Daily Digest 12/5/2017 (Despite Arguments to Delay, FCC Will Kill Net Neutrality)

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel of the Federal Communications Commission said that widespread irregularities tied to network neutrality feedback, including at least 1 million phony comments, have tainted the public commenting process. The allegations are buttressing a campaign by online activists and government officials who oppose the FCC's plan to dismantle net neutrality rules. In a review of FCC comments over the past six months, Schneiderman's office found that at least 1 million submissions may have impersonated Americans, including as many as 50,000 New York residents — a potential violation of state law. Millions more comments probably were submitted by nonexistent people, he said. Still, according to Schniederman, the FCC has refused to provide help to determine who may be responsible for the alleged fake commenting. Schneiderman said that the inspector general's office of the FCC offered its help only Dec 4, ahead of the news conference. Schneiderman called for a federal investigation and for the FCC to push back its planned vote to strip net neutrality rules. “They just have to stop this vote,” he said. “You cannot conduct a legitimate vote on a rulemaking proceeding if you have a record that is in shambles, as this one is.” Tina Pelkey, a spokeswoman for the FCC, responded in a statement Dec 4: “At today’s news conference, they didn’t identify a single comment relied upon in the draft order as being questionable. This is an attempt by people who want to keep the Obama Administration’s heavy-handed Internet regulations to delay the vote because they realize that their effort to defeat the plan to restore Internet freedom has stalled.”

While I fundamentally disagree with the merits of the Federal Communications Commission’s [net neutrality] proposal, what is equally concerning is the lack of integrity to the FCC’s process that has led to this point. To review, the FCC has held zero public hearings. The FCC has knowingly maintained a system that has already been corrupted and is susceptible to abuse. This has led to the following problems:

• Approximately a million comments may have fraudulently used the names of real people, including thousands that the New York Attorney General is now investigating
• An alleged distributed denial of service attack that the Government Accountability Office is now investigating
• Nearly half a million comments were filed from Russian e-mail addresses
• 50,000 consumer complaints missing from the record

Distressingly, the FCC has been unwilling to assist a law enforcement investigation into some of these problems. That’s unacceptable. The FCC needs to correct this course immediately. The integrity of our process is at stake. The future of the Internet is at stake. Until we get to the bottom of this, no vote should take place until a responsible investigation—like that in New York—is complete.

The Benton Foundation joined Public Knowledge and 40 other consumer protection groups, digital divide advocates, and local government agencies -- including New York City -- in a letter urging Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to delay the vote on the “Restoring Internet Freedom” Draft Order, which would roll back the agency’s net neutrality rules if adopted. Specifically, the groups propose the FCC delay the vote until a pending court case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit -- the en banc review in Federal Trade Commission v. AT&T Mobility -- resolves. Groups urge this delay because the Ninth Circuit might decide that the FTC has no jurisdiction over broadband providers. If so, and if the FCC rolls back the net neutrality rules December 14, then neither the FTC nor the FCC will have the authority to regulate broadband providers. The letter states, “Rushing to a vote before the Ninth Circuit resolves this decision cavalierly risks the purported safeguards that you and other supporters of the Draft Order have repeatedly declared will protect consumers from abusive or anti-competitive practices."

While the Federal Communications Commission said it has 18,000 carrier responses to network neutrality complaints, the National Hispanic Media Coalition says it has only received 823 pages worth.  "The FCC has not produced any additional documents since we filed an Application for Review [on November 14]," said NHMC Special Policy Advisor Gloria Tristani. Besides carrier responses, "we are missing other documents as well, such as attachments to consumer complaints, consumer rebuttals, etc." The FCC has not explained why it didn't provide those documents, according to the NHMC. The NHMC and other net neutrality advocates say the FCC should have conducted a detailed analysis of net neutrality complaints and resolutions before proceeding with its repeal. Instead,FCC Chairman Pai's anti-net neutrality proposal says that "in most instances, [the complaints] have not been verified," without providing much analysis.

