July 7, 2015 (Solving problems for First World elite)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for TUESDAY, JULY 7, 2015
Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee https://www.benton.org/calendar/2015-07-07
DIVERSITY
San Francisco tech firms too focused on solving problems for First World elite - analysis
If Facebook’s tech staff were a county, it would be a remote island in Alaska - analysis
Google’s algorithm shows prestigious job ads to men, but not to women. Here’s why that should worry you.
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
T-Mobile was asked to turn over more customer info than its larger rivals [links to web]
Senate advances secret plan forcing Internet services to report terror activity [links to web]
Silicon Valley 'civic-tech' companies driving transparency in local government
Why Terrorists Love Silicon Valley - L Gordon Crovitz/WSJ editorial [links to web]
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Free markets and rural universal service
Artificial Scarcity: How Data Caps Harm Consumers and Innovation - research
What Washington really knows about the Internet of Things
Maine Gov. Paul LePage Vetoes State Broadband Fund [links to web]
Next Century Cities Grows to 100 Communities Nationwide Leading on Next-Generation Broadband Internet - press release [links to web]
PRIVACY
Consumer Watchdog wants government to make Google give Americans the ‘right to be forgotten’ online [links to web]
EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
Why Police Agencies Still Can't Communicate In A Crisis
CYBERSECURITY
Hacking Team hacked: firm sold spying tools to repressive regimes, documents claim
The OPM cyberattack was a breach too far - editorial
SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
EOBC: FCC Could Cut TV's Auction Opening Prices By Billions [links to web]
Newest hotel perk: Portable Wi-Fi (and it's free!) [links to web]
In the Future, We’ll All Use Our Phones to Identify Ourselves - Gemalto op-ed [links to web]
ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
Hillary Clinton to Ramp Up Media Exposure: ‘America Will See More of Her’ [links to web]
Confessions of a Clinton reporter: The media's 5 unspoken rules for covering Hillary - analysis
Hillary Clinton vs. media: what's really going on [links to web]
Hilary Clinton, John Ellis Bush most Googled in 2016 field [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
Music Publishing Deal Driven by Shift From Sales to Streaming
TELEVISION
USA’s victory over Japan in the Women’s World Cup title game has crushed the US ratings record for soccer [links to web]
CHILDREN AND MEDIA
Televisions Are No Longer the Screen of Choice for Kids [links to web]
TELECOM
Sen Schumer aims to crackdown on robocalls [links to web]
TRANSPORTATION
Google debuts carpooling service in Israel [links to web]
Comcast Ventures Backs Connected Car Startup [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Egypt Enforces Tough Media Restrictions [links to web]
UK complaints soar over abuse of private data [links to web]
Global Deal Values Rise 11.6 Percent in First Half [links to web]
DIVERSITY
SF TECH TOO FOCUSED ON SOLVING PROBLEMS FOR FIRST WORLD ELITE
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Michelle Quinn]
[Commentary] In this column, I'm focusing on whether the companies created as part of the rise of San Francisco (CA) as the region's tech capital are contributing to the watering down of the industry's overall ambition. My take: They are. This boom has been knocked for being tech lite, with entrepreneurs working hard to address the First World problems of the young, wealthy urbanite -- where to eat, how to get the laundry done, whom to date, what to drink. Hipness is the business plan. And many of the sillier ideas are in San Francisco. It makes sense. There's a concentration here of young tech professionals looking for a way to outsource the mundane chores that eat up a lot of time. The dense geography of the city makes it a perfect petri dish for testing services powered by mobile apps of any stripe. But many folks are thoroughly unimpressed with what the city's startups are doing with all that loot. "What is going on in San Francisco is the death of disruption," said Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur who teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford and Berkeley. Many are particularly critical of the rash of companies, mostly based in that city, that are essentially new digital middlemen for existing services. They are often referred to as "Airbnb for X" or "Uber for X," with X being anything -- boats, dogs, food, doctors, alcohol or weed. The city, says Blank, is "a sea of non-interesting ideas."
