June 2013

FCC at Crossroads on Indecency Rules - Enforce, Ignore or Risk Another 'Nipplegate'?

The Federal Communications Commission has spent much of the Obama Administration punting on indecency. But now, as a new chairman waits in the wings, broadcasters and advocacy groups are searching for signs about its future direction on the hot-button issue.

Already there have been indications that the FCC is flirting with relaxing standards and limiting its enforcement efforts to flagrant use of profanity or blatant displays of sexuality. It just ended a request for comments from viewers and members of the broadcast industry in which it floated the idea that it would no longer fine programs featuring fleeting expletives or nudity. And Tom Wheeler, the former telecommunications executive President Obama appointed to take over for departed FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, hinted during his confirmation hearings in Congress this week that he may take a laissez faire attitude when it comes to cracking down on blue language or content. Meanwhile, the FCC did not take a single enforcement action against a network-owned and operated affiliate for indecency or profanity during the first half of President Obama's tenure. During that time, the backlog of complaints swelled, prompting Genachowski to instruct the agency’s enforcement bureau last fall to dismiss roughly a million of these objections, noting the statute of limitations had expired in certain instances.

Local TV Bids Expected to Fetch Up to $2.5 Billion

Final bids are due in the auction of Local TV LLC's 19 television stations, expected to fetch between $2 billion and $2.5 billion, potentially making it the biggest in a series of recent TV station deals.

A unit of private-equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners, Local TV owns stations affiliated with various broadcast networks in markets such as Denver, Cleveland and St. Louis. It operates two additional stations that are owned by Tribune. The company was formed in 2006 when Oak Hill bought nine stations from New York Times Co. In 2008 it acquired eight Fox affiliates from Fox network's owner, News Corp. People familiar with the deal said Local TV is likely to be broken up into pieces. It could take several days, and possibly even weeks, to work out which bidders get which stations, the people said.

Five Reasons to Throw Your Data Away

[Commentary] Common wisdom when it comes to Big Data is that you should keep it all. The reality, however, is far different. Keeping all your data is more expensive — and carries more risk — than it first appears.

Here are five key reasons to throw your data away.

More data equals more risk.
More data means more noise.
Storing your data isn’t free.
Data analyzed is a lot more valuable than data stored.
The more data you have, the less you can trust it.

[Bob Tennant is CEO of Recommind which specializes in unstructured data management and analysis technology]

Americans Worked Less, Watched More TV in 2012

The aging of America's population means fewer people are working and more retirees are at home watching TV, according to the American Time Use Survey released by the Labor Department.

With less time spent at work, Americans boosted the portion of their day going to leisure and sports activities: Time spent on leisure jumped about nine minutes to five hours and 22 minutes. Americans watched TV for two hours and 50 minutes a day, a second-straight increase from two hours and 44 minutes in 2010. Meanwhile, time spent sleeping edged up to eight hours and 44 minutes, from eight hours and 40 minutes in 2010. Time devoted to volunteering and cooking, meanwhile, fell.

At Netroots Nation in San Jose, liberal online activists plot victory

About 2,700 liberal bloggers, social-media mavens, petitioners, organizers and other online activists swarmed the San Jose McEnery Convention Center for the first full day of their eighth annual convention, Netroots nation, darting between seminars, panel discussions and exhibit halls.

Talk of across-the-aisle cooperation was rarer than an electrical outlet unburdened by smartphone chargers. The convention seems to energize activists to redouble their efforts. Democracy for America Chairman Jim Dean -- whose national grass roots PAC grew out of the 2004 presidential campaign of his brother, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean -- said he relishes Netroots Nation because he meets "people who are from places where things are difficult" for liberals, from Alaska to Florida.

EU data authorities threaten to fine Google

European data protection authorities have for the first time threatened to fine Google, if the Silicon Valley company does not address their privacy concerns within three months. The co-ordinated move by regulators in Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands could result in Google having to pay several million euros, under proposed new rules.

