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Nicholas von Hoffman, Provocative Journalist and Author
Nunes memo centers on a 40-year-old law written to prevent surveillance abuses
At the center of the firestorm over a congressional memo that President Trump and his allies say reveals federal authorities’ missteps is a 40-year-old law passed in the wake of explosive domestic spying scandals. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) grew from congressional investigations into spy agencies’ eavesdropping on Americans, including civil rights activists and protesters against the Vietnam War, without warrants. The law created a warrant requirement for federal authorities to intercept the communications of anyone in the United States, including foreigners. It says the Justice Department must prove to a federal judge that there is probable cause to believe any American target is an agent of a foreign power and engaged in acts such as spying on behalf of a foreign government. Now, the House Intelligence Committee’s Republican leadership, which plans to release the memo, suggests a politicized FBI and Justice Department abused the law to put surveillance on a former Trump campaign aide to advance an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Lost in the noise are some of the fundamentals about the surveillance law. FISA has several parts, but the one at issue now is the least controversial. Title I of FISA governs intercepts of phone calls and emails, and it requires a detailed paper trail, with evidence presented to a federal judge that is first reviewed at several levels of the Justice Department.
Who cares if President Trump misleads the media? Apparently Mueller does.
It was reported that special counsel Robert Mueller's team is interested in President Donald Trump's role in drafting a misleading statement to the New York Times in the summer, about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that involved Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. Mueller's team already has questioned several White House officials about the statement and that “some lawyers and witnesses who have sat in or been briefed on the interviews have puzzled over Mueller's interest in the episode. Lying to federal investigators is a crime; lying to the news media is not.” The special counsel's focus on a statement to the press is indeed striking. A special counsel looking into possible obstruction would naturally want to question President Trump about firing the man who was investigating the Trump campaign. But how does misleading the media fit into an obstruction probe? Misleading the media, on its face, would not be of interest to Mueller. But a false statement to the press that might indicate a coverup certainly could be.
As Strongmen Steamroll Their Opponents, US Is Silent
Across the world, autocratic leaders are engaging in increasingly brazen behavior — rigging votes, muzzling the press and persecuting opponents — as they dispense with even a fig leaf of democratic practice once offered to placate the United States or gain international legitimacy. They know they run little risk of rebuke from an American president who has largely abandoned the promotion of human rights and democracy in favor of his narrow “America First” agenda. President Donald Trump has barely paid lip service to the promotion of universal human rights, and experts say his warm embrace of hard-line leaders like President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, whose antidrug drive has killed thousands of his own citizens without due process, has only encouraged their worst excesses.
President Trump says his State of the Union viewership was the highest ever. The ratings say otherwise.
President Donald Trump boasted that the viewership of his State of the Union speech was “the highest number in history” — a claim at odds with ratings figures released the day before. In a Feb 1 tweet, President Trump said, "Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network, for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart! " That number matched a figure released by Nielsen based on viewership on 12 broadcast networks and cable channels. But the audience was smaller than the 48 million who watched Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in 2017 and smaller than several speeches delivered by recent predecessors. Barack Obama's joint session speech in 2009 drew 52 million viewers; George W. Bush's State of the Union address in 2003 drew 62 million viewers; and Bill Clinton's joint session speech in 1993 drew 67 million viewers. (A newly elected president's first address to a joint session of Congress is not considered a State of the Union speech.) A White House official, who was not authorized to speak for the president and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that President Trump intended to say that the cable ratings for his speech were the highest ever.
Get to know the city of Detroit's propaganda arm
Early in Jan, in the days after Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said he'd be moving forward with a plan to require thousands of Detroit businesses to buy into a costly surveillance program intended to reduce crime, a sponsored post that looked favorably upon the program appeared at the top of our Facebook timeline. The linked content — "Inside the Real Time Crime Center, DPD's 24-hour monitoring station" — had all of the trappings of a news story. There was a headline, a byline, a mix of quotes and information. It was published at a site called "theneighborhoods.org," suggesting it may have been the work of a community news nonprofit. But the story was not journalism. It was written by the Detroit city government — more specifically, its "Storytelling" department. The department created by Mayor Duggan in 2017 is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation. Staffed by six people, some of them former journalists, its primary objective is to populate a website and cable channel called "The Neighborhoods," which launched as Mayor Duggan was in the midst of a re-election effort that hinged on his ability to thwart perceptions he'd let the city's neighborhoods languish during his first term. The company line at the time was that the site would "give Detroiters and their neighborhoods a stronger voice," filling a void department head and "chief storyteller" Aaron Foley claimed traditional media hadn't.