benton.org/headlines/san-francisco-tech-firms-too-focused-solving-problems-first-world-elite | San Jose Mercury News
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SILICON VALLEY DIVERSITY
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Philip Bump]
[Commentary] Being a bit obsessed with demographics at the county level, we were curious which counties in the United States most closely matched the demographics of the companies' technology and executive jobs. So we pulled 2014 data for each county and compared it to the 2015 data for Facebook, Google and Microsoft … and the 2014 data for Apple, the most recent available. If these companies were a county, they'd be in Alaska -- at the western edge of the Aleutian islands. The county that's most like the companies' gender make-up is Concho County, Texas, where men outnumber women by more than two-to-one. (Concho County is sheep country, near the center of the state.) The counties most like the companies' tech staff are in remote parts of Alaska, where there is a higher ratio of Asian-American to white residents. Compared to the executive staff, though, it's slightly different. The composition of the executive staffs of Facebook, Google and Microsoft overall is like Forest County, Pa. -- just on the edge of the Allegheny National Forest near Erie. Looking only at racial demographics, they're more like Snohomish County, Wash., outside of Seattle. Apple is nearly the same, looking like adjacent King County -- which happens to be the home of Microsoft. In other words, Microsoft's executive staffers look pretty much like the community where they live. Their tech staffers look more like the residents of the Aleutians.
benton.org/headlines/if-facebooks-tech-staff-were-county-it-would-be-remote-island-alaska | Washington Post
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GOOGLE’S ALGORITHM
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Julia Carpenter]
Fresh off the revelation that Google image searches for “CEO” only turn up pictures of white men, there’s new evidence that algorithmic bias is, alas, at it again. In a paper published in April, a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University claim Google displays far fewer ads for high-paying executive job, if you’re a woman. “I think our findings suggest that there are parts of the ad ecosystem where kinds of discrimination are beginning to emerge and there is a lack of transparency,” said Carnegie Mellon professor Annupam Datta. “This is concerning from a societal standpoint.”
benton.org/headlines/googles-algorithm-shows-prestigious-job-ads-men-not-women-heres-why-should-worry-you | Washington Post
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
SILICON VALLEY 'CIVIC-TECH' COMPANIES DRIVING TANSPARENCY IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Heather Somerville]
Cities from San Francisco (CA) to Palo Alto (CA) and Dublin -- even down to the financially troubled city of Bell in Southern California -- are using Silicon Valley startup technology to open a window into government spending at an unprecedented level of detail. From how much a community spends on police equipment to the amount of a check written to a contractor building the new fire station, more details of a city's budget are moving from paper or clunky software to sophisticated Web applications -- marking an information revolution that could lead to better government. "This is something that people have wanted for a long time: the idea that we have a right to know how our government is spending our money," said Emily Shaw, deputy policy director at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for open government. "The idea is that if you have that kind of transparency, and you have concerned citizens, then you have oversight that otherwise wouldn't exist." The undertaking is only beginning and is an immense task. It requires that governments using software systems built decades ago adopt more modern cloud-based technology from startups such as Redwood City-based OpenGov, and that city leaders adjust to a new paradigm where constituents can track every nickel of spending. Water and sanitation districts, universities, county governments and the State Lands Commission are also using the software.
benton.org/headlines/silicon-valley-civic-tech-companies-driving-transparency-local-government | San Jose Mercury News
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
FREE MARKETS AND RURAL UNIVERSAL SERVICE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Greg Rosston, Scott Wallsten]
[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Ajit Pai eschews free-market principles in his proposal to modernize the rural universal service telephone subsidy program to promote broadband Internet access. Instead, he follows decades of FCC commissioners before him by going along with the tried, true and massive subsidy programs that have no known effect on subscription rates. This anachronistic and out-of-date tax and subsidy scheme is merely an inefficient transfer of billions of dollars from urban areas to rural areas and, given the nature of how funds are raised, also a transfer from the poor to the wealthy. Pai's proposal (and the original modification of the rural subsidy system put forth by the chairman) would simply ensure that ineffective subsidies continue to flow uninterrupted to politically powerful rural telephone companies. Like Commissioner Pai, we, too, believe that markets have yielded unprecedented innovation. We hope he'll realize that his love of markets should extend to universal service and also convince his fellow commissioners to take an economically rational and socially responsible approach to broadband subsidies.
