Daily Digest 8/30/2018 (Communications and Democracy)

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Table of Contents

Communications and Democracy

Iran-based political influence operation - bigger, persistent, global  |  Read below  |  Jack Stubbs, Christopher Bing  |  Reuters
President Trump Claims Without Evidence That China Hacked Clinton Email Server  |  Read below  |  James Doubek  |  National Public Radio
  • FBI refutes Trump claim that Clinton’s private email server was hacked by China  |  Ars Technica
President Trump blasts CNN over anonymous sourcing in Cohen report  |  Read below  |  Stephanie Murray  |  Politico
  • Carl Bernstein, journalist of Watergate fame, faces questions about a blockbuster Trump piece  |  Washington Post
  • Reporters fire back at President Trump for ripping ‘anonymous sources’  |  Hill, The
President Trump unblocks more Twitter users after US court ruling  |  Read below  |  David Shepardson  |  Reuters
President Trump shares video accusing Google of not promoting his State of the Union addresses  |  Read below  |  Brett Samuels  |  Hill, The
  • President Trump says Google ignored his State of the Union address; Google disagrees  |  USA Today
  • Trump’s latest misleading attack on Google, explained  |  Vox
How President Trump could hurt Google  |  Read below  |  Nancy Scola, Ashley Gold  |  Politico
  • Opinion: I wrote the article about media bias in Google searches. Regulation isn’t the answer.  |  Washington Post
  • Kara Swisher: Trump’s Ludicrous Attack on Big Tech -- Idea Google and Twitter are rigging their platforms against him is false  |  New York Times
  • Casey Newton: The president’s attacks on social media are incoherent and depressing  |  Vox
  • Republican fury about ‘bias’ on the internet is just a distraction, ThinkProgress founder Judd Legum says  |  Vox
  • President Trump keeps threatening tech companies, but he’s terrible at following through  |  Vox
ProPublica's User’s Guide to Democracy  |  ProPublica

Platforms

World's Leading Human Rights Groups Tell Google to Cancel Its China Censorship Plan  |  Intercept, The
Swedish study notes surge in automated Twitter accounts  |  Associated Press

Broadband/Internet

False Alarm: Verizon’s Fire Department Customer Service Fail Has Nothing to Do with Net Neutrality  |  Read below  |  Berin Szoka  |  Op-Ed  |  Medium
Telecom-backed group defends anti-net neutrality robocalls to seniors  |  Vox
FCC focusing on rural broadband  |  Read below  |  Anna Wiernicki  |  Nexstar Broadcasting
Here are the top 100 winners of the FCC’s $1.5B CAF II auction  |  Fierce
Co-ops offer path to expanding high-speed options in rural Wisconsin  |  Wisconsin Gazette

Privacy

The Fight Over California's Privacy Bill Has Only Just Begun  |  Read below  |  Issie Lapowsky  |  Wired
How smart TVs are getting quite smart about you  |  Fast Company

Ownership

Sinclair Broadcast Group files countersuit against Tribune Media over failed merger  |  Read below  |  Brian Fung  |  Washington Post
American Cable Association: Gray-Raycom Combination Would Increase Broadcast TV Ownership Consolidation 'Considerably'  |  Broadcasting&Cable
Amazon pushes back against Sen Sanders' attacks on how the company treats its workers  |  Hill, The

Policymakers

Coalition Urges Prompt Consideration of Nominees to Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board  |  New America
Congressional Innovation Fellowship Applications Open Through 9/9  |  TechCongress

Company News

AT&T looking to buy more spectrum for 5G  |  Fierce
Netflix’s Latest Price Hike May Have Scared Away Low-Income Consumers  |  Variety

Stories from Abroad

International Trade Commission overturns Trump tariffs on Canadian newsprint  |  Hill, The
Today's Top Stories

Communications and Democracy

Iran-based political influence operation - bigger, persistent, global

Jack Stubbs, Christopher Bing  |  Reuters

An apparent Iranian influence operation targeting internet users worldwide is significantly bigger than previously identified, encompassing a sprawling network of anonymous websites and social media accounts in 11 different languages. Facebook and other companies recently said that multiple social media accounts and websites were part of an Iranian project to covertly influence public opinion in other countries. A Reuters analysis has identified 10 more sites and dozens of social media accounts across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. US-based cyber security firm FireEye Inc and Israeli firm ClearSky reviewed Reuters’ findings and said technical indicators showed the web of newly-identified sites and social media accounts - called the International Union of Virtual Media, or IUVM - was a piece of the same campaign, parts of which were taken down the week of Aug 20 by Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet. IUVM pushes content from Iranian state media and other outlets aligned with the government in Tehran across the internet, often obscuring the original source of the information such as Iran’s PressTV, FARS news agency and al-Manar TV run by the Iran-backed Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah. The extended network of disinformation highlights how multiple state-affiliated groups are exploiting social media to manipulate users and further their geopolitical agendas, and how difficult it is for tech companies to guard against political interference on their platforms.

