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March 2017

What More Do We Know About Ajit Pai’s Agenda?

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai delivered his first major policy speech as Chairman on March 15th, in remarks titled, “Bringing the Benefits of the Digital Age to All Americans.” At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pai discussed his guiding principles for his regulatory approach as FCC Chairman, and concluded with practical policies he will be championing to expand broadband access nationwide. Chairman Pai outlined four guiding regulatory principles:
The Importance of Digital Empowerment and the “Democratization of Entrepreneurship”
Ubiquitous Access to Digital Opportunity
A Competitive Free Market Unleashes Private-Sector Ingenuity
The Free Market Doesn’t Mean that Government Has No Role

Justice Department Settles Civil Antitrust Claim Against AT&T and DIRECTV for Orchestrating Information Sharing Agreements with Competitors

The Department of Justice reached a settlement that will prohibit DIRECTV and its parent corporation, AT&T, from illegally sharing confidential, forward-looking information with competitors.

The department’s Antitrust Division filed suit on Nov. 2, 2016, alleging that DIRECTV was the ringleader of a series of unlawful information exchanges between DIRECTV and three of its competitors – Cox Communications, Charter Communications and AT&T (before it acquired DIRECTV) – during the companies’ negotiations to carry the SportsNet LA “Dodgers Channel.” SportsNet LA holds the exclusive rights to telecast almost all live Dodgers games in the Los Angeles area. The settlement, which will obtain all of the relief sought by the department in its lawsuit, will ensure that when DIRECTV and AT&T negotiate with providers of video programming, including negotiations to telecast the Dodgers Channel, they will not illegally share competitively-sensitive information with their rivals. The settlement also requires the companies to monitor certain communications their programming executives have with their rivals, and to implement antitrust training and compliance programs.

How technology tramples on freedom

[Commentary] Rapid advances in biometric technology mean the public is surveilled – and their movements recorded – more than ever before. If this technology spreads without limits, it could soon impinge on basic rights.

There is more discussion to be had on the scope, scale, and implications of "biometrics," yet for the moment we will close with the logical truth that no people, no society need rules against behaviors that are impossible, but the ballistic trajectory of biometric capabilities is such that constructing prohibitory rules before something is possible has become wholly essential. Probabilistically, enumerating forbidden things must fail to anticipate some dangers hence the policy tradeoff is whether to nevertheless attempt that enumeration or to switch over to enumerating permitted things. A free society being one where "that which is not forbidden is permitted" and an unfree society being one where "that which is not permitted is forbidden," whether we can retain a free society by enumerating forbidden aspects (of biometrics) is now at question.

[Dan Geer is the chief information security officer for In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit investment firm that works to invest in technology that supports the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US intelligence community.]

Weekly Digest

What More Do We Know About Ajit Pai’s Agenda?

What More Do We Know About Ajit Pai’s Agenda?

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Robbie's Round-Up for the Week of March 20-24, 2017

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