March 28, 2014 (Bulk Metadata Program)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2014
Spectrum Management Advisory Committee Meeting http://benton.org/calendar/2014-03-28/
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
President Obama Statement on the Section 215 Bulk Metadata Program - speech
House Leaders Sideline Anti-NSA Lawmakers [links to web]
How the NSA would get phone data under Obama Administration’s new plan - analysis
Feds want an expanded ability to hack criminal suspects’ computers
Government Data Requests Fall at Yahoo But Rise at Google [links to web]
PRIVACY/SECURITY
Sen Franken takes aim at 'stalker apps' [links to web]
Judge tosses lawsuit against Facebook over use of minors' photos [links to web]
Leading Reform Groups Call for New Regulations to Protect Consumers from Unfair and Discriminatory “Big Data” Practices - press release [links to web]
INTERNET/TELECOMMUNICATIONS
House Republicans move to block Internet management switch [links to web]
Facebook Connectivity Lab will develop advanced technology to provide internet across the world [links to video]
Consumer Reports: Average Spending on Telecom Bundles is $1,848 a Year
Industrial Internet Consortium Wants Standards for ‘Internet of Things’ [links to web]
Comcast's Cohen Calls Hastings Peering Arguments 'Hogwash'
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
FCC's Wheeler: We Can't Give Broadcasters Blanket Info On Spectrum Value
CBO Scores Federal Spectrum Incentive Act - research [links to web]
Sprint Partners With CCA and NetAmerica to Expand Rural 4G LTE
Things the FCC thinks it knows - Richard Bennett op-ed [links to web]
Smartphones, the Disappointing Miracle
TELEVISION
Inside LA’s TV channel sharing trial: Can broadcasters part with their airwaves?
The FCC Pulls the Plug on Broadcasters - op-ed
Emergencia: FCC might require Spanish version of broadcast weather alerts
GOP Senators To FCC: Don't Change JSAs Outside Quadrennial Review [links to web]
Missouri Legislators Ask That JSAs Be Grandfathered [links to web]
Research: TV Is Still the Top News Source
Fox Broadcasting Says Slitting a Woman’s Throat is Suitable for 14-Year-Old Children - press release [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
Cash, Paranoia Fuel Tech Giants' Buying Binge
Comcast talks spinoff with Time Warner Cable execs [links to web]
JOURNALISM
Charting the years-long decline of local news reporting - analysis
EDUCATION
4 ways to leverage federal funds for education technology [links to web]
BUDGET
FCC Chairman Wheeler at Hearing on the FCC's Fiscal 2015 Budget Request - speech [links to web]
Chairman Wheeler Lays Into FCC IT System at Hill Hearing [links to web]
FCC Commissioner Pai at Hearing on the FCC's Fiscal 2015 Budget Request - speech [links to web]
POLICYMAKERS
Admiral Michael Rogers: One Too Many Hats [links to web]
Seeking to Ban Online Betting, GOP Donor Tests Influence [links to web]
COMPANY NEWS
Facebook's hypocritical approach to transparency - The Value Alliance op-ed [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Turkey Blocks YouTube [links to web]
Top EU Court Backs Internet Bootlegging Ruling [links to web]
Carlos Slim slams Mexico telecoms bill [links to web]
EU commissioner attacks China’s telecoms subsidies [links to web]
China to Boost Cybersecurity [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
OBAMA STATEMENT ON BULK METADATA PROGRAM
[SOURCE: The White House, AUTHOR: President Barack Obama]
Earlier this year in a speech at the Department of Justice, I announced a transition that would end the Section 215 bulk telephony metadata program as it previously existed and that we would establish a mechanism to preserve the capabilities we need without the government holding this bulk metadata. I did so to give the public greater confidence that their privacy is appropriately protected, while maintaining the tools our intelligence and law enforcement agencies need to keep us safe. I have decided on a proposal that will, with the passage of appropriate legislation, allow the government to end bulk collection of telephony metadata records under Section 215, while ensuring that the government has access to the information it needs to meet its national security requirements. Under the proposal, a new program would be created with the following key attributes:
the government will not collect these telephone records in bulk; rather, the records would remain at the telephone companies for the length of time they currently do today;
absent an emergency situation, the government would obtain the records only pursuant to individual orders from the FISC approving the use of specific numbers for such queries, if a judge agrees based on national security concerns;
the records provided to the government in response to queries would only be within two hops of the selection term being used, and the government’s handling of any records it acquires will be governed by minimization procedures approved by the FISC;
the court-approved numbers could be used to query the data over a limited period of time without returning to the FISC for approval, and the production of records would be ongoing and prospective; and
the companies would be compelled by court order to provide technical assistance to ensure that the records can be queried and that results are transmitted to the government in a usable format and in a timely manner.
