Friday, November 2, 2018
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USDA Announces Funding to Increase Access to Education, Workforce Training and Health Care Opportunities in Rural Communities
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced that the US Department of Agriculture is awarding grants for 128 projects to increase access to job training, educational and health care services in rural areas. USDA is awarding $39.6 million through the Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) Grant Program. More than 4.5 million residents in 40 states and three territories will benefit from the funding. Investments include:
- Washburn University, in KS, is being awarded $349,213 to help provide resources to enable two-way interactive distance learning via video teleconferencing technology.
- St. Anthony Hospital, in OK, is receiving $457,020 to help SSM Health Care of Oklahoma purchase telemedicine equipment to expand its Saints 1st Telehealth Network to serve up to 3,434 inpatients and 3,401 outpatients.
Benton Ridge Telephone Company can trace its roots back over 100 years to when it started out as a rural telephone company serving the OH community with the same name. The largest part of the company’s business now, however, is its wireless internet service provider unit known as Watch Communications, which offers service in parts of rural OH, IN and IL. When the company decided to bid – and ultimately won over $52 million – in the Connect America Fund II auction, its plan was to use fixed wireless for the project area. We talked recently with Greg Jarman, chief operating officer for the CAF II winner, about the company’s plans for the funding, which will be distributed to the company over a period of 10 years. The project area includes additional areas of the three states that Watch already serves. “By land mass, it’s an 84% of our coverage area expansion,” Jarman said.
USTelecom recently released an update to its US broadband industry capital spending series. In this update, USTelecom reported that sector investment rose $1.5 billion (or 2%) between 2016 and 2017—a reversal of a two-year decline following the 2015 Open Internet Order. In this Perspective, I look at changes in capital spending beginning in 2015 (as measured by USTelecom) with the aid of a counterfactual constructed with guidance from the analysis of investment effects from the 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order. I find that while the decline in capital spending rose in 2015 and 2016 stopped in 2017, investment in the telecommunications sector is materially compressed, being about $10-to-$13 billion (or 12-to-15%) below expectations. As measured here, about $24-to-$30 billion in investment has been lost to the Title II drama since 2015. At a time when policymakers are seeking increased investment in broadband networks, disputes over the regulatory classification of Internet access, which may materially diminish investment incentives, appear to be counterproductive. A more temperate approach to Net Neutrality, perhaps delaying action until some material breach is observed, may be a better regulatory approach.
TechFreedom Releases First Comprehensive Analysis of Federalism Obstacles to State Net Neutrality Regulations
TechFreedom published a comprehensive analysis of why state laws and executive orders attempting to replicate, or expand upon, the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 network neutrality rules will likely fail in court. Five key findings:
- Restoring broadband to a Title I classification is a valid exercise of the Commission’s authority, not a surrender of that authority.
- Because the RIFO will succeed in court, the FCC has expressly preempted state regulation.
- None of the exceptions to federal preemption apply to the state actions.
- State regulation would violate the Dormant Commerce Clause.
- States can protect Internet users by enforcing laws of general applicability.
Freedom House, a US-based pro-democracy think tank, releases an annual report that analyzes the amount of internet freedom in countries around the world, and assigns a score to each country. While America still has a high level of internet freedom, the loss of net neutrality protections, privacy laws, and the merging of major telecom companies caused its rating to drop in 2018. “It is depressing but not unexpected,” said Josh Tabish, the Ford/MDF Technology Exchange Fellow at Fight for the Future. “In terms of internet freedom, this current congress has been one of the most dangerous that the country has maybe ever seen.” “Losing net neutrality impacts internet freedom because the open web is one of most powerful tools we have to hold leaders to account,” Tabish said. “Whether you’re challenging tyranny or just saying something unpopular politically, net neutrality is essential for maintaining free speech online.”
the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) has agreed to modify its agreement with domain name registrar Verisign that will allow it to boost prices for .com domain names, but not to vertically integrate--say, merge with a web content supplier. That came in an extension of the six-yea.com registry agreement. Also part of the agreement, said NTIA, is "a new commitment to content neutrality in the Domain Name System (DNS)....Verisign will operate the .com registry in a content neutral manner with a commitment to participate in ICANN processes. To that end, NTIA looks forward to working with Verisign and other ICANN stakeholders in the coming year on trusted notifier programs to provide transparency and accountability in the .com top level domain." The new agreement repeals the domain name "price controls" under the Obama Administration.
