June 10, 2013 (NSA surveillance programs)
Headlines staff have some graduations to attend – we’ll return WEDNESDAY, June 12.
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, JUNE 10, 2013
This week’s agenda http://benton.org/calendar/2013-06-09--P1W/
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data
President Obama defends NSA surveillance programs as 'right balance'
White House Plays Down Data Program
How the U.S. Uses Technology to Mine More Data More Quickly - analysis
Secret Court's Oversight Gets Scrutiny
Intelligence Agencies and the Data Deluge - analysis
Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations [links to web]
Leaker’s Employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, Became Wealthy by Maintaining Government Secrets [links to web]
Consumers, privacy advocates call for investigation into PRISM
Intelligence leaders call for prosecuting NSA leaker
Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program
Will PRISM damage tech companies’ reputations for privacy? - analysis [links to web]
Data-Driven Tech Industry Is Shaken by Online Privacy Fears [links to web]
Silicon Valley through the NSA prism - analysis [links to web]
Silicon Valley firms deny giving government broad access to data [links to web]
The Laws That Make It Easy for the Government to Spy on Americans - analysis
Key to government’s monitoring power lies in war, technology - analysis
Washington Post: US public should know about government collection of phone, Internet records - editorial [links to web]
Europeans call for answers over U.S. web spying allegations [links to web]
LA Times: Brave new world of government surveillance - editorial [links to web]
WSJ: 'Big Brother' and Big Data - editorial [links to web]
The next big national intelligence debate - analysis
What Google and NSA Snoops Have in Common - op-ed [links to web]
Actually, Most Countries Are Increasingly Spying on Their Citizens, the UN Says
Data mining pits national security vs. personal privacy - analysis [links to web]
Why the NSA Needs Your Phone Calls… - analysis
Do We Need a Data Court?
Reporters say there's a chill in the air
Conservatives as Defenders of the Media
CYBERSECURITY
President Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks
U.S. and China Move Closer on North Korea, but Not on Cyberespionage
Chinese hacked Obama, McCain campaigns, took internal documents, officials say [links to web]
INTERNET/BROADBAND
New NTIA Report Explores How and Why People Connect to the Internet - press release
Moffett: Cablecos Should Impose Usage-Based Pricing; But Can They?
Google highlights India bandwidth threat [links to web]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
It’s Another Big Week in the Sprint Takeover Saga as Shareholder Vote Looms
DOJ clears Softbank's acquisition of Sprint Nextel
Former Joint Chiefs Chairman to Join Board of Sprint
SoftBank looks beyond Sprint to T-Mobile USA
The Danger Of Meddling With Wireless - op-ed
AT&T: Supporting Public Safety Through Effective Spectrum Policy [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
FCC Invites Comment on Minority Media and Telecommunications Council Ownership Study - public notice
The FCC should repeal its newspaper-broadcast ownership rule - op-ed
TELEVISION
FCC Report on Cable Industry Prices
TiVo Announces Settlement of Patent Litigation [links to web]
Lower Broadcast Prices Hikes Could Send A Signal to Cable [links to web]
EDUCATION
ConnectED: Here Comes E-rate 2.0 - analysis
ENERGY
Building a 21st Century Electric Grid - press release [links to web]
JOURNALISM
Nonprofit Journalism – A Growing But Fragile Part of the US News System - research
Reporters say there's a chill in the air
Conservatives as Defenders of the Media
POLICYMAKERS
John Dingell becomes longest-serving member of Congress ever [links to web]
MORE ONLINE
When Artworks Crash: Restorers Face Digital Test [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
BOUNDLESS INFORMANT
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill]
The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analyzing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications. The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks. The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message. The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013. One document says it is designed to give NSA officials answers to questions like, "What type of coverage do we have on country X" in "near real-time by asking the SIGINT [signals intelligence] infrastructure." An NSA factsheet about the program, acquired by the Guardian, says: "The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."
