Benton RSS Feed
The “Obama phone” debate is still ringing in Washington — as is a bad connection with some of the facts.
Lifeline, the controversial phone subsidy program that snagged attention during the first Obama administration, has landed back in the spotlight. Critics then accused the White House of dishing out free cellphones to the poor. Now they’re questioning whether reforms put in place by the Federal Communications Commission to tackle rampant misuse will actually work. The false rumors that started circling nearly four years ago continue to haunt the program as opponents push a welfare state narrative along the lines of Obamacare. A Republican-led House bill with 42 co-sponsors would nearly gut the federal program. An amendment in the recent Senate budget debate tried to eliminate funding entirely. And a House Communications subcommittee hearing Thursday will dissect its worth.
'Obama phone' facts still a hang-up in Washington
In a letter to House Communications Subcommittee leaders Greg Walden (R-OR) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA), a dozen public interest organizations urged the panel to allow a recent round of reforms to take hold before precipitously altering this the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program which provides modest, affordable, essential phone service to low-income households.
The letter was signed by