Month: November 2015

Categories
Law

The last word (for now) on NSA data collection

Saturday marked the end of the National Security Agency’s gathering information about the phone calls of millions of Americans indiscriminately.

A law passed over the summer overhauled the government’s authority to collect so-called telephone metadata with a framework that provides for phone companies to hold such records subject to the government’s obtaining an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that authorizes their release.

The change, embodied in the USA Freedom Act, originated with revelations by Edward Snowden that the government was collecting phone records of Americans in bulk and randomly. The law gave the government 180 days, until Nov. 29, to comply.

In a ruling on Nov. 9 that held such collections likely unconstitutional, Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia noted that the end of bulk collection would not be “the last chapter in the ongoing struggle to balance privacy rights and national security interests under our Constitution in an age of evolving technological wizardry.”

Categories
Sports

Golden State Warriors and the values that support a record start

In his book “Winners: And How They Succeed,” Alastair Campbell reports that the winningest winning mindsets are in sports.

The Golden State Warriors, who have set a record for the best start to an NBA season, underscore Campbell’s finding.

Guard Stephen Curry and his teammates will look to go 18 and 0 on Saturday when they host Sacramento.

The Warriors’ start sent me to stories about the team and the values instilled by Coach Steve Kerr: joy, mindfulness, compassion and competition.

Joy means “he wants us having fun,” interim coach Luke Walton told reporters on Tuesday. (Kerr is on leave to recover from a spinal fluid leak.)

Mindfulness, said Walton, means “thinking the game. It’s not just trying [to] out-talent people; it’s not trying to go for your individual stats. It’s being mindful of the right way to do things.”

“There’s compassion—for each other and for the game of basketball,” he added. “And then there’s competition.”

On Friday, Curry scored 41 points on Friday against Phoenix despite not playing in the fourth quarter. Equally amazing: He hit nine of 16 3-pointers to edge past LeBron James in all-time 3-pointers made. Curry now has 1,278 threes for his career, which spans 433 games. James, by comparison, has 1,276 threes in 927 games.

On offense, it can seem as if Curry and his teammates operate continually beyond the three-point line. After hitting a shot, Curry spins and, without a trace of celebration, heads down the court to play defense.

Categories
News

Paris, Beirut attacks

https://twitter.com/jean_jullien/status/665305363500011521

https://twitter.com/MGHuff/status/665966897775706113

https://twitter.com/dmascret/status/665820842224435200

Categories
Law

Why New York’s attorney general has a case against DraftKings and FanDuel

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman made news on Tuesday when he ordered FanDuel and DraftKings to stop accepting wagers in the state.

Both of the daily fantasy sports sites allegedly run afoul of New York law, which prohibits bookmaking that profits from illegal gambling activity, according to Schneiderman.

The cease-and-desist order adds to the scrutiny faced recently by both leagues, which call their contests games of skill, citing as support a federal law passed in 2006 that excludes fantasy sports from the definition of the term “bet” or “wager.”

Schneiderman’s office thinks otherwise. In a letter to FanDuel (a nearly identical version went to DraftKings), Kathleen McGee, chief of the attorney general’s Internet bureau, wrote:

“Our review concludes that FanDuel’s operations constitute illegal gambling under New York law, according to which, ‘a person engages in gambling when he stakes or risks something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or a future contingent event not under his control or influence.’

FanDuel’s customers are clearly placing bets on events outside of their control or influence, specifically on the real-game performance of professional athletes. Further, each FanDuel wager represents a wager on a ‘contest of chance’ where winning or losing depends on numerous elements of chance to a ‘material degree.’”

The Empire State classifies as gambling games that involve a significant amount of chance. As David Apfel and Andrew Kim of the law firm Goodwin Proctor noted in a column last April, most fantasy contests involve some element of chance. The degree matters.

The federal law that excepts fantasy leagues from the definition of Internet gambling does nothing to upend state laws that prohibit, allow, or regulate gambling, leaving the leagues to navigate the variations in laws governing gambling in each state.

Currently DraftKings, FanDuel, and other fantasy sites operate in 45 states that allow games with some element of chance so long as skill predominates.

