You’re reading the Benton Foundation’s Weekly Round-up, a recap of the biggest (or most overlooked) telecommunications stories of the week. The round-up is delivered via e-mail each Friday; to get your own copy, subscribe at www.benton.org/user/register
Round-Up for the Week of May 13-19, 2017
May 18 the Federal Communications Commission voted 2–-1 to initiate a notice of proposed rulemaking pertaining to its Network Neutrality rules. We are concerned about the possible impact of this rulemaking on the Lifeline program’s support for broadband service. We care deeply about the Lifeline broadband program because it mitigates the affordability barrier to broadband services in our homes — which is particularly acute for low-income people and people of color — and because broadband access removes barriers to educational, emergency, and civil services and job opportunities. We strongly support the FCC's recent Lifeline modernization order, which added stand-alone broadband internet service to Lifeline. We urge the Commission to ensure that nothing in this rulemaking will harm, impair, or weaken the ability of the Lifeline program to help low-income families to afford broadband service so that they can take part in the modern economy. We also urge the Commission to avoid any shift in Lifeline resources or policy that distracts from the program's core goal of defraying the cost of communications services.
The Federal Communications Commission issued a Public Notice that begins a review of its rules applicable to media entities, including broadcasters, cable operators, and satellite television providers. The FCC’s action invites public comment on which media rules should be modified or eliminated as unnecessary or burdensome.
Through this review, the FCC seeks to reduce regulations that can stand in the way of competition, innovation, and investment in the media marketplace. The Commission also seeks input regarding specific rules from which small businesses should receive regulatory relief. Today’s media entities are subject to a multitude of regulations, many of which are decades old.
On March 2, a disturbing report hit the desks of US counterintelligence officials in Washington. For months, American spy hunters had scrambled to uncover details of Russia's influence operation against the 2016 presidential election. In offices in both DC and suburban Virginia, they had created massive wall charts to track the different players in Russia's multipronged scheme. But the report in early March was something new. It described how Russia had already moved on from the rudimentary e-mail hacks against politicians it had used in 2016. Now the Russians were running a more sophisticated hack on Twitter.
The report said the Russians had sent expertly tailored messages carrying malware to more than 10,000 Twitter users in the Defense Department. Depending on the interests of the targets, the messages offered links to stories on recent sporting events or the Oscars, which had taken place the previous weekend. When clicked, the links took users to a Russian-controlled server that downloaded a program allowing Moscow's hackers to take control of the victim's phone or computer--and Twitter account.
Conservative group Judicial Watch has filed suit against the Federal Communications Commission to get documents it says the commission has not produced in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. On the same day the FCC was voting to launch the rollback of Title II classification, the group said the commission had failed to turn over records related to the 2015 Internet Order that imposed Title II and the White House's influence on the decision. The suit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia after the group says the FCC failed to respond to two FOIA requests. Both those requests were made under new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who has also accused the White House of pressuring the FCC to move to Title II, including referring to the Open Internet order as Obama's rules.
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