benton.org/node/179317 | White House, The | WH Fact Sheet
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GETTING PHONE DATA
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Sean Gallagher]
Under the Administration’s proposed program, the National Security Agency would still have the ability to request data without a new court order in an emergency, and “[telecommunications] companies would be compelled by court order to provide technical assistance to ensure that the records can be queried and that results are transmitted to the government in a usable format and in a timely manner.” In order to be able to live up to that mandate and deliver datasets for all numbers that are two “hops” from a specified phone number in a “timely manner,” one of two things would have to happen: telecom companies would have to have the capability to perform the same sort of analytic searches that the NSA currently performs with its Mainway database onsite; or the NSA would have to be able to make its own index of telco databases that would allow it to perform such searches. And while in either scenario the data available to the NSA would be a much smaller amount than what the agency currently retains (5 years’ worth), it would still give the NSA the ability to request large swaths of phone record data.
benton.org/node/179362 | Ars Technica
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RIGHT TO HACK COMPUTERS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jennifer Valentino-Devries]
The Department of Justice is pushing to make it easier for law enforcement to get warrants to hack into the computers of criminal suspects across the country. The move, which would alter federal court rules governing search warrants, comes amid increases in cases related to computer crimes. Investigators say they need more flexibility to get warrants to allow hacking in such cases, especially when multiple computers are involved or the government doesn’t know where the suspect’s computer is physically located. The Justice Department effort is raising questions among some technology advocates, who say the government should focus on fixing the holes in computer software that allow such hacking instead of exploiting them. Privacy advocates also warn government spyware could end up on innocent people’s computers if remote attacks are authorized against equipment whose ownership isn’t clear.
benton.org/node/179361 | Wall Street Journal
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INTERNET/TELECOMMUNICATIONS
TELECOM BUNDLES
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Andrew Burger]
Americans don’t believe they’re getting good value from their in-home telecom services, Internet and TV services in particular, despite the fact they spend an average $1,848 a year on them, according to a new market report from Consumer Reports National Research Center. Even bundled service subscribers don’t see their service packages as any great value. Though they rated highly for service satisfaction, Verizon FiOS and regional cable telecom services provider WOW, both received “middling or lower” grades for value. When it comes to overall customer satisfaction among bundled service subscribers (Internet, TV and phone), Verizon FiOS took top honors. Verizon FiOS received the highest ratings for reliability across all three services, though it did receive more billing complaints than average, Consumer Reports noted. WOW scored highest overall among bundled telecom providers and received high marks for all services as well. SuddenLink and Bright House Networks also received higher-than-average satisfaction scores for bundled services. Consumers are getting better at negotiating deals with telecom service providers, Consumer Reports found. Ninety-two percent of survey respondents who reported trying to negotiate a better deal with their providers said they got one. Forty-six percent of those said they received a discounted price as much as $50 lower per month, 44 percent received a new or extended promotional rate, 33 percent received additional channels, and 16% got equipment free or at a discounted rate.
benton.org/node/179314 | telecompetitor
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COMCAST AND NETFLIX
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Comcast executive VP David Cohen says that Netflix CEO Reed Hasting's criticisms of the companies' recent peering deal are "essentially hogwash." In an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators, Cohen said that when the history of that deal is written, it will say that Netflix was the motivated force behind it, and that Netflix essentially wanted to cut out the wholesalers and deal directly with Comcast. "I have a huge amount of respect for him," Cohen said of Hastings. "He's built an amazing business. He's a great partner of Comcast. And, by the way, I think he would say Comcast is a great partner of his because, if it wasn't for Comcast and the cable industry and the investments we've made in broadband, Netflix would not be as successful as it is, and Netflix has clearly enabled us to sell more broadband subscriptions." Then came the hogwash part. He said peering agreements are nothing new, were how the Internet was built, and have nothing to do with network neutrality or the "stronger" rules Hastings was calling for.
