and watch your Redbox Instant by Verizon movies," it said. "Unfortunately, due to a technical error on our part, the consent page used an invalid email address instead of your Redbox Instant by Verizon email and did not allow you to properly enter your email address before completing the consent process." After apologizing, Redbox Instant by Verizon assured customers that their account information was "safe and secure.” Redbox Instant by Verizon will be “re-sending this reminder email to you soon, after we’ve corrected the migration function,” it said. We decided not to wait for an invitation and tried the link again, finding that the email address issue was corrected. A confirmation email thanked us for our consent to switch our purchased movies to M-GO and said we’d receive instructions within the next 24 hours on “how to complete the migration process.”

An anonymous telecom company and an Internet company backed Twitter in the social networking site’s legal fight for the right to release information related to national security letters (NSLs) it receives. The anonymous companies filed an amicus brief Tuesday arguing that gag orders are an “unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech and a serious infringement of their First Amendment Rights.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is representing the anonymous companies, provided the brief. Twitter filed a lawsuit in October arguing that “users deserved to know certain basic facts about NSLs that the government did or did not serve on the social media company,” EFF said. NSLs issued by the federal government almost always contain a gag order, prohibiting the companies from notifying customers or the public that a demand has been made, the group said. The anonymous telecom and Internet companies involved in this case “want to go public with some details of their fights against NSLs,” such as their corporate identities and “what they have done to protect customers from unreasonable collection of information,” EFF said. The government argues that identifying the companies that received an NSL “might endanger national security,” EFF said. Several courts, including the Supreme Court, recognize that “a prior restraint -- preventing speech in the first instance instead of imposing a penalty after the speech -- is a serious and dangerous step," EFF Legal Fellow Andrew Crocker said. "Yet with NSLs, we have prior restraints imposed at the government's whim, without any judicial oversight or review. Our clients want to talk about their experience with these NSLs, but the government is unconstitutionally shielding itself from any criticism or critique of their procedures." A San Francisco-based federal district court judge agreed with EFF in 2013 that the NSL provisions were unconstitutional and prohibited any future NSLs and accompanying gag orders, EFF said. That ruling was stayed pending appeal, allowing additional NSLs to be distributed while the case makes its way through the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.