T-Mobile disclosed a major new spectrum deal with Sprint that the company said stands apart from the two carriers’ plans to merge. However, details of the new transaction are vague at best.
“In September 2018, we signed a reciprocal long-term spectrum lease with Sprint that included a total commitment of $533 million and an offsetting amount to be received from Sprint for the lease of our spectrum,” T-Mobile wrote in its latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Lease payments are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2018. The reciprocal long-term lease is a distinct transaction from the Merger.” Brian Goemmer from AllNet Insights & Analytics, a firm that carefully tracks the Federal Communications Commission’s spectrum licensing activities, said that, so far, the agreement hasn't turned up in filings at the FCC. But he said that, with a $533 million price tag, “it should be a pretty significant number of leases.”
On Nov 6, Americans will choose the lawmakers who will try to hammer out privacy rules for major tech players like Google, Facebook and Amazon. Democrats are poised to take the House majority — and want strict privacy controls. Lots of things can — and do — change after elections: Committees get new leaders with new priorities; Other members shift as lawmakers jockey for a preferred spot somewhere else; Policymakers get overtaken by news events, shifting their plans. But for the first time, lawmakers have Silicon Valley asking for federal regulation and a hard deadline (2020) in CA’s privacy rules. Privacy advocates hope that will be a potent combination, and Democrats taking the House could shake things up further.
Thasos is at the vanguard of companies trying to help traders get ahead of stock moves like that using so-called alternative data. Such suppliers might examine mine slag heaps from outer space, analyze credit-card spending data or sort through construction permits. Thasos’s specialty is spewing out of your smartphone. “It’s creating this data all the time, even if it’s not ringing,” said Greg Skibiski, Thasos’s 45-year-old founder and chief executive. “It’s a beacon. Every single person is carrying this beacon.” Thasos gets data from about 1,000 apps, many of which need to know a phone’s location to be effective, like those providing weather forecasts, driving directions or the whereabouts of the nearest ATM. Smartphone users, wittingly or not, share their location when they use such apps. Before Thasos gets the data, suppliers scrub it of personally identifiable information. It is just time-stamped strings of longitude and latitude. But with more than 100 million phones providing such coordinates, Thasos says it can paint detailed pictures of the ebb and flow of people, and thus their money.
Sen Wyden Releases Discussion Draft of Legislation to Provide Real Protections for Americans’ Privacy
Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) released a discussion draft of sweeping new legislation, Consumer Data Protection Act, that would empower consumers to control their personal information, create radical transparency into how corporations use and share their data, and impose harsh fines and prison terms for executives at corporations that misuse Americans’ data. The Consumer Data Protection Act protects Americans’ privacy, allows consumers to control the sale and sharing of their data, gives the Federal Trade Commission the authority to be an effective cop on the beat, and will spur a new market for privacy-protecting services. The bill empowers the FTC to:
- Establish minimum privacy and cybersecurity standards.
- Issue steep fines (up to 4% of annual revenue), on the first offense for companies and 10-20 year criminal penalties for senior executives.
- Create a national Do Not Track system that lets consumers stop third-party companies from tracking them on the web by sharing data, selling data, or targeting advertisements based on their personal information. It permits companies to charge consumers who want to use their products and services, but don’t want their information monetized.
- Give consumers a way to review what personal information a company has about them, learn with whom it has been shared or sold, and to challenge inaccuracies in it.
- Hire 175 more staff to police the largely unregulated market for private data.
