Government & Communications

Russian Dirt on Clinton? ‘I Love It,’ Donald Trump Jr. Said

The June 3, 2016, e-mail sent to Donald Trump Jr. could hardly have been more explicit: One of his father’s former Russian business partners had been contacted by a senior Russian government official and was offering to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton. The documents “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” read the email, written by a trusted intermediary, who added, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

If the future president’s eldest son was surprised or disturbed by the provenance of the promised material — or the notion that it was part of a continuing effort by the Russian government to aid his father’s campaign — he gave no indication. He replied within minutes: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” Four days later, after a flurry of e-mails, the intermediary wrote back, proposing a meeting in New York on Thursday with a “Russian government attorney.” Donald Trump Jr. agreed, adding that he would most likely bring along “Paul Manafort (campaign boss)” and “my brother-in-law,” Jared Kushner, now one of the president’s closest White House advisers.

FCC Chairman Pai Orders Immediate Action on Lifeline Waste, Fraud and Abuse

In a letter to Universal Service Administration Company CEO Vickie Robinson, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai responded to a recent Government Accountability Office report on potential waste, fraud and abuse in the FCC’s Lifeline program and additional internal FCC investigations. “In light of these investigations and their findings, I believe immediate action is warranted.” He called on USAC to implement safeguards in six areas to ensure Universal Service Fund monies are not used by “unscrupulous eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs)”:

  • Audit the ten ETCs with the highest number of potential ineligible Lifeline subscribers
  • Review a sampling of Lifeline subscribers each month to determine if they are eligible
  • Require ETCs to verify Lifeline subscribers’ eligibility and de-enroll any subscribers who are not eligible
  • Refer ETC abuses to the FCC’s Office of Inspector General for possible civil or criminal action
  • For addresses with 500 or more Lifeline subscribers, require ETCs to de-enroll subscribers who cannot verify their address and confirm they are “independent economic households” from other Lifeline subscribers -- and, on a quarterly basis, review in a similar way a sampling of addresses with 25 or more subscribers
  • Recapture improper payments associated with de-enrolled Lifeline subscribers
  • Explore automating the process of detecting oversubscribed addresses
  • Step up efforts to identify “phantom,” deceased and duplicate subscribers, de-enroll them, and prosecute ETCs who collect USF funds for serving these fictitious customers
  • Require Lifeline sales agents to register with USAC, block new subscribers enrolled by sales agents who are registering too many customers, and stepping up prosecution of fraudulent sales agents.

Chairman Pai asked USAC to report to him on implementation of these safeguards by August 8, 2017.

President Trump defends Trump Jr.: 'I applaud his transparency'

President Donald Trump praised his son, Donald Trump Jr., who is under fire for meeting with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have compromising information about Trump's Democratic rival in the presidential race, Hillary Clinton. “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency,” President Trump said in a brief statement, which White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders read to reporters during an off-camera briefing.

President Trump had previously remained silent on the growing controversy surrounding the meeting at the height of the campaign. The revelation has shaken the White House, which for months has struggled to contain the fallout from a wide-ranging investigation into Russia’s election-meddling effort in 2016. Sanders acknowledged that, “the president is, I would say, frustrated with the process of the fact that this continues to be an issue.”

Virginia is First State to Opt in to AT&T FirstNet Plan

Virginia is expected to be the first state to opt in to AT&T FirstNet plans to build a wireless public safety network that ultimately will interconnect with public safety networks in all 50 states. Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe announced the decision at an event July 11.

For Every 1 Net Neutrality Comment, Internet & Cable Providers Spent $100 on Lobbying Over Decade

Three of the largest internet service providers and the cable television industry’s primary trade association have spent more than a half-billion dollars lobbying the federal government during the past decade on issues that include network neutrality, according to a MapLight analysis.

Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) have spent $572 million on attempts to influence the Federal Communications Commission and other government agencies since 2008. The amount represents more than $100 for each of the 5.6 million public comments on the FCC’s proposed elimination of net neutrality rules. Despite the resources devoted to the rollback by the big internet service providers, net neutrality advocates haven’t been totally bereft of support in the nation’s capital. Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has spent $41.1 million lobbying in the nation’s capital. Facebook, which boasts 2 billion unique monthly users, has spent almost $43.3 million.

Paying Professors: Inside Google’s Academic Influence Campaign

Google operates a little-known program to harness the brain power of university researchers to help sway opinion and public policy, cultivating financial relationships with professors at campuses from Harvard University to the University of California, Berkeley. Over the past decade, Google has helped finance hundreds of research papers to defend against regulatory challenges of its market dominance, paying stipends of $5,000 to $400,000, The Wall Street Journal found.

Some researchers share their papers before publication and let Google give suggestions, according to thousands of pages of e-mails obtained by the Journal in public-records requests of more than a dozen university professors. The professors don’t always reveal Google’s backing in their research, and few disclosed the financial ties in subsequent articles on the same or similar topics. The funding of favorable campus research to support Google’s Washington, D.C.-based lobbying operation is part of a behind-the-scenes push in Silicon Valley to influence decision makers. The operation is an example of how lobbying has escaped the confines of Washington’s regulated environment and is increasingly difficult to spot.

Lawsuit alleges President Trump violated 1st Amendment by blocking US citizens on Twitter

With each tweet, President Trump says he’s redefining the American presidency, describing his use of social media as “modern day presidential” and necessary to fight what he deems fake news. Not everyone agrees on the substance of Trump’s social media message, but both his supporters and detractors have something in common: They want access to Trump’s frenetic Twitter feed. Which is why the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of seven Twitter users who say their 1st Amendment rights were violated after they were blocked from reading Trump’s personal account (@realDonaldTrump, not the official @POTUS account) after criticizing him or his policies. The suit, filed in US District Court in the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, names President Trump, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and White House director of social media Dan Scavino as defendants. The Knight Institute sent a letter to the White House in June threatening legal action if it didn’t heed its call to unblock followers.

President Trump Has Secretive Teams to Roll Back Regulations, Led by Hires With Deep Industry Ties

President Donald Trump entered office pledging to cut red tape, and within weeks, he ordered his administration to assemble teams to aggressively scale back government regulations. But the effort — a signature theme in Trump’s populist campaign for the White House — is being conducted in large part out of public view and often by political appointees with deep industry ties and potential conflicts.

Most government agencies have declined to disclose information about their deregulation teams. But ProPublica and The New York Times identified 71 appointees, including 28 with potential conflicts, through interviews, public records and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Some appointees are reviewing rules their previous employers sought to weaken or kill, and at least two may be positioned to profit if certain regulations are undone. The appointees include lawyers who have represented businesses in cases against government regulators, staff members of political dark money groups, employees of industry-funded organizations opposed to environmental rules and at least three people who were registered to lobby the agencies they now work for.

Are Americans moved by Trump’s media-as-enemy war cry? The opposite may be true.

[Commentary] At first glance, a new report from Pew Research looks devastating for President Trump’s favorite punching bag, the nation’s news media. One might think that the message Trump has been hammering home is really getting through. After all, Pew’s polling clearly shows that a big chunk of the American public buys his message that the press is a negative force in our society. Amy Mitchell, Pew’s director of journalism research, said the growing partisan divide in attitudes about the news media mirrors a Pew study done earlier in 2017 in which Democrats showed a growing appreciation of the press’s watchdog role; but appreciation for that role plummeted among Republicans. If journalism is to do its job fully, and as the founders intended, it can’t speak primarily to one side of the political aisle. I don’t have the answers to that problem, though I’m planning to explore them in the coming weeks. In the meantime, it’s important to acknowledge what this report doesn’t show: That Trump’s traitorous-media-scum message is moving the needle as he intends. And that — although in a grasping-at-straws way — is good news.

