Daily Digest 2/5/2018 (Hey, Philadelphia, do you feel alright?)

[Commentary] I voted to release the Nunes memo because I believe that the duty to inform the American public is one of my biggest responsibilities as an elected representative in our democratic republic. This is in accordance with the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, which directed House and Senate committees to “exercise continuous watchfulness” over executive-branch programs. Furthermore, according to rules of the House, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on which I serve, may disclose publicly any information in its possession after a determination by the committee that the public interest would be served by such disclosure. All Americans should understand the implications of the actions taken by the leaders of our federal law enforcement agencies and their impact on our citizenry. I understand the FBI and Justice Department’s unprecedented public denunciation of the potential publication of the memo, because they don’t want to see a precedent set by which Congress firmly exercises its informing function. But it is the right of our citizens to demand that they are kept informed by the men and women they send to Washington, especially during troubling and contentious times. My vote to release this memo did exactly that. [Rep Will Hurd (R-TX) is a member of the House Intelligence Committee]

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) says Congress late last year received “extraordinarily important new documents” in its investigation of President Donald Trump and his campaign’s possible collusion with the 2016 Russian election hacking, opening up significant new lines of inquiry in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe of the president. The committee's ranking member says “end-of-the-year document dumps” produced “very significant” revelations that “opened a lot of new questions” that Senate investigators are now looking into, meaning the inquiry into President Trump and the Russia hacking—already nearly a year old—will not be finished for months longer. “We’ve had new information that raises more questions,” said Sen. Warner. He also warned about a “coordinated” attack by the president and “Trump zealots” in the House of Representatives to undermine the legitimacy of the investigations against him, an effort Sen Warner says includes the president’s threats to fire special counsel Robert Mueller and other officials as well as a secret Republican memo alleging “shocking” FBI surveillance abuse against President Trump. Sen. Warner calls out House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), in arguably more explicit terms than any Democrat has yet, saying he has read the underlying classified material used in the memo and that Rep. Nunes misrepresented it as part of a McCarthyite “secret Star Chamber” effort to discredit the FBI probe of the president.

House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) isn’t joining fellow rural state lawmakers in pushing for dedicated funding for broadband in the infrastructure package. She wants to focus on bills to streamline permitting and clear away regulations impeding new networks, and attach them to the infrastructure legislation. “I want to see how much bipartisan support we can end up building for simplifying this process,” she said. Full House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) agreed: “Sometimes it’s more than just the money,” he said, arguing that FCC subsidies already provide billions of dollars for broadband and that the private sector is doing just fine. But small telecoms from Blackburn’s home state say simply cutting red tape isn’t enough to close the urban-rural digital divide. “Money drives the network,” said Levoy Knowles, executive director of the Tennessee Telecommunications Association, citing estimates that the state needs well over $1 billion for broadband. “There has to be some dedicated money to close the gap.”

[Commentary] AT&T has decided it’s good business to advocate for an “Internet Bill of Rights.” Of course, that catchy name doesn’t in any way mean that what AT&T wants is a codified list of rights for Internet users. No, what AT&T wants is to keep a firm hold on the gains it has made in the last year at the expense of its customers’ rights. There is nothing in the history—the very recent history—of AT&T to make anyone believe that it has anyone’s actual best interests at heart. Let’s take a look at how this company has traditionally felt about privacy and network neutrality.

• Few companies have done more to combat privacy and network neutrality than AT&T.

• AT&T’s Fight Against Privacy

• AT&T’s Fight Against Network Neutrality

Disrupting traffic has long been a way for protesters to call attention to a cause. But when the cause itself is speed—in this case, Internet speed—the move takes on an extra level of defiance. That’s what one cyclist made clear when he used his bike to protest the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC voted in December to end Obama-era rules for Internet service providers. By doing away with so-called net neutrality, critics say, the agency opened the door to broadband companies blocking access to certain websites or slowing down Internet speeds unless users pay a fee—a process known as “throttling.” Rob Bliss, a video director for the website Seriously.TV, was upset with the FCC’s decision. So he grabbed a bike and headed to Washington, DC, to do some throttling of his own. [see video at the link below]

The Federal Communications Commission has levied a record fine against two farmworker radio stations in California and Arizona for overstepping restrictions against commercial advertising. The Cesar Chavez Foundation, a nonprofit social service affiliate of the United Farm Workers union, agreed to a $115,000 fine and a one-year moratorium on new underwriting from for-profit sponsors on the two stations. The stations — KUFW-FM (90.5) in Woodlake (CA) and KNAI-FM (88.3) in Phoenix — strayed from rules that allow educational stations to acknowledge underwriters without making "commercial" pitches for them, the FCC found. Those violations, from August 2016 to March 2017, involved promotional announcements that implicitly compared an underwriter's business with competitors', provided information about valuation and discounts, and urged listeners to contact a business. Examples included assuring listeners they could "trust" one car dealership, and listing services and products of specific cellphone companies, according to the FCC. And at 30 to 60 seconds, the announcements were too long, the agency said. Such violations "threaten to upset the reasonable balance between the financial needs of noncommercial educational stations and their obligation to provide an essentially noncommercial service," the FCC said.

The practice of printing hard-copies of the “FCC Record” should be eliminated. To be crystal clear, I am not suggesting that we keep its contents or information from the public.  On the contrary, I suggest that it makes little sense to continue to publish paper copies when other mechanisms are more consumer friendly, cost-efficient, and easier to access.  Instead, the Commission should make its documents centrally located and easier to find for interested parties electronically, making paper copies of the Record unnecessary on a going forward basis.  If Encyclopedia Britannica could eliminate paper versions of their works in 2012, why can’t the FCC do the same for its paper copies in 2018? .... Ultimately, replacing paper copies of the FCC Record with an electronic version would save scarce federal funding, be more accessible for interested parties, and result in less paper waste.  That seems worth the limited effort needed to make it a reality. [FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly]

A group of Silicon Valley technologists who were early employees at Facebook and Google, alarmed over the ill effects of social networks and smartphones, are banding together to challenge the companies they helped build. The cohort is creating a union of concerned experts called the Center for Humane Technology. Along with the nonprofit media watchdog group Common Sense Media, it also plans an anti-tech addiction lobbying effort and an ad campaign at 55,000 public schools in the United States. The campaign, titled The Truth About Tech, will be funded with $7 million from Common Sense and capital raised by the Center for Humane Technology. Common Sense also has $50 million in donated media and airtime from partners including Comcast and DirecTV. It will be aimed at educating students, parents and teachers about the dangers of technology, including the depression that can come from heavy use of social media.