Judge should order Missouri Gov to stop using ephemeral messaging app, lawyers say
Two Missouri lawyers have sued the Missouri governor’s office over its use of Confide, an ephemeral messaging mobile app, which they say is in violation of state public records law. The two men are set to appear before a county judge on Feb 2 to ask for a temporary restraining order that would bar current and future use of such apps by the governor and his staff. Lawyers representing Gov Eric Greitens (R-MO) say that such a move is unwarranted. Confide, like Signal and other popular encrypted-messaging apps, auto-deletes messages after a certain period of time, making automated record-keeping of those messages very difficult, if not impossible. Use of such apps by public employees for official business is almost certain to run afoul of transparency laws. This Missouri suit, Sansone v. Greitens, appears to be one of the first, if not the first such lawsuit involving a state-level government agency and its alleged use of such a messaging system.
FCC Announces Tentative Agenda For February 2018 Open Meeting
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the February Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, February 22, 2018.
- Spectrum Horizons – The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that seeks comment on proposed rules that would apply to spectrum above 95 GHz for licensed services, unlicensed operations, and a new class of experimental licenses. (ET Docket No. 18- 21; RM-11713; WT Docket No. 15-245; RM-11795)
- Encouraging the Provision of New Technologies and Services – The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to provide guidelines and procedures to implement section 7 of the Communications Act, as amended, to improve Commission processes to promote the provision of new technologies and services to the public. (GN Docket No. 18-22)
- Mobility Fund Phase II Second Order on Reconsideration – The Commission will consider an Order addressing the remaining issues raised by parties in petitions for reconsideration of the Mobility Fund Phase II Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. (WC Docket No. 10-90; WT Docket No. 10-208)
- Broadcast EEO Mid-Term Reports – The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that proposes to eliminate the requirement in Section 73.2080(f)(2) of the Commission’s rules that certain broadcast television and radio stations file the Broadcast MidTerm Report (Form 397). (MB Docket Nos. 18-23; 17-105)
- Maintenance of Copies of FCC Rules – The Commission will consider a Report and Order that would eliminate specific Part 74, 76, and 78 rules that require certain broadcast and cable entities to maintain paper copies of Commission rules, while retaining provisions that require the subject entities to be familiar with the rules governing their operations. (MB Docket Nos. 17-231; 17-105)
- Part 64 Provision of Payphone Service – The Commission will consider a Report and Order to (1) eliminate all payphone call tracking system audit and associated reporting requirements, (2) permit a company official, including but not limited to the chief financial officer, to certify that a completing carrier’s quarterly compensation payments are accurate and complete, and (3) eliminate expired payphone compensation rules. (WC Docket Nos. 17-141; 16-132; CC Docket No. 96-128)
Innovation Month at the FCC
Feb 2 is Groundhog Day. Fittingly, I’m announcing an agenda for the Federal Communications Commission’s February meeting that revisits some familiar themes from the past year: modernizing outdated rules, closing the digital divide, and most significantly, promoting innovation. Topping the agenda for Innovation Month will be a proposal to unleash new wireless services and technologies in frequencies above 95 GHz. Traditionally, these airwaves haven’t been viewed as well-suited for communications services. But recent advancements in propagation technology have changed the equation and expanded the boundary of usable spectrum. As a result, these very high-band frequencies are today’s spectrum horizons. Additionally, the FCC is set to take another step forward in our work to close the digital divide. In 2017, the Commission created a plan to invest $4.5 billion over the next 10 years to expand 4G LTE service to areas that don’t have it. The Commission then received petitions for reconsideration for certain aspects of that Mobility Fund II Report & Order. In three weeks, the Commission will vote on an item to resolve those aspects of the petitions that haven’t yet been addressed. Resolving these questions would move us closer to the start of the Mobility Fund II reverse auction, and eventually the end of dead spots in rural America where wireless coverage simply isn’t available. [FCC Chairman Pai]
Did Some Consensus Break Out at a House Broadband Hearing?