benton.org/node/153517 | Guardian, The
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OBAMA DEFENDS NSA PROGRAMS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Justin Sink]
President Barack Obama defended a pair of recently disclosed surveillance programs as striking the “right balance” between national security and civil liberties following a speech June 6 in California. “You can't have 100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We're going to have to make some choices as a government,” President Obama said. “You can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amok, but when you actually look at the details, I think we've struck the right balance.” Obama stressed that every member of Congress had been briefed on the phone monitoring program and that the relevant Intelligence committees were aware of PRISM — the code name of the NSA's secret program to monitor Internet traffic. He also noted that federal judges had to sign off on data-gathering requests. “If people can't trust not only the executive branch but also don't trust Congress and don't trust federal judges to make sure we're abiding by the Constitution, then we're going to have some problems here,” President Obama said. The President went on to say that the White House believed the programs played an important role in preventing terror attacks. “My assessment and my team’s assent was they help us prevent terrorist attacks, and the modest encroachments on privacy that are involved … on net, it was worth us doing. Some other folks may have a different assessment of that,” he said. On the collection of phone data, President Obama stressed that the government agency was only “looking at phone numbers and durations of calls; they're not looking at people.” He said that to listen in on calls, investigators would need to obtain new authorization from a federal court. “I want to be very clear: Some of the hype that we've been hearing over the last day or so, nobody's listening to the content of people's phone calls,” President Obama said. In regard to Internet data, the President noted the surveillance “does not apply to U.S. citizens and it does not apply to people living in the U.S.” The President also said he had a personal interest in the controversy because when he left office, he could be a prime target for surveillance. “I suspect that on a list of people who might be targeted so that someone could read their emails or listen to their phone calls, I'd probably be pretty high on that list,” President Obama said. But, the President said, he had confidence in the checks and balances installed in the system, and that those involved in the program were worried about the constitutional questions at hand.
benton.org/node/153514 | Hill, The | The Hill – Obama as NSA target
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WHITE HOUSE PLAYS DOWN DATA PROGRAM
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jonathan Weisman, David Sanger]
The Obama Administration tried to marshal new evidence in defense of its collection of private Internet and telephone data, arguing that a secret program called Prism is simply an “internal government computer system” designed to sort through court-supervised collection of data, and that Congress has been briefed 13 times on the programs since 2009. After rushing to declassify some carefully selected descriptions of the programs, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, conceded for the first time that the Prism program existed. But in a statement, after denouncing the leak of the data to The Guardian and The Washington Post, Clapper insisted it was “not an undisclosed collection or data mining program.” Instead, he said it was a computer system to “facilitate” the collection of foreign intelligence that had been authorized by Congress. Clapper also insisted that the government “does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers” of telephone and Internet providers, saying that information is turned over only under court order, when there is a “documented, foreign intelligence purpose for acquisition” of the data. He appeared to be attempting to push back against early reports that the government had direct access to the huge computer servers at Google, Microsoft, Facebook and similar companies. Those firms have denied they give the government a “back door” to their systems.
benton.org/node/153513 | New York Times | Washington Post
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HOW US MINES DATA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: James Risen, Eric Lichtblau]
When American analysts hunting terrorists sought new ways to comb through the troves of phone records, e-mails and other data piling up as digital communications exploded over the past decade, they turned to Silicon Valley computer experts who had developed complex equations to thwart Russian mobsters intent on credit card fraud. The partnership between the intelligence community and Palantir Technologies, a Palo Alto (CA) company founded by a group of inventors from PayPal, is just one of many that the National Security Agency and other agencies have forged as they have rushed to unlock the secrets of “Big Data.” Today, a revolution in software technology that allows for the highly automated and instantaneous analysis of enormous volumes of digital information has transformed the N.S.A., turning it into the virtual landlord of the digital assets of Americans and foreigners alike. The new technology has, for the first time, given America’s spies the ability to track the activities and movements of people almost anywhere in the world without actually watching them or listening to their conversations. New disclosures that the N.S.A. has secretly acquired the phone records of millions of Americans and access to e-mails, videos and other data of foreigners from nine United States Internet companies have provided a rare glimpse into the growing reach of the nation’s largest spy agency. They have also alarmed the government: Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said that “a crimes report has been filed by the N.S.A.”
benton.org/node/153512 | New York Times
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DATA DELUGE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Quentin Hardy]
Political leaders including President Barack Obama and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in recent days have defended snooping on private communications by noting that intelligence agencies were not reading personal messages, but rather information about the messages. “This is just metadata,” Senator Feinstein said at a news conference. “There is no content involved.” In fact, say researchers in the field of data analysis, the metadata, or the information about such things as where a message came from and when it was sent, is frequently more valuable to security officials than the content of the messages. It provides dense and useful information to agencies increasingly swamped by the global computing onslaught. A study published in Nature last March demonstrated that just four data points about the location and time of a mobile phone call made it possible to identify the sender 95 percent of the time. Using just two randomly chosen points, it was possible to identify half of users. Such information can come not just from phone companies, but also from smartphone applications or Wi-Fi hot spots. Metadata is also useful because national security is now dealing with a deluge of information.