President Trump Claims Without Evidence That China Hacked Clinton Email Server

James Doubek  |  National Public Radio

President Donald Trump tweeted that China was behind a hack of Hillary Clinton's emails, in an apparent reference to an article published by the conservative Daily Caller website. China denied the allegation. "Hillary Clinton’s Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ or, after all of their other missteps (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA, Dirty Dossier etc.), their credibility will be forever gone!" the President tweeted. The article, by reporter Richard Pollack, cites two anonymous sources and says a Chinese-owned company based outside of Washington (DC) "hacked Hillary Clinton's private server throughout her term as secretary of state and obtained nearly all her emails." President Trump tweeted a few hours earlier in another apparent reference to the story. "Report just out: 'China hacked Hillary Clinton’s private Email Server.' Are they sure it wasn’t Russia (just kidding!)? What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!"

President Trump blasts CNN over anonymous sourcing in Cohen report

Stephanie Murray  |  Politico

President Donald Trump took aim at CNN over information it reported in July that relied on anonymous sources, slamming all outlets that rely on such sources and labeling reports based on them "fiction made up by the Fake News reporters." President Trump made specific reference to a CNN story published in July with the headline "Cohen claims Trump knew in advance of 2016 Trump Tower meeting," a reference to a meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian attorney who had been billed as possessing damaging information about Hillary Clinton sourced from the Kremlin. That report attributed its information to unnamed "sources with knowledge." Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer, has since said that he was a source for the CNN article and said that he is no longer sure about assertions he made to CNN and other outlets. "The fact is that many anonymous sources don’t even exist. They are fiction made up by the Fake News reporters," the president wrote on Twitter. "Look at the lie that Fake CNN is now in. They got caught red handed! Enemy of the People!" "When you see 'anonymous source,' stop reading the story, it is fiction!" he added in a second post.

President Trump unblocks more Twitter users after US court ruling

David Shepardson  |  Reuters

President Donald Trump unblocked some additional Twitter users after a federal judge in May said preventing people from following him violated individuals constitutional rights.  US District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan ruled on May 23 that comments on the president’s account, and those of other government officials, were public forums and that blocking Twitter users for their views violated their right to free speech under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on Aug 10 sent the Justice Department a list of 41 accounts that had remained blocked from Trump’s @RealDonaldTrump account. The seven users who filed suit had their accounts unblocked in June. At least 20 of the 41 individuals said on Twitter that President Trump had unblocked them on Aug 28. 

President Trump shares video accusing Google of not promoting his State of the Union addresses

Brett Samuels  |  Hill, The

President Donald Trump shared a video that showed Google advertising former President Barack Obama's State of the Union speeches but not his, escalating his battle with the tech giant over what he claims is bias against conservatives. President Trump shared the video with the caption "#StopTheBias." “For years, Google promoted President Obama’s State of the Union on its homepage. When President Trump took office, Google stopped," the video reads, followed by a 25-second montage showing Google's home page the night of each State of the Union speech dating back to 2012

How President Trump could hurt Google

Nancy Scola, Ashley Gold  |  Politico

While President Donald Trump has few direct ways of going after Google, his administration and allies in Congress could find ways to make life difficult for the company. Antitrust officials at the Justice Department or Federal Trade Commission, for example, could investigate whether the search giant is abusing its market dominance. Trump's Republican allies in Congress could subject the company to more unpleasant, high-profile hearings. And the president's public attacks could, over time, recast Google as a partisan player, a disturbing possibility for a company that depends on being the default search engine of choice for Americans of all political stripes.