On Tuesday, January 30, the House Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology convened a hearing on broadband deployment in the US entitled Closing the Digital Divide: Broadband Infrastructure Solutions. The aim of the hearing was to discuss twenty-five resolutions and bills that address federal permitting, siting, and permissions to access rights-of-way, which some stakeholders identify as barriers to investment and broadband infrastructure deployment. True to recent form in DC, there were contentious moments at the start of the event. But, as naïve as this sounds, there were glimmers of consensus in the discussion as well.
Statehouses are the new arena in the battle for net neutrality
A consortium of public interest groups including Free Press report that at least 14 states have signed or introduced orders and bills seeking to enforce network neutrality, while seven states are considering them. Their first tactic has been to block Internet serivce providers wishing to do business with state governments. The governors of New York and Montana signed such executive orders this month blocking any ISPs that don’t meet net neutrality principles from publicly-funded contracts. Legislators in statehouses are drafting similar rules. This requirement will prove to be an enormous deterrent in states like California where ISPs have millions of dollars in state contracts at stake. In smaller states, there’s far less leverage. A second approach is recreating much of the FCC’s net neutrality requirements at the state level. Ryan Singel, a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, believes that legislation may survive judicial scrutiny, and the political prospects for defending the ruling are dim. “The sheer number of efforts across the states and across party lines goes to show how badly ISPs and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai misplayed their hands by ramming through a total repeal of net neutrality protections without regard to public or expert input,” he wrote. “It’s likely a preview of net neutrality being a prominent issue in the 2018 mid-terms and beyond.”
California’s Senate Misfires on Network Neutrality, Ignores Viable Options
The California Senate approved legislation that would require Internet service providers (ISPs) in California to follow the now-repealed 2015 Open Internet Order. While well-intentioned, the legislators sadly chose an approach that is vulnerable to legal attack. States are constrained because federal policy can override, or “pre-empt,” state regulation in many circumstances. State law that doesn’t take this into account can be invalidated by the federal law. It’s a waste to pass a bill that is vulnerable to legal challenge by ISPs when strong alternatives are available. In a letter to the California Senate, EFF provided legal analysis explaining how the state can promote network neutrality in a legally sustainable way. Unfortunately, SB 460, the legislation approved by the California Senate, is lacking many of the things EFF’s letter addressed.
San Francisco Asks Vendors for Citywide Broadband Proposals, Mandates Net Neutrality
San Francisco’s (CA) attempt to bring affordable, high-speed Internet service to every home and business in the city is set to take a major step forward Jan 31 as city officials begin choosing private-sector partners to build the network at the lowest possible cost. After three years of deciding what a city-owned fiber-optic Internet network would look like, the Department of Technology will invite Internet providers, telecommunication experts, financial firms and other players to submit plans for constructing and operating the network. The network would be owned by the city but built and managed as a public-private partnership — an arrangement that allows the city to blunt some of the costs and risks of creating a brand-new utility. The city would maintain significant control over the price consumers would pay if they sign up for the service. The city will winnow down the responses it receives to three teams, from which it will select a plan. The city has mandated that its partner adhere to the principles of network neutrality. The city is also requiring subsidies for low-income residents, along with privacy protections for customers’ data. Overall the project, which has been spearheaded by Mayor Mark Farrell, is expected to cost between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion, but that figure could come down, depending on how it is financed. The project would make San Francisco by far the largest city in the country to operate a high-speed municipal Internet service.
Sen John Kennedy Could Be the Internet's Hero
As Congress considers a measure that would overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s vote that destroyed Network Neutrality and put the internet’s entire future at risk, all eyes are on Sen John Kennedy (R-LA). Right now that measure has 50 supporters in the Senate — and needs just one more vote to pass. Sen Kennedy has been telling the press that he’s “honestly undecided” and that it’s a “very, very close call.” Activists and advocates have been cheering the senator on, calling on him to be a hero and stand up for his constituents and the open internet. The week of Jan 29, activists showed up at the senator’s offices in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, New Orleans and Shreveport to deliver more than 6,000 petition signatures from constituents urging Kennedy to back the resolution of disapproval to reverse the FCC’s bad decision.
