October 2018

In Nov, during what we’ve dubbed Space Month, the Federal Communications Commission will take up nine items to ensure that America leads in the New Space Age, with an emphasis on cutting through the red tape. We start with improving a satellite-enabled technology that millions of Americans rely on every day without even knowing it: the positioning, navigation, and timing service known to most Americans as the Global Positioning System, or GPS. The Commission will vote on allowing American devices to access the European global navigation satellite system, known as Galileo.

In recent days, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai ordered his agency to investigate telecommunication carriers’ slow response in restoring service to the Florida Panhandle, which Hurricane Michael struck on Oct 10. Free Press applauds Chairman Pai for holding telecom companies accountable in this instance. But Chairman Pai failed to show the same urgency in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which struck Puerto Rico in 2017 and left nearly the entire population without phone and broadband service.

Research I helped conduct has found that the fundamental driver of disinformation in American politics from 2015-2018 has not been Russia, but Fox News and the insular right-wing media ecosystem it anchors. All the Russians did was jump on the right-wing propaganda bandwagon: Their efforts were small in scope, relative to homegrown media efforts. And what propaganda victories the Russians achieved occurred only when the right-wing media machine picked up stories and, often, embellished them.

Sen Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) joined Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) in sending a letter to Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, expressing serious concerns about reports that Google waited six months before notifying the public of a data breach that exposed the private information of nearly 500,000 users participating in the Google+ social media network.