November 2013

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

NSA OVERSIGHT
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Tony Romm]
A decades-old presidential order that allows the US government to siphon buckets of data overseas remains a blind spot for most members of Congress. The National Security Agency may have relied on that executive order, known by its numerical designation 12333, to monitor world leaders’ communications and lap up hundreds of thousands of email address books and more, according to recent reports fueled by Edward Snowden’s leaks. But even the NSA’s chief defenders, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), acknowledge they have little perspective into how the executive order is used to spy on foreign targets. Knowledge is even harder to come by outside key congressional intelligence committees. And the executive branch’s broad international surveillance powers under the order might remain fully intact as Congress weighs new NSA reforms, though some lawmakers are at least pondering additional reporting requirements so that they can be better informed. “I do think we need more oversight over 12333 and the efforts our intelligence agencies make under that order,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said. The trouble, he said, isn’t always that the NSA and others are trying “to hide the ball” -- but that Congress also needs to do its part and ask “the right questions.”
benton.org/node/165981 | Politico
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US OFFICIALS OFFER FEW CONCESSIONS ON NSA SPYING TO PRIVACY BOARD
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Alina Selyukh]
The US government is open to some changes to how it conducts its phone and Internet surveillance programs as long as they do not undermine the programs' effectiveness, US officials told a privacy oversight board. How exactly the US phone and online data-gathering programs could strike such a balance -- helping thwart terrorist plots while also protecting Americans' privacy -- is under review by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. No timeline has been set for the board's work, but ultimately it will issue a report to President Barack Obama and Congress on the legal standards now used for online and phone spying by US intelligence agencies and what reforms may best ensure Americans' privacy is protected. "I think we've learned a lot about some potential reforms that the government was amenable to," the board's Chairman David Medine said after a public hearing with officials from the National Security Agency, FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Justice Department. Chairman Medine said he saw some openness from government officials about updating some privacy protections for foreigners and changing how long the government keeps the records it collects. Privacy advocates worry that the programs aimed at tracking down foreign terrorists also scoop up private data about Americans, and US allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel have complained about surveillance of their communications. "We are open to consideration of a variety of possible reforms to the program so long as they don't eliminate its utility," said DNI General Counsel Robert Litt.
benton.org/node/166174 | Reuters
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SWEEPS TO CONTINUE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Sanger]
The Obama Administration has told allies and lawmakers it is considering reining in a variety of National Security Agency practices overseas, including holding White House reviews of the world leaders the agency is monitoring, forging a new accord with Germany for a closer intelligence relationship and minimizing collection on some foreigners. But for now, President Barack Obama and his top advisers have concluded that there is no workable alternative to the bulk collection of huge quantities of “metadata,” including records of all telephone calls made inside the United States. Instead, the Administration has hinted it may hold that information for only three years instead of five while it seeks new technologies that would permit it to search the records of telephone and Internet companies, rather than collect the data in bulk in government computers. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the director of the NSA, has told industry officials that developing the new technology would take at least three years.
benton.org/node/166182 | New York Times
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NSA CHIEF LIKELY TO LOSE CYBER WAR POWERS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Senior military officials are leaning toward removing the National Security Agency director’s authority over US Cyber Command, according to a former high-ranking administration official familiar with internal discussions. Gen. Keith Alexander, a four star general who leads both the NSA and Cyber Command, plans to step down in the spring. No formal decision has been made yet, but the Pentagon has already drawn up a list of possible civilian candidates for the next NSA director, the former official said. A separate military officer would head up Cyber Command, a team of military hackers that trains for offensive cyberattacks and protects US computer systems. The fact that the Administration is considering whether to split the commands isn’t a direct response to the revelations about the NSA’s surveillance operations, but it does reflect growing concern over the power of the NSA director and a shortage of oversight of the position. It also is an indication of the growing importance of cyberattacks in military operations.
benton.org/node/166175 | Hill, The
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YES, THERE ACTUALLY IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE SURVEILLANCE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
[Commentary] When it comes to your online privacy -- or what little is left of it -- businesses and governments act in some pretty similar ways. They track your credit card purchases. They mine your e-mail for information about you. They may even monitor your movements in the real world. Corporate and government surveillance also diverge in important ways. Companies are looking to make money off of you, while the government aims to prevent attacks that would halt that commercial activity (along with some other things). But the biggest difference between the two has almost no relation to who's doing the surveillance and everything to do with your options in response. Readers were asked whether they had changed their online behavior as a result of the extended national conversation about privacy -- and if so, which form of snooping annoyed you more. Looking through the responses so far, this one caught my eye: “The government because I can't *choose* not to be spied on by them. The government also has the power to kill or imprison me which no private company has.” Putting aside the government's power to capture or kill, your inability to refuse the government is what distinguishes the National Security Agency from even the nosiest companies on Earth. In a functioning marketplace, boycotting a company that you dislike -- for whatever reason -- is fairly easy. Diners who object to eating fake meat can stop frequenting Taco Bell. Internet users that don't like Google collecting their search terms can try duckduckgo, an anonymous search engine.
benton.org/node/166166 | Washington Post
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HOW WE KNOW THE NSA HAD ACCESS TO INTERNAL GOOGLE AND YAHOO CLOUD DATA
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Barton Gellman, Ashkan Soltani, Andrea Peterson]
We do not know exactly how the National Security Agency and UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) intercept Google and Yahoo data, other than it happens on British territory. But we do know they are intercepting it from inside the Yahoo and Google private clouds, because some of what NSA and GCHQ collect is found nowhere else. The two companies do not entrust their data center communications to the “public internet,” which is comparable to an international highway system that anyone can use. Instead, they link their data centers with thousands of miles of privately owned or privately leased fiber optic cable – in effect, a system of private highways. When Google and Yahoo have to share a stretch of road with the public internet, they take other precautions to keep their traffic secure. We showed some of the NSA’s briefing slides to private sector experts with detailed knowledge of the internal corporate networks of each company. In separate conversations, they agreed that the slides included samples of data structures and formats that never travel unencrypted on the public Internet. “This is not traffic you would encounter outside of Google's internal network,” said one of the experts. The slide shows data in a format that is “only used on and between Google machines. And, also as far as I know, Google doesn't publish their binary RPC protocol, which is what this resembles." An RPC is a “remote procedure call,” and this one is used when one Google data server has to confirm that it is talking to another. Another NSA slide provided by former contractor Edward Snowden showed that the NSA developed Google-specific “protocol handlers" so that it could parse the company’s proprietary formats and pull out the information it wanted to keep.
benton.org/node/166165 | Washington Post
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POLICYMAKERS

