February 2013

New Document Sheds Light on Government’s Ability to Search iPhones

Cell phone searches are a common law enforcement tool, but up until now, the public has largely been in the dark regarding how much sensitive information the government can get with this invasive surveillance technique. A document submitted to court in connection with a drug investigation, which we recently discovered, provides a rare inventory of the types of data that federal agents are able to obtain from a seized iPhone using advanced forensic analysis tools.

The list, available here, starkly demonstrates just how invasive cell phone searches are—and why law enforcement should be required to obtain a warrant before conducting them. Last fall, officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized an iPhone from the bedroom of a suspect in a drug investigation. In a single data extraction session, ICE collected a huge array of personal data from the phone. Among other information, ICE obtained:

call activity
phone book directory information
stored voicemails and text messages
photos and videos
apps
eight different passwords
659 geolocation points, including 227 cell towers and 403 Wi-Fi networks with which the cell phone had previously connected.

Sec Kerry defends liberties, says Americans have "right to be stupid"

Secretary of State John Kerry offered a defense of freedom of speech, religion and thought in the United States telling German students that in America "you have a right to be stupid if you want to be."

"As a country, as a society, we live and breathe the idea of religious freedom and religious tolerance, whatever the religion, and political freedom and political tolerance, whatever the point of view," Sec Kerry told the students in Berlin, the second stop on his inaugural trip as secretary of state. "People have sometimes wondered about why our Supreme Court allows one group or another to march in a parade even though it's the most provocative thing in the world and they carry signs that are an insult to one group or another," he added. "The reason is, that's freedom, freedom of speech. In America you have a right to be stupid - if you want to be," he said, prompting laughter. "And you have a right to be disconnected to somebody else if you want to be. And we tolerate it. We somehow make it through that. Now, I think that's a virtue. I think that's something worth fighting for," he added. "The important thing is to have the tolerance to say, you know, you can have a different point of view."

MetroPCS Moves Forward With T-Mobile Deal, Schedules Shareholder Vote for March

MetroPCS filed papers to close its deal to merge with T-Mobile USA, scheduling a March 28 shareholder vote to approve the purchase. In a letter to its stock owners, MetroPCS urged shareholders to cast a yellow ballot in favor of the deal, and ignore the white “no” ballots being solicited by a dissident shareholder. “After a multi-year, thorough review of MetroPCS’ options, with the assistance of independent financial and legal advisors, the MetroPCS board determined that this proposed combination is the best strategic alternative for our stockholders,” the company said in its letter.

Maybe You’ll Get the Pay TV You Want, After All: Cablevision Sues Viacom to Break Up the Bundle

Pay television has a simple model: If you want to watch one channel, you have to pay for dozens — or hundreds — of others, whether you watch them or not. That model drives lots of consumers nuts, but it has looked very, very hard to dislodge. Now one cable provider says it will try to break up the bundle: Cablevision has sued Viacom for “illegally forcing Cablevision to carry and pay for 14 lesser-watched ancillary networks its customers do not want.”

On the face of it, Cablevision is directly attacking the core bundling principle the industry has used for years, and continues to implement as pay-TV providers and programmers sign new, long-term deals. It is accusing Viacom of an “illegal tying arrangement in violation of the federal antitrust laws,” and if it is successful, the repercussions could be widespread and significant. But note that the conventional wisdom in the pay-TV industry is that “tying” rules aren’t applicable to cable bundles — people have tried repeatedly to break the bundle using the courts and failed.

Microtargeting has growing influence in political campaigns, says Interactive Advertising Bureau

Data played a big role in last year’s presidential campaign, whether it was used to evaluate how likely a person was to vote for a particular candidate based on his or her Facebook profile, or to project which states would go for which candidate. But there was almost no component of a campaign that was as affected by changing tech as political advertising.

Microtargeting — or narrowly focused online advertising — is a growing component of political campaigns, according to a white paper published by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The IAB estimates that microtargeted ads accounted for between $130 million and $200 million in ad spending during the 2012 presidential election. The findings also back up what’s become a familiar post-election narrative: that President Obama’s campaign was better at using and deploying high-tech tactics than the campaign of GOP challenger Mitt Romney.

Silicon Valley launches campaign to get kids to code

A new nonprofit is launching a campaign to encourage American kids to code.

