August 2015

Everson Complains to FEC About GOP Debate Criteria

The campaign of GOP presidential hopeful Mark Everson confirmed it has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission over not being included in the Fox/Facebook inaugural GOP debate on Aug 6. Everson, former IRS commissioner and CEO of the Red Cross, is complaining Fox used improper criteria for determining participation. Fox has said all along it was using the five most recent national polls to determine participation among a field that by some counts tops 100 candidates, and even loosened its criteria for a pre-debate forum--which had been polling at least 1 percent--that will include a number of candidates who did not make the top-10 debate cut-off according to the polls--Fox will release the list of polls Aug. 4 at 5 p.m., the cut-off for determining which 10 get in. Fox went from a 1 percent cut-off for the pre-debate forum to "all declared candidates whose names are consistently being offered to respondents in major national polls, as recognized by Fox News."

“All candidates who meet our criteria and are included in the five most recent national polls will be eligible for the debates," said EVP of News for Fox News Michael Clemente, of Everson's complaint. Fox similarly used the national polls criteria for the South Carolina/FNC/Google GOP debate in the last presidential election cycle, and did not list the polls beforehand that time around either. Not surprisingly, given that the debate is three days away, Everson asked the FEC for an expedited ruling.

Veteran Campaign Reporters Criticize Fox News' Control Over Republican Debate: "This Whole Thing Is A Sham"

Veteran presidential campaign correspondents and media experts are criticizing Fox News' unprecedented role as a gatekeeper in the Republican primary. "Should Fox be playing this role?" asked Eric Engberg, a former CBS News correspondent who covered presidential campaigns from 1976 to 2000. "I think given Fox's ideological bent and that Roger Ailes has spent most of his career working on political campaigns, this whole thing is a sham."

In a segment laying out how super PACs supporting former Texas Gov. Rick Perry had made a large ad buy on Fox News and other cable networks ahead of the debate, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained, "So, Fox News set that rule for the Republican Party, and now, Fox News gets to cash in on that rule by getting all of the Rick Perry super PAC money in the form of his national ads. It's a nice racket, right?" "That sounds to me like either extortion or bribery, I don't know which," Engberg said. "You don't know whether Fox has indicated to these people that they would be wise to buy more advertising. It has a smell of corruption about it because it mixes money with open political campaigning."

White House Details 'Cyber Sprint' Progress, Says Congress Needs to Lift Sequester for Security Improvements

On July 31, the White House released the overdue progress report on agency cybersecurity improvements following the Office of Personnel Management hacks. The "30-Day Cybersecurity Sprint" commenced June 12, and a public assessment was initially expected July 20. Along with the progress report, the Obama Administration urged that lawmakers relieve across-the-board spending cuts, so agencies can further bolster network defenses.

"It is critical Congress lift the harmful spending cuts known as sequestration and provide agencies certainty in their budgets, to improve their planning, and their ability to forecast and acquire the necessary resources for addressing emerging cyberthreats," US Chief Information Officer Tony Scott said. He blamed the “unsustainable state” of the federal government’s networks on "decades of underfunding and years of uncertainty in budgets" for IT operations. President Barack Obama's fiscal 2016 budget request would increase cyber spending by 11 percent, bringing the total information security investment to $14 billion. The cyber sprint’s instructions to agencies included immediately plugging years-old security holes, surveilling networks for newly identified threats and reducing the number of "privileged" users with wide access to data.

Cybersecurity Bill Faces Time Crunch as Recess Approaches

With the Senate clocking out for the summer at the end of the week of Aug 3, there is precious little time to get skeptical senators on board for a major overhaul of the nation's cybersecurity laws -- the final item on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) pre-recess checklist. Already, privacy advocates have launched a coordinated push to point out what they consider a lack of privacy protections in the bill, which is intended to facilitate cybersecurity coordination between the private sector and the government. Supporters say the law would allow both to build more secure defenses against online intruders.

Majority Leader McConnell's proposed timing raised the ire of key Senators, including one of the Senate's most outspoken privacy advocates, Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who called the timing a "political stunt." The majority leader has not formally moved to line up the vote to open the debate on the Cyber Information-Sharing Act, or CISA. Majority Leader McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said that the Senate would take up the cybersecurity bill on Aug 5 and finish it as early as the evening of Aug 6, allowing members to leave town for the August recess that night or the morning of Aug 7. Although CISA passed out of the Senate Intelligence Committee nearly unanimously in March, senators from both parties are pushing to add amendments to the bill. Given the tight schedule before recess, that could be a major roadblock to getting the legislation finished without a deal facilitated by leadership.