FCC CHAIRMAN TOM WHEELER ANNOUNCES STAFF APPOINTMENTS
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced staff appointments to the Office of the Chairman and additional senior appointments in the Office of General Counsel, the Office of the Managing Director, and the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
Ruth Milkman, Chief of Staff. Ms. Milkman served as Chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau from August 2009 to June 2011, and from June 2012 until the present. From June 2011 to June 2012, Ms. Milkman was Special Counsel to the Chairman for Innovation in Government. Previous experience at the Commission between 1986 and 1998 included serving as Deputy Chief of the International and Common Carrier Bureaus, and as Senior Legal Advisor to Chairman Reed Hundt. Ms. Milkman also was a founding partner of Lawler, Metzger, Milkman & Keeney, LLC and served as a law clerk to the Honorable J. Harvie Wilkinson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Philip Verveer, Senior Counselor to the Chairman.
Gigi B. Sohn, Special Counsel for External Affairs.
Diane Cornell, Special Counsel. Ms. Cornell will have responsibility for issues in the International Bureau, as well as for FCC process reform.
Daniel Alvarez will serve as a legal advisor to the Chairman, with responsibility for issues in the Wireline Competition and Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureaus.
Renee Gregory will serve as a legal advisor to the Chairman, with responsibility for issues in the Office of Engineering and Technology and the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, as well as incentive auction issues.
Maria Kirby will serve as a legal advisor to the Chairman, with responsibility for issues in the Media, Consumer and Governmental Affairs and Enforcement Bureaus. Ms. Kirby has served since 2012 as a legal advisor to the Chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
Sagar Doshi, Special Assistant to the Chairman. Mr. Doshi is a graduate of Stanford University who has worked at Google and Protocol Link, Inc.
Jon Sallet will serve as Interim Director of the Technology Transitions Policy Task Force and will become Acting General Counsel upon General Counsel Sean Lev’s departure before the end of the year.
Jon Wilkins, Acting Managing Director and Advisor to the Chairman for Management.
Roger Sherman, Acting Chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
[MUCH MORE AT THE URL BELOW]
benton.org/node/165987 | Federal Communications Commission
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GIGI SOHN AT FCC
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Edward Wyatt]
Tom Wheeler was sworn in as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and promptly named to his senior staff Gigi B. Sohn, one of the agency’s most outspoken critics but a supporter of the new leader. Wheeler, 67, a venture capital investor and former Obama campaign fund-raiser, named Sohn as special counsel for external affairs. Although several public-interest groups warned that Wheeler’s past as a telecommunications industry lobbyist might cause him to favor those companies as FCC chairman, Sohn, as president of Public Knowledge, said at the time of his nomination that she believed he would be independent. Sohn said at the time of Wheeler’s nomination that telecommunications “was a very different industry” when he was a lobbyist. But, she added, “he understands how the regulatory process can be hijacked by incumbents to thwart competition.” Sohn, in her new role, will work with legislators and intergovernmental agencies. Under Sohn, Public Knowledge had been a sharp critic of the previous chairman, Julius Genachowski, particularly over the commission’s failure to reclassify Internet service into a regulatory category that would treat it as a public utility, potentially subject to the same oversight and rate regulation as telephone companies. Some public interest groups that have been critical of Wheeler expressed optimism about Sohn’s appointment. “We hope her appointment signals a willingness in the Wheeler administration to engage more directly with the public interest community,” said Craig Aaron, the president of Free Press, a nonpartisan advocacy group. “We have high expectations of her and the new chairman.”
benton.org/node/166181 | New York Times
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NEW FCC CHAIR SHAKES THINGS UP WITH FIRST APPOINTMENT
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Paul Sweeting]