benton.org/node/179360 | Broadcasting&Cable
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
WHEEER ON SPECTRUM VALUE
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
During a Senate Financial Services Subcommittee hearing. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said that the FCC will start meeting with broadcasters in individual markets to give them a sense of what their spectrum will be worth at auction, but that it cannot provide that information on a blanket basis. Broadcasters have been looking for answers out of the FCC given that they have to make business decisions about whether to keep their spectrum and how and whether to share spectrum. The FCC is expected to vote a spectrum auction item by its May meeting, and Chairman Wheeler appeared to fuel that speculation with a timetable for discussing the plan at the FCC and on the Hill starting next week. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) asked when broadcasters would be given some regulatory certainty about how much their spectrum will be worth in the auction. "There is a lot of focus on the nature of the auction," Sen Moran said, "and how that is going to occur. What I think may be missing is whether there is going to be any spectrum to auction. You talked earlier about the business community needing certainty. When can broadcasters begin to understand what their company's spectrum may be worth.” Sen Moran pointed out that they have to enter into contracts for towers and employees and to plan their businesses. He said he was sure the question would come up when Chairman Wheeler addresses broadcasters at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks. Chairman Wheeler offered a timeline. He said next week he would start talking about the auction framework -- "working through the options and narrowing it down" -- with other commissioners, as well as sharing thoughts about how to structure the auction with members of Congress.
benton.org/node/179313 | Broadcasting&Cable
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SPRINT PARTNERS WITH RURAL CARRIERS
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Bernie Arnason]
Sprint wants to accelerate its 4G buildout and it’s turning to rural carriers to help them achieve it. Rural carriers will soon be able to partner with Sprint through their affiliations with the Competitive Carriers Association (CCA) and the NetAmerica Alliance (NAA) for preferred roaming and network build-out and “sharing,” respectively. The programs will offer a variety of tactics to get Sprint’s network greater reach across the US including a central data hub roaming clearinghouse, access to a 4G device ecosystem, and assistance in building Sprint-certified 4G networks. The new Sprint Rural Roaming Preferred Provider Program will give CCA members access to a data services hub that facilitates data roaming across their mutual networks at preferred roaming rates. CCA CEO Steven Berry said voice roaming is also included as a part of this agreement. Perhaps the more interesting feature of this program is the establishment of a device ecosystem. Access to popular and affordable 4G devices by rural carriers has long been a challenge. Sprint says they plan to build a device ecosystem that will include “band 12” chipsets for use in many rural carrier’s lower 700 MHz spectrum. Beginning in January 2015, Sprint says devices will become available and they intend to be the main driver of an ecosystem of devices that will support roaming across these different spectrum bands.
benton.org/node/179315 | telecompetitor | Washington Post
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SMARTPHONES, THE DISAPPOINTING MIRACLE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Quentin Hardy]
Crittercism looked at three billion interactions a day with apps for one month. It’s useful to start by thinking about the overall network, with all its phones and carriers. That would include, say, an Android device being used in India, a BlackBerry on Wall Street, or an iPhone in Germany. Once you take into consideration all of the different phone models (2,582), carriers (691), and versions of operating systems (106), there are over 100 million possible permutations of how a signal might be processed. Then there are the underlying mechanics of each smartphone app. It may appear to be a single piece of software, but most apps change with nearly every load, drawing on new information from cloud computing systems for new data. Crittercism says that 46 percent of apps rely on six or more different cloud services, like Facebook’s login system, ad placement businesses, or Amazon Web Services, to function. Three percent draw off more than 20 different cloud services to deliver, say, that music app or that mobile game. Then there are the apps themselves. “About two million of those, between Android, iOS and the other stores and downloads,” Andrew Levy, Crittercism’s chief executive, said in an interview. So an unimaginable number of permutations of phones then draw on a huge number of different multimillion-dollar data centers, probably run by different companies. And how long does it take to put all this together, from the time you hit the touch screen until it starts to react in your phone? In the United States, it’s about 320 milliseconds from making a request to the initial response. The real issue for companies, however, is not load times as much as failure rates. When that happens, customers are alienated and no business happens. A company with $1 billion in mobile revenue would lose $2.5 million a month with a 3 percent failure rate. Even losing one one-thousandth of the time is an $82,000 loss.
benton.org/node/179356 | New York Times
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TELEVISION
FCC AND BROADCASTERS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Fred Campbell]
[Commentary] The biggest problem facing the communications industry is a shortage of the invisible infrastructure known as spectrum. Broadband carriers need the licensed spectrum owned by broadcasters to meet skyrocketing demand for smartphone capabilities and other services. The Federal Communications Commission has an idea: Host a voluntary auction so broadcasters can sell spectrum to be repurposed for broadband. It's expected to take place in 2015. But what if no one comes? That's the multibillion-dollar question, as the success of the auction depends on a substantial number of television stations agreeing to sell their spectrum. Last March a group of broadcasters filed comments with the FCC expressing concern that the agency might not pay the stations their share of the auction revenue, or might impose restrictions on who can purchase the spectrum and for what price. The stations may have reason to wonder. The FCC should study the impact of joint marketing agreements on the marketplace. Issuing a request for broader comment on similar arrangements in the cable, online and mobile video market segments would avoid the appearance of picking winners and losers. It would also begin narrowing the trust deficit between broadcasters and the FCC -- putting the incentive auction back on a track to success.
