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December 2015

Ninth Circuit hears arguments on IP address blocking and shared accounts under the CFAA

[Commentary] On Dec 9, the Ninth Circuit heard argument in Facebook v. Power Ventures, an important case on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). The case considers whether a company violated the CFAA by accessing Facebook accounts with user permission in violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service, even after Facebook sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company and blocked its IP address. And that’s not the only CFAA case the Ninth Circuit recently heard on using shared passwords. A different panel heard argument in United States v. Nosal on a similar question but involving very different facts.

[Orin Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School]

Closing the broadband access gap in American cities

[Commentary] On December 10, the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and the National League of Cities hosted an event at the titled “Broadband opportunity: boosting uptake in America’s cities and metropolitan areas”. The event featured a moderated conversation with Sen Cory Booker (D-NJ) and a panel discussion with city officials from around the country.

We know high-speed Internet is already a major part of daily life, as evident by the 75 percent of American households with broadband subscriptions. But bringing broadband within reach of the other 25 percent remains a challenge, one that is especially acute within metropolitan areas among at-risk populations like the lower-income and less-educated. Getting all Americans a private broadband subscription will require a new federalist framework, where unique responsibilities lie at all levels. Coordination within government and between government and the private sector is paramount.

Anti-surveillance gadgets for protesters

“There is a huge disparity between the amount of technologies used by the authorities and the technologies available to protesters and activists during protests and riots,” warn Pedro Oliveira and Xuedi Chen, two designers from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. “That gap is only getting wider.” Oliveira and Chen hope to even the odds with an electronic arsenal of their own.

At the Radical Networks conference in Brooklyn this past October, they presented the Backslash kit, a package of devices that help protesters stay safe and connected during demonstrations. Gadgets include everything from portable routers that create improvised communication networks in the event of an Internet blackout to a pendant that blocks radio signals (to prevent cell phone surveillance). A pocket-sized “personal black box” creates its own Wi-Fi hotspot, which protesters can use to automatically copy any photos or videos they capture to an on-board SD card, ensuring evidence will survive even if a protester’s device is seized or destroyed.

NPR's On-Air Source Diversity: Some Improvement, More Work To Be Done

[Commentary] Results are in from the third year of NPR's sourcing project -- designed to understand and ultimately improve the gender, geographic, and racial and ethnic diversity of people heard on NPR as outside sources of news and opinion. The news is mixed.

In fiscal year 2015, which ended Sept. 30, there was a notable increase, compared to two years earlier, in the percentage of black sources, and an incremental, statistically insignificant increase in the share of female sources. Most disappointingly, there was virtually no change in the share of Latino sources. Asian sources improved slightly (again, a statistically insignificant change). The third-year results reflect a variety of experiments to improve source diversity that took place in 14 newsroom divisions over nine months. Looking at race and ethnicity, the findings showed a decline in the overall percentage of white sources, to 73 percent, in fiscal year 2015, compared to 80 percent in fiscal year 2013. As the dominance of white voices dropped, the share of black sources rose to 11 percent, from 5 percent, and the share of Asian sources rose to 8 percent, from 5 percent. But the share of Latino sources stayed flat, at 6 percent each year.

Weekly Digest

Net Neutrality Oral Arguments and Responding to Terrorism

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Robbie's Round-Up (December 7-11, 2015)

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