America's Digital Infrastructure Is Crumbling, Too
[Commentary] In Jan 30's State of the Union message, President Donald Trump called on Congress to allocate at least $1.5 trillion for "the infrastructure investment we need." Much of the conversation relates to people's most tangible perception of infrastructure: roads, rails and bridges. The media rightly give us increasingly frequent images of derailed train cars, collapsed trestles, cracked stanchions and crumbling bridges. But in the 21st century, infrastructure is more than concrete and metal. Equally important is the digital infrastructure that underlies America’s economy and governments. In an era when goods, services and ideas are increasingly transported via the internet, the strands of fiber, routers, servers and seemingly endless lines of code that compose our digital highways and hubs are quickly becoming the backbone of U.S. infrastructure -- and it too is crumbling. Perhaps nowhere is the U.S. greater need of information technology improvements than in government. The first priority should be reversing, or at least stanching, the technological brain drain and inverted demographic model across the public sector. Culture, not technology, is the greatest barrier to modernizing the public sector’s technology.
The rural connection
[Commentary] Rural America now has an opportunity to work with, and add to, the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network, FirstNet. A recent study in Arizona showed a number of businesses would relocate to rural areas with sufficient workforces if the areas weren’t lacking broadband coverage. It has also been reported by Connect America, a group under the direction of the federal government, that areas that deploy broadband services are more likely to keep businesses already located in their area. Understand that even with the FirstNet mandate to provide coverage for rural public safety agencies, there are still many rural areas where the network will not be able to provide adequate coverage simply because of the economics involved. However, the combination of FirstNet, fiber, and microwave circuits penetrating rural areas leads to the possibility of expanding FirstNet coverage not only for public safety but for use by businesses and citizens living and working in rural areas. Local leadership in states, cities, counties, small towns, and villages, as well as tribal areas, have a great opportunity to join forces with FirstNet and to use the network as the lynchpin of a much broader initiative to drive broadband in rural America. It takes hard work and an understanding of what pieces and parts need to be put into place to help further the goal of providing rural broadband. [Andrew Seybold is the CEO of Andrew Seybold, Inc., a consulting, and educational firm serving the wireless community and its customers since 1991.]
Is Faster Better? Quantifying the Relationship Between Broadband Speed and Economic Growth
In this bulletin, I aim to quantify the relationship between higher broadband speeds (10 Mbps versus 25 Mbps) and the growth rates in important economic outcomes in U.S. counties including jobs, personal income, and labor earnings. Doing so exposes the potential for severe selection bias in studies of broadband’s economic impact, which is addressed in this study using Coarsened Exact Matching. Once balanced, the data reveal no economic payoff from the 15 Mbps speed difference between the years 2013 and 2015. I also revisit the Crandall, Lehr and Litan (2007) study on broadband’s effect on employment to evaluate the possible impacts of selection bias, and conclude that the positive benefits of broadband reported in that particular study are likely spurious. The selection bias problem may infect other studies on the economic impacts of broadband Internet services. Do counties with mostly 25 Mbps broadband connections fare better economically than counties with mostly 10 Mbps broadband connections? I find no evidence of such an effect here, at least with respect to the growth in jobs, personal income, or labor earnings between 2013 and 2015.
CenturyLink says FCC should maintain 3.5 GHz PALs to ease rural broadband deployments
As CenturyLink looks to continue its broadband expansion efforts in harder to build rural areas using a mix of wireline and wireless technologies, the service provider says the Federl Communications Commission should not alter the rules governing the Priority Access Licenses (PALs) that will be issued in the 3.5 GHz band. CenturyLink, which asked the FCC for permission last fall to test 3.4 GHz wireless spectrum in some of its rural markets, told the FCC that the “use of PEAs as the geographic license area for PALs will inhibit higher-speed broadband deployment in rural areas.”