Sinclair increases 'must-run' Boris Epshteyn segments

Even while under fire for requiring its outlets to run conservative content, Sinclair Broadcast Group is increasing the "must-run" segments across its affiliates featuring former Trump White House official Boris Epshteyn to nine times a week. The move comes as the company is seeking to dramatically expand its holdings by purchasing Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, which would make it the largest local television operator in the country, with more than 200 stations.

But Sinclair's unusual practice of requiring all its stations to run reports dictated from the corporate offices has been flagged by critics of the Tribune acquisition and even become a subject of late-night TV ribbing by HBO's John Oliver. Epshteyn was hired by Sinclair as chief political analyst in April after a short ride in the White House overseeing the choice of Trump surrogates for TV appearances. Now, on Sinclair, he is offering his own political commentary. His "Bottom Line with Boris" segments already air three times a week, but will now triple in frequency, featuring a mix of his political commentary as well as "talk backs" with local stations and interviews with members of Congress. The segments will have a “billboard,” meaning they’re sponsored, but will not be sponsored content, a Sinclair spokesperson said. Epshteyn’s segments are “must runs,” so all the Sinclair stations across the country will air them along with their other “must-run” segments including conservative commentary from Mark Hyman and the Terrorism Alert Desk segments. Epshteyn reliably parrots the White House's point of view on most issues.

Who Has Your Back? AT&T, Verizon, Other ISPs Lag Behind Tech Industry in Protecting Users from Government Overreach

While many technology companies continue to step up their privacy game by adopting best practices to protect sensitive customer information when the government demands user data, telecommunications companies are failing to prioritize user privacy when the government comes knocking, an Electronic Frontier Foundation annual survey shows. Even tech giants such as Apple, Facebook, and Google can do more to fully stand behind their users.

EFF’s seventh annual “Who Has Your Back” report digs into the ways many technology companies are getting the message about user privacy in this era of unprecedented digital surveillance. The data stored on our mobile phones, laptops, and especially our online services can, when aggregated, paint a detailed picture of our lives—where we go, who we see, what we say, our political affiliations, our religion, and more. AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, and Verizon scored the lowest, each earning just one star. While they have adopted a number of industry best practices, like publishing transparency reports and requiring a warrant for content, they still need to commit to informing users before disclosing their data to the government and creating a public policy of requesting judicial review of all NSLs.

Fox & Friends sent a misleading tweet. Then Trump accused James Comey of a crime.

President Donald Trump tweeted July 10 that former FBI Director James Comey “leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION” when he provided the New York Times with information about his meetings with the president. There’s no evidence that is true. The president’s tweet apparently came from a segment on Fox & Friends, which was a misleading interpretation of a report from the Hill newspaper on the contents of Comey’s memos. "James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media. That is so illegal!" the President tweeted.

The Hill said that, based on interviews with unnamed “officials familiar with the documents,” more than half of Comey’s memos contained classified information. Because of this, the circumstances of the creation and storage of the memos that did contain classified information could have run afoul of FBI protocols. But the report does not claim that Comey actually leaked classified information to the New York Times or anyone else. The president retweeted this misleading Fox & Friends video concerning these allegations less than 10 minutes before his outburst.

ACLU sues President Trump over voter fraud commission

The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging President Trump’s voter fraud commission. In a lawsuit filed July 10 in the US District Court of the District of Columbia, the ACLU says the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity violated federal public access requirements by holding its first meeting in private, without public notice.

President Trump formed the 15-member commission with an executive order in May to investigate his claims of voter fraud in 2016’s presidential election. The group is expected to hold its first public meeting on July 19. The ACLU lawsuit notes that Vice President Pence, who chairs the commission, held a 90-minute telephone meeting with its members on June 28. During the call, the suit says Vice Chairman Kris Kobach told members the commission was sending a letter to the 50 states and the District of Columbia requesting information on registered voters, including full names and addresses, political party registration and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. In its complaint, the ACLU argues that the commission has violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires all advisory committee meetings to be open to the public and timely noticed in the Federal Register.

