Daily Digest 5/24/2018 (Rob Portman)

Democratic voters are receptive to the party’s efforts to use the network neutrality debate as a way to energize the base heading into the November midterms, according to Morning Consult/Politico polling. The most recent survey — conducted May 17-19 among 1,990 registered voters nationwide — found that 59 percent of Democratic respondents said a candidate’s support for the net neutrality rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015 was somewhat or very important when deciding whom to vote for in the midterms, compared to 51 percent of respondents overall. Among self-identified liberals, 66 percent said that support was an important factor, compared with 42 percent of conservatives who said the same. 

[Speech] What is the Federal Communications Commission doing to help seize the opportunities of next-generation wireless networks? I strongly believe that the market, not government, should drive innovation and investment in the wireless sector. But the FCC has a role to play in promoting competition by maximizing carriers’ willingness and ability to invest in their networks, making it easier to deploy the physical infrastructure necessary for networks to function, and freeing up spectrum for wireless services. I’ve got some good news to report on the mid-band front. In 2017, the FCC agreed to explore repurposing more mid-band spectrum, including the 3.7 to 4.2 GHz band, commonly called the “C band.” We have done a lot of work on this issue in the time since—enough so that I’m pleased to announce that at the FCC’s July meeting, I intend to put up for a vote a proposal to make more intensive use of that 500 MHz of spectrum, including seeking additional input on making it available for commercial terrestrial use.

[Op-ed] Even as wireless carriers are already rolling out 5G trials across the US, to keep pace with activity happening internationally and bring this transformative network to fruition in a timely fashion, policymakers must make a few more key moves. First, states and municipalities must streamline policies to infrastructure deployment. Next, and equally important, is that the federal government – namely, the Federal Communications Commission – must do its part as well. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has led the way on streamlining policies regarding infrastructure at the federal level; however, physical infrastructure is only one-half of the solution.  Invisible infrastructure is equally important, and the FCC could be doing more to unlock the spectrum resources needed to power the next generation of mobile connectivity. Our leaders have the right ideas, but if we hope to capture the gold medal in the race to 5G, we must move quickly and act now on mid-band spectrum.

[Roslyn Layton is a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and served on the President-Elect Donal Trump Transition Team for the FCC in 2016-2017]

A group of journalists protesting outside the offices of a New York City hedge fund recently shined a light on a little-known fact about the state of the local American newspaper: Behind the scenes, financial firms often hold all the cards. Investors like Alden Global Capital LLC and Fortress Investment Group LLC have acquired ownership stakes in newspapers that have struggled to adapt in an online world, from the Denver Post to the Providence Journal. Funds have brought their cost-cutting know-how to help restructure several newspaper chains in heavy debt after the 2008 financial crisis. But the evolving ownership picture has sparked fresh questions over whether investment firms can really help save local newspapers by making them profitable again -- or if they’ll starve them to the point that they collapse instead. "They’re not reinvesting in the business,” Ken Doctor, a longtime newspaper analyst and president of the website Newsonomics, said about Alden Global. “It’s dying and they are going to make every dollar they can on the way down.”

Comcast plans to outbid Disney for Fox’s movie and TV studios, its cable networks and its stake in Hulu, as Comcast announced today it’s in “advanced stages of preparing an offer.” Murdoch, who heads Fox, already turned down a proposal from Comcast late last year in favor of Disney, despite Comcast’s bid that was 16 percent higher.  Now that it’s out in the open, a bidding war is sure to ensue, and Comcast and Disney will offer their respective spins. Here’s what to expect:

From Comcast: Simple; We’re paying more. Comcast has already secured financing for at least $60 billion in cash, apparently. That compares to Disney’s offer of $52.4 billion, which comes as Disney stock. 

From Disney / Fox: This deal is better because of certainty that it will close. A bigger offer from Comcast isn’t useful if Comcast can’t get the deal done.

Seattle (WA) levied an annual tax of about $50 million on big companies recently to help solve the city's homeless problem. The tax was watered down from the original proposal but it was controversial and pitted the city against its most powerful corporate resident, Amazon.com. Now the action moves to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. The CA cities of San Francisco, Mountain View, Cupertino and East Palo Alto are all considering similar taxes on large local employers (read: tech companies) to offset growing inequality and overcrowding they blame on the industry that turned them into boomtowns. The optics don't favor Big Tech. Seattle’s tax measure passed the city council unanimously. In the Democratic enclaves of Northern California, meanwhile, office-holders say the corporate tax cuts enacted in 2017 by a Republican-controlled Congress make cash-flush technology companies an appealing target. Alphabet Inc.’s tax bill alone dropped by almost $1 billion in the first quarter thanks to the tax law championed by President Trump

[Commentary] In a few days, the nations of the European Union take the first step to establish a New Digital World Order when the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect on May 25. For the first time, government has stepped in on a comprehensive basis to oversee the unregulated collection of personal information through the internet. Unfortunately, it is not the United States of America that is leading the world in protecting personal rights. Instead, the Old World is leading the New World.