[Commentary] A number of folks here in Washington were surprised by just how supportive Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn was of Tom Wheeler’s nomination to head the Federal Communications Commission. Wheeler is a former head of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and what’s now known as CTIA – The Wireless Association, to telecommunications interest groups that Sohn often clashed with as head of one of the leading industry watchdogs. But Sohn had nothing but nice things to say about Wheeler’s appointment. Wheeler returned the favor by naming Sohn as special counsel for external affairs for the agency, a new and presumably bespoke position created just for her. The appointment of Sohn should soothe, at least for now, the concerns of those in telecommunications policy circles who were worried about having a former telecommunications lobbyist at the head of the agency in charge of policing the industry. But among those unlikely to be thrilled with the idea that Sohn has the ear of the new chairman are the Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America, and other media industry groups who take a very dim view of Public Knowledge’s pro-consumer views on copyright.
benton.org/node/166170 | GigaOm
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THE BRIEF, RIDICULOUSLY PRODUCTIVE REIGN OF FCC CHAIRWOMAN MIGNON CLYBURN
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Chris Ziegler]
[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s position between serving the public versus feeling pressure to meet the demands of large corporations results in things not always getting done in a timely fashion. And when they do, the decisions made don’t necessarily have citizens foremost in mind. That’s what has made FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn’s fleeting moment in the chairperson’s seat such a refreshing change of pace. Tapped to lead the FCC in the gap between Julius Genachowski’s departure and former lobbyist Tom Wheeler’s confirmation, she didn't just sit back and keep the seat warm for Wheeler. Instead, she used the opportunity to launch two hugely important new blocks of wireless spectrum, fix a long-running technical problem between AT&T's network and smaller carriers, and close one of the biggest telecommunications deals in history -- all while dealing with an unprecedented 16-day government shutdown. Commissioner Clyburn also oversaw the creation of new rules for phone calls that inmates make from prisons, the culmination of a decade-long fight with service providers where monopolies and a captive audience (literally) have led to absurdly high rates -- rates that, as the FCC pointed out in an August ruling, prevented some low-income families from staying connected. And with just days to go until Wheeler’s swearing in to office, Clyburn oversaw a set of actions aimed at completely overhauling (and saving) AM radio, and -- practically on her way out of the door -- a proposal to dump federal sports blackout rules, the bane of TV-watching football and baseball fans everywhere. While the jury is still out on how Wheeler will shape the country’s telecom policy, Chairwoman Clyburn -- much to the delight of many -- remains on board as a commissioner until 2017. And her industrious moment at the helm hasn’t been lost on DC insiders. "In her short stint as the chair of the FCC, Clyburn worked to further the public interest and protect consumers," Public Knowledge said in a statement. "We look forward to continuing our work with Clyburn as she resumes her position as a commissioner of the FCC."
benton.org/node/166156 | Verge, The
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MIGNON’S GREATEST HITS
[SOURCE: Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, AUTHOR: Marcella Gadson, David Honig]
[Commentary] Any reckoning of the greatest chairs in Federal Communications Commission history would undeniably include Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn. In her six-month tenure, Chairwoman Clyburn delivered extraordinary value for entrepreneurs and consumers and, especially, for minorities and women trying to break into the nation’s most influential industries and the one-sixth of the economy these industries represent. As we prepare for Chairwoman Clyburn to pass the torch to Tom Wheeler this morning, we fondly look back and remember twelve of “Mignon’s Greatest Hits” for civil rights, entrepreneurship, and technological progress for our nation.
Restoring WHGH-AM – The Only Voice for Minority Listeners in Thomasville, GA
Reducing Predatory Prison Phone Rates
Introducing Minority- and Women-owned Business Enterprise Participation as a Key Factor in the Wireless Competition Report
Demystifying and Defending the Universal Service Fund’s Longstanding Program to Help the Poor Secure Lifeline Telephone Service
Revitalizing the E-rate Program
Approving the Largest Minority Spectrum Deal in US History
Solving the Interoperability Crisis
Proposing New Rules to Improve Rural Call Completion
Resolving the Most Far-Reaching Retransmission Consent Case
Commencing First Systemic FCC Hispanic Television Study
Taking Proactive Steps to Revitalize AM Radio
Promoting Minority Broadcast Ownership by Relaxing Archaic Foreign Ownership Restrictions
benton.org/node/165983 | Minority Media and Telecommunications Council
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