- Require companies to assess the algorithms that process consumer data to examine their impact on accuracy, fairness, bias, discrimination, privacy, and security.
Privacy controversies continue to plague Google. In this seemingly unshakeable cycle of improvements and gaffes, it's nearly impossible to make a full accounting of Google's user privacy impacts and protections. But it's critical to understand how the people on the front lines of that fight think about their jobs, and how it fits in with the fundamental truth of how Google makes money.
Google’s privacy apparatus—which spans the globe and includes dedicated standalone teams, groups within other teams, and an extensive leadership structure—comprises thousands of employees and billions of dollars in cumulative investment. More than a dozen Google employees who work on privacy at all levels talked with WIRED about the massive scale and scope of these efforts.
There’s even more phony or misleading political news circulating on social media than there was in 2016, according to a new University of Oxford report that casts doubt on tech companies’ attempts to crack down on disinformation ahead of the midterms. The report also found that social media users were more apt to share “junk news” than what researchers considered “professional content,” which includes news from established media outlets and information from the government, academics or political candidates. What’s more, the report concluded that the kind of junk news once relatively contained to people on the far right is now being readily shared by mainstream political conservatives. With less than a week remaining before the midterms, the research suggests the efforts that Facebook, Twitter and other companies have taken to suppress disinformation may be too little, too late. Lawmakers have made it clear that if technology companies are unable to police their platforms and address the spread of false or phony information that could influence the democratic process, they may pursue regulation.
Left-leaning groups are pouring money into online advertising on platforms like Facebook ahead of the midterms — and cash from Silicon Valley staffers is flowing to Democratic campaigns, according to recently released data. Donations to Democratic candidates from tech staffers, political action committees and outside groups is more than triple that of Republican candidates, $13.4 million to $3.7 million. Among top firms, Amazon came out on top overall with $12.4 million in donations to candidates, parties and outside groups, though Google outspent Amazon in terms of donations to liberal groups and candidates. And Recode found that more than 90 percent of staff donations from Netflix, Twitter, Airbnb, Apple, Stripe, Lyft, Alphabet, Salesforce, Facebook, Tesla, eBay, PayPal and Microsoft went to Democratic candidates this campaign season, with Amazon, Uber and Hewlett-Packard and Intel not far behind percentage-wise. Democratic candidates, meanwhile, are vastly outspending their Republican counterparts on Facebook ads.
Communications and Democracy
‘When I can, I tell the truth’: President Trump pushes back against his peddling of falsehoods
President Donald Trump defended his proclivity to spread misleading statements and falsehoods, saying that he tells the truth when he can. “Well, I try. I do try...and I always want to tell the truth,” President Trump said. “When I can, I tell the truth. And sometimes it turns out to be where something happens that’s different or there’s a change, but I always like to be truthful." President Trump also took issue with the media’s estimates of the sizes of caravans of Central American migrants slowly making their way toward the United States. “You have caravans coming up that look a lot larger than it’s reported, actually,” he said. “I’m pretty good at estimating crowd size. And I’ll tell you, they look a lot bigger than people would think.”
The furor over Rep. Steve King’s ties to white nationalist figures and groups has struck the telecom industry, where two heavyweights castigated Rep. King (R-Iowa) over some of his recent remarks. NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, denounced King’s remarks and could “no longer support his campaign.” And AT&T, which has contributed to King’s campaign, said it will not make further campaign contributions to the lawmaker in 2018. Rep. King, who has a long track record of incendiary racial remarks, sparked uproar with his endorsement of Faith Goldy, a white nationalist running for mayor in Toronto. Rep King also has drawn heavy scrutiny for discussing conspiracy theories about billionaire donor George Soros with a Nazi-linked foreign party. In an interview with members of a far-right Austrian political party with historical Nazi ties, he tied Soros to the ‘Great Replacement’ — a far-right conspiracy theory describing a push to replace white Europeans with minorities.
