December 2015

PRIVACY

EMAIL PRIVACY ACT
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
It’s among the most popular bills in Congress, but it’s still stuck in committee. More than 300 House members, a majority of the body, have signed on as cosponsors to the Email Privacy Act, which would require police to obtain a warrant before accessing emails, Facebook messages, and other private online content. It has vocal support from conservatives such as Reps. Kevin Yoder and Ted Poe, as well as liberals such as Reps. Jared Polis and Sheila Jackson Lee. Getting it passed is one of the top policy priorities for Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo, and it’s even endorsed by antitax crusader Grover Norquist. But after more than three years of debate, the bill still hasn’t made it to the House floor for a vote. And a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee made it clear why: The panel’s chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, isn’t backing the bill yet, and his committee perch gives him enough power to keep it from going through. Chairman Goodlatte said he supports the “core” of the Email Privacy Act, but he also demanded changes to ensure the bill doesn’t hamper law enforcement. A Goodlatte aide said the hearing “highlighted some issues that need to be addressed” and declined to say when the bill might advance to a vote in the committee. Goodlatte’s resistance is proving to be a major stumbling block, even though the bill already has more cosponsors than it would need votes to pass.

benton.org/headlines/majority-house-members-want-end-warrantless-email-spying-why-hasnt-their-bill-moved | National Journal
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GOOGLE AND PRIVACY
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: ]
Google is being accused of invading the privacy of students using laptop computers powered by the Internet company's Chrome operating system. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, depicts Google as a two-faced opportunist in a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission. Google disputes the unflattering portrait and says it isn't doing anything wrong. The complaint alleges that Google rigged the "Chromebook" computers in a way that enables the company to collect information about students' Internet search requests and online video habits. The foundation says Google is dissecting the activities of students in kindergarten through 12th grade so it can improve its digital services. The complaint contends Google's storage and analysis of the student profile violates a "Student Privacy Pledge" that the company signed in 2014. The pledge, which covers more than 200 companies, contains a provision guaranteeing that students' personal information won't be exploited for "non-educational" purposes. The foundation is calling on the FTC to investigate Google, stop it from using information on students' activities for its own purposes and order it to destroy any information it has collected that's not related to education.
benton.org/headlines/google-accused-invading-students-privacy | Associated Press
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ACCESSIBILITY

DATA CAPS
[SOURCE: American Public Media, AUTHOR: Wes William]
It’s hard to find a Comcast Internet customer who doesn’t loathe the idea of the company’s forthcoming data usage limits, but usage caps may prove particularly painful to one group: the deaf and hard of hearing. Unlimited access is especially crucial for many in the deaf and hard-of-hearing community who use Video Relay Service, or VRS, to conduct phone calls. The calls are facilitated using a sign language interpreter on the other end – and that requires an Internet video feed. “It’s really important to the deaf community because it provides visual communication,” said Dan Hoffman, the ASL and Deaf Studies program coordinator for Utah Valley University. VRS does not use that much data — 5-10 megabits per second, according to Sorenson VRS, one of the leading VRS companies — but that adds up when you're also using your connection for normal browsing. The Federal Communications Commission does have protections in place to ensure the adequate provision of telecommunications services to the deaf community, but from a cursory read, it is unclear if capping VRS use is an Americans with Disabilities Act violation.
benton.org/headlines/comcast-data-caps-make-life-deaf-difficult | American Public Media
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FIXING A PROBLEM WITH THE HEARING AID COMPATIBILITY MANDATE
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly]
[Commentary] One significant problem with the hearing aid compatibility mandate for wireless providers, especially smaller ones, and the hearing loss community is that there is currently no definitive list of which wireless handsets actually meet or exceed the necessary standards set by the Federal Communications Commission. While it is true that Commission rules require individual wireless handset manufacturers and providers to make available information on all hearing aid-compatible models currently offered and the associated rating information for those handsets, this hasn't provided the comprehensiveness needed to aid compliance. In other words, providers are not certain which wireless phones rate at a standard of M3 or T3 or better. It would seem more than reasonable to require the FCC, either through the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau or Office of Engineering and Technology, to maintain an accurate, user-friendly, up-to-date list (or at least updated semi-annually) that not only retail providers, but also consumers, can review to inform them of various phone options and to ensure that the handsets they intend to purchase are hearing aid compatibility compliant. But such a list doesn't exist today. And claims have been made that the information on the Accessibility Clearinghouse site may not be completely accurate. Instead, providers are potentially liable for penalties if they rely on incorrect information about the compatibility of phone models.
benton.org/headlines/fixing-problem-hearing-aid-compatibility-mandate | Federal Communications Commission
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INTERNET/TELECOMMUNICATIONS