Secret NSA maps show Silicon Valley is focus of Chinese cyberattacks

Silicon Valley (CA) is blanketed by red dots on a secret National Security Agency map that marks each successful “computer intrusion” by Chinese hackers of a corporate, private or US government target over a five-year period ending early in 2014. The map shows that California was the most targeted state with nearly 50 successful cyberattacks among more than 600 recorded. The map was part of an NSA briefing prepared by the NSA Threat Operations Center in February 2014. The briefing highlighted China's interest in Google, defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and air traffic control systems. Almost every state recorded at least one successful attack, but after Silicon Valley, most were concentrated in industrial areas, especially along the Northeast Corridor.

FCC Announces Workshop on Access to, and Use of, Broadcast Ownership Data

On Wednesday, September 9, 2015, the Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau will host an all-day public workshop to discuss access to, and use of, the FCC's commercial broadcast ownership data. As part of the FCC's ongoing outreach efforts, the goal of this workshop is to assist individuals and organizations that wish to use and study the large amount of broadcast ownership data that is available to the public on the FCC's website. Topics addressed in the workshop will include: relevant data that the FCC collects, how members of the public an access those data, and mechanisms for querying, studying, and visualizing the data, including the combination with data available for non-FCC sources. In light of the technological requirements for this event, the FCC strongly encourages attendees to preregister by visiting the FCC website.

Three questions with Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google

In an interview with TechTank at Brookings, Darrell West and Jack Karsten spoke with Vint Cerf, the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. Cerf has served in executive positions at Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet Society, MCI, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He is the past President of the Association for Computing Machinery and is a member of the National Science Board.

When asked if the question of net neutrality can be depolarized, and if so, how, Cerf said, "Hard to say -- the Federal Communications Commission rules change to Title II gave the FCC the ability to respond to what it may consider anti-competitive behavior by broadband providers. That has not stopped the telecommunications companies and cable companies from complaining. Some are agreeing to the rules if they are allowed to complete giant, anti-competitive mergers... so I think this debate will continue in one form or another. Note that zero rating is another form of anti-competitive behavior since it gives access to the Internet only for that provider’s services."

Cable Networks Stuffing More Ads Into Programs

With ratings mostly lower, media companies are stuffing more commercials into their cable networks in order to keep ad revenues from falling further. AMC Networks increased its load of ad time by 10 percent in the second quarter compared to 2014, according to a new report by Todd Juenger of Sanford C. Bernstein. Also posting big increases were Viacom, up 7 percent and A+E Networks, up 5 percent. Juenger notes that Viacom and A+E have been ratcheting up their ad loads because they also registered among the biggest commercial ratings declines.

AMC gained share of viewing, but Juenger says its original programming underperformed, possibly missing audience guarantees, leading the company to put more ads in its movie lineup. C3 ratings among adults 18-49 in primetime dropped about 9 percent, he says. “The continued ad stuffing is an obvious and unsustainable (some would say 'desperate') action by the networks to prop up ad revenue in the face of declining audiences,” Juenger said in his report. “Not only can this not be sustained going forward, it further contributes to the audience declines, making [subscription video on demand] that much more preferable for viewers made numb by the absurd amount of ads (as well as decreasing the efficacy of the advertising that is still seen)."

How Data and Programmatic TV Will Dominate the 2016 Presidential Campaign

Already sick of hearing about data, the big buzzword during 2015's upfronts? Bad news: The incessant upfront chatter was just the beginning, as data blending and programmatic TV buying also looks to dominate the 2016 presidential campaign. There will be a projected $4.4 billion in TV ad spending for all 2016 elections (compared with $3.8 billion in 2012). With 17 Republican candidates already in the running and Aug 6's first Republican presidential debate just days away, the ad buys have already begun, both nationally and in the early primary states.

The crowded field is giving Republican strategists an early chance to prove they've learned their lessons from the 2012 campaign. "You saw the Obama campaign pioneering a lot of the work and scale in this space. Republican consultants, targeters and analytics folks came out of that and said, 'We've got to learn and adapt those lessons,'" said Brent McGoldrick, CEO of Deep Root Analytics, a media analytics company formed in response to that 2012 loss. "For the first time on the Republican side, in 2016, you're going to see this type of data blending informing media targeting on the right."

Joe Biden spikes on social media

Vice President Joe Biden dominated the 2016 conversation on social media the weekend of July 31. Mentions of him on Aug 1 far eclipsed any day in the previous two weeks and started as Maureen Dowd’s column entered the bloodstream. There were nearly five times as many mentions of the former Florida governor Jeb Bush as there were of the sitting Vice President. But, over this weekend, there was more media interest in Vice President Biden than Bush. Reports that he was “actively exploring a presidential run” are what sparked the intense chatter: But President Barack Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer weighed in with a reality check, tweeting Aug 2: “Here’s an uncomfortable reality, 90 percent of the people being quoted today as ‘Sources Close to Biden,’ know nothing about the VP’s thinking.”

Benton

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