[Campbell is executive director of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology]
benton.org/node/179359 | Wall Street Journal
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WEATHER ALERT RULES
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Tim Devaney]
The Federal Communications Commission is reconsidering a rule that would provide Spanish broadcasts of emergency alerts and other important announcements. The rule was originally recommended in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Back then, groups including the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council petitioned the FCC to require broadcasters to notify Spanish listeners in the event of an emergency. "MMTC filed its petition on Sept. 22, 2005, in response to its perceived deficiencies in distributing multilingual emergency information in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina," the agency wrote. The FCC is reopening the comment period for another month as it considers such a rule. The rule would require certain stations to air all presidential messages in both English and Spanish. To a lesser extent, emergency broadcasts in certain areas may also be aired in other languages, such as French or Mandarin.
benton.org/node/179358 | Hill, The
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CHANNEL SHARING TRIAL
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Kevin Fitchard]
In Los Angeles, PBS affiliate KLCS and mutlilingual station KJLA have begun transmitting their programming on each other’s airwaves, essentially packing multiple TV channels into the same broadcast airwaves. The two TV stations and CTIA will soon make their initial report. KLCS has been cramming as many varied video streams onto their airwaves as possible to see what can be supported. Basically, a 6 MHz broadcast channel can support 19.39 Mbps of capacity, which is way more than necessary for a single HD video stream or a combination of standard-definition streams. The big question is whether you can pack two or more HD streams into that channel, and finding that answer isn’t as simple as it appears.
benton.org/node/179301 | GigaOm
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TV IS TOP NEWS SOURCE
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: George Winslow]
A new survey from InkHouse and GMI, a Lightspeed Research company, finds that TV is still by far the preferred way to access news by nearly three quarters of all Americans and that TV is still the most trusted news outlet. Their data shows that 73% prefer to get their news from television, which also ranks first among the most trusted news outlets, followed by news websites (52%), print magazines and newspapers (36%), radio (25%) and social media (23%). Not surprisingly, digital media is gaining ground, particularly among younger demos. Among those aged 25 to 44, 60% chose news websites as their preferred news source and among the 18-34 age group, 41% chose social media. The study also found that email remains the preferred way to share news, with 34% using email, followed by 29% using social media and 8% using text messages. But among those aged 18 to 24, 50% are more likely to share news on social media compared to 45% for the 24 to 35 age group and only eight percent of those 55 or older.
benton.org/node/179354 | Broadcasting&Cable
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OWNERSHIP
BUYING BINGE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Reed Albergotti, Rolfe Winkler]
From messaging to watches and thermostats, Facebook and Google, along with Amazon and Apple, each want to own the digital platform where people communicate, shop and seek entertainment. The competition is driven by their ability to pay -- their combined market capitalization exceeds $1 trillion -- and long memories of faded tech stars that didn't evolve quickly enough. This combination of fear and primal ambition is leading to one of the biggest buying and investing sprees since the dot-com era of the late 1990s. Facebook and Google, in particular, have enjoyed wide latitude to make big investments, thanks to their booming stock price and their founders' supervoting shares. The four companies are competing to control as much as possible of the tech ecosystem. In Silicon Valley parlance, it's all about controlling "the platform." A big reason is to gather data about users, to serve them ads or to anticipate their next purchase.
benton.org/node/179310 | Wall Street Journal
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JOURNALISM
DECLINE OF LOCAL NEWS REPORTING
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Paul Farhi]
Local news has become a tough sell, especially online. It’s not that people aren’t interested in their communities -- local news usually ranks as the top priority in surveys -- it’s that the economics of the digital age work strongly against reporting about schools, cops and the folks down the street. In drawing readers and viewers from a relatively small pond, local news outlets struggle to attract enough traffic to generate ad dollars sufficient to support the cost of gathering the news in the first place. Conversely, sites that report and comment on national and international events draw from a worldwide audience, making it relatively easier to aggregate a large audience and the ad dollars that come with it. One result: A steady, years-long decline in local-news reporting, as newspapers -- the largest source of local news -- have gradually cut back their reporting staffs. A second upshot: The biggest investments in digital news have gone toward start-up ventures that target broad and borderless audiences, bypassing community news altogether.
benton.org/node/179307 | Washington Post
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