DARK CLOUDS OVER THE INTERNET
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Keane Woods]
[Commentary] A global Internet unbounded by territorial limits is pure fantasy. Down where the cables lie and the servers spin, territory still matters. Other nations are increasingly exercising their territorial control over the Internet, often in ways that mimic America’s worst practices. Because American law has made it nearly impossible to obtain digital evidence through legitimate channels, foreign police are turning to illegitimate ones. If the global Internet is going to be warped to suit governments’ interests, we must ensure that it isn’t broken up into cantonized national networks with less privacy, less efficiency, less commerce and less speech. That means making it easier for foreign governments to get data when that access is justified and harder when it is not. International agreements are one solution, and America and Britain are rumored to be negotiating such a deal. In the meantime, American technology companies should be free to comply directly with foreign government requests for data, as long as that access is warranted and meets international standards of due process and human rights. If America fails to allow such access, it will happen anyway in a brute and extralegal manner — and the result will be a less secure, less efficient Internet.
[Andrew Keane Woods is an assistant professor of law at the University of Kentucky]
benton.org/headlines/dark-clouds-over-internet | New York Times
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WHEN IPTV ISN'T OTT: COMCAST'S DILEMMA
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Jeff Baumgartner]
Don’t look now, but Stream TV, Comcast’s new Internet protocol-delivered skinny-bundle service, is about to open up an old can of worms tied to the Federal Communications Commission’s network-neutrality rules.
Net Neutrality Worries: Comcast’s policy with Stream TV, a service for broadband-only customers, is catching some heat from bloggers and others who believe it violates network-neutrality rules or, at the very least, puts other online video services at a disadvantage. But Stream TV is not an over-the-top service, Comcast has insisted. That’s because it is delivered over separately provisioned bandwidth, and because the IP traffic it generates does not intermix with the traffic and bandwidth set aside for Comcast’s public high-speed Internet products. That means Comcast is not prioritizing IP traffic. Rather, it’s using a separately managed swath of bandwidth for its IP-delivered services. DOCSIS 3.0 modems are flexible in that some tuners can be used for regular high-speed Internet service, while others can be used for managed IP services, like Stream TV or Comcast’s Xfinity TV app for X1.
Within the Current Rules: For now, the rules appear to be in Comcast’s favor when it comes to managed IPTV services, which are viewed differently in terms of regulations than services delivered over a public Internet connection. In multichannel video programming distributor definition rules issued last December, the FCC said “an entity that delivers cable services via IP is a cable operator to the extent it delivers those services as managed video services over its own facilities and within its footprint.”
benton.org/headlines/when-iptv-isnt-ott-comcasts-dilemma | Broadcasting&Cable
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MUNICIPAL NETWORKS CONTRIBUTE TO INCREASED BROADBAND COVERAGE
[SOURCE: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, AUTHOR: Bengt G Mölleryd]
Although Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries have made tremendous progress in recent years fostering the deployment of high-speed broadband networks, many challenges remain in terms of how to enhance and expand these networks in order to meet the growing demands of the digital economy. A new report from the OECD examines experiences with municipal broadband networks in a number of countries including Australia, Denmark, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Sweden, given its widespread use of municipal networks, is used as an anchor country for the analysis. The models and experience of the municipal networks in these countries have varied from being highly successful to not meeting expectations. In some cases, they have provided welcome competition by offering an alternative infrastructure or increased the geographical availability of advanced telecommunication services where none existed. Sometimes they have enabled retail competition by splitting the provision of infrastructure and services based on an open access approach. Proponents say they have contributed to cities and regions, as there are noticeable effects on social and economic developments in these locations, which the report explores. Overall, the report notes, municipal networks play a significant role in providing services for many people in OECD countries. As a result they are a viable and sometimes extremely effective way of supporting the objectives of local communities, addressing unmet demand and creating new opportunities for growth and prosperity in those communities, which otherwise would not be there.
benton.org/headlines/municipal-networks-contribute-increased-broadband-coverage | Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development | OECD Report
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WIRELESS