No One Wins the Machiavellian Game of Trump vs. the Press

[Commentary] What might have been, decades ago, a compact between an audience and a trusted source of information—we’ll tell you who this gif-making guy is if you need us to—sours into something repugnant. At the same moment the president claims that the press is dangerous, has too much power … a press outlet (out of an overabundance of corporate caution) does something that looks like a dangerous abuse of power. This inversion plunks us all into the darkest possible timeline—the one where a president can “jokingly” hint at violence against reporters and his adherents feel empowered to threaten it more overtly.

On July 7, President Trump spent more than two hours with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, at the meeting of the G20 countries in Hamburg, and afterward Putin (as Machiavellian a leader as anyone could ask for) joked about the journalists who hurt the president. Presidents have more power than reporters (especially in Russia, where 82 journalists have been killed since 1993, most of them covering politics, corruption, and crime). But the fix is now in: The president says you can’t trust the press and the press says you can’t trust the president. If Machiavelli is right, that’s a recipe for an apocalypse.

Albuquerque police refuse to say if they have stingrays, so ACLU sues

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico has sued the city of Albuquerque, seeking records by the city’s police department about its use of stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators. In May 2017, the ACLU of New Mexico filed a public records request to the Albuquerque Police Department (which has been under federal monitoring for years), seeking a slew of information about stingrays. The requested info included confirmation on whether the police had stingrays, "policies and procedures," and contracts with the Harris Corporation, among other materials. Albuquerque denied many of these requests, citing a state law that allows some public records to be withheld on the grounds that they reveal "confidential sources, methods." So, the week of July 3, the ACLU of New Mexico sued.

China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February

Apparently, China’s government has told telecommunications carriers to block individuals’ access to virtual private networks by Feb. 1, thereby shutting a major window to the global internet. Beijing has ordered state-run telecommunications firms, which include China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, to bar people from using VPNs, services that skirt censorship restrictions by routing web traffic abroad. The clampdown will shutter one of the main ways in which people both local and foreign still manage to access the global, unfiltered web on a daily basis.

In keeping with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “cyber sovereignty” campaign, the government now appears to be cracking down on loopholes around the Great Firewall, a system that blocks information sources from Twitter and Facebook to news websites such as the New York Times and others.

Facebook among tech firms battling gag orders over government surveillance

Tech companies -- including Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft -- are fighting gag orders from US courts preventing them from talking about government surveillance of their users, arguing it has a chilling effect on free speech.

Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft all have policies to notify users of government requests for account information unless they are prohibited by law from doing so in exceptional circumstances such as life-threatening emergencies, child sexual exploitation and terrorism. However, it seems that the US government is attaching gag orders – many with no time limit – to their data requests in about half of all cases. This means that people are having their digital lives ransacked without their knowledge and with no chance for public scrutiny or appeal. Tech companies and civil liberties campaigners argue that the gag orders are unconstitutional, violating the fourth amendment, which gives people the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property, and the first amendment, which protects the companies’ right to talk to their customers and discuss how the government conducts its investigations.

Spyware Sold to Mexican Government Targeted International Officials

A team of international investigators brought to Mexico to unravel one of the nation’s gravest human rights atrocities was targeted with sophisticated surveillance technology sold to the Mexican government to spy on criminals and terrorists. The spying took place during what the investigators call a broad campaign of harassment and interference that prevented them from solving the haunting case of 43 students who disappeared after clashing with the police nearly three years ago.

Sen Klobuchar Warns Against Politicizing AT&T-Time Warner

Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has warned attorney general Jeff Sessions that any political interference in the Justice Department's review of the AT&T-Time Warner merger would be "unacceptable." Sen Klobuchar was responding to a report in the New York Times that White House advisors have discussed leveraging the deal against Time Warner-owned CNN, which President Donald Trump has hammered as fake news—most recently in a tweet featuring him pummeling a figure with a CNN logo for a head.

