February 2016

While weighing in on the Federal Communications Commission's proposal to allocate more higher-band spectrum for mobile services, Facebook said it has "no plans" to provide connectivity solutions in the United States, but given its mission to make the world a more connected place, it's throwing its support behind the FCC's plans to make more spectrum available. The company said it "fully supports" the commission's proposals to make the 28 GHz, 37 GHz and 39 GHz bands available for mobile use while also promoting sharing among a variety of users and platforms.

American and European officials failed to reach an agreement over how digital data -- including financial information and social media posts — could be transferred between the two regions. Despite last-minute talks, the two sides remained far apart on specific details required to approve a comprehensive deal. Without an agreement, companies that regularly move data, including tech giants like Google and nontech companies like General Electric, could find themselves in murky legal waters.

European and American officials had until Jan 31 to meet a deadline set by Europe’s national privacy agencies, some of which have promised aggressive legal action if the current negotiations founder. Those agencies will publish their own judgment on how data can be moved safely between the two regions on Feb 3. With time ticking down, the two sides are now hoping to agree to a broad deal before European national regulators act on Feb 3, according to several officials with direct knowledge of the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Still, negotiators said sticking points remained — including over how Europeans’ data would be protected from surveillance by the American government and how Europeans could seek legal remedies in American courts — and neither side could guarantee the final outcome.

Former American diplomats, current members of Ethiopia’s intelligence agency, and foreign policy experts all said that the Ethiopian government is afraid of dissident views spreading online, and has crafted its intelligence service, telecommunication sector, and legal codes to stamp out digital dissent. Perhaps the foremost victim of the country’s Internet crusade is young Nafkot Nega, who believes his father is a terrorist because he’s a journalist.

The prohibitive factors that cause Ethiopia’s digital divide are straightforward. The monopoly on Internet access has made it prohibitively expensive for many citizens to get online. Routine service outages make connections unreliable. And for those Ethiopians who do manage to access the Internet, there is little content available in the local language of Amharic. Whether these barriers to Internet access are the intended result of a system designed to limit the spread of information, or the unintentional byproduct of a monopolistic cash cow is about as murky as the country’s dealings in cyber-espionage. “Ethiopia wants to maintain as much control as possible over the Internet so that it can prevent internal comments that are critical of government policies and minimize access to critical comments originating outside Ethiopia,” said David Shinn, the former American ambassador to Ethiopia. A member of the Information Network Security Agency, one of Ethiopia’s intelligence agencies, also said that the monopoly purposefully limited Internet access to preserve security in the country.