Susan Crawford

The Alternative Facts of Cable Companies

Charter’s renaming of itself—after a megamerger with Time Warner Cable in 2018—as “Spectrum.” But changing your name doesn’t mean that you aren’t liable for misbehavior under your previous moniker. This is what Charter…er, Spectrum… found recently when, following a lengthy investigation, New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, filed an extraordinary lawsuit against the company. The company’s 2.5 million New York subscribers (of its 22 million nationwide) have been told they’re getting X (in terms of download and upload speeds) when actually they’re getting a lot less than X.

Portland Is Again Blazing Trails for Open Internet Access

The tussle over "network neutrality" started 20 years ago in Portland (OR). Today, Portland and its region are poised to be Ground Zero for resolving the real issues behind public concern over “net neutrality”—the stagnant, uncompetitive, hopelessly outclassed state of internet access in America. Portland is taking seriously the idea of a publicly overseen dark-fiber network over which private providers could compete to offer cheap, ubiquitous internet access.

Why Broadband Should Be a Utility

Fiber cities know the difference between publicly overseen networks, aimed at providing a utility service, and wholly private, “demand-driven” communications networks. There is no single meaning of the word utility, but the concept is familiar to many people. The basic idea is that a utility is a service that 1) relies on a physical network of some kind and 2) is a basic input into both domestic and economic life. A utility is not a luxury.

China Will Likely Corner the 5G Market -- And the US Has No Plan

China is planning to deploy fiber-optic connections to 80 percent of the homes in the country. What’s new about China's massive deployment of fiber, both in its own territory and in its global market along its planned Belt and Road, is that China is likely to permit only 5G equipment made by Huawei and a handful of other Chinese companies to connect to that fiber. China, not America, will be the place where new online services are born. Although the US came up with the idea of the internet, we don't have a sandbox to play in, a giant market in which to test new high-capacity services.

Susan Crawford Video: Is the Internet Public or Private?

Internet access is an indispensable determining factor when it comes to opportunities and resources. Susan Crawford, author and Harvard Law professor, reflects on the monopoly that companies hold over the service, quality and availability of fiber optic internet service. She points out that with little to no government regulatory infrastructure, or representatives with the necessary know-how, provider incentives rarely align with the public’s best interest. “My fear is that we’ve lost the idea that government actually helps people have better lives,” she wrote.

The Sneaky Fight to Give Cable Lines Free Speech Rights

It seems counterintuitive that a phone line could be a "speaker." But the cable industry very much wants to ensure that the act of transmitting speech from Point A to Point B is protected by the First Amendment, so that making a cable connection carry any speech it isn’t interested in amounts to unconstitutional “forced speech.” The addition of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court roster gives the industry a significant boost.

Cities Are Teaming Up to Offer Broadband, and the FCC Is Mad

This is a story that defies two strongly held beliefs. The first—embraced fervently by today's Federal Communications Commission—is that the private marketplace is delivering world-class internet access infrastructure at low prices to all Americans, particularly in urban areas. The second is that cities are so busy competing that they are incapable of cooperating with one another, particularly when they have little in common save proximity. These two beliefs aren’t necessarily true.

Why An Army of Small Companies is Defending the Sprint/T-Mobile Merger

In Aug it was reported that T-Mobile was asking the small operators that resell T-Mobile's excess network capacity (Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs)) to write letters and opinion pieces in support of the company's proposed $36 billion merger with Sprint. By helpfully suggesting talking points to resellers —including Mint Mobile, Republic Wireless, and Ting, all of which lease access from the Big Four network operators (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile) in order to sell phone and data services to customers, T-Mobile is following the usual "air of inevitability" merger playbook

How Curbs Became the New Urban Battleground

It's common knowledge that city curbs are fiercely contested places, what with Ubers and Lyfts hovering inconveniently and blocking traffic; piles of shared bikes and scooters being dropped off and picked up; rapidly climbing numbers of deliveries being made by double-parked trucks; and buses and taxis pulling up—not to mention all the private-car parking going on. These daily dramas will only get more boisterous and difficult in the years to come, when fleets of city-licensed driverless cars join the fray.

Net Neutrality Is Just a Gateway to the Real Issue: Internet Freedom

[Commentary] The Senate voted 52–47 to revive an Obama administration rule ensuring equal treatment for online traffic—the so-called “net neutrality” rule recently erased by the Trump Federal Communications Commission. But the vote wasn't really about "net neutrality." Instead, it was a deeply political, bipartisan call—three Republican Senators signed on—for internet freedom writ large. Here's why: "Net neutrality," these days, is shorthand for "We don't like how much unconstrained power Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink have over us." 

The Sprint and T-Mobile Merger Will Test the Department of Justice's Mettle

[Commentary] Is our government bound by the rule of law or the rule of President Trump? The Department of Justice's Antitrust Division must consider this question. Here's why. There is a two-part, simple legal standard for deciding whether the proposed combination of Sprint and T-Mobile should be allowed. Would it harm competition in such a way that consumers would suffer?

