Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett announced that the US Department of Agriculture is investing in infrastructure projects in a dozen states to improve e-Connectivity in rural communities. USDA is investing $91 million through the Telecommunications Programs. The 19 projects will benefit more than 27,000 businesses and households in AR, GA, IA, KY, MN, NC, ND, NM, OK, TN, UT, and VA. Examples of the projects in which USDA is investing:

• The Arkansas Rural Internet Company is receiving a $19.9 million loan to deploy a fiber broadband system to more than 5,000 subscribers in Dallas, Calhoun and Ouchita counties in rural southern AR. 
• In NM, the Tularosa Basin Telephone Company Inc. will use an $11.8 million loan to improve telecommunications for nearly 10,000 customers in the Carrizozo, Cloudcroft and Tularosa exchanges. 
• The Choctaw Nation is receiving a $2.9 million grant to construct a hybrid fiber and fixed wireless system on unserved portions of Le Flore County (OK). This project will increase access to economic development, health care, educational and public safety opportunities for 300 households and 15 businesses. It will include a community center in the Hodgen School where the public can access computer terminals and WiFi service free of charge.

This study draws on participant observation and interviews with low-income adults in Chicago to show how the poor stay connected to phone service and mobile Internet through the possession of multiple phones, including those subsidized by government aid. The “accumulation” of phones by individuals is widely observed, though underexplored in scholarship. Popular media coverage in the US frames the possession of multiple phones by people in poverty as criminal or excessive. In contrast, this study identifies three functions for phone accumulation as a strategy for maintaining phone access: to back up other phones, to build up capacities across phones, and to share phones with others in need. Each function responds to struggles unique for the urban poor as mobile technology advances and public phone access declines. Extra phones insure against regular disconnections due to loss and theft of devices and limits on subsidized service. Active service on one device combines with Internet functionality on another to approximate a single, high-end device and service plan. Subsidized phones help overcome the hesitation that poor people feel in lending out their devices to others in need. Accumulation thus contributes to the goal of securing reliable phone access for low-income Americans. There are limits to accumulation as a strategy for maintaining access, which result from the prevalence of inferior hardware, limited service plans, and lack of trust among strangers. Telecommunications policies should adapt to the needs of low-income phone users with accumulation in mind. The article concludes with recommendations for adapting policy to the needs of low-income phone users.

Instead of embracing 5G, San Jose (CA) Mayor Sam Liccardo taxed it.  Beginning in 2015, the city sought up to $3,500 per year per small cell.  Compare that to $100 in Phoenix (AZ) and $50 in Indianapolis (IN) — cities about the size of San Jose that have leapfrogged it in terms of small cell deployment. Excessive taxes charged by big cities deplete the capital needed to build broadband in suburban and rural America. That’s why several dozen mayors, county supervisors, and elected leaders called on the Federal Communications Commission to act.

Two months ago, the FCC listened to those local leaders.  We reined in the abusive taxes that have blocked broadband, while guaranteeing that cities are fully compensated for their costs.  We voted, on a bipartisan basis, to ensure cities act on small cell applications within reasonable periods of time.  And, we affirmed that cities may impose aesthetic requirements so that communities can preserve their look and feel. In response to these reasonable policies, Mayor Liccardo sued.  But federal law is clear that local governments may not effectively prohibit the provision of service. And as Mayor Liccardo’s years of zero small cells show, his 5G tax operated as a textbook prohibition. While Mayor Liccardo spends San Jose’s resources suing to defend his 5G tax, we at the FCC will continue cutting red tape so that all San Jose residents — and all Americans — have a fair shot at fast, affordable broadband.

I believe that Louis Brandeis’ progressive framework can help us navigate the future of antitrust:

First, Brandeis believed that legislators creating antitrust laws should consider broad economic and social issues. Second, legislatures should enact enforceable legal standards that identify harmful industrial (that is to say, economic) conduct in a manner that vindicates their chosen social and democratic values. Third, antitrust enforcers are to bring their expertise to bear, using economics and evidence. And, of course, they must prove their cases in court, which focuses any lawyer’s attention – and judicial decisions -- on the facts at hand. Brandeis believed that the right laws would lead to the right investigations, and then, to the right results. Fourth, Brandeis was creative in thinking of ways to improve sectoral regulation when competition could not be expected to flourish. Fifth, competition policy (both antitrust and sectoral regulation) is to be informed by a spirit of experimentation. 

[Jonathan Sallet is a Benton Senior Fellow.]

In just over a decade, Facebook has connected more than 2.2 billion people, a global nation unto itself that reshaped political campaigns, the advertising business and daily life around the world. Along the way, Facebook accumulated one of the largest-ever repositories of personal data, a treasure trove of photos, messages and likes that propelled the company into the Fortune 500. But as evidence accumulated that Facebook’s power could also be exploited to disrupt elections, broadcast viral propaganda and inspire deadly campaigns of hate around the globe, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg stumbled. Bent on growth, the pair ignored warning signs and then sought to conceal them from public view. At critical moments over the last three years, they were distracted by personal projects, and passed off security and policy decisions to subordinates, according to current and former executives. .This account of how Zuckerberg and Sandberg navigated Facebook’s cascading crises, much of which has not been previously reported, is based on interviews with more than 50 people. Among the reports: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), who has been one of the tech platform’s chief antagonists on Capitol Hill, that he should be trying to cooperate with Facebook instead of scrutinizing it.

Privacy groups are pressing the Federal Trade Commission for the status of their complaint against Google. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the Center for Digital Democracy, and their counsel at the Institute for Public Representation were among a host of groups that filed a complaint against Google back in April, asserting that while YouTube is the most popular online platform for kids, from which the company profits, Google asserts that the site is not for children in arguing that it does not have to be compliant with the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).  While the groups said they had met with FTC staffers in May about the complaint, they have heard and seen nothing since. "While more than six months have passed since we conferred with the FTC," they wrote, "the privacy of millions of children visiting YouTube is compromised every single day. On behalf of the 22 consumer and privacy advocacy organizations which signed our complaint, we convey our hope that the FTC will act soon to protect these children."

A New Hampshire judge’s attempt to compel Amazon to share recordings from an Echo device at the scene of an alleged double murder is putting a fine point on law enforcement’s growing demand for data from Internet of Things devices. Prosecutors are seeking two days of recordings from the smart speaker in a Farmington (NH) home where two women were found dead in Jan 2017. The judge directed the company to turn over evidence in the case, but so far, Amazon has said it “will not release customer data without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us." Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo said law enforcement has long asked technology companies to turn over data from connected devices. Such requests date back to at least the early 2000s, when law enforcement tried to surveil via car assistance programs. But it’s happening with greater frequency as the number of IoT devices in consumers’ homes explodes. “Now that everything has a microphone or a sensor,” Cardozo said, “the amount of data is just so many orders of magnitude greater.”

President Donald Trump expressed hope the White House would defeat CNN in a lawsuit over his decision to suspend the press credentials of reporter Jim Acosta, whom he called “bad for the country." President Trump railed against Acosta, calling him a “rude” person whose “grandstanding” is unfair to the broader White House press corps. “I really think that when you have guys like Acosta, I think they’re bad for the country,” President Trump said. “He’s just an average guy who’s a grandstander who’s got the guts to stand up and shout.”  President Trump was uncertain when asked if he believes he will prevail in the lawsuit brought by CNN, which alleges the White House violated Acosta's Constitutional rights by stripping his pass.  “I don’t know. We should,” President Trump said. “We’ll see how the court rules. Is it freedom of the press when somebody comes in and starts screaming questions and won’t sit down?”