“Time is running out for Google to get serious about data protection,” said Viviane Reding, the EU’s top justice official in charge of bolstering the bloc’s data protection rules. The decision to threaten Google with sanctions comes eight months after a probe led by EU regulators concluded that the US internet company failed properly to disclose how it was using its users’ personal data across multiple platforms. It also comes amid growing concern about the extent to which both governments and private companies collect and exploit people’s personal data on a vast scale.

AT&T chief scours Europe for suitable acquisitions

Randall Stephenson, chief executive of AT&T, is expected to be back in Europe this month to meet Neelie Kroes, the continent’s industry regulator. It will be the latest of his frequent visits, and a sign of how AT&T has been scouring the European mobile telecoms markets for acquisitions to expand outside its core US market.

AT&T was most recently linked with talks with the Spanish government over the availability of Telefónica. While Madrid talks were denied by government officials, AT&T has been talking to companies, government officials and regulators across Europe, according to corporate advisers. “The intelligence coming back from all parts of Europe is that AT&T is interested, even if there has not been any traction yet,” says one industry adviser. “AT&T is testing the waters,” says another informed person. “They are exploring everything, which means talking to everyone. But if it was to do a deal then the idea would be ‘go big, and go early’ as the opportunities will not last forever.” AT&T has made little secret of its desire to acquire European businesses, although its focus is on mobile telecoms, which would make a bid for a whole group such as Telefónica less likely.

AT&T’s European ambitions reflect the technology lead that US mobile operators believe they have now established over their European counterparts, after having lagged behind them in the 1990s and early 2000s. Stephenson sees an opportunity to capitalize on some of the lessons AT&T has learnt during its introduction of LTE-based 4G services in the US over the past two years. This includes the extraordinary growth of mobile broadband use that has resulted, and the potential for web-based services that can be provided over these new networks.

Revealed: the top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant

Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information "inadvertently" collected from domestic US communications without a warrant.

The documents detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target "non-US persons" under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance. The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used. The documents detail the circumstances in which data collected on US persons under the foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed, extensive steps analysts must take to try to check targets are outside the US, and reveals how US call records are used to help remove US citizens and residents from data collection.

However, alongside those provisions, the FISA court-approved policies allow the NSA to:

Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;
Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;
Preserve "foreign intelligence information" contained within attorney-client communications;
Access the content of communications gathered from "U.S. based machine[s]" or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

Head of Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board pledges open look at U.S. surveillance

David Medine, the recently-confirmed chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, pledged to be "as transparent and public as possible" as the board reviews recently exposed U.S. government secret surveillance programs. The board, which has been largely dormant since 2008, held its first full-fledged meeting on June 19. The meeting was behind closed doors to review classified information about the vast and controversial Internet and phone monitoring programs. But Chairman Medine said that the board is aiming to hold a public event around July 9 to get legal insight from experts, academics and advocates.

Big Brother and Silicon Valley

[Commentary] The National Security Agency’s data-mining story has fundamentally changed the public’s picture of Silicon Valley and its relation to the state.

The Valley has, historically, kept as far away from Washington as possible. A strong, though not particularly ideological, strain of libertarianism appears to be coded into the DNA of computer engineers—a desire to be left alone to create beautiful systems that can be messed up only by the uncomprehending interference of mediocrities from the government. Partly as a result, information technology has been one of the country’s most lightly regulated industries. Last year, when Congress was poised to pass laws intended to protect intellectual property and prevent online piracy, tech companies, led by Google, struck back with one of the most effective lobbying tactics ever used: they shut down for a day. The effect was instantaneous—both bills went from easy sailing to overwhelming defeat. So much for that regulatory effort.

But the opposition between tech and government has been breaking down recently, and in ways not limited to the N.S.A. program. Silicon Valley was always aware of the downsides to a relationship with Washington, but now it knows more about potential positives, not just in the growing influence of tech money in political campaigns and tech endorsements of individual candidates but in industry-led advocacy efforts on issues like immigration reform, and in the idea of technology as a solution for chronic social problems. Now, it turns out, the biggest companies in the computer business—Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and Apple, among others—have been giving vast amounts of user data to the government’s chief surveillance agency, in some cases for years.

Benton

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