Internet providers pitch municipal broadband partnerships to Loveland (CO) City Council (Digital First Media)
CBS and Viacom, After 12 Years Apart, Again Explore Deal to Recombine
The boards of CBS and Viacom have formed special committees to evaluate a potential merger, a deal that would reunite the two big pieces of the Redstone family’s media empire. Shari Redstone, vice chairman of both companies, is pushing for a merger. She, along with her 94 year-old father, Sumner Redstone, controls CBS and Viacom, with a roughly 80% controlling stake in each company through their holding company National Amusements. Shari Redstone believes both companies need greater scale to better compete against bigger rivals.
We Need To Shine A Light On Private Online Censorship
[Commentary] In the wake of ongoing concerns about online harassment and harmful content, continued terrorist threats, changing hate speech laws, and the ever-growing user bases of major social media platforms, tech companies are under more pressure than ever before with respect to how they treat content on their platforms—and often that pressure is coming from different directions. There is a clear need for hard data about specific company practices and policies on content moderation, but what does that look like?Part of the answer to these questions can be found by looking to the growing field of transparency reporting by internet companies. Unquestionably, the major platforms have become our biggest online gatekeepers when it comes to what we can and cannot say. Whether we want them to have that power or not, and whether we want them to use more or less of that power in regard to this or that type of speech, are questions we simply cannot answer until we have a complete picture of how they are using that power. Transparency reporting is our first and best tool for gaining that insight. [Kevin Bankston is the Director of the Open Technology Institute at New America. Liz Woolery is Senior Policy Analyst at the Open Technology Institute at New America.]
Facebook's Future Rests on Knowing You Even Better
Less time spent on Facebook could deal a huge blow to Facebook’s once-ironclad business. But the company has a plan to counteract that: It is raising its prices. A lot. Even as Facebook reported that users collectively spent 50 million fewer hours a day on the network in the fourth quarter, revenue during that period increased 47 percent to $13 billion. Facebook pulled this off by boosting the average price per ad by 43 percent. Unfortunately for users, mining our personal data to better sell us stuff is the future of Facebook’s business. Over the years, Facebook has managed to rise above criticism over privacy and transparency by pointing to settings that purport to give users control over what they share and with whom. But those settings are complex and not well understood by users. Further, Facebook does not give users full control over their data.
Facebook wants its users to drive out fake news. Here’s the problem with that.
[Commentary] Mark Zuckerberg announced recently that Facebook plans to ask its community to help rate news producers’ credibility. Randomly selected users will be asked whether they are familiar with an outlet, and if so, invited to judge its trustworthiness. The ratio that results — of those who know the source, the proportion that trusts it — will “inform ranking in the News Feed” (though Facebook has remained vague about its relevance compared with other metrics). Rather than relying on expert judgment or hiring his staff to make those assessments, Zuckerberg has concluded that crowdsourcing is the “most objective” way to ensure “high quality” news on the platform. But the reliability of this “trusted sources” measure is dubious, for two reasons. First, people in superficial surveys of this kind often indicate trust in fake sources that have familiar and vaguely credible names. Second, partisan Facebook users with a high interest in promoting “their” media could bias the results. [Bernhard Clemm is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute, Florence.]
The pharmaceutical industry is no stranger to fake news
Cuba hands note of protest to U.S. over internet task force
Cuba handed a note of protest to the top U.S. diplomat in Havana on Jan 31 over the Trump administration’s creation of a Cuba Internet Task Force that it said was an attempt to violate its sovereignty and carry out subversive activities. The U.S. State Department said recently it was convening the task force to promote “the free and unregulated flow of information” on the Communist-run island that has one of the lowest internet penetration rates in the world. The group would examine ways of “expanding internet access and independent media”, it said. “The Foreign Ministry’s note asked the U.S. government to cease its subversive, interventionist and illegal actions against Cuba... and calls upon it to respect Cuban sovereignty,” the ministry said. The ministry had handed the note to Lawrence Gumbiner, the acting charge d‘affaires of the U.S. embassy in Havana. The news came the day after U.S. Republican President Donald Trump underscored his administration’s sanctions on what he called the “communist and socialist dictatorships of Cuba and Venezuela” in his State of the Union address.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) -- we welcome your comments.
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