But elements of daily fantasy sports—significantly both the dailiness and fact that prizes vary with the number of participants—suggest that chance may outweigh skill in the outcome. According to Apfel and Kim:

“Many states distinguish between entry fees and bets, and have a clear law stating that paying to play in a game or contest for a prize is perfectly lawful, provided the prize has nothing to do with the number of entrants. Where a game’s prize is set in advance and does not turn on how many individuals enter the game, these states permit the game to proceed. But where prizes consist of a percentage of the entrance fees or are otherwise dependent in whole or in part on the number of participants, the laws in these states treat the otherwise benign entry fees as illegal bets or wagers.”

The frequency of the contests suggests that playing daily fantasy is less about drafting well—a skill that tests entrants’ ability to size up the skills of players they draft for their fantasy teams, an activity akin to what professional sports teams do as part of their business—than about luck.

Dustin Gouker, who covers the daily fantasy industry for Legal Sports Report, put it this way recently:

“There are thousands of contests that you can choose to enter on a variety of sites, with entry fees from 25 cents to thousands of dollars. Those buy-ins are how daily fantasy sites make money; they take a percentage of each entry fee. The biggest contests routinely pay out millions of dollars.

Does it sound like gambling, on its face? Gambling can be defined as wagering money on an uncertain outcome — like, say, a last-minute fumble that wins a player more than a million dollars. Sure sounds like daily fantasy fits the bill.”

A lot of money rides on the distinction. FanDuel and DraftKings each are valued at more than $1 billion and count among their investors the NBA, NBC Sports, Google, and Time Warner/Turner Sports (FanDuel), and Major League Baseball; Robert Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots; Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and Fox Sports (DraftKings).

Together the companies have 1.1 million active players in the Empire State, which houses 12.8% of the fantasy sports market, according to the Times. Being shut out of New York would cost the leagues a combined $35 million in revenue per year.

Then there’s the ad spending. FanDuel and DraftKings have spent more than $220 million since August, as anyone who has watched sports on TV or the Internet during that time knows. Fox Sports’ investment in DraftKings came with a promise by the fantasy site to spend $250 million on ads with the network over the next three years.

Judging by their investments, the investors thus far have concluded that benefits of backing the companies outweigh the risks. For the leagues, daily fantasy sports translate to viewers for games. Nearly two-thirds of daily fantasy players say they watch more live sports as a result of fantasy play, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, an industry group.

Both DraftKings and FanDuel are pushing back against the charges by Schneiderman. DraftKings said in a statement it “will examine and vigorously pursue all legal options available” to continue operations in the Empire State, and accused the attorney general of failing to “understand our business or why daily fantasy sports are clearly a game of skill.”

“Fantasy sports is a game of skill and legal under New York State law,” echoed FanDuel.

Of course, a larger threat to the companies may come less from what happens in New York and more from what happens if other states follow Schneiderman’s lead. Last month, regulators in Nevada ordered daily fantasy sites to stop accepting wagers until they obtain a gambling license. The Department of Justice reportedly is investigating the sites, too.

Both DraftKings and FanDuel say they welcome government regulation. Officials in some states seem inclined to agree. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said on Wednesday that daily fantasy sites constitute “a form of gambling” but added that “it’s important to get beyond that.”

“Let’s focus on the issues, let’s focus on protecting consumers, and let’s set out some really robust standards for how this industry should operate, if it’s going to operate here in this state,” Healey told MassLive.

Healey’s suggestion may represent a lifeline. For those in the business of daily fantasy sports, a rule book soon may seem like the safest bet of all.

 

 

 

 

Categories
Privacy

The US and EU have three months to come to terms on trans-Atlantic data transfers

The United States and Europe have three months to work out a procedure for the transfer of personal data to the US from the EU, representatives of an independent advisory body that brings together data protection regulators from the EU’s member states announced on Saturday.

The announcement, by the EU’s Article 29 Working Party, gives guidance to businesses and other organizations that send data ranging from posts on social media to personnel records across the Atlantic following a ruling in October by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) invalidating a so-called safe harbor that had governed such transfers since 2000.

