October 2014

What if the FCC is the wrong agency to handle network neutrality?

Is the Federal Communications Commission the wrong agency to handle matters of net neutrality and Internet openness? That's what some in Congress and elsewhere are suggesting.

Instead, they say, ensuring that Internet providers don't abuse their network operator roles should be a matter for the Federal Trade Commission and antitrust law. In a hearing Oct 10, members of the House Judiciary Committee grilled current and former federal officials over the possibility of letting the FTC take on the punishing of broadband companies that have harmed consumers. "Do you believe the FTC would be effective at protecting the competitive interest?" asked Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO). Former-FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell and current FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright told the committee that using the FTC to regulate companies after the fact would be enough and that the FCC does not need to regulate Internet service providers (ISPs). So far, there's been no evidence of a market failure that would require the FCC's preemptive regulation, they said. Net neutrality advocate Tim Wu testified that looking at Internet policy solely through the lens of antitrust law would ignore the non-economic harms that Internet providers could wreak on the Internet, such as suppressing speech and limiting diversity.

FCC Plans Stealth Internet Tax Increase

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission, without statutory authority, is proposing to expand its taxation and regulation of the Internet.

Congress is oblivious to Federal Communications Commission efforts to undermine the spirit if not the letter of Internet Tax Freedom Act by extending substantial new federal fees on broadband access. These fees could be as harmful, if not more so, than any that state and local governments might imagine. Yet many in Congress, unaware of the fees that might be applied to the Internet, applaud the FCC. Under its “Open Internet” or “network neutrality” proceeding, the FCC would regulate the Internet and broadband service providers with rules similar to those that courts have not once but twice ruled unlawful. By statute, the FCC regulates telecommunications services, not Internet services. Rather than wait for Congress to give it authority to regulate Internet services, the FCC asserts that power for itself by some imaginative interpretation of the Communications Act.

[Furchtgott-Roth is a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and founder of the Center for the Economics of the Internet]

Democrats push Obama-quality digital tools all the way down to state House races

During the 2008 election cycle, digital wizardry seemed like black magic. In 2012, political cookies were still bleeding-edge tech. In 2014, it's a power available with a few dollars and few clicks.

It's part of what both Democrats and Republicans identify as a powerful digital trend. The left has spent the last 10 years developing campaign technologies, whether it's online advertising, the modeling of voter behavior, or volunteer contact management. This cycle, they say, they have figured out how to get those technologies to play well together -- and in turn make them available to even the smallest campaigns.

Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany

The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices.

The agency has used “under cover” operatives to gain access to sensitive data and systems in the global communications industry, and these secret agents may have even dealt with American firms. Documents describe a range of clandestine field activities that are among the agency’s “core secrets” when it comes to computer network attacks, details of which are apparently shared with only a small number of officials outside the NSA.

Second leaker in US intelligence, says Glenn Greenwald

The investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald has found a second leaker inside the US intelligence agencies, according to a new documentary about Edward Snowden. Towards the end of filmmaker Laura Poitras’s portrait of Snowden -- titled Citizenfour, the label he used when he first contacted her -- Greenwald is seen telling Snowden about a second source. Snowden, at a meeting with Greenwald in Moscow, expresses surprise at the level of information apparently coming from this new source. Greenwald, fearing he will be overheard, writes the details on scraps of paper.

Edward Snowden: It was worth it

National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden on Saturday defended his disclosure of reams of classified information and said his actions were worth fleeing his seemingly idyllic life in Hawaii and ending up in hiding in Russia, where he was joined by his girlfriend in July.

“It was about getting the information back to people so they could decide if they cared about it, and on that account … I could not have been more wrong in thinking that people wouldn’t care,” he said. But he also suggested that if he had been a journalist handling the leaked documents, he would have been more conservative than some of the reporters who wrote about the surveillance programs.

Sec Pritzker: US won't allow 'Internet to be co-opted'

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker insisted that the United States would prevent the Internet from being "co-opted" by any government or person.

She said the United States will remain a champion of an open Internet, as the Commerce Department plans to move away from its oversight role of the system that governs Internet addresses. "Let me be clear about this: The United States will not allow the global Internet to be co-opted by any person, entity or nation seeking to substitute their parochial world view for the collective wisdom of the community," she said. She added: "We know that those interested in government control tend to be countries that censor content and stifle the free-flow of information."

Flight Attendants Fight to Reinstate Ban on Fliers’ Devices

Lawyers for the nation’s largest flight-attendant union argued in federal court to effectively reinstate a government ban on the use of electronic devices during takeoffs and landings.

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA is suing the Federal Aviation Administration, saying the agency notice last year that paved the way for fliers to use their devices throughout flights violated federal regulations that require passengers to stow all items during takeoffs and landings. Justice Department lawyers representing the FAA say the agency’s guidance, which permitted fliers to keep smaller devices in their hands during all phases of flight, doesn’t violate the stowage rule because small devices aren’t governed by it. The two sides argued the case to a three-judge panel with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

How ‘Braveheart’ explains the future of tech policy

A Q&A with former-Rep Chip Pickering (R-MS).

As an aide to then-Sen Trent Lott (R-MS), Pickering helped draft the first major update to the nation's telecom laws since they were written in 1934. He later became a congressman himself and now leads COMPTEL, a growing association of tech and telecom companies like Google Fiber and Netflix that hope to challenge the dominance of Verizon and AT&T. “If you look at ‘Braveheart,’ they were going to take on the king, and the only way they could take on the king was to unite the tribes. What COMPTEL's doing is, we're uniting the tribes so we can take on the king.”

Microsoft gets into election forecasting

Microsoft is jumping into election forecasting with a new service from its Bing search engine that incorporates political news and polling data.

The Microsoft product is designed to work closely with search results. For example, a Bing user can search "Kentucky Senate race" and the service will show Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) with an 83 percent chance of defeating Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes. The service will soon include an option for users to see a digital list of everything they can expect to see on their physical ballot come election day, according to Bing corporate vice president Derrick Connell. The company's interactive congressional and gubernatorial map gives Republicans a 63 percent chance of winning the Senate in November, roughly in line with other forecasts.

Benton

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