benton.org/node/153531 | New York Times
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SECRET COURT’S OVERSIGHT
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Evan Perez]
President Barack Obama and congressional allies point to oversight by the nation's secret surveillance court as evidence that recently disclosed National Security Agency programs aren't, in President Obama's words, examples of government spying "run amok." But critics say neither the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court nor Congress has done much to place checks on the data-gathering efforts, which were largely unknown to the public until the leak of information on NSA programs that collect telephone subscriber data from major carriers and monitor foreign email and Internet traffic. From 1979 through 2012, the court overseeing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has rejected only 11 of the more than 33,900 surveillance applications by the government, according to annual Justice Department reports to Congress. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy-advocacy group that tracks the reports, said the breadth of the NSA programs approved by the court show that the government gets little oversight. "The FISA system is broken. At the point that a FISA judge can compel the disclosure of millions of phone records of U.S. citizens engaged in only domestic communications, unrelated to the collection of foreign intelligence…there is no longer meaningful judicial review," Rotenberg said.
benton.org/node/153528 | Wall Street Journal
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CALL FOR INVESTIGATION
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Hayley Tsukayama]
The backlash against the PRISM surveillance program, which gives the U.S. government a direct pipeline to data from major consumer technology companies, is in full force with several groups calling for a full Congressional investigation of the program. Companies reported to be a part of the program include Apple, Google and Facebook. Several of the tech firms have denied participating in or even knowing about PRISM. Internet privacy advocates have decried the government’s secret monitoring. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has raised alarms for years about what it calls “domestic spying” run by the NSA, is asking for support to petition Congress for a full investigation of the program. A Progressive Change Campaign Committee petition calling for a similar investigation has gotten nearly 20,000 signatures in 36 hours. A petition from the progressive technology company CREDO has gotten more than 40,000 signatures asking President Obama to justify the surveillance.
benton.org/node/153511 | Washington Post
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CALL FOR PROSECUTION
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Megan Wilson]
The leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees said that the leaker who disclosed the National Security Agency’s phone and internet surveillance programs should be prosecuted. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that the leak could endanger the security of Americans. “Taking a very sensitive classified program that targets foreign person on foreign lands, and putting just enough out there to be dangerous, is dangerous to us, it's dangerous to our national security and it violates the oath of which that person took,” Chairman Rogers said. “I absolutely think they should be prosecuted,” he added. Chairman Feinstein said efforts were made to protect the privacy of American citizens, including relying on a secret intelligence court for authorization. “If there is strong suspicion that a terrorist outside of the country is trying to reach someone on the inside of the country, those numbers then can be obtained,” Chairman Feinstein said. “If you want to collect content on the American, then a court order is issued.” "Here's the rub, the instances where this has produced good -- has disrupted plots, prevented terrorist attacks is all classified, that's what's so hard about this," Chairman Feinstein added. "So that we can't actually go in there and other than the two that have been released give the public an actual idea of people that have been saved, attacks that have been prevented, that kind of thing."
benton.org/node/153510 | Hill, The
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TECH COMPANIES AND SURVEILLANCE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Claire Cain Miller]
When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit. Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. They opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests. And in some cases, they changed their computer systems to do so. The negotiations shed a light on how Internet companies, increasingly at the center of people’s personal lives, interact with the spy agencies that look to their vast trove of information — e-mails, videos, online chats, photos and search queries — for intelligence. They illustrate how intricately the government and tech companies work together, and the depth of their behind-the-scenes transactions.
