Bloomberg

The Obama Administration is letting law enforcement keep computer-security flaws secret in order to further US investigations of cyberspies and hackers.

The White House has carved out an exception for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to keep information about software vulnerabilities from manufacturers and the public.

Until now, most debate has focused on how the National Security Agency stockpiles and uses new-found Internet weaknesses, known as zero-day exploits, for offensive purposes, such as attacking the networks of adversaries.

The law enforcement operations expose a delicate and complicated balancing act when it comes to agencies using serious security flaws in investigations versus disclosing them to protect all Internet users, according to former government officials and privacy advocates.

Motorola Mobility and Samsung Electronics avoided fines as European Union antitrust regulators said “patent wars” with Apple shouldn’t allow consumers to get caught in the crossfire.

Motorola Mobility, which Google is selling to Lenovo Group, broke EU antitrust law when it sought and enforced a German legal injunction against Apple over patents for technology for industry-standard products such as mobile phones, the European Commission said. Samsung and the EU finalized a settlement that ends a similar antitrust probe.

Joaquin Almunia, the EU’s competition chief, said the EU’s decisions provide “legal clarity on the circumstances in which injunctions to enforce standard essential patents can be anti-competitive.”

The EU is cracking down on patent abuses as Motorola Mobility, Microsoft, Apple and Samsung trade victories in courts across the world on intellectual property. Industry-standard technology helps ensure products such as mobile-phone antennas and global-positioning system software can operate together when made by different manufacturers.

AT&T the second-biggest US mobile-phone carrier, will introduce 4G LTE wireless Internet access to commercial flights, mounting a challenge to Wi-Fi provider Gogo.

With help from Honeywell International, AT&T will begin offering the service in the continental US as soon as late 2015 for in-flight Wi-Fi Internet connections and entertainment, as well as for cockpit communications, according to a statement.

AT&T would be the first provider of 4G LTE to planes, said Roger Entner, an analyst with Recon Analytics in Dedham, Massachusetts.

“The service could potentially be faster, since you don’t have to bounce up to a satellite,” he said. The service will use ground-based antennas aimed skyward at receivers on planes, AT&T Strategy Chief John Stankey said in a phone interview.

Pending final approval from regulators, AT&T will use some of the Wireless Communications Service, or WCS, spectrum it acquired in 2012 to transmit the LTE signal to the planes, Stankey said.

Nearly six months after launching a nationwide executive search to find a replacement for its retiring president and CEO, Steve Largent, CTIA-The Wireless Association finally has a new leader.

And it didn’t have to look too far, either. Meredith Attwell Baker, the former Republican Federal Communications Commissioner and acting administrator of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, will take over as president and CEO of CTIA on June 2.

In Baker, CTIA is getting an influential Washington insider and lobbyist who has a deep understanding of spectrum policy -- at a time when both the FCC and the NTIA are carrying out an ambitious Obama Administration plan to double the country’s supply of airwaves for use in high-speed wireless Internet service by 2020.

In a statement accompanying the news release, Baker wasted no time in outlining three spectrum policy priorities. Specifically, she said she will “place more emphasis on technical and engineering expertise related to spectrum and wireless technologies; work with commercial and government users to produce a viable five-year plan for the future of spectrum usage; and begin to regularly assess how efficiently spectrum is being used.”

Amazon is taking a hit in states that are collecting an online sales tax. In one of the first efforts to quantify the impact of states accruing more tax revenue from web purchases, researchers at Ohio State University published a paper that found sales dropped for Amazon when the online charge was introduced.

In states that have the tax, households reduced their spending on Amazon by about 10 percent compared to those in states that don’t have the levy. For online purchases of more than $300, sales fell by 24 percent, according to the report titled “The Amazon Tax.” The findings add to concerns about how much the world’s largest online retailer can expand.

The company has been grappling with decelerating revenue growth amid heavy spending by Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos on new initiatives. Amazon has enjoyed an edge against brick-and-mortar retailers because consumers didn’t have to pay a sales tax for purchases from the e-commerce site, yet that has eroded as states including California and Texas have unveiled the levies.

Comcast is having no problem getting bigger. The largest US cable company added video customers for a second straight quarter, bucking the industry trend of losing TV subscribers.

Video subscriber growth and the Winter Olympics helped first-quarter profit of 68 cents a share, excluding some items, beat the 64 cents analysts estimated on average. Comcast also reported that revenue rose to $17.4 billion. Analysts had predicted $17 billion.

Bolstered by its new X1 digital set-top box that gives people the ability to watch TV shows stored online, Comcast added 24,000 TV customers in the quarter to reach a total of 22.6 million.

Zebra Technologies is buying a unit of Motorola Solutions for $3.45 billion, borrowing most of the amount for a bet on mobile-computing services for businesses that need to track employees and products.

Zebra plans to fund the deal with about $200 million of cash and $3.25 billion in new debt. That’s almost as much as Zebra itself is worth, based on the closing stock price, which valued the company at about $3.4 billion. Both companies offer bar-code scanning, radio-frequency identification and other technology that companies can use to control their inventory, whether it’s retailers stocking shelves or hospitals recording doses of medicine.

Motorola also has specialized tablets and computers for various industries.

The White House’s directive to limit the use of software flaws by US intelligence agencies could require the disclosure of thousands of precious exploits now in the hands of elite spying units, intelligence professionals say.

The stockpile of exploits is derived from vulnerabilities not just in ordinary computer software, but also in industrial controllers, heating and cooling systems, printers, anti-virus software, video conferencing systems and encryption protocols.

The exploits, typically based on simple oversights and flaws in computer code that hackers can use to take control of most anything that runs with the help of a computer chip, are considered essential to gathering some of the most valuable US intelligence.

The US National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said.

The NSA’s decision to keep the bug secret in pursuit of national security interests threatens to renew the rancorous debate over the role of the government’s top computer experts. Putting the Heartbleed bug in its arsenal, the NSA was able to obtain passwords and other basic data that are the building blocks of the sophisticated hacking operations at the core of its mission, but at a cost.

Millions of ordinary users were left vulnerable to attack from other nations’ intelligence arms and criminal hackers. The NSA and other elite intelligence agencies devote millions of dollars to hunt for common software flaws that are critical to stealing data from secure computers. Open-source protocols like OpenSSL, where the flaw was found, are primary targets.

Telecom Italia, the country’s largest phone company, is teaming with Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Italia for an Internet-television service to attract broadband subscriptions, giving consumers an alternative to satellite TV.

Starting in 2015, Telecom Italia clients with a My Sky HD decoder will have access to all of Sky’s TV programs over the Web, the companies said in a joint statement. Sky offers about 180 channels and programs including Formula 1, MotoGP and soccer’s Champions League. Telecom Italia’s mobile-phone customers can also watch Sky TG24 all-news channel on their smartphones and tablets.

Telecom Italia Chief Executive Officer Marco Patuano, accelerating his efforts to revive the indebted former phone monopoly, is adding services in a bid to boost phone bills as competition hurts margins in Italy’s saturated market. A broadband pay-TV service may shake up the Italian TV and video market -- the country doesn’t have major cable carriers. “Phone carriers need to enter the game of entertainment to renew their business,” said Francesco Siliato, a professor who specializes in media and telecommunications at Milan’s Politecnico University. “At the same time, TV broadcasters need new partners to spread out contents via the Internet.”