Calling Facebook a Utility Would Only Make Things Worse

[Commentary] One phrase that keeps being tossed around: "Facebook should be treated like a utility." The idea is that the use of Facebook has become effectively essential to modern life, and therefore it should be regulated just like water or electricity. Let's get this right: Facebook is not a utility. It is an app. It may be a dominant app. It may even be exercising monopoly power unfairly. But it is not a utility, and muddying the definitional waters this way will only help the real utilities—like Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink—avoid genuine oversight.

America Needs More Fiber

[Commentary] The solution to the country’s digital divide isn’t going to come from private-market competition, but rather from massive government mobilization. Just don’t call it “nationalization.”

Koch Brothers are Cities' New Obstacle to Building Broadband

[Commentary] The internet, the mega-utility of the 21st century, officially has no regulator. In the meantime, fed up with federal apathy and sick of being held back by lousy internet access controlled by local cable monopolies, scrappy cities around the US are working hard to find ways to get cheap, world-class fiber-optic connectivity. But now there’s an additional obstacle: Powerful right-wing billionaires have joined the fight against municipal fiber efforts, using their deep pockets to fund efforts to block even the most commonsense of plans.

Ajit's Shell Game

[Commentary] I’ve got bad news for everyone who is working overtime to protest Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s campaign to eliminate net neutrality: You are being tricked. Pai is running a kind of shell game, overreaching (“go ahead and run all the paid prioritization services you want, Comcast!”) so that we will focus our energies on the hard-to-pin-down concept of net neutrality—the principle of internet access fairness that he has vowed to eliminate.

Why the Government is Right to Block the AT&T-Time Warner Merger

[Commentary] Despite what AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson thinks, the Department of Justice’s suit blocking AT&T from acquiring Time Warner’s assets in an $85 billion merger is a great moment for antitrust in America. It’s late, but it’s welcome.

How One Little Cable Company Exposed Telecom’s Achilles’ Heel

[Commentary] The details of the network neutrality rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in February 2015 were not important to AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Spectrum, or CenturyLink. What was important was the idea that any part of the government might have enforceable oversight over their data transmission services or charges. That’s what they can’t stand; that’s what they would do anything to avoid. And that’s what they are working to undo: the FCC’s classification of them as “common carriers” under “Title II” of the Telecommunications Act. That classification gave the FCC the legal authority to say something to the carriers about treating internet traffic fairly. No classification, no “net neutrality” rule. The trouble for the carriers is that the classification carries with it the risk that their businesses will be treated, someday, as the utility services they are. Net neutrality: not risky. Classification: risky. If people begin noticing that there’s no competition, that Americans are paying too much for too little, and that the entire country is suffering as a result, that’s a big problem for Big Cable.

Ajit Pai Is Siding With the Oligarchy — and Misleading Trump’s Base

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai wants to characterize this battle as one between “the people” (who love the internet) and “the government” (which, in his view, has been bossing “the people” around). But he’s missing a giant piece of the puzzle.

There are actually three players on the battlefield, not two: the people, the government, and particularly powerful private individuals. The whole idea behind the democratic enterprise is to keep the triangle balanced: not too strong a government, not too powerful a group of oligarchs, and plenty of opportunity for individuals. Chairman Pai is putting his thumb decidedly on the scale in favor of the oligarchs, and it’s a risky move.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School]

The FCC Is Leading Us Toward Catastrophe

[Commentary] Here’s what we know about Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s latest plans: He’s planning to erase the utility designation the Obama FCC re-applied to high-speed internet access carriers in February 2015 (following an unprecedented 10-year period of deregulation). In parallel, in an empty bid to pay lip service to the idea of an open internet, he wants to shift authority to the Federal Trade Commission...This move is not really about net neutrality: It’s about whether or not internet access is a utility rather than a luxury. If it’s a utility, it needs to be subject to rules, laid out in advance, about availability and quality. If it’s not, we’re saying we trust competition in the private market to protect consumers and ensure that everyone in the country gets world-class, open, nondiscriminatory internet access.

Chairman Pai is saying he trusts competition in the private marketplace. That’s nonsensical.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School]

President Donald Trump’s Multi-Pronged Attack on the Internet

[Commentary] Comcast, Charter (now Spectrum), Verizon, CenturyLink and AT&T account for over 80 percent of wired subscriptions and have almost total power in their territories. According to the Federal Communications Commission, nearly 75 percent of Americans have at most one choice for high-speed data. It’s about to get worse: President Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, under the leadership of its fiercely deregulatory chairman, Ajit Pai, wants to let these companies become even more powerful by letting them do whatever they want and allowing them to merge with one another.

Chairman Pai has already pushed Congress to erase rules that would have constrained these companies from using and selling our sensitive online information. And he is getting ready to wipe out the classification of high-speed data services as a utility — even though, without this legal label, the FCC’s authority to require these five companies to treat their customers fairly will be fatally undermined. Combining untrammeled power over distribution with must-have content gives a network operator both the incentive and the ability to use its network to benefit itself, whether or not its actions are good for the public. This has been true of communications networks from the telegraph forward, and we’re seeing this same pattern play out with high-speed internet access.