benton.org/node/153508 | New York Times | Washington Post | The Atlantic
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SURVEILLANCE LAWS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Arik Hesseldahl]
With all of the new disclosures in the last 24 hours about surveillance by the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of both telephone and Internet use by American citizens, it’s useful to dredge up some history of how all this came to be. With the new disclosures, there’s been a lot of focus on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and on the Obama Administration’s secret interpretations of various sections of that law as a legal basis for all this spying. But a law passed in 1994 and signed by then-president Bill Clinton is worth remembering for what it requires of American telecommunications companies. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act requires telecom carriers and the companies that manufacture the gear they use to modify the design of that equipment to ensure that they have built-in surveillance capabilities. The point was to make it easier to tap digital phone networks, which were on the rise. Strangely, the law didn’t expressly cover data passing over the Internet. That changed in 2005, following a petition by the Department of Justice — the FBI’s parent agency — to the Federal Communications Commission. The DOJ asked that the scope of CALEA be expanded to cover the Internet. Broadband Internet companies would be required to open up their networks so that VOIP phone calls could be wiretapped, as well. The FCC agreed, arguing that the Internet had replaced the old telephone exchanges. This isn’t just a history lesson. In recent years, the FBI has been complaining of “going deaf.” Encrypted communications that use peer-to-peer connections like Skype and FaceTime and other tools like Google Hangouts are difficult to monitor. Now the FBI wants Congress to require that new communications software products that run on the user’s computer or smartphone be built from the ground up to be wiretap-friendly, essentially by inserting backdoor capabilities in the source code. Wiretaps could be executed silently, and without the user knowing. Companies that don’t comply would be subjected to a fine of $25,000 per day. The new proposal is being dubbed CALEA II by some people.
benton.org/node/153505 | Wall Street Journal | The Atlantic
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WAR, TECHNOLOGY
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Craig Timberg]
Expanded government surveillance was cast as a price of war in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Yet nearly a dozen years later, the war on terrorism is showing signs of ebbing while the surveillance systems created to fight it continue unabated. If anything, they are becoming more powerful. That’s because the nation went to a war footing at a time of profound technological change that fueled an explosion of personal data. Governments and businesses have developed the ability to mine, sort and analyze this information as never before — and show little inclination to relinquish that power. Few adults can navigate the modern world without leaving behind massive trails of data: where we go, where we live, how we look, what we buy, what we eat, what Web sites we visit and — perhaps most powerfully for those seeking to monitor us — who is in our network of personal relationships. From a legal perspective, this information is considered fair game in our wired world, given freely with every e-mail sent, every photo posted to Facebook, every bag of groceries bought with a credit card.
benton.org/node/153504 | Washington Post | The Atlantic
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THE NEXT BIG NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DEBATE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Vivek Wadhwa]
[Commentary] We can debate whether government access to our phone records and web data is making us safer or obliterating our civil liberties. But the reality is that in the tech era, which we have already entered, what we used to think of as privacy is becoming a relic. Before we know it, products like Google Glass will record everything we see and hear. Expect cameras and sensors to be everywhere in public places and office buildings and on drones. Face recognition technology will identify and track us. There will be all sorts of data collected about us from many sources. The real debate we need to have centers around what is being done with these data. We will readily allow Google to track our searches, learn our likes and dislikes, and incorporate the advice of our friends so that it can recommend where we travel or what restaurants we choose. But should these data also be used to market to us? Should Google be allowed to share our data with third parties—and governments? And then the bigger question: how do we reign in government? We can’t stop the gathering of data, but we can surely limit its use. We can also put limits on the time that tech companies and governments are allowed to keep these data. That is the real battle that needs to be fought.
benton.org/node/153499 | Washington Post
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OTHER COUNTRIES INCREASINGLY SPYING ON THEIR CITIZENS
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Olga Khazan]
The revelation that the National Security Agency seems to be collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers is shocking, but it's actually part of a growing trend in which governments worldwide are relying on widespread, unrestricted surveillance in the name of national security. A report released by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the freedom of opinion and expression found that as communications systems have advanced, nations all over the world are increasingly logging and monitoring communications data, many even without just cause: "Changes in technology have been paralleled by changes in attitudes towards communications surveillance. When the practice of official wiretapping first commenced in the United States of America, it was conducted on a restricted basis, and was only reluctantly sanctioned by the courts. Over time, however, States have expanded their powers to conduct surveillance, lowering the threshold and increasing the justifications for such surveillance." In the worst cases, countries are actually listening in on their own citizens, remotely hacking into their computers and turning on Web cameras, or logging in and intercepting Skype calls.
