The U.S. Supreme Court should decline again to review when it’s OK for police to require someone to unlock an encrypted cellphone, New Jersey said Friday in docket 20-937. In Andrews v. New Jersey, a prosecutor secured a court order directing Robert Andrews, an Essex County sheriff's officer the time, to turn over passwords for two cellphones. Andrews challenged, citing Fifth Amendment protections, but the New Jersey Supreme Court said those protections don’t apply to passwords. No new circuits or state supreme courts have weighed in since October, when the high court chose not to hear a similar Pennsylvania case (see 2010050042), New Jersey told SCOTUS. "Petitioner claims a different result is nevertheless warranted, but he faces a significant threshold problem: Petitioner has not yet gone to trial, let alone been convicted and sentenced.” Future trial court proceedings “may obviate the need for review of any Fifth Amendment issues in this case,” the state said. New Jersey disagreed there's a judicial split over application of the “foregone conclusion” doctrine, which says it’s not self-incriminating to give the state information it already knows. “Petitioner alleges a split over whether a suspect could be required to verbally ‘communicate’ the ‘pure testimony’ of his device’s passcode. ... Yet in this case, Petitioner will be allowed to directly enter the passcode without divulging it.” The state Supreme Court was correct, New Jersey said. "Whenever a suspect enters his passcode, he is only confirming that he ... knows the code. If the government knows as much, that suspect has not incriminated himself and the Fifth Amendment is not offended. ... A contrary rule would elevate form over substance, allowing the State to enforce a search warrant if a device is protected by biometrics but not by a passcode. And it would offer those seeking to evade a lawful search warrant a path to do so.” The American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation support SCOTUS hearing the New Jersey case (see 2101080057).

AirFuel Alliance is launching an automated test system and certification program to support the AirFuel Resonant wireless charging standard. The program paves the way for deployment of AirFuel Resonant-certified products, President Sanjay Gupta said Thursday.

NTIA plans a virtual meeting April 29 at noon EDT about the multistakeholder process on promoting IoT software component transparency, says Thursday’s Federal Register (see 2012100021).

Bad actors are picking up the pace and raising the bar on cyberthreats, blogged Tom Emmons, Akamai principal product architect, about the fast-rising rate of “volumetric” distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks this year. “We've already seen more attacks over 50 Gbps” through March 24 than in all 2019, Emmons said Wednesday. “DDoS attacks are getting bolder and badder. Three of the six biggest volumetric DDoS attacks Akamai has ever recorded and mitigated have been in the past month, including the two largest known DDoS extortion attacks to date.” Threat actors “continue to expand their sights,” said Emmons. “The number of customer attacks per month has continued at near record volume, and we have continued to see diversification of attacks across geographies and industries.” Criminals apparently cling to "hope of a major Bitcoin payout,” he said. Bad actors “have started to ramp up their efforts and their attack bandwidth, which puts to rest any notion that DDoS extortion was old news.”

AT&T began supplying 4G LTE connectivity to 2021-model Maseratis in the U.S. under a multiyear agreement, said the carrier Tuesday. Access is included with unlimited AT&T in-car Wi-Fi through AT&T data plans. Maserati owners can sign up for a free trial lasting three months or 3 GB, whichever comes first.

Google Maps is getting a refresh this year, with upgrades to location capability, weather and routing models, blogged Dane Glasgow, Google Maps vice president-product. Live View is coming to indoor places that are tricky to navigate, including airports, transit stations and malls. Indoor navigation will be enabled by localization, which uses AI to scan “tens of billions” of Google Street View images to determine a user’s orientation, Glasgow wrote Tuesday. Advances “help us understand the precise altitude and placement of objects inside a building,” he said. Data comes from AirNow.gov, the Central Pollution Board, the Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Lab and The Weather Co., and the app works with other companies' services.

Defining broadband as 100 Mbps symmetrical would be "arbitrary," with no data to justify it since applications for key services and streaming entertainment rely on much less, Technology Policy Institute President Scott Wallsten blogged Monday. Only 42% of households have such service, he said. Too high a definitional bar could mean subsidies going to areas that don't need them, with people in unconnected areas remaining unconnected, he said: The FCC would be better off taking a weighted look at various factors, not just bandwidth. AT&T and NCTA have raised similar arguments (see 2103260035).

President Joe Biden should appoint a federal chief data officer, showing that open data policies and data capabilities are a priority, BSA|The Software Alliance wrote Friday in a letter with CTA and several other associations. The Center for Data Innovation, Information Technology Industry Council, Internet Association, R Street Institute, Software & Information Industry Association, TechNet and U.S. Chamber Technology Engagement Center signed. They asked Biden to fully implement the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary Government Data Act. The chief data officer should lead the federal chief data officer council, they said. The White House didn’t comment.

The U.S. and EU should forge a "pragmatic" digital alliance for data transfers because fully harmonized policies are unrealistic, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said Thursday. ITIF noted the "crisis" in digital relations and a "serious risk" of de facto data localization. It urged policymakers to create a successor to the Privacy Shield, annulled by the European Court of Justice in July 2020 (see 2007160002), as part of a broader framework that also includes new general data protection regulation-compliant personal data transfer mechanisms and better law enforcement cooperation on accessing electronic evidence. Such a cooperative agenda based on shared values would be a "strategic counterweight to authoritarian digital powers" like Russia and China, the group said: An alliance based on "digital realpolitik” is needed "now more than ever." The U.S. and EU are talking about PS (see 2103250023).

A stock analyst slammed AT&T's chief and the cable industry, partly over streaming. Warner Bros' decision to release its 2021 film slate simultaneously to theaters and its HBO Max subscription VOD service was an “overcommitment,” Wedbush's Michael Pachter told a virtual Digital Entertainment Group Expo Wednesday. “AT&T bit off way more than they could chew when they bought Time-Warner.” Pachter said the media company is “trying to package HBO Max and sell it and maybe later sell the studio.” AT&T is trying to shore up the value of HBO Max “because they think they’re going to get a Netflix multiple on that,” he said. The company is making "bad decisions for the creatives,” he said, trying to maximize profit for the content "by shoving it onto HBO Max.” Taking a swipe at AT&T CEO John Stankey, Pachter said, "It’s hard to get in the head of somebody who actually doesn’t know what they’re doing,” saying the former WarnerMedia CEO is “in way over his head.” Stankey didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday. Studios have fallen into “lockstep pursuit down the subscription streaming dream,” another executive told the conference (see 2103250067).