March 2015

Hillary Clinton Used Personal E-mail Account at State Dept, Possibly Breaking Rules

Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal e-mail account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.

Clinton did not have a government e-mail address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal e-mails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act. It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Clinton’s advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal e-mails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of e-mails were given to the department. Mrs. Clinton stepped down from the secretary’s post in early 2013. Her expansive use of the private account was alarming to current and former National Archives and Records Administration officials and government watchdogs, who called it a serious breach.

Senator Barbara Mikulski, Maryland Democrat and Role Model, to Retire in 2017

Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, the animated and occasionally irascible Democrat from Maryland who rose from being a community organizer to become the longest-serving woman in Congress, announced that she would retire when her term ends in 2017.

The surprising decision came just a few months after Republicans gained control of the Senate, reducing Sen Mikulski from chairwoman to of the powerful Appropriations Committee, where she had been the first woman to lead the panel, to ranking member. Sen Mikulski, 78, announced her decision to not seek a sixth term. Sen Mikulski said that she wanted to spend the next two years in Congress focusing on her work instead of raising money and campaigning.

Net neutrality could hinder efforts to safeguard Web, worry security experts

Some security experts worry the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rules could limit broadband providers when it comes to rooting out malicious Internet traffic. Problems may arise if Internet service providers start equating net neutrality with “common carrier” status, says John Pescatore, director of emerging security threats at the SANS Institute.

Phone companies still operate under common carrier status and are prohibited form treating calls differently based on where they come from, who is calling, or what might be said on the call. As common carriers, phone companies are prohibited from looking into the content of what they transport. The downside is that phone companies do nothing to filter out bad or annoying calls. It took a separate law to get them to allow a Do Not Call List, Pescatore says. “Net neutrality has not been defined the same way,” he says. “But it is likely the ISPs will treat it that way and make absolutely no progress toward filtering out bad stuff before it reaches the end user,” he says. Unless the FCC specifically dictates that ISPs must take specific measures to control bad traffic, net neutrality could slow down some of the progress providers have made ensuring a safer Internet, says Pescatore.

Court Drama Beckons for Broadband

[Commentary] If the Federal Communications Commission’s new network neutrality rules are upheld, broadband providers may end up spending even more time in the courtroom.

Among the rules’ potentially more onerous terms are provisions allowing regulators to determine whether a provider’s pricing and practices are “just and reasonable” and whether they constitute “unreasonable discrimination.” If consumer groups, Internet companies or other parties believe a broadband provider to be acting in violation of these relatively vague categories, they can file a complaint with the FCC. But they can also simply take the matter up in court. Indeed, Title II, the provision of telecom law that governs broadband under the new rules, allows parties wishing to challenge providers’ prices or business practices to sue them in any district court in the US instead of going to regulators. Those found to be in violation of the law could be responsible for damages, including paying attorneys’ fees. For cable and telecom companies, one fear beyond the long arm of government is that this could also lure plaintiffs’ lawyers to file class-action suits on behalf of broadband customers.

A Legal House of Cards: Why the FCC Will Lose in Court on Title II Internet (80%)

The Federal Communication Commission’s Open Internet Order, which reclassified the commercial Internet as a Title II utility, is very likely (80%) in the end, to be overturned in court. The FCC’s legal theory and many core assumptions are so aggressive, it’s clear that the FCC expects, and needs, continual and maximal deference from the court to prevail. The FCC also requires the courts to view the FCC’s most aggressive assertion of unbounded authority ever, as a mere administrative interpretation of ambiguous law, and not a political bypass of Congress and the 1996 Telecom Act.

1. FCC’s decision is not an administrative interpretation of law but a political bypass of Congress.
2. FCC is not Congress and has no legislative authority to “modernize” communications law.
3. FCC’s legal theory is a Rube Goldberg contrivance to manufacture legal authority.
4. FCC’s legal theory recognizes no statutory bounds on FCC authority or jurisdiction.
5. FCC reclassification assumes it can overrule legally‐settled definitions and findings of fact.
6. FCC asserts authority for an illegal goal; compel zero‐price for service with no compensation.
7. FCC is arbitrary & capricious ignoring large reliance interests & need for proportionality.
8. FCC’s legal forbearance theory is inherently contradictory and thus arbitrary.

