RELATED:

We should first explain what is being proposed. For some time, the FBI has sought a way to observe information that passes through internet service providers in the same way they can (with a warrant) listen in on phone conversations. The problem is that while it's relatively easy for the FBI to deal with the handful of companies that operate telephone networks, there are many, many platforms on the Internet which people use to communicate: Gchat, Facebook, Twitter direct messages, Snapchat, etc. And as people — specifically, the people who the FBI wants to listen in on — use phones less and the Internet more, less and less communication is visible to their wiretapping. In , the FBI's general counsel described what she called the "Going Dark" problem.

The problem isn't really encryption, as such. While communications over Facebook and GMail and Apple's iMessage are encrypted, what the FBI really wants is a way for those companies — and others that don't use encryption — to let it peek in on what is being said.

RELATED:

Not always, mind you — just after they get a court order. The FBI presents it as a natural evolution of its existing ability to eavesdrop on phone calls once a judge signs a warrant. In those cases, the FBI approaches a phone company, which allows access to communications involving a party. What the FBI wants to do, it assures those asking, is simply to allow that same sort of ability if it goes and knocks on Facebook's front door, warrant in-hand. .

Late last month,on the proposal being developed by a government task force which would need to be passed by Congress. The amendment to the existing wiretapping law — the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act — would allow a court to impose a series of increasing fines if a firm won't or can't comply with an FBI request to allow it to observe communications. (In the past, the Feds would apparently back off from companies that resisted.) In addition to indicating the president's likely support, :

Foreign-based communications services that do business in the United States would be subject to the same procedures, and would be required to have a point of contact on domestic soil who could be served with a wiretap order, officials said.

That notice that begins the 30-day requirement for compliance could, for example, be in the form of the signed warrant from the judge.

RELATED:

It sounds simple. It is not.

RELATED:

For one thing, internet communications are not like phone calls. While the FBI's goal isn't to break encryption directly, that's its effect in practice. This is not a trivial endeavor. Internet traffic is encrypted at various levels of difficulty, some of which are far harder to access than others. In some cases, the encryption takes place between users and isn't done by the company. Coming up with systems to allow the FBI access to communication could theoretically be very time- and resource-consuming. Because that cost is borne differently by companies of different sizes, The Times points out a strategy for those looking to evade observation.

Which brings us to the most obvious way for terrorists or drug dealers or law-breakers or, yes, privacy puritans to avoid the FBI's proposed wiretapping ability: if you want to reduce the likelihood that your communications will be observed, check out what will hereafter be known as "burner" companies — new shops that enable the sort of communications you want to do but are unlikely to have enough users that one draws the attention of the FBI. Become a TechCrunch afficianado! When a company announces it's "a new way to connect people," that's your best bet, as long as it doesn't become too popular. (The "burner" analogy to cheap cell phones — you've seen The Wire, right? — is flawed, of course; that would be more like creating new Facebook accounts to send messages for a day or so.) 

RELATED:

But of course, the FBI is not the only who might have an easier time observing your communications if the proposal goes forward. Opponents argue that placing backdoors into online platforms, these companies will necessarily be creating a way for anyone with enough savvy and access (i.e. hackers) to discover and break in.a professor from Columbia University: "I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

There is a tiny chance that all of this is moot.  a CNN interview last week with a former FBI agent who claimed that the federal government was already storing all digital communication. All as in all. This is highly unlikely, if only because of the infrastructure that would be required. But if it is the case: Go ahead and use Facebook. 

Photo: The FBI comes knocking. (AP)

But the payments processing company reported growth in service and data processing revenue, as well as international transactions.

The Foster City, Calif., company said its fiscal second-quarter net income totaled $1.27 billion, or $1.92 per share.

That compares with net income of $1.29 billion, or $1.91 per share, in the same period last year.

Revenue grew nearly 15 percent to $2.96 billion from $2.58 billion a year earlier.

Analysts, on average, forecast earnings of $1.81 per share, on revenue of $2.85 billion, according to FactSet.

Shares rose $2.98, or 2 percent, to $169 in after-hours trading.

TORONTO, April 18 (Reuters) - Toronto fans filled the Air Canada Centre ready to celebrate their team clinching an NHL playoff spot for the first time in nearly a decade on Thursday but the Maple Leafs' 5-3 loss to the visiting Islanders left many poised to push the panic button.

The Leafs are clinging to fifth place in the Eastern Conference on 53 points but their grip on a playoff spot is starting to slip.

Four chasing teams - the Ottawa Senators (52 points), New York Islanders (51), New York Rangers (48) and Winnipeg Jets (48) - all made up ground with wins on Thursday, setting up a nail-biting finish to the regular season.