The ruling by the ECJ highlighted the cross-border flow of data and raised anew questions about the protections for privacy in a digital economy. It also upended the expectations of more than 4,000 companies, including tech giants such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google, that had certified compliance with the safe harbor to relay data from Europe to the US.

The statement by the Article 29 Working Group aim to allay fears by companies that the ECJ’s ruling might spur regulators in Europe to bring enforcement actions against companies for mishandling data transfers. In the meantime, companies can use contracts to assure privacy safeguards or adopt rules that protect the privacy of data transfers among corporate subsidiaries.

Officials on both sides of the Atlantic also say they will continue negotiations on a pact that can replace the safe harbor. If the sides cannot agree by the end of January, regulators in each of the EU’s member states will “take all necessary and appropriate action, including coordinated enforcement actions,” the Working Party said in its statement.

“Transfers of personal data are an essential element of the transatlantic relationship,” the group added. “The EU and the US are each other’s most important trading partners, and data transfers, increasingly, form an integral part of their commercial exchanges.”

The safe harbor reconciled differences in privacy protection between the US and EU, which holds that citizens have a fundamental right to privacy with respect to the processing of their data. The US regulates privacy by sector but lacks a national scheme.

The ECJ nullified the safe harbor as part of its resolution of a referral from Ireland’s high court, which had referred the matter to the ECJ following a ruling by the republic’s data protection commission (DPC) that the safe harbor preempted investigation of a claim an alleged violation.

The case began in June 2013,  when Max Schrems, then a law student at the University of Vienna, filed a complaint with the DPC charging that Facebook, which maintains its European headquarters in Dublin, sent at least some of the information he and his fellow citizens of the EU posted on the site to servers the company operates in the United States.

Schrems premised his complaint on leaks by Edward Snowden, who documented how the National Security Agency obtained information about users from Facebook, Google, and other tech firms. The surveillance, Schrems asserted, contravened the EU’s protections for personal data.

The ECJ agreed. According to the court, the National Security Agency’s ability to compel tech firms to hand over electronic communications provided by their users “must be regarded as compromising the essence of the fundamental right to respect for private life.”

In January 2014, the Obama administration and tech companies announced a deal that allows the companies to disclose information about data they are required to share with the government

Categories
Sports

Cricket All-Stars, NFL show globalization of sports

At JFK this week I passed a billboard for a financial firm that depicted a ball shaped like an American football but flatter at each end, like a rugby ball, with the pattern of a soccer ball.

The mythical mass served as metaphor for globalization, which two items in the news this week suggest is accelerating when it comes to sports.

First is a cricket match slated for Saturday at Citi Field in New York, the first of three exhibitions to be played in the U.S. this month by teams of retired all-stars. The other is an announcement by the NFL that it will play at least three games in London in each of the next five seasons after three contests there this year.

The moves mark a quickening of activity by two sports that have yet to arrive in the U.S. and U.K., respectively, on a national level. Of course, cricket has billions of fans around the world. Test matches between England and Pakistan, and between India and South Africa, are among the top events this weekend in all of sport.

The matches in the states will feature Sachin Tendulkar, who retired from the Indian national team two years ago after scoring 15,921 runs in 200 test matches, or 2,000 more than his closest rival; and Shane Warne, an Australian who retired in 2013 and ranks second of all time in wickets taken (getting a batter out) in test matches.

Tendulkar, 42, who may be the greatest batsman of all time, and Warne, 46, among the best bowlers ever, will helm opposing teams of former greats from Pakistan, India, England, South Africa, the West Indies, and Sri Lanka. “The vision is to globalize cricket,” Tendulkar told the Times. “Somewhere we need to start.”

That could be America, which in 1844 hosted the first international cricket match, between the U.S. and Canada. Today roughly 35,000 Americans play cricket, according to the United States of America Cricket Association.

The grounds at Citi Field will include a pitch that organizers of the matches have trucked from Indiana, where it was grown for the occasion by Mark Perham, the former groundsman at Eden Park, the largest stadium in New Zealand. The pitcher’s mound, which had a workout in the recently concluded World Series, will be lowered so as not to present a hazard for cricketers.