[NetCompetition is a pro‐competition e‐forum supported by broadband interests]

Dodger Fans Face Second Season With No Games on TV Amid Fee Rift

As the Los Angeles Dodgers begin spring training, they’ll be invisible to most TV fans back home. For a second straight year, a dispute over the subscriber fees sought by Time Warner Cable, which operates the Dodgers’ SportsNet LA, is blacking out games to more than 60 percent of Los Angeles-area viewers. Under an accord valued at $7 billion to $8 billion, Time Warner Cable became the charter distributor of the Dodgers’ SportsNet LA and set about pressing other pay-TV providers in the region to charge all of their subscribers $4-plus a month for games. That’s more than the New York Yankees charge for the YES Network, according to researcher SNL Kagan. DirecTV, Charter, Dish, Verizon Communications, AT&T’s U-verse and Cox Communications all refused. As a result, only local subscribers of Time Warner Cable and tiny Bright House Networks can legally see Dodger games.

President Obama seeks reboot of China cyber laws

President Barack Obama has lashed out at new Chinese cyber security regulations, elevating the increasingly contentious issue to the top of the two countries’ bilateral agenda.

“This is something that I’ve raised with President Xi [Jinping],” President Obama said. “We have made it very clear to them that this is something they are going to have to change if they are to do business with the United States.” Over recent weeks, US and European corporate executives have expressed alarm over two new pieces of Chinese legislation targeting telecom companies, internet service providers and banks. Both are still in the drafting process, but could begin to take effect soon.

Chairman Walden makes plea on net neutrality bill

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) asked the White House to turn off Democrats' "shock collars" and let members negotiate a legislative deal on net neutrality. Chairman Walden made another plea for congressional Democrats to come to the negotiating table following the Federal Communications Commission's approval of regulations to reclassify the Internet under authority governing traditional telephones. "I'm hopeful now that the commission has acted that Democrats will have their shock collars turned off and they'll actually be able to cross the line and work with us," he said. "I am at a loss for how to make my plea any clearer to my colleagues," he said in prepared remarks. "Please work with us to draft a bill. What the FCC did last week is ill advised, illogical, and illegal. And while there are other tools at Congress’s disposal to express our displeasure with this action, I remain firmly committed to a bipartisan legislative solution."

Additionally, Chairman Walden said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s timeline for drafting new net neutrality rules does not hold up, judging from a meeting the two had in November. "And in that meeting, Chairman Wheeler assured me that he was committed to net neutrality without reclassification of broadband," Chairman Walden said. "This stands in stark contrast to press reports of Chairman Wheeler’s ‘summer epiphany’ and decision to impose net neutrality through reclassification as a telecommunications service." Chairman Walden also speculated that a few people at the White House "helped, probably, write" the proposal.

The Process of Governance: The FCC & the Open Internet Order

The Federal Communications Commission’s recent adoption of new Open Internet rules has received unprecedented attention and, along with national debate about the outcomes, has generated significant interest in the process by which the FCC, like other independent regulatory agencies, creates rules. In particular, people want to know when the new rules will be released for public review. The answer is tied to a broader question of governance: How does the FCC best create an enforceable rule that reflects public input, permits internal deliberation, and is built to withstand judicial review? As with its substantive decisions, the answer is simple -- by following Congress’ blueprints. As with governance generally, the goal is obvious: To engage in effective, informed action that furthers the public interest.

US millennials post ‘abysmal’ scores in tech skills test, lag behind foreign peers

There was this test. And it was daunting. It was like the SAT or ACT -- which many American millennials are no doubt familiar with, as they are on track to be the best educated generation in history -- except this test was not about getting into college. This exam, given in 23 countries, assessed the thinking abilities and workplace skills of adults. It focused on literacy, math and technological problem-solving.

The goal was to figure out how prepared people are to work in a complex, modern society. And US millennials performed horribly. That might even be an understatement, given the extent of the American shortcomings. No matter how you sliced the data -- by class, by race, by education -- young Americans were laggards compared to their international peers. In every subject, US millennials ranked at the bottom or very close to it, according to a new study by testing company ETS.

Benton

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