[Rosston is deputy director and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and director of the public policy program at Stanford University. Wallsten is vice president for research and senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute.]
benton.org/headlines/free-markets-and-rural-universal-service | Hill, The
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ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY
[SOURCE: New America Foundation, AUTHOR: Danielle Kehl, Patrick Lucey]
In this paper, we examine the growth and impact of usage-based pricing and data caps on wired and mobile broadband services in the United States. We analyze the financial incentive that Internet service providers (ISPs) have to implement these usage limits and discuss research that demonstrates how these policies affect consumer behavior. In particular, we explain how data caps can make it harder for consumers to make informed choices; decrease the adoption and use of existing and new online services; and undermine online security. It is also increasingly clear that data caps have a disproportionate impact on low-income and minority populations as well as groups like telecommuters and students. In the conclusion, we urge the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), particularly as the new Open Internet Order goes into effect, to open up a serious inquiry into whether data caps are an acceptable business practice.
benton.org/headlines/artificial-scarcity-how-data-caps-harm-consumers-and-innovation | New America Foundation
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WHAT WASHINGTON REALLY KNOWS ABOUT THE INTERNET OF THINGS
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Darren Samuelsohn]
President Barack Obama wears a FitBit monitor on his wrist to count his steps and calories, and has waxed poetic about the power of wearable technology to “give each of us information that allows us to stay healthier.” On Capitol Hill, 13 members have joined together across party lines in 2015 to launch the Internet of Things Caucus. Started by a former Microsoft marketing executive and a Republican who made his fortune in electronics, the caucus pledges to help foster the coming explosion of “products, services and interconnected opportunities that didn’t exist a generation ago and will be taken for granted by the end of this generation.” Then again, the caucus hasn't even held its first meeting yet. President Obama's own government panel has warned of a "small -- and rapidly closing -- window" for the US government to successfully figure out how to deal with the tech explosion everyone is so excited about. The number of web-linked gadgets surpassed the number of humans on the planet seven years ago, and today the Internet of Things, the profusion of networked objects and sensors that increasingly touch our lives, is quickly turning our physical world into something totally new. As American consumers start filling their homes and businesses with networked technology -- smart watches sending health data wirelessly, cars that can take over for their human drivers, and drones tracking wildfires and cattle -- POLITICO set out to determine how well government was keeping up. Beyond one fledgling caucus, how is Washington grappling with this sweeping new force? The short answer: It's not.
benton.org/headlines/what-washington-really-knows-about-internet-things | Politico
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EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
POLICE COMMUNICATIONS
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Matt Stroud]
The four separate police agencies involved in the disorganized response to last summer's protests in Ferguson (MO) couldn't easily talk to each other. It might seem inconceivable that interagency communication would be a problem in 2015. But nine years after The 9/11 Commission Report recommended better communications between agencies, and decades since federal reports began identifying problems with how first responders co-ordinate, there are still no federal standards in place. While there has been some progress toward a nationwide solution, it's still a long way off. A draft summary of a Justice Department report on the law enforcement response to the Ferguson protests makes brief mention of the apparent communication breakdown among cops in Ferguson. The solution is twofold: establishing a broadband frequency that those agencies can access, and making sure everyone at those agencies has the equipment to use it.
benton.org/headlines/why-police-agencies-still-cant-communicate-crisis | Bloomberg
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CYBERSECURITY
HACKING TEAM GETS HACKED
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Alex Hern]
The cybersecurity firm Hacking Team appears to have itself been the victim of a hack, with documents that purport to show it sold software to repressive regimes being posted to the company’s own Twitter feed. The Italy-based company offers security services to law enforcement and national security organisations. It offers legal offensive security services, using malware and vulnerabilities to gain access to target’s networks. According to the documents, 400GB of which have been published, Hacking Team has also been working with numerous repressive governments -- something it has previously explicitly denied doing. It has not been possible to independently verify the veracity of the documents. The perpetrators of the apparent hack used the company’s own official Twitter feed (renamed to “Hacked Team”) to communicate. They continued to post to the feed for hours after, highlighting specific documents they claim come from the hack, such as e-mails, invoices, and even screenshots of Hacking Team employee’s computers, until the company regained control on July 6 and removed the posts. One such tweet, which has since been removed, purports to show Hacking Team negotiating with a third-party reseller to export its malware to Nigeria. If the sale took place, it may have bypassed Italian export controls. Another is claimed to show the company debating what to do after an independent investigation from the University of Toronto attacked it for selling hacking tools to Ethiopia, which then used it to target journalists in the US and elsewhere. The company has never publicly confirmed nor denied working with Ethopia, and in March 2015 a spokesman dismissed earlier reports as “based on some nicely presented suppositions”.