President Trump said as a candidate his White House would oppose the deal. In a letter to AG Sessions, sen Klobuchar said that while she has "serious questions" about the deal's impact, "the transaction should be judged solely on its impact on competition, innovation, and consumers, not as 'leverage' for political gain." She added: “Any political interference in antitrust enforcement is unacceptable. Even more concerning, in this instance, is that it appears that some advisers to the President may believe that it is appropriate for the government to use its law enforcement authority to alter or censor the press. Such an action would violate the First Amendment.”

The ethics issue: Should we abandon privacy online?

In an age where fear of terrorism is high in the public consciousness, governments are likely to err on the side of safety. Over the past decade, the authorities have been pushing for – and getting – greater powers of surveillance than they have ever had, all in the name of national security. The downsides are not immediately obvious. After all, you might think you have nothing to hide. But most of us have perfectly legal secrets we’d rather someone else didn’t see. And although the chances of the authorities turning up to take you away in a black SUV on the basis of your WhatsApp messages are small in free societies, the chances of insurance companies raising your premiums are not.

President Trump’s leaks crackdown sends chills through national security world

National security officials across the federal government say they are seeing new restrictions on who can access sensitive information, fueling fears in the intelligence and security community that the Trump administration has stepped up a stealthy operation to smoke out leakers. Officials at various national security agencies also say they are becoming more concerned that the administration is carefully tracking what they’re doing and who they’re talking to — then plotting to use them as a scapegoat or accuse them of leaks.

One US official voiced concern over even talking to their superiors about a benign call from a reporter. The agency this official works for had started limiting staff’s access to information, they said, and it would make it far easier to figure out who was talking to people in the media. There was suspicion, the official said, that the agency was even tracking what they printed, to keep tabs on what information they were accessing. A half dozen officials across the national security community described to Politico a series of subtle and no-so-subtle changes that have led to an increasingly tense and paranoid working environment rooted in the White House’s obsession with leaks. President Donald Trump has regularly vented about his intense frustration with anonymously sourced stories, and has specifically targeted federal government entities, including intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI and the State Department.

President Trump shrugs off 'haters' and media in early morning tweets

President Donald Trump waved off critics and the "Fake News Media" on July 7 as he prepared to meet with world leaders at the annual Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. "I will represent our country well and fight for its interests! Fake News Media will never cover me accurately but who cares! #MAGA," he wrote in an early morning tweet, using an abbreviation for his campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again." "My experience yesterday in Poland was a great one. Thank you to everyone, including the haters, for the great reviews of the speech!" the President tweeted.

Other presidents boosted free press abroad; President Trump bashes it

President Donald Trump bashed the American press corps on July 6, singling out CNN and others as "fake news." That wasn't new, of course. What was different was where it occurred. This latest example of Trump's anti-media rhetoric -- perhaps the defining element of his presidency thus far -- came during a visit to Warsaw, Poland, his second overseas trip since taking office. In the past, presidents have often used foreign visits to preach the value of a free press. President Trump went a different way.

Judge denies DOJ effort to halt Twitter lawsuit over national security orders

A federal judge in California has decided to allow Twitter’s lawsuit against the attorney general’s office to go forward. She rejected arguments that the social media giant should not be allowed to be precise in its transparency reports when describing how it responds to the government’s requests for user data.

Twitter has argued that, just as it has been precise in other areas of its transparency report, so too should it be allowed to say precisely how many national security orders it has received from American authorities. For now, under federal law, it is only allowed to describe those numbers in vague ranges, such as “0 to 499,” and “500 to 999,” and so forth. Lawyers for Twitter say that this law constitutes a violation of the company’s First Amendment rights and is “prior restraint,” a concept of blocking legitimate speech before it is uttered. Attorneys from the Department of Justice claimed in a hearing in federal court in Oakland, California, earlier this year that if Twitter is allowed to specifically say how many national security orders it has received, potential adversaries could somehow use that number to inflict harm. But the judge didn’t buy it.