Code.org has tapped some of the technology industry's leading luminaries –- Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter and Square's Jack Dorsey and Microsoft's Bill Gates –- to lead the charge in a new video promoting the cool of coding. Code.org is working to make computer science classes available in more schools and create "the wizards of tomorrow." It was started by Hadi and Ali Partovi, technology entrepreneurs and startup investor and advisors. It's the beginning of an ambitious attempt to program new public policy. Silicon Valley is undertaking a more concerted political campaign than ever before to address the escalating demand for engineers at Silicon Valley companies as Congress weighs immigration reform.

Supreme Court blocks challenge to federal wiretapping program

The Supreme Court blocked a lawsuit challenging the federal government's monitoring of international phone calls and e-mails. In a 5-4 decision that split along ideological lines, the court ruled that activists, journalists and lawyers represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) could not prove that they were harmed by the wiretapping program.

"Simply put, respondents can only speculate as to how the attorney general and the director of national intelligence will exercise their discretion in determining which communications to target," Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, agreeing with the Obama Administration's position that the challengers lacked the legal standing to sue. The decision in Clapper v. Amnesty International did not address the constitutionality of the warrantless wiretapping program, which Congress authorized in 2008 as an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Mid-2013 expansion for Internet names targeted

Hundreds of Internet address suffixes to rival ".com" should be available for people and businesses to use by the end of the year, the head of an Internet oversight agency said.

The initial ones, expected in mid-2013, will likely be in Chinese and other languages besides English, said Fadi Chehade, CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. That will be followed within weeks by English suffixes that do not have competing bidders. Although the specific names won't be announced until late April, they will come from a pool of single-bidder proposals — among them, ".aetna," ''.cadillac" and other brand names sought by companies, regional monikers such as ".vegas" and ".quebec" and generic suffixes such as ".like" and ".vacation." Many proposed suffixes, such as ".app," ''.music" and ".tech," will likely take longer, however, because multiple groups have submitted bids to run them and must work out disputes.

Comcast Announces New Legal and Public Policy Hires

Comcast hired Ryan Wallach as Senior Deputy General Counsel and Madura Wijewardena as Senior Director, Public Policy.

Wallach’s responsibilities will include legal analysis and advocacy regarding regulatory and litigation matters, and he will report to Lynn Charytan, Vice President Legal Regulatory Affairs and Senior Deputy General Counsel. Wijewardena will identify and analyze emerging public policy issues of significance to the company, and he will report to Rebecca Arbogast, Vice President of Global Public Policy.

Wallach recently served as Special Counsel at Willkie, Farr & Gallagher LLP where he provided strategic guidance to clients on regulatory and legislative policy and compliance issues and initiatives for over a decade. He has served as a Professorial Lecturer in Law at the George Washington University Law School for the past seven years co-teaching a survey course on developments in communications law. He is an active member of the Federal Communications Bar Association. Wallach served as a judicial clerk to The Honorable Clyde H. Hamilton at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Columbia, South Carolina and to The Honorable Harold H. Greene at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington. He holds a law degree from George Washington University Law School and a bachelor's degree from The Colorado College. Prior to joining Comcast, Wijewardena served as the Director of Research & Policy at the National Urban League (NUL) in Washington, D.C. where he used research to develop NUL’s economic policy agenda and managed NUL’s policy interactions in telecommunications and media. Prior to NUL, Wijewardena worked for a consulting firm in Chicago where he used data analysis to assist governments, foundations and political campaigns to develop policies and influence opinion. Wijewardena was also part of President Obama’s first campaign in Chicago. For the first eight years of his career, Wijewardena was a corporate attorney in telecommunications and media. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago concentrating in microeconomics and statistics, and law and bachelor’s degrees from the University of Sydney, Australia.

MMTC Asks FCC To Delay Ownership Moves

In a move that could further delay action on the Federal Communications Commission's long-running ownership reform proceeding, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council asked the agency to postpone a vote until the MMTC can conduct a study on what impact relaxing of some crossownership rules would have on minority and women ownership.

The MMTC, headed by David Honig, said the study will be aimed at determining "whether the presence of grandfathered newspaper-broadcast and radio-TV ownership operations materially harms minority and women-owned stations, taking into consideration the experiences of other stations in the same markets." The request was made in a letter to the FCC. The MMTC said it has hired BIA/Kelsey to conduct the study and promised to deliver it to the FCC within two months in the hope that the agency would ask for a round of public comments on it — a process that could take another month or so.

"The National Association of Broadcasters reviewed MMTC's letter and agrees that there is potential merit in additional data-gathering regarding minority ownership," said Jane Mago, executive VP and general counsel, NAB, in a letter to the FCC. "Accordingly, NAB does not oppose MMTC's suggestion that the Commission defer action in the above-referenced proceedings pending its review of the results of MMTC's study."

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