benton.org/headlines/hacking-team-hacked-firm-sold-spying-tools-repressive-regimes-documents-claim | Guardian, The | ars technica
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THE OPM CYBERATTACK WAS A BREACH TOO FAR
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff]
The other shoe is expected to drop this week on the disastrous loss of confidential information from the databases of the Office of Personnel Management. The agency is expected to reveal the extent to which information from security investigations of current, former and prospective federal employees and contractors was compromised. The background checks often unearth sensitive and intimate matters, and the loss may put many at risk of blackmail. The agency is expected to reveal how many dossiers were taken, but reports suggest it was in the millions. The breach comes on top of a separate intrusion in which personally identifiable information on 4.2 million federal workers was filched from the OPM databases. President Barack Obama ought to be far more steamed about the break-ins than he appears. Spying is a constant in international relations, but this particular theft is not business as usual. The Chinese would like to have a smooth, harmonious summit when Presidents Xi Jinping and Obama meet in September. President Obama should put China on notice today that such theft is inconsistent with harmony at the table -- and he’s mad as hell about it. If that doesn’t get Beijing’s attention, the United States should begin preparations for retaliation aimed specifically at the alleged Chinese attackers. Not all of the broad US-China bilateral relationship needs to be put at risk, but the thieves must feel the heat. It is the only way to deter future attacks.
benton.org/headlines/opm-cyberattack-was-breach-too-far | Washington Post
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
THE MEDIA'S 5 UNSPOKEN RULES FOR COVERING HILLARY
[SOURCE: Vox, AUTHOR: Jonathan Allen]
[Commentary] After a quarter of a century on the national stage, there's no more comfortable political figure to afflict than Hillary Clinton. And she's in for a lot of affliction over the next year and half. As a reporter, I get sucked into playing by the Clinton rules. This is what I've seen in my colleagues, and in myself.
1) Everything, no matter how ludicrous-sounding, is worthy of a full investigation by federal agencies, Congress, the "vast right-wing conspiracy," and mainstream media outlets.
2) Every allegation, no matter how ludicrous, is believable until it can be proven completely and utterly false. And even then, it keeps a life of its own in the conservative media world.
3) The media assumes that Clinton is acting in bad faith until there's hard evidence otherwise.
4) Everything is newsworthy because the Clintons are the equivalent of America's royal family.
5) Everything she does is fake and calculated for maximum political benefit
Hillary Clinton is comfortable enough to be a target for a lot of journalistic affliction and powerful enough that no one needs to comfort her from that affliction. But these double standards are an important factor to keep in mind when judging her against her rivals for the presidency. Whether they're fair or not, the Clinton rules distort the public's perception of Hillary Clinton.
benton.org/headlines/confessions-clinton-reporter-medias-5-unspoken-rules-covering-hillary | Vox
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OWNERSHIP
SESAC-NATIONAL MUSIC PUBLISHERS’ ASSOCIATION DEAL
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Ben Sisario]
In the latest change to the rapidly evolving business of music publishing, Sesac, a boutique rights group backed by private equity, has agreed to buy the Harry Fox Agency, a major clearinghouse of songwriting rights. The deal, made with the National Music Publishers’ Association — a trade group that has owned Harry Fox since its creation in 1927 — would allow Sesac to combine two kinds of licensing that have long been separate in the fragmented world of music publishing, which centers on the copyrights for songwriting. Sesac, known as a performing rights organization, collects royalties whenever the 400,000 songs in its catalog — including works written by Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond and Kurt Cobain — are played on the radio, streamed online or even piped into shopping malls. The Harry Fox Agency handles the so-called mechanical licenses from song publishers that record companies need to sell CDs and downloads. Gaining the ability to issue both kinds of licenses would enable Sesac to handle digital rights more efficiently, said John Josephson, the company’s chairman and chief executive. It would also give Sesac control of the valuable data that is generated from digital outlets like Apple, Spotify and Pandora, giving it an advantage over Ascap and BMI, its much bigger rivals in the American performing-rights business.
benton.org/headlines/music-publishing-deal-driven-shift-sales-streaming | New York Times
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