[Commentary] Like all major government efforts to deregulate industries, from telephones to airlines, the Federal Communications Commission’s move to do away with net neutrality is destined to have a major impact. We think consumers will benefit because increased competition is a greater spur to technological innovation than government fiat. Two important points to keep in mind: First, deregulation will not usher in a digital chaos. The FCC and Federal Trade Commission will still have oversight responsibilities. Second, net neutrality is a new concept promulgated by the Obama administration. The internet operated without these restrictions previously without adverse effects. If deregulation doesn’t work, it can be modified or reversed. Congress also can weigh in. But let’s give innovation and competition a chance. Anyone who claims to know exactly how this proposal plays out, and who’ll win and lose, is relying on preconception. Deregulation could be the best thing since cat videos.

One of the main fears that school officials have about curtailing “net neutrality” is that internet service companies will have new powers to throttle or block the flow of online content that serves as academic lifeblood for many districts. But gauging whether those worries are justified or overblown requires a lot of speculation about industry behavior, and how it would apply to schools. Chris Lewis, a vice president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge, said dire scenarios envisioned by some school officials are not unrealistic. Lewis envisions ISPs placing new pricing demands on education companies that deliver content, like videos, that require high bandwidth. If those companies agreed to pay more to ISPs, those charges could get passed on to school districts, he said.

Broadband and the digital applications it makes possible are impacting residents, businesses, and governments alike. This condensed literature review has focused on the array of research that has documented broadband’s impact on topics ranging from economic development to civic engagement and fields as diverse as healthcare and agriculture. While some researchers argue that the true impact of digital applications are not being properly measured, recent research has found that the Internet sector in the US was responsible for six percent of real GDP in 2014 or about $966 billion surpassing chemical products, accommodation and food services among others. Furthermore, research found that the digital services subsector of advanced industries was responsible for 60 percent of the advanced industries employment growth since 2014 and that digital flows—only 15 years old—now have a larger impact on centuries old goods trade.

Summer 2017, the West Virginia state legislature decided to take some leftover funds for water and sewer projects and reinvest it in another essential public utility: the internet. These funds were evidently needed, because half of all counties in the state—27 of 55—have already applied for a piece of the pie. In July, the state announced that a combination of those leftover funds and a portion of the state’s Community Development Block Grant—a national program that funds community growth projects—would be combined to provide a pot of an estimated $1.5 million for West Virginia communities to use on building broadband infrastructure for underserved communities. The requests filed so far total just over that, at $1.59 million.

In a speech on Nov 28, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai angrily denounced celebrities and tech companies who have been criticizing his plans to undo the 2015 rules. Hollywood is always a good scapegoat, of course, and Republicans looking to stir up anger in 2017 do well to frame their issues as a response to the unchecked power of Silicon Valley.  An irony to the Silicon Valley scapegoating is that people from both sides of the debate say that the biggest internet companies have been less than fully engaged in the net neutrality debate. It has been a point of consistent grumbling from the most enthusiastic net neutrality advocates. If Comcast started charging web services for faster internet speeds, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google would have no trouble paying the tolls. Smaller companies might, however, leaving them at further competitive disadvantage. There’s a pro net-neutrality school of thought that the rules are needed to prevent the internet giants from gaining an even greater advantage over smaller companies. Chairman Pai has the votes to upend the way the federal government treats competition on the internet. His chosen plan has made many people very angry. So he’s taken the default strategy of anyone involved in American politics circa 2017 – whip up some anger of his own. 

Myanmar is the latest country to piggyback off of a dangerous rhetorical strategy made popular by President Trump. The New York Times reports that an official in Myanmar’s Rakhine state recently said: “there is no such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news.” Rohingya is the Muslim minority in Myanmar facing sweeping persecution from hardline Buddhists. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people have fled the country in the wake of what a top UN official called ethnic cleansing.

This isn’t the first time the country claimed fake news: A few weeks ago, Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, alluded to reports about the Rohingya crisis and said the situation was being exacerbated by calculated misinformation campaigns.