benton.org/node/153497 | Atlantic, The
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WHY THE NSA NEEDS YOUR PHONE CALLS
[SOURCE: Foreign Policy, AUTHOR: Stewart Baker]
Do the revelations about National Security Agency phone and Internet surveillance point to the end of privacy, law, and the Constitution? Nope. There are a lot of reasons to be cautious about rushing to the conclusion that these "scandals" signal a massive, lawless new intrusion into Americans' civil liberties. Despite this apparent breadth, there are a lot of reasons to be cautious about rushing to the conclusion that it signals a massive, lawless new intrusion into Americans' civil liberties. The order seems to come from the court established to oversee intelligence gathering that touches the United States. Right off the bat, that means that this is not some warrantless or extrastatutory surveillance program. The government had to convince up to a dozen life-tenured members of the federal judiciary that the order was lawful. You may not like the legal interpretation that produced this order, but you can't say it's lawless. In fact, it's a near certainty that the legal theory behind orders of this sort has been carefully examined by all three branches of the government and by both political parties.
benton.org/node/153494 | Foreign Policy
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DO WE NEED A DATA COURT?
[SOURCE: nextgov, AUTHOR: Joseph Marks]
The complex information, security and privacy issues brought to the fore by recently exposed National Security Agency programs to mine telephone and Internet data might best be handled by a special “data court,” the Economist magazine’s Data Editor Kenneth Cukier said. That’s because data, metadata and privacy issues can be so complex, and intelligence agencies’ requests for data can be so time sensitive, that they may require judges and attorneys with specialized expertise to manage them, Cukier said. Judges from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court who currently authorize the government’s mining of telephone metadata involving foreign callers may lack sufficient understanding of how data the government collects can be used, how data may be linked together to produce additional information and how it may affect the privacy of Americans on the other end of many of those calls, Cukier said.
benton.org/node/153493 | nextgov
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CHILL IN THE AIR
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Dylan Byers]
President Barack Obama said recently that the Department of Justice’s monitoring of reporters as part of national security leak investigations could “chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.” As far as many journalists are concerned, the President couldn’t have been more right - despite last week’s leaks to the media about secret NSA surveillance programs. National security reporters and watchdogs said they already have seen increased caution from government sources following revelations that the DOJ had subpoenaed Associated Press reporters’ phone records and tracked the comings and goings of Fox News reporter James Rosen at the State Department. Reporters on the national security beat say it’s not the fear of being prosecuted by the DOJ that worries them - it’s the frightened silence of past trusted sources that could undermine the kind of investigative journalism that President Obama was talking about.
benton.org/node/153525 | Politico
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DEFENDERS OF THE MEDIA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Amy Chozick]
The press — often the target of allegations of liberal bias by conservative media — has found an unlikely ally in right-leaning radio and television hosts who have taken to defending the First Amendment with a fire-and-brimstone zeal. The First Amendment has always been a hot-button issue for talk radio, but conservative hosts in particular have focused on freedom of the press after revelations last month that the Justice Department had seized the phone and e-mail records of a Fox News reporter, the Washington correspondent James Rosen, who had included details about a secret United States report on North Korea in a 2009 article published on FoxNews.com. The debate over the government’s approach to leaks widened on June 9 when The Guardian revealed the identity of Edward Snowden, a contractor for the National Security Agency and the source of disclosures about the government’s widespread collection of private Internet and telephone data. On Sunday evening Fox News pundits debated whether the Obama administration had overreached in the use of secret surveillance techniques. There was little debate, however, when it came to Rosen.
benton.org/node/153524 | New York Times
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CYBERSECURITY
TARGET LIST FOR CYBERATTACKS
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill]
President Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals. The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) "can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging". It says the government will "identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power". The directive also contemplates the possible use of cyber actions inside the US, though it specifies that no such domestic operations can be conducted without the prior order of the president, except in cases of emergency. The aim of the document was "to put in place tools and a framework to enable government to make decisions" on cyber actions, a senior administration official told the Guardian.
benton.org/node/153516 | Guardian, The
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US, CHINA AND CYBERESPIONAGE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jackie Calmes, Steven Lee Myers]
Even as they pledged to build “a new model” of relations, President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping of China ended two days of informal meetings in California on June 8 closer on pressuring a nuclear North Korea and addressing climate change, but remaining sharply divided over cyberespionage and other issues that have divided the countries for years. Although the leaders of the world’s two biggest powers made no public statements on their second day of talks, their disagreements — over cyberattacks as well as arms sales to Taiwan, maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea and manipulation of the Chinese currency — spilled into the open when senior officials from both countries emerged to describe the meetings in detail. From the outset, the White House said the purpose of the meetings here was not to announce new deals or understandings — “deliverables,” in diplomatic parlance — but to create a more comfortable relationship between Presidents Obama and Xi, who took full power in March, that could avoid plunging the two nations into escalating conflict.