President Donald Trump says railing against his enemies in the media helped him win — and that his supporters like him more when he cranks up the "enemy of the people" rhetoric. President Trump said, "I think I'm doing a service [by attacking the press] when people write stories about me that are so wrong." He said, "I know what I do good and what I do bad. I really get it, OK? I really get it better than anybody in the whole world." When an interviewer said, "Tens of thousands of people go into a stadium to listen to you, and then people go on social media and they get themselves so jazzed up. There’s got to be a part of you that's like: 'Dammit, I'm scared that someone is gonna take it too far.'" President Trump responded, “It’s my only form of fighting back. I wouldn’t be here if I didn't do that.” He also said, "If they would write accurately about me, I would be the nicest president you've ever seen. It would be much easier."
CNN president Jeff Zucker, the guy who first brought our president to the small screen when he green-lighted The Apprentice in 2004 while running NBC, had arguably schooled Donald Trump in the art of reality television. Halfway through President Trump’s first term, his instincts remain just as acute. If Fox News represents President Trump’s base and MSNBC has become a friendly platform for the resistance, CNN is the arena where both sides show up for cantankerous battle. “On Fox, you rarely hear from people who don’t support Trump,” Zucker said. “On MSNBC, you rarely hear from people who do support Trump. We want to be home to both those points of view.” He continued, as if rebuking a common critique of the network. “It is true some of these folks are not very good with the facts, but that’s O.K. in the sense that it’s our job then to call them out.”
“People say all the time, ‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about Trump, I’ve had too much Trump,’" Zucker said. “And yet at the end of the day, all they want to do is talk about Trump." "We’ve seen that anytime you break away from the Trump story and cover other events in this era, the audience goes away," he added. "So we know that, right now, Donald Trump dominates.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted over the past fractious, violent week shows a majority of voters think that President Donald Trump has done more to divide the country than unite it since he took office in 2017 — but that the national news media are even worse. Just 3 in 10 voters, 30 percent, said President Trump has done more to unite the country, compared with 56 percent who said he’s done more to divide it. Even more voters, 64 percent, said the media have done more to divide the country, while only 17 percent say they have done more to unite it.
Majorities of Democrats (88 percent) and independents (54 percent) said President Trump has done more to divide the U.S., while 55 percent of Republicans said Trump has done more to unite the country instead. But few voters in either party — 28 percent of Democrats, 9 percent of Republicans and 14 percent of independents — said the national news media have done more to unite the country.
The 20th Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) elected the first woman to one of five top executive positions in the history of the organization. Member States of ITU, the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technology, completed the elections for the posts of ITU Secretary-General, ITU Deputy Secretary-General, Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB) and Director of ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT). The winning candidates are:
- Mr Houlin Zhao of China was re-elected to the post of ITU Secretary-General.
- Mr Malcolm Johnson of the United Kingdom was re-elected to the post of ITU Deputy Secretary-General.
- Dr Chaesub Lee of Republic of Korea was re-elected to the post of TSB Director.
- Doreen Bogdan-Martin of the United States was elected to the post of BDT Director.
Officials in Beijing are providing governments around the world with technology and training that enable them to control their own citizens. As Chinese companies compete with their international counterparts in crucial fields such as artificial intelligence and 5G mobile service, the democratic norms that long governed the global Internet are falling by the wayside. When it comes to Internet freedom, many governments are eager to buy the restrictive model that China is selling.
The best way for democracies to stem the rise of digital authoritarianism is to prove that there is a better model for managing the Internet. We will have to tackle social media manipulation and misuse of data in a manner that respects human rights, while also preserving an Internet that is global, free and secure. Policymakers should undertake serious efforts to protect critical infrastructure and citizens’ personal data from misuse by governments, companies and criminals. Tech companies should dramatically scale up their work with civil-society experts to maximize their own transparency and ensure that their platforms are not being misused to spread disinformation.
[Michael Abramowitz is the president of Freedom House. Michael Chertoff is the chairman of Freedom House.]
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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