Broadband/Internet

False Alarm: Verizon’s Fire Department Customer Service Fail Has Nothing to Do with Net Neutrality

Berin Szoka  |  Op-Ed  |  Medium

Network neutrality activists are having a field day with the recent report that Verizon “throttled” the mobile data usage of the Santa Clara County Fire Prevention District (FPD). What really happened wasn’t a net neutrality issue: The FPD simply chose a data plan for their mobile command and control unit that was manifestly inappropriate for their needs. The FPD needed a lot of high-speed 4G mobile data — up to 300 GB/month when the device was deployed. (The typical consumer uses ~4 GB/month.) Verizon sold such pay-as-you-go plans to government users, but FPD opted for a much cheaper plan: up to 25 GB at 4G speeds, with slow speeds after that point. The 2015 Open Internet Order is quite explicit that data plans with speed restrictions don’t violate the throttling rule, so long as the company is clear about what users are getting.

Make no mistake: public safety communications are vital, and what happened involved mistakes by all parties involved. Verizon may or may not have been clear enough about the difference between the two plans, and using the word “unlimited” to refer to the kind of cheaper plan FPD chose might be confusing, since consumers do get as much data as they want to use — but not, once they reach their basic data allowance, at 4G speeds. But even if Verizon did mislead its customers (and it’s not clear they did), it wouldn’t really be a net neutrality issue requiring special Federal Communications Commission rules; it would be a standard consumer protection issue, the kind the Federal Trade Commission deals with all the time. Indeed, the FTC has already sued AT&T over how it marketed its own “unlimited” plans, and after the Ninth Circuit ruled that the lawsuit could proceed, the company settled.

[Berin Szóka is president of TechFreedom]

FCC focusing on rural broadband

Anna Wiernicki  |  Nexstar Broadcasting

Many use high speed internet every day, but for some people in rural areas around Siouxland, an internet connection can be hard to get. The Federal Communications Commission is now trying to fix that. Sen Roy Blunt (R-MO) says when it comes to internet access, Missouri is a black hole. "We're behind the rest of the country on this, and I am not satisfied with that," he said. Sen Blunt says without broadband access everyone from farmers to students suffer. "Whether it is farming in the field, whether it is keeping up with commodity prices, whether it is your kids having equal access to information when they are doing their homework as someone who lives closer to the schoolhouse when they do their homework, there is no reason we can't solve this," Sen Blunt said. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says he's found a solution. "We allocated up to $2 billion dollars to help address those gaps and fix broadband across the country," Chairman Pai said. The Connect America Fund is designed to bring internet access to rural areas. The program gives $2 billion to select companies to build that infrastructure.

Privacy

The Fight Over California's Privacy Bill Has Only Just Begun

Issie Lapowsky  |  Wired

Lobbying groups and trade associations, including several representing the tech industry, are pushing for a litany of deep changes to California's new data protection law that they say would make the law easier to implement before it goes into effect in January 2020. But privacy advocates worry that pressure from powerful businesses could end up gutting the law completely. "This is their job: to try to make this thing absolutely meaningless. Our job is to say no," says Alastair MacTaggart, chair of the group Californians for Consumer Privacy, which sponsored a ballot initiative that would have circumvented the legislature and put the California Consumer Privacy Act to a vote in November. Big Tech and other industries lobbied fiercely against the initiative. In June, MacTaggart withdrew it once the bill, known as AB 375, passed. With just three days left in the legislative session, California lawmakers are scrambling to vote on a new bill, called SB-1121. The original bill had been hastily written and passed in an effort to keep MacTaggart's initiative off the ballot. The original goal of SB-1121 was to deal with typos and other small, technical errors, with the hope of introducing more substantive changes later. But over the last few weeks, groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the Internet Association, which represents companies like Google and Facebook, have pushed for significant alterations, even as the tech industry works to develop a federal privacy bill that would, if passed, override California's law.

Ownership

Sinclair Broadcast Group files countersuit against Tribune Media over failed merger

Brian Fung  |  Washington Post

Sinclair Broadcast Group filed a countersuit in an escalating legal battle with Tribune Media, after the two companies' proposed merger fell apart this month under federal scrutiny. The counterclaim maintains that Sinclair “pushed hard" to secure regulatory approval for the proposed tie-up and called Tribune’s subsequent attempt to distance itself from Sinclair “self-serving.” Sinclair is asking a Delaware court to find that it was Tribune that broke the terms of the merger agreement. “Tribune, through its meritless lawsuit, is seeking to capitalize on an unfavorable and unexpected reaction from the Federal Communications Commission to capture a windfall for Tribune,” said Sinclair chief executive Chris Ripley. Sinclair’s filing comes weeks after Tribune sued Sinclair for breach of contract, alleging that Sinclair’s dealings with regulators charged with reviewing the deal were marked by “belligerent and unnecessarily protracted negotiations." Tribune is seeking damages of $1 billion in the suit.

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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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