benton.org/node/153492 | New York Times
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
EXPLORING THE DIGITAL NATION
[SOURCE: National Telecommunications and Information Administration, AUTHOR: Press release]
In a new report, Exploring the Digital Nation: America’s Emerging Online Experience, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) examines how Americans connect to the Internet and what Americans do once they get online. The report, co-authored with the Economics and Statistics Administration, confirms the dramatic growth in the number of Americans who are going online to perform important tasks like applying for jobs, looking up health information, and learning about current events. The new report, for the first time in eight years, explores how and why Americans go online. It is based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s July 2011 Current Population Survey (CPS) Computer and Internet Use Supplement, and includes information collected from 53,500 households. While most Americans still used a desktop or laptop computer to go online in 2011, mobile device use grew significantly, with more than a third of Americans reporting that they used their mobile phones to access the Internet. The report also found that almost all users who used the Internet at home did so via a broadband connection.
The July 2011 CPS data collection gathered information on a broad range of online activities. This report focuses primarily on three areas – employment, health, and civic engagement – that are particularly important for society. The CPS data suggest that widespread Internet use benefits society, that mobile devices further increase these benefits, and that the Internet’s great utility leads users to go online regularly and rely on it in their daily lives.
The report also finds that:
34 percent of Internet users ages 25 and older conducted job searches online, and unemployed Internet users were more than twice as likely to use the Internet to look for employment as their employed counterparts.
35 percent used the Internet for research about health plans or providers.
31 percent of Internet users between the ages of 25 and 44 went online when looking for news, compared to only 8 percent of those over the age of 65.
Overall, about seven out of ten households nationally went online at home, with variability based on demographics and geography. And while the percentage of Americans who did not use the Internet declined compared with previous studies, the report finds that the key reasons some Americans chose not to go online included a lack of interest, expense, and insufficient computing equipment.
benton.org/node/153484 | National Telecommunications and Information Administration | read the report | NTIA blog | B&C
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USAGE-BASED PRICING
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
Cable companies will have an increasingly dominant position in the broadband market moving forward – but they soon may be compelled to move to usage-based pricing, said Craig Moffett, a financial analyst focused on the communications industry. Cable companies offer the highest broadband speeds throughout 80% of U.S., with only markets served by fiber-to-the-home offering higher speeds. Moffett doesn’t anticipate telcos deploying FTTH much more widely than they already have. And even with pair bonding and vectoring, DSL cannot match DOCSIS broadband speeds, he noted. “For 80% of the country, cable will emerge as the only game in town,” said Moffett. On the video side, however, cable companies are seeing steep content cost increases which the cablecos have passed on to their subscribers. Because of the rise in over-the-top video, content companies are faced with declining revenues and are trying to make up those losses by increasing prices which, in turn, makes cable offerings increasingly less attractive to consumers.
benton.org/node/153480 | telecompetitor
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
BIG WEEK FOR SPRINT-SOFTBANK
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Ina Fried]
The battle over Sprint Nextel will reach a key milestone this week as its shareholders are slated to vote on a proposal by Japan’s SoftBank to acquire a controlling interest in the company. A June 12 vote, though, could be delayed as a committee of Sprint’s board continues to weigh a competing offer from Dish Network. That committee has to decide whether Dish’s overtures are likely to lead to an offer that is superior to the bid put forth by SoftBank. So far, the company has not publicly indicated a plan to change the June 12 vote.
benton.org/node/153489 | Wall Street Journal
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DOJ OKs SPRINT-SOFTBANK
[SOURCE: IDG News Service, AUTHOR: Stephen Lawson]
The U.S. Department of Justice said it has no objection to Softbank acquiring Sprint Nextel, a decision that clears the way for the Federal Communications Commission to rule on the deal. In January, the Justice Department, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, asked the FCC to defer action on the proposed buyout so it could further study the deal. The Department of Homeland Security joined in on the request. In a letter to the FCC, the DOJ said it was withdrawing the request for more time. "The Agencies have reviewed the information provided by the Applicants and analyzed the measures undertaken by the Applicants to address potential national security, law enforcement, and public safety issues, including supply chain issues. Based on this review, the Agencies hereby notify the Commission that they have no objection to the grant of the applications," the letter said.