Two over-arching principles should frame the debate about the privacy of Americans. First, personal data is the consumer’s property, parting with that property must be an opt-in decision. Second, privacy should be a forethought rather than an afterthought in the design of digital services.

[Tom Wheeler served as the 31st Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013-2017]

Police departments pay Amazon to use facial-recognition technology the company says can “identify persons of interest against a collection of millions of faces in real-time.”  More than two dozen nonprofits wrote to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to ask that he stop selling the technology to police, after the ACLU of Northern California revealed documents to shine light on the sales. The letter argues that the technology will inevitably be misused, accusing the company of providing “a powerful surveillance system readily available to violate rights and target communities of color.” The revelation highlights a key question: What laws or regulations govern police use of the facial-recognition technology? The answer: more or less none. State and federal laws generally leave police departments free to do things like search video or images collected from public cameras for particular faces, for example. Cities and local departments can set their own policies and guidelines, but even some early adopters of the technology haven’t done so. “This is a perfect example of technology outpacing the law,” says Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “There are no rules.”

Hackers possibly working for an advanced nation have infected more than 500,000 home and small-office routers around the world with malware that can be used to collect communications, launch attacks on others, and permanently destroy the devices with a single command, researchers at Cisco warned. VPNFilter—as the modular, multi-stage malware has been dubbed—works on consumer-grade routers made by Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear, TP-Link, and on network-attached storage devices from QNAP, Cisco researchers said. It’s one of the few pieces of Internet-of-things malware that can survive a reboot. Infections in at least 54 countries have been slowly building since at least 2016, and Cisco researchers have been monitoring them for several months. The attacks drastically ramped up during the past three weeks, including two major assaults on devices located in Ukraine. The spike, combined with the advanced capabilities of the malware, prompted Cisco to release Wednesday’s report before the research is completed

Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, ripped the news media for what he described as irresponsible reporting and suggested he would launch a website to assess the legitimacy of individual journalists and news organizations. Musk unleashed a barrage of criticism aimed at reporters, saying they are "sanctimonious," have "earned this mistrust" and are kowtowing to the business interests of their publications.

It wasn't immediately clear whether any specific news report triggered the rant, which totaled at least 19 tweets. "Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication," Musk said. "Thinking of calling it Pravda …"

Musk swiftly dismissed suggestions that he's veering into territory occupied by President Trump, who has similarly blasted the news media for reporting he dislikes. "Thought you’d say that," he said in response to one reporter who made the comparison. "Anytime anyone criticizes the media, the media shrieks 'You’re just like Trump!' Why do you think he got elected in the first place? Because no ones believes you anymore. You lost your credibility a long time ago."

President Donald Trump's decision to block his Twitter followers for their political views is a violation of the First Amendment, a federal judge ruled May 23, saying that President Trump's effort to silence his critics is not permissible under the US Constitution because the digital space in which he engages with constituents is a public forum. The ruling rejects administration arguments that the First Amendment does not apply to President Trump in this case because he was acting as a private individual. In a 75-page decision, Judge Naomi Buchwald said President Trump, as a federal official, is not exempt from constitutional obligations to guard against "viewpoint discrimination." "No government official — including the President — is above the law," wrote Judge Buchwald.

In a victory for court access advocates, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit will start live -streaming oral arguments beginning with the 2018-2019 term. That is according to Chief Judge Merrick Garland, who said May 23 that the court had voted to live -stream all arguments, except those dealing with classified or sealed matters. The D.C. circuit has primary jurisdiction over government agency decision challenges, including the FCC's. It is the court that will hear oral argument in the challenge to the FCC's network-neutrality rules and is currently considering whether to overturn the FCC's UHF discount decision. The new streaming policy will take effect Sept. 5.

The 13 Democratic Reps on the House Communications Subcommittee accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai of trying to evade congressional oversight of his agency. The Reps sent a letter to Chairman Pai calling him out for failing to respond to oversight letters or fully answering questions during congressional testimony. “While we appreciate your continued willingness to testify before our Committee, we are concerned that you have been unable to give complete responses to verbal questions, questions for the record or oversight letters from our members,” the Reps wrote. “We take our oversight responsibilities very seriously, and we expect witnesses before the Committee and recipients of our letters to treat their responses the same way.” The members also attached 26 letters they’ve sent to which they say the agency hasn't fully responded. They asked Chairman Pai to respond with written answers by June 4. “We have already responded to twenty-one of the letters in question and look forward to responding to the remaining few in the near future,” FCC spokesman Brian Hart said in a statement.