"We have to stop the bleeding and get back to what has made us successful but our lack of success the last couple of games has nothing to do with us thinking we have a playoff spot," Leafs defenceman Cody Franson told reporters.

"We don't work that way, we work one day at a time."

Toronto have not reached the playoffs since 2004 and own the longest playoff drought of teams in the NHL today, while the surging Islanders, who have not reached the playoffs since 2007, took a step towards ending their own barren spell, moving to within a point of the Leafs.

Toronto, the only NHL franchise to have been valued at more than $1 billion by Forbes, are a massive success off the ice but for all their money cannot seem to buy a playoff spot.

When the Leafs last hoisted the Stanley Cup in 1967, the NHL was still a six-team league, players did not wear helmets and netminders had just discovered face masks.

'BIG PICTURE'

With four games to play in the current regular season, Toronto's postseason destiny is in their own hands but long-suffering fans have learned to take nothing for granted.

While 'Leafs Nation' may be getting a case of the jitters, players say there is nothing to panic about.

"It's just the way it goes sometimes, I don't think there is any reason to be panicked about it," said Maple Leafs netminder James Reimer. "It's just a couple of tough breaks and that's it.

"You look at the big picture. We've played probably 40 good games out of 44 and that's a good average.

"You're going to have some tough games sometimes. Nothing to be concerned about we know we can do it."

The Islanders, who ranked near the bottom of Forbes evaluations at $155 million, are proving to be good value as they picked up their fifth win in six games with the help of two goals from John Tavares, leaving him in the fight for league scoring honours with 26 on the season.

"We scored on our first two shots and thought we were on our way then we stopped," said Leafs coach Randy Carlyle. "It's back to the drawing board. The sun is going to come up tomorrow.

"We all hope anyway." (Editing by Peter Rutherford)

LAUSANNE (Reuters) - Prince, Leonard Cohen and Marcus Miller will headline the Montreux Jazz festival in July, expanded by the opening of a third concert hall "Lab", organizers said on Thursday.

Cohen will open the 47th edition of one of Europe's most prestigious summer music events, on July 4, and give a second concert the next night.

Prince was already booked for three back-to-back evenings (July 13-15) at the July 4-21 festival, the first since the death of founder and director Claude "Funky" Nobs in January after a skiing accident.

"Three nights, three shows, he's back. It is a huge honor," festival director Mathieu Jaton told a news conference in Lausanne. "We never know what Prince will do, or who he's coming with, but we're used to his incredible surprises."

Tickets for Prince - ranging from 175 Swiss francs ($190) to a whopping 395 francs - are already sold out, while all others go on sale on Friday morning (3.00 a.m. ET)

Other highlights include Sting on the 16th, the electronic group Kraftwerk on the 17th, Diana Krall on the 18th and Joe Cocker on the 20th.

For blues fans, Bonnie Raitt opens on the 11th for Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite. Brian May of Queen fame and Deep Purple appear on the 19th and are likely to jam, Jaton said.

Claudia Leitte headlines the traditional Brazilian night on the 12th, along with Tulipa Ruiz and Gal Costa.

Miller, a top American bass player injured in a bus accident in Switzerland in November, returns to the Montreux stage on the 21st, opening for an 80th birthday concert for Quincy Jones.

"Quincy is transforming his birthday part into an homage for Claude," Jaton said, noting that the legendary Los Angeles-based producer served as co-director of the festival in the 1990s.

"Wyclef Jean is returning, last time he carried Claude Nobs on his shoulders at a concert that went on to four o'clock in the morning. It's a wink to Claude to have him back," he added.

American comeback musician Sixto Rodriguez, enjoying a second career at age 70, will inaugurate the "Lab" on July 4, a new venue with a capacity of 2,000.

"Searching for Sugar Man", a film by Malik Bendjelloul which won the Oscar for Best Documentary this year, chronicles an amazing bid to find the mysterious Detroit-based Rodriguez who shot to fame in South Africa but remained unknown in America.

Rodriguez made only two albums in the early 1970s, "Cold Fact" and "Coming from Reality". His poetic lyrics about the drug scene and poverty are tinged with "anti-establishment blues" and led to a cult following in apartheid-era South Africa - which he learned of only decades later.

The festival along Lake Geneva, whose two traditional venues are the larger Stravinski Auditorium and more intimate Miles Davis Hall, draws some 250,000 music fans each year.

($1 = 0.9312 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Paul Casciato)

But in Israel, more and more Jewish parents are saying no to the blade.