benton.org/node/153488 | IDG News Service | read the DoJ letter
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MULLEN ADDED TO SPRINT BOARD
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: ]
Sprint announced that Admiral Mike Mullen would join the company’s board after its proposed $20.1 billion sale to SoftBank of Japan closes. Admiral Mullen, 66, who had served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 2007 to September 2011, would serve as an independent director as well as the company’s security director. He is also on the board of General Motors. His appointment would satisfy one of the concessions that the companies agreed to win government approval for the merger. Sprint and SoftBank have been working for months to ease fears of government agencies and lawmakers over national security issues. Some Congressional leaders have expressed concerned about SoftBank’s ties to Chinese telecommunications equipment makers. In addition, Dish Network, which is seeking to wrest Sprint away from SoftBank with a $25.5 billion offer, has mounted an effort to fan worries about a foreign takeover of a major American telecommunications company.
benton.org/node/153486 | New York Times
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SOFTBANK/T-MOBILE?
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: David Gelles, Paul Taylor]
Japan’s SoftBank is considering making a bid for T-Mobile USA if its agreed deal for Sprint Nextel falls apart, according to people familiar with the matter. Talks are preliminary, these people said, but signal SoftBank’s strong interest in entering the US market no matter the fate of its $20.1 billion deal for control of Sprint. People close to the process said news of SoftBank’s interest in T-Mobile, first reported by Reuters, could scare Sprint shareholders into voting for the deal. SoftBank has considered buying T-Mobile before, but moved on Sprint last year after T-Mobile’s owner, Deutsche Telekom, opted for a reverse merger of the unit with MetroPCS. That deal is now complete, with Deutsche Telekom owning 74 percent of the new publicly traded T-Mobile USA. The consolidated ownership of T-Mobile would make it easy for SoftBank to strike a deal, avoiding the complications it has faced in its pursuit of Sprint.
benton.org/node/153523 | Financial Times
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INCENTIVE AUCTIONS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Robert Hahn, Peter Passell]
[Commentary] There is still an important role for the Federal Communications Commission in regulating wireless, but it is limited. The first priority should be making more spectrum available to the highest bidders by accelerating the pace of government auctions. Once spectrum is sold, owners should be free to resell it to other wireless carriers (or to other industries that value it more). For without more bandwidth (and free-market allocation of privately controlled spectrum), access to data-hungry services like high-definition video will be undermined, along with the incentives to develop the next generation of wireless devices. There's no denying the temptation to intervene on behalf of the underdogs in the marketplace. But the lessons from the long, checkered history of economic regulation are painfully clear: The cures are often worse than the disease. The specific lesson for the FCC is that it should think hard before following the Justice Department's counsel to restrict who can participate in spectrum auctions. Punishing firms for their success in winning and keeping customers is unlikely to foster robust competition or maximize innovation. The big question now is whether the FCC will give wireless what it needs to change and grow—and resist the impulse to restructure the market according to its own notions of what makes for healthy and robust competition.
[Hahn is director of economics and professor at the Smith School, University of Oxford; Passell is editor of the Milken Institute Review]
benton.org/node/153522 | Wall Street Journal
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OWNERSHIP
FCC INVITES COMMENTS on MINORITY MEDIA AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS COUNCIL STUDY
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
On May 30, 2013, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (“MMTC”) submitted a study titled “The Impact of Cross Media Ownership on Minority/Women Owned Broadcast Stations” (the “Study”) to the Federal Communications Commission. According to MMTC, the Study “examines whether, and to what extent, cross-ownership might have a material adverse impact on minority and women ownership” of commercial broadcast stations. MMTC suggests that the FCC seek public comment regarding the extent to which the Study may or should be relied on by the FCC in the ongoing media ownership and diversity proceedings. The FCC invites public comment on the Study from interested parties. Comments will be due on July 22, 2013, and Replies will be due on August 6, 2013.