MOBILE PAYMENT SERVICES
[SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Max Lewontin]
Internationally, mobile payment services appear to be flourishing, especially for a broader base of users who might not have previously had access to a bank account or those in traditionally cash-based economies. Several of the services – such as M-Pesa in Kenya, Flous in several Middle Eastern countries, and Alipay in China – were developed by existing mobile phone companies or technology providers, easing the transition for many users to doing common banking tasks and sending money to friends and family using a mobile device. Mobile payment services, observers say, have great potential to increase access to financial services for “unbanked” — people without access to a bank account — or “underbanked” consumers. “We used to think of ‘underbanked’ as tied to geographical access points, in other words, of ATMs as a point of sale – now, geographic points are being replaced,” says Annette LoVoi, director of financial services and asset building at Appleseed, a network of public interest justice centers based in the US and Mexico. “In other words, the way I used to think of cashing a check at the grocery store when I began my financial life, it’s different now. The old geographically-based access points don’t hold up any more." The group has advocated for the advancement of mobile banking services to recent immigrants, underbanked consumers, and people with limited English proficiency, though they say the high cost of many mobile phone plans could be prohibitive. The argument has also been embraced by policymakers.
benton.org/headlines/how-mobile-payment-services-could-help-low-income-consumers | Christian Science Monitor
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ELECTION 2016