"It's such a taboo in Israel and in Judaism," said Gali, nursing her six-week-old son, about the decision not to have him circumcised.

"It's like coming out of the closet," she said, asking to be identified by her first name only because she had not told her relatives yet.

Nearly all baby boys in Israel are circumcised. Be their parents ultra-Orthodox or totally secular Jews, it is by far the most common choice. Most Israeli-Arabs also keep with a practice that is widespread in the Muslim world.

Jewish circumcisions are done when the baby is eight days old. The majority are performed by a mohel, a religious man trained in the procedure carried out in a festive religious ceremony called a "brit", Hebrew for covenant.

But an increasing minority fear it is a form of physical abuse.

"It's the same as if someone would tell me 'it's our culture to cut off a finger when he is born'," said Rakefet Kaufman, who also did not have her son circumcised.

"People should see it as abuse because it is done to a baby without asking him," she said.

When Gali learnt she was carrying a baby boy it was obvious to her that he would be circumcised. But she started to think again after a conversation with a friend whose son was uncircumcised.

"She asked me what my reason was for doing it, was it religious? I said no. Was it for health reasons? No. Social? No. Then it began to sink in. I began to read more about it, enter Internet forums, I began to realize that I cannot do it."

PHENOMENON GROWING

"The phenomenon is growing, I have no doubt," said Ronit Tamir, who founded a support group for families who have chosen not to circumcise their sons.

"When we started the group 12 years ago we had to work hard to find 40 families ... They were keeping it secret and we had to promise them we'd keep it secret," she said. "Then, we'd get one or two phone calls a month. Nowadays I get dozens of emails and phone calls a month, hundreds a year."

Tamir believes Jews in today's Israel find it easier to break religious taboos.

"People are asking themselves what it means to be Jewish these days," she said, and that leads some to question rules of all kinds, including circumcision.

In societies around the world who circumcise boys for non-religious reasons, out of habit or tradition or because of the perceived health benefits, the practice can be controversial.

Rates of circumcision in Europe are well under 20 percent, while in the United States, according to 2010 statistics cited by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), more than half of newborn boys continue to be circumcised.

The American Academy of Paediatrics said in August that the health benefits of infant circumcision - potentially avoiding infection, cancer and sexually-transmitted diseases - outweighed the risks, but said parents should make the final call.

But where the decision is ultimately a matter of personal choice for many families around the world, for Jews who question the tradition, it is more complicated.

"It is the covenant between us and God - a sign that one cannot deny and that Jews have kept even in times of persecution," said one well-known mohel who has been performing circumcisions in Israel for more than 30 years. He asked not to be named to avoid being connected to any controversy.

He pointed to the Book of Genesis, where God said to Abraham: "And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins; and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you."

It is this covenant that, the mohel said, that "keeps the people of Israel together".

The Bible goes on: "And the uncircumcised male child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

Scholars have differed over the years what this means in practice.

BEING DIFFERENT

Tamir is unswayed by the ancient verses.

"This edict is painful, irreversible and maims," she said. The Internet was helping to spread the word, she said, allowing parents to find information about circumcision and seek advice anonymously.

Some Jewish groups in the United States which oppose circumcision offer alternative religious brit ceremonies that do not include an actual circumcision.

"There is definitely a growing number of Jewish families in the U.S. who are choosing not to circumcise," said Florida-based Rebecca Wald. In 2010 she started a website to connect parents who are unsure about what to do.

"Since then, in phone calls, emails, and on social networking sites I have connected with hundreds of Jewish people in the U.S. who question circumcision." she said in an email interview. "Many of them have intact (uncircumcised) sons or plan to leave future sons intact."

Wald's son was not circumcised.

"I have a very strong sense of Jewish identity and, believe it or not, having an intact son has only deepened it," she said.

In Israel, where the vast majority are circumcised, the dilemma may be particularly difficult.

Although she is confident of the choice she and her husband made, Gali still has one concern.

"The main issue which still troubles me a little is the social one, that one day he may come to me and say 'Mom, why did you do that to me? They made fun of me today'," Gali said.

The Health Ministry does not keep records on circumcisions but estimates about 60,000 to 70,000 are held in Israel every year, which roughly corresponds to the number of boys born in 2010, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

The ministry said it treats about 70 cases a year of circumcisions gone wrong, mainly minor complications such as excessive bleeding.

Kaufman said "people were shocked" to learn that her son is not circumcised.

"In Israel everybody does it, like a herd," she said. "They don't stop and ask themselves about this specific procedure which has to do with damaging a baby."

Watching her son rummage through a stack of toys, Kaufman said: "The way he was born is the way his body should be."

(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Sonya Hepinstall)