benton.org/node/153481 | Federal Communications Commission | read the MMTC study
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FCC’S NEWSPAPER-BROADCAST OWNERSHIP RULE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Reed Hundt]
[Commentary] A widespread though unverified rumor had it that President Bill Clinton did not want the newspaper-broadcast ownership rule repealed as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act because he did not want the owner of the Little Rock newspaper to be the same person who owned the dominant Little Rock television station. Fritz Hollings, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, did not want the Federal Communications Commission to repeal the rule for the same reason, transposed to the media of South Carolina. But if I lacked the gumption and votes at the FCC to get rid of the rule then, the proliferation of Internet access and content over the past 17 years should give today’s commissioners the conviction to do the right thing. In celebration of our commitment to freedom, the FCC should eliminate the rule that constrains the owner of a broadcast TV station from also owning a newspaper in the same city, and vice versa — forthwith. The largest point is this: The former FCC chairman can have a preference about who owns a newspaper or a TV station. But the current FCC chairman should let the market decide. One of the glories of the United States is that we truly believe in free speech. When applied to media, that means we should honor the freedom to own the means of speech. [Hundt was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997]
benton.org/node/153485 | Washington Post
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TELEVISION
REPORT ON CABLE INDUSTRY PRICES
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
The Federal Communications Commission released its Congressionally-mandated, annual statistical report on the average rates that cable operators charge for “basic cable service, other cable programming,” and cable equipment. The latest report presents key findings for the 12 months ending January 1, 2012. The average monthly price of expanded basic service (the combined price of basic service and the most subscribed cable programming service tier excluding taxes, fees and equipment charges) for all communities surveyed increased by 4.8 percent over the 12 months ending January 1, 2012, to $61.63, compared to an annual increase of 2.9 percent in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The price of expanded basic service has increased at a compound average annual growth rate of 6.1 percent during the period 1995-2012. The CPI increased at a compound average annual growth rate of 2.4 percent over the same period. However, the price per channel (price divided by number of channels) for subscribers purchasing expanded basic service decreased by 0.4 percent over the 12 months ending January 1, 2012, to 51 cents per channel. Over the 17 years from 1995-2012, the increase in price per channel was less than 1 percent per year (0.2 percent) on an annual basis.
Over the 12 months ending January 1, 2012, the average price of expanded basic service increased by 4.3 percent, to $60.99, for those operators serving communities for which no effective competition finding was made as of January 1, 2012 (noncompetitive communities). For the effective competition communities, the average price of expanded basic increased by 5.3 percent, to $62.49. Over this period, price per channel increased slightly, by 0.2 percent, in noncompetitive communities, to 52 cents per channel, and decreased by 1.4 percent in effective competition communities, to 49 cents per channel. The price per channel is 6.1 percent lower in effective competition communities than in noncompetitive communities, which reflects that operators in effective competition communities carry more channels on expanded basic service than operators in noncompetitive communities.
benton.org/node/153482 | Federal Communications Commission
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EDUCATION
HERE COMES E-RATE 2.0
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
President Barack Obama’s unveiled ConnectED, an initiative aimed at connecting 99 percent of America’s students to the Internet through high-speed broadband and high-speed wireless within 5 years. “This is not connectivity for connectivity’s sake,” noted Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Gene Sperling, the Director of the National Economic Council. “It is laying the foundation for a vision of classrooms where students are engaged in individualized digital learning and where teachers can assess progress lesson by lesson and day by day. It’s about creating learning environments where students can both succeed and struggle without embarrassment, where barriers for children with disabilities are removed, and where we can bring the most modern, innovative, and up-to-date content into the classroom.”
http://benton.org/node/153458
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JOURNALISM
NONPROFIT JOURNALISM -- A GROWING BUT FRAGILE PART OF THE U.S. NEWS SYSTEM
[SOURCE: Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR: Mark Jurkowitz, Jesse Holcomb, Jodi Enda and Monica Anderson]
The growing nonprofit news sector is showing some signs of economic health, and most leaders of those outlets express optimism about the future, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. But many of these organizations also face substantial challenges to their long-term financial well-being. The report finds that large, often one-time seed grants from foundations help many of these nonprofit news outlets get up and running. But as those grants expire, many organizations do not have the resources or expertise necessary for the business tasks needed to broaden the funding base. More than half of the nonprofit news organizations surveyed by the Pew Research Center in late 2012 (54%) identified business, marketing and fundraising as the area of greatest staffing need, compared with 39% who said the top need was for more editorial employees. In addition, nearly two-thirds of the nonprofits (62%) cited "finding the time to focus on the business side of the operation" as a major challenge-compared with 55% who cited "increasing competition for grant money."
benton.org/node/153520 | Project for Excellence in Journalism
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