[Crawford is a professor at Harvard Law School]

Handcuffing Cities to Help Telecom Giants

[Commentary] It is good to be one of the handful of companies controlling data transmission in America. It’s even better — from their perspective — to avoid oversight. And it’s best of all to be a carrier that gets government to actually stop existing oversight. The stagnant telecommunications industry in America has long pursued the second of those goals — avoiding oversight, or even long-range thinking that would favor the interests of all other businesses and all other Americans over those of AT&T, Verizon, Charter, and Comcast — by proclaiming that there is something really magnificent coming any day now from the industry that will make anything regulators are worrying about irrelevant. And now that technique is at the heart of achieving Goal Three—wiping out oversight.

Case in point: Right now, plans are being implemented at the FCC and at least 17 state legislatures to block cities from constraining uses of their rights-of-way by private cellular companies for 5G deployments that — you guessed it — are coming any day now. In other words, if a city wants to set up a fair and competitive system that favors competitors, citizens, and long-range goals instead of the interests of a single big company—well, that would be illegal. This nationwide effort is aimed at, effectively, privatizing public rights of way.

Google Fiber Was Doomed From the Start

[Commentary] In Feb, there was a shakeup at Alphabet’s Access division (the new name for what was originally called Google Fiber). It named a new CEO, Greg McCray, and news outlets reported that hundreds of Access employees were being shifted to other parts of the Google empire. The bumpersticker from defenders of the status quo is that this means the Google Fiber experiment was a disaster. That’s simply not the case. What this set of events does usefully and colorfully signal is that we need an entirely different approach to the country’s desperate need for world-class data transmission....

The only business model for fiber that will work to produce the competition, low prices, and world-class data transport we need — certainly in urban areas — is to get local governments involved in overseeing basic, street grid-like “dark” (passive, unlit with electronics) fiber available at a set, wholesale price to a zillion retail providers of access and services. There’s plenty of patient capital sloshing around the US that would be attracted to the steady, reliable returns this kind of investment will return. That investment could be made in the form of private lending or government bonds; the important element is that the resulting basic network be a wholesale facility that any retail actor can use at a reasonable, fair cost.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School]

Open Data Privacy Playbook

Cities today collect and store a wide range of data that may contain sensitive or identifiable information about residents. As cities embrace open data initiatives, more of this information is available to the public. While releasing data has many important benefits, sharing data comes with inherent risks to individual privacy: released data can reveal information about individuals that would otherwise not be public knowledge. In recent years, open data such as taxi trips, voter registration files, and police records have revealed information that many believe should not be released. Effective data governance is a prerequisite for successful open data programs. The goal of this document is to codify responsible privacy-protective approaches and processes that could be adopted by cities and other government organizations that are publicly releasing data. Our report is organized around four recommendations:

  • Conduct risk-benefit analyses to inform the design and implementation of open data programs.
  • Consider privacy at each stage of the data lifecycle: collect, maintain, release, delete.
  • Develop operational structures and processes that codify privacy management widely throughout the City.
  • Emphasize public engagement and public priorities as essential aspects of data management programs.

Each chapter of this report is dedicated to one of these four recommendations, and provides fundamental context along with specific suggestions to carry them out. In particular, we provide case studies of best practices from numerous cities and a set of forms and tactics for cities to implement our recommendations. The Appendix synthesizes key elements of the report into an Open Data Privacy Toolkit that cities can use to manage privacy when releasing data.

The Alternative Facts of Cable Companies

[Commentary] Cable is in many ways an uncreative business—“like chicken in a grocery store,” as Comcast founder Ralph Roberts once said. The cable guys (today, mostly Comcast and Charter in the US, who together account for half of the 92 million high-speed internet access subscriptions in the country) have successfully implemented one basic, foolproof idea: locking up entire geographic markets by acquisition while scaling up rapidly as possible. With high numbers of subscribers all within clustered markets, costs per subscriber are vanishingly low, back office functions can be shared, programming can be bought at a bulk discount price (half or a third of what any smaller operator might pay), and competition can be avoided. Meanwhile, customers keep paying. Another week, another chicken. But in order to avoid anyone getting the idea that oversight might be a good idea, Charter and Comcast have to uphold the fiction that their service is getting better and better in response to trumpeted “competition”—even if there isn’t any actual rival anywhere around. If everyone believes that services are improving, then there’s no need for government intervention. The market is providing!

What a monopolist most desires is a quiet life. That’s why Spectrum’s marketing and management teams let loose with ads claiming that consumers would get new X internet data speeds — “fast, reliable internet speeds.” The branding people went nuts, using adjectives like Turbo, Extreme, and Ultimate for the company’s highest-speed 200 or 300 Mbps download offerings. But no one, or very few people, could actually experience those speeds. Why? Because the company deliberately required that internet data connections be shared among a gazillion people in each neighborhood.