DATA-MINING FIRM SEARCHES FOR VOTERS BY COMBING HIGH SCHOOL YEARBOOKS
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Sasha Issenberg]
A company working for Gov John Kasich's (R-OH) super-PAC is trying to create a “social graph” of possible supporters by scanning high school yearbooks, small-town newspapers, and sports-team rosters. In recent weeks, as Dr Ben Carson began to slip in national polls of the Republican presidential primary field, volunteers at New Day for America, the super-PAC backing Gov John Kasich, began calling Dr Carson backers in New Hampshire who might be open to Gov Kasich as a second or third choice. They were equipped with a target list of voters identified as social anchors -- people who are particularly influential within their personal networks, based on information culled from yearbooks, church lists, sports rosters, and other sources nationwide. The list was prepared by Applecart, a New York-based data company that specializes in taking social-network analysis offline. Rather than merely looking for relationships validated on sites like Facebook and Twitter, Applecart is using a variety of sources to build its own map of the analog links between Americans. The idea is to help campaigns identify the voters who are likeliest to shape the attitudes and opinions of others around them, and then work to engage them as supporters. Applecart’s approach upends the logic of volunteer campaigns, in which campaigns look outward from the supporters they already have; instead, Applecart’s system starts with the targets they want to reach and then moves back to find people who are connected with them. “What we’re talking about is not finding that Rihanna is probably influential to my 19-year-old female cousin, but that the one person in her community whose name no one knows yet is influential [to her] because they went to high school together,” says Sacha Samotin, 24, one of Applecart’s founders.
benton.org/headlines/data-mining-firm-searches-voters-combing-high-school-yearbooks | Bloomberg
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IT'S NOT YOU: POLITICAL JOURNALISM REALLY IS BROKEN
[SOURCE: Medium, AUTHOR: Jonathan Stray]
[Commentary] If you often get the feeling that politics coverage has nothing to do with you, you’re not alone. For many years I’ve felt that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way journalists approach politics. Most politics coverage is about politicians, not the things I care about and the actions I could take. “Politics” does not mean politicians or government. Government is one of the places where politics happens, to be sure. But politics is so much bigger than that: it’s all the ways that people come together to exercise power collectively. Political journalism could imagine the audience as agents, people who act. Political journalism could be genuinely empowering, if it started from the concerns of the people it’s supposed to serve and not the spectacle of elections. I want political journalism to help me better understand how to change the world to my liking, by acting with other people who want the same thing. I want it to be about me and my community, and our aspirations, and what we could do to make them real. Political journalism should be politically empowering. Everything else is entertainment.
[Jonathan Stray is a freelance journalist and computer scientist who teaches a course on computational journalism at Columbia University]
benton.org/headlines/its-not-you-political-journalism-really-broken | Medium
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THE REAL REASON THE MEDIA IS RISING UP AGAINST DONALD TRUMP
[SOURCE: Vox, AUTHOR: David Roberts]
[Commentary] Something new and morbidly interesting is happening in US politics and media, but no one can agree on exactly how to characterize it. Superficially, it is about the lies told by Donald Trump, but it's about much more than that, as well. As everyone acknowledges, politicians have always lied. So what's going on here? How are Trump's lies different? Are they just more voluminous, more flagrant? Or is there something deeper going on that has unsettled the media establishment? Trump has gone from an entertaining player to someone who threatens the game..
Media gatekeepers are in danger of being exposed as impotent bystanders. What's happened from (roughly) Gingrich forward is that the right has used coordinated institutional power and the explosion of new communications technology to sap the media's power to do damage. The old-guard political media has always seen itself as a disinterested referee. But what they confront now is aggressive, unapologetic nonsense, piped up from a nationalist, ethnocentric, revanchist conservative base through the mouth of one Donald J. Trump. He is forcing them to choose sides, to accept his bare assertions and make a mockery of their purported allegiance to accuracy...or to call him out and, in the eyes of his supporters, formally align against him. The conceptual space for neutrality has all but disappeared. Media outlets are being forced to take sides, and facing the grim possibility that even if they do, they have no power to affect the outcome. Their twin idols -- objectivity and influence -- are being exposed as illusions. That's what has them so anxious about Donald Trump.
benton.org/headlines/real-reason-media-rising-against-donald-trump | Vox
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TRUMP THREATENS CNN
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Hadas Gold]
Donald Trump threatened to boycott the next Republican debate, unless hosting network CNN donated $5 million to a charity. “How about I tell CNN, who doesn’t treat me properly I’m not gonna do the next debate, okay,” Trump said. “How about we do this for CNN: I won’t do the debate unless they pay me five million dollars, all of which money goes to the Wounded Warriors or goes to vets?” It's the same move the Republican frontrunner pulled before the other GOP debate hosted by CNN in September. Trump sent a letter to CNN President Jeff Zucker, asking him to donate all profits from the Republican presidential debate to veterans' charities. Despite not getting an official response to his letter from CNN, Trump still made it to the debate.
benton.org/headlines/trump-threatens-boycott-cnn-debate-demands-5-million | Politico | Washington Post
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HILLARY CLINTON PLEDGES BROADBAND FOR ALL AMERICANS IN $275 BILLION INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Ashley Carman]
Former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has unveiled a five-year, $275 billion infrastructure plan, hinging on a main goal: to expand faster broadband connections to millions of Americans. This goal, among others that aim to improve the nation's crumbling roads and bridges, would bring the US's infrastructure and technology up to par with other major nations, including China, she said. "It means giving all American households access to world-class broadband and creating connected ‘smart cities’ with infrastructure that’s part of tomorrow’s Internet of Things," her plan says. By 2020, she says she'll bring affordable broadband with "sufficient" speeds to all American households, and with that wider internet access, she’ll push broadband providers to fight for their customers with lower prices. Her plan also calls for "fostering the evolution from 4G wireless networks to 5G networks and other next-generation systems," which she calls "essential platforms" that support connected devices, smart factories, and driverless cars. All these investments, she believes, have "enormous potential to drive economic growth and improve people’s lives."
benton.org/headlines/hillary-clinton-pledges-broadband-all-americans-275-billion-infrastructure-plan | Verge, The
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December 2015

More Consumers Plan to Cut Pay-TV Cord

Here’s How Zuckerberg is Giving Away 99% of His Facebook Shares But Staying in Control

Zuckerberg’s Letter to His Newborn Daughter

The Reason Why There Aren’t more Black Engineers in Silicon Valley

Mossberg: An Encryption ‘Backdoor’ Is a Bad Idea

The San Francisco Chronicle, once imperiled, is profitable — and growing its digital business

China blamed for 'massive' cyber attack on Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology

At the Paris climate talks, media coverage takes a turn

December 2, 2015 (Email Privacy Act)

A Majority of House Members Want to End Warrantless Email Spying. Why Hasn’t Their Bill Moved?