American football comes to rugby grounds

Separately, the NFL announced on Tuesday it has leased Twickenham Stadium, which normally houses rugby and recently hosted the sport’s world cup, for each of the next three seasons.

That brings to three the number of venues the league will use to host games in London between now and 2020. In addition to Twickenham, which holds 82,000 people, the league will play at least two games a year at Wembley Stadium over the coming five years.

The NFL also is slated to play two games a year at a stadium being built for Tottenham Hotspur when it is completed in 2018.

According to the league, the three games it hosted this season at Wembley averaged 83,777 fans apiece, a crowd roughly equivalent to the capacity of MetLife Stadium.

The push by the NFL to expand internationally will extend south as well. The league is expected to play at least one game in Mexico City in 2016 and says it is exploring matchups in Germany and Brazil.

Categories
Sports

The Mets finish a series and fill a season

mets_capBy the time Eric Hosmer doubled off Matt Harvey to cut the Mets’ lead in half in game five of the World Series on Sunday night, the armless chair that I occupied in games one through four had developed a groove from all the times I had winced or felt my body cringe involuntarily.

Mets fans, including this one, recoiled when closer Jeurys Familia gave up a home run to Alex Gordon that tied game one with two outs remaining in the bottom of the ninth. In what was to become a pattern, the Mets seemed to outdo the Royals. Until they didn’t.

We flinched in game four, when second baseman Daniel Murphy missed a ground ball for an error that scored the tying run, setting up Familia to blow the second of three blown saves.

On Sunday, Harvey had shut out the Royals through eight innings before insisting that manager Terry Collins allow him to start the ninth.

“Pride, meet fall,” the Daily News later scolded.

But dwelling on mistakes by the Mets overlooks the constancy that defines the Royals. It’s hard to imagine a team that competes more relentlessly, runs the bases better, or makes contact with the ball more often.

“The Royals crowd the bases with runners, and that puts on nonstop pressure,” Mets captain David Wright told reporters after game four.

Though the Mets were outmatched, both the series and the season provided plenty of euphoria. I don’t think I’ve ever loved watching pitching as much as I did watching the Mets’ young starters.

Or seeing Murphy hit seven home runs in nine postseason games, like a modern-day Babe Ruth.

It was such a joy to watch the Mets at times you didn’t want the games to end. Which is how I will remember this season.

Categories
Sports

FIFA shows what can happen when governance becomes an afterthought

The rules for international soccer fill 140 pages and prescribe, among other things, that the color of artificial playing fields must be green.

If FIFA had brought such specificity to its governing practices the governing body of the world’s most popular sport might have avoided the alleged infractions that have led to corruption probes by prosecutors in the US, the UK, and Switzerland.

The failures of governance at FIFA became clearer this weekend with publication by the Financial Times of an interview with Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, FIFA’s longtime president, whom the organization’s independent ethics committee suspended in October amid allegations that he misappropriated funds.

At some point in their existence, organizations decide on the rules and practices by which they’re directed so as to ensure their long-term success. Or they don’t, in which case they expose themselves to excess financial or business risk.

Such basic practices as term limits for executives, a mandatory retirement age, or transparent processes for setting executive compensation and electing directors all seem to have been missing from FIFA’s boardroom throughout Blatter’s tenure.

Blatter told the FT he remained president of FIFA for so long—he was elected in 1998—because of a push by a majority of the organization’s board to counter a move by UEFA, the governing body for European soccer and the most influential of soccer’s six confederations, to dismantle FIFA.

As for a payment by FIFA in 2011 of roughly $2 million to Michel Platini, the UEFA president, that Blatter has said was owed Platini pursuant to an employment agreement when Platini served as Blatter’s adviser between 1998 and 2002, Blatter reiterated to the FT what he has said previously: that there was no agreement in writing to document the outlay because Swiss law allows for oral agreements.

When Malcolm Moore, the reporter, followed up by noting that’s now how large companies act, Blatter distinguished FIFA as “a club” but refused to address why there’s no record of the payment to Platini.

Blatter’s suspension may relieve pressure on FIFA from its biggest sponsors. About a week before Blatter’s suspension, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, and Visa all called on the embattled executive to step down.