WE’RE ABOUT TO LOSE NET NEUTRALITY -- AND THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Marvin Ammori]
[Commentary] Network neutrality is a dead man walking. The execution date isn’t set, but it could be days, or months (at best). And since net neutrality is the principle forbidding huge telecommunications companies from treating users, websites, or apps differently -- say, by letting some work better than others over their pipes -- the dead man walking isn’t some abstract or far-removed principle just for wonks: It affects the internet as we all know it. Once upon a time, companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and others declared a war on the internet’s foundational principle: that its networks should be “neutral” and users don’t need anyone’s permission to invent, create, communicate, broadcast, or share online. The neutral and level playing field provided by permissionless innovation has empowered all of us with the freedom to express ourselves and innovate online without having to seek the permission of a remote telecom executive. But today, that freedom won’t survive much longer if a federal court -- the second most powerful court in the nation behind the Supreme Court, the DC Circuit -- is set to strike down the nation’s net neutrality law, a rule adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2010. Some will claim the new solution “splits the baby” in a way that somehow doesn’t kill net neutrality and so we should be grateful. But make no mistake: Despite eight years of public and political activism by multitudes fighting for freedom on the internet, a court decision may soon take it away.
benton.org/node/166158 | Wired
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

LIMITING SPECTRUM BIDS MAY LOWER AUCTION
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Doug Halonen]
Restricting the ability of wireless giants AT&T and Verizon to bid for repurposed broadcast TV spectrum during the Federal Communication Commission’s planned incentive auction could reduce auction revenues by more than $5.8 billion, according to a new study sponsored by the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition and the Consumer Electronics Association. The research also says an FCC staff proposal to reduce the auction payoffs of smaller broadcasters could undermine station participation in the auctions. “To attract the critical mass of broadcasters necessary to make the auction a success, we need competitive bidding among all wireless carriers for every license, and the assurance that every TV station will be fully compensated for its spectrum rights,” said Preston Padden, executive director of the broadcasters coalition.
benton.org/node/166088 | TVNewsCheck
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T-MOBILE’S PLANS
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Brendan Greeley, Scott Moritz]
T-Mobile is merely the first company in the US market to acknowledge reality. Wireless telecommunications in the US is on its way to becoming what the industry has fought against for two decades: a commodity business, where carriers and un-carriers all look the same and prices keep going down. For the last 10 years, AT&T and Verizon, which together have more than half of the market by number of subscribers, have been the quickest to roll out big, fast wireless networks. Their advertisements have focused more on quality and reach than price; they could assume, correctly, that customers would pay a premium for the largest, fastest network. T-Mobile’s ads claim no such superlatives.
benton.org/node/165977 | Bloomberg
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EXPERT GROUP SEEKS EXPEDITED FCC HANDLING OF RADIO TECHNOLOGIES ABOVE 95 GHZ
[SOURCE: CommLawBlog, AUTHOR: Mitchell Lazarus]
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which includes the top experts in this area, expects frequencies above 95 GHz soon to be ripe for commercial exploitation. But the group sees the lack of Federal Communications Commission rules as a barrier. In addition to regulatory uncertainty, innovators will face what the IEEE delicately calls “an expected regulatory delay that is difficult to quantify.” The IEEE filed a Petition for Declaratory Ruling that seeks to address the problem. It relies on a 1983 statute, called “Section 7,” that says, in part: “The Commission shall determine whether any new technology or service proposed in a petition or application is in the public interest within one year after such petition or application is filed.” We emphasize the word “shall,” which is Congress’s usual way of signaling that an agency must follow the statutory direction. Despite that, during the 30 years since Congress enacted Section 7, the FCC has mostly ignored it. On a few occasions it has cited other parts of Section 7 as generally favoring new technologies, but the FCC has never complied with the one-year deadline. The IEEE wants to change that.
benton.org/node/166081 | CommLawBlog
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PRIVACY

SUPREME COURT NOTES “DISCONCERTING” FACEBOOK SETTLEMENT, WILL EYE FUTURE CHARITY DEALS
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Jeff John Roberts]
When Facebook is sued over privacy, it has a novel way to make the issue go away: the company hands over a sum of money to lawyers and “non-profit” groups to reach a legal settlement while paying nothing to consumers. The trick worked when the social network got into trouble over Beacon, a program which publicly displayed users’ shopping purchases, and it worked again for “Sponsored Stories,” which turned users into product pitchmen without their consent. This so-called “cy-pres” model, described in a New York Times piece this summer, has been copied by other companies, including Google and Adobe. Now, the Supreme Court is hinting that it’s had enough of companies using charity payouts to end lawsuits. Chief Justice John Roberts expressed skepticism about the Beacon settlement, which paid $3 million to class action lawyers and $6.5 million to a new privacy group called the “Digital Trust Foundation.” In a written opinion, he noted the potential for abuse and conflict-of-interest: “[The] challenge focused on a number of disconcerting features of the new Foundation: the facts that a senior Facebook employee would serve on its board, that the board would enjoy nearly unfettered discretion in selecting fund recipients, and that the Foundation -- as a new entity -- necessarily lacked a proven track record of promoting the objectives behind the lawsuit.”
benton.org/node/166171 | GigaOm
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CONTENT

TWITTER NEWS CONSUMERS
[SOURCE: Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project, AUTHOR: Amy Mitchell, Emily Guskin]
Nearly one-in-ten US adults (8%) get news through Twitter, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center, in collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Compared with the 30% of Americans who get news on Facebook, Twitter news consumers stand out as younger, more mobile and more educated. In addition, a separate Pew Research analysis of conversations on Twitter around major news events reveals three common characteristics: much of what gets posted centers on passing along breaking news; sentiments shift considerably over time; and however passionate, the conversations do not necessarily track with public opinion. According to the survey, 16% of US adults use Twitter. Among those, roughly half (52%) “ever” get news there -- with news defined as “information about events and issues that involve more than just your friends or family.” Mobile devices are a key point of access for these Twitter news consumers. The vast majority, 85%, get news (of any kind) at least sometimes on mobile devices. That outpaces Facebook news consumers by 20 percentage points; 64% of Facebook news consumers use mobile devices for news. The same is true of 40% of all US adults overall, according to the survey. From that research, three central themes emerge:
A core function of Twitter is passing along pieces of information as the story develops.
The Twitter conversation about big news events can shift and evolve, both in terms of sentiment and topic.
Although sentiment on Twitter can sometimes match that of the general population, it is not a reliable proxy for public opinion
benton.org/node/166100 | Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project
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GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE

THE INEVITABLY DIGITAL FUTURE OF AMERICAN GOVERNANCE
[SOURCE: nextgov, AUTHOR: Zachary Karabell]
[Commentary] The Obamacare story that will matter, and linger, is that the Affordable Care Act was the first major law implemented almost entirely online. It’s the template for the future, and rather than using its launch as an excuse to renew attacks on the law, we need to learn what we can because, like this bill or not, it is part of the next wave of government. The tenor of the recent oversight hearings, convened by the Republican-controlled House, is that the design of the website exposed the fundamental failings of the law and government incompetence. But what’s actually been exposed is that the US government has not yet made the transition to a digital age. While the Administration could have and should have done far better, the reasons for its failure are less about a flawed process than a system currently ill-designed for this type of legislation. Testing publicly only works when there is some consensus on what the outcome should be, which in almost all cases is the actual release of the product. But imagine the political blowback if an early version of the site had been tested and then scrutinized by adversaries. They would have used the glitches as a compelling case to delay the implementation. When a fair number of people would use the flaws revealed during testing as a way to torpedo the project, optimal testing just can’t be done.
benton.org/node/166092 | nextgov
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

SPYING COMPLAINT TO OECD
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: David Meyer]
The campaign group Privacy International sued the UK government in July over intelligence agency GCHQ’s tapping of the world’s communications. However, it hit a brick wall in that case, so now the group has taken the issue to a higher authority. Privacy International said that it had filed complaints to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) about the telecoms operators that have worked a little more closely than necessary with GCHQ, a major National Security Agency partner. The telcos in question are BT, Verizon Enterprise, Vodafone Cable, Viatel, Level3 and Interoute, all of which operate the fat undersea cables that GCHQ is so fond of tapping (after all, they do mostly pass by the UK). According to Privacy International, the firms may have broken OECD guidelines around the respect of the rights to privacy and freedom of expression.
benton.org/node/166177 | GigaOm
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CLARIN’S BREAKUP PLAN
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Taos Turner]
Argentina's largest media company offered to break itself up into six separate business units, the latest effort by Grupo Clarín to prevent the government from dismantling it under a media law the country's top court upheld last week. In documents filed to the Supreme Court and the government's media regulator, Clarín said it would voluntarily divide its profitable cable-television business into three companies, two of which would contain TV and radio stations. The other three companies would offer a mix of broadcast, cable-TV and radio stations around the country. Clarín said breaking the company up was the "least desirable" outcome, but said it was being "steamrolled under the threat of confiscation" by the government. Clarín's divestment plan is the beginning of a lengthy legal battle. While the Supreme Court ruled that the media law was constitutional, it also called on the government to enforce the law fairly. The court, said Henoch Aguiar, a former communications secretary, "closed one door and opened five."
benton.org/node/166176 | Wall Street Journal
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Daily Digest

Analysis

November 2013

November 5, 2013 (Wheeler Sworn In As FCC Chairman)

As US Weighs Spying Changes, Officials Say Data Sweeps Must Continue

FCC Chief Hires a Critic of the Agency

The ObamaCare Website Failure Was Inevitable

IG: DHS cybersecurity tools, training not up to par

NSA’s spying humiliates Germany, again

Anti-spying activists take telco complaint to the OECD

Argentine Media Giant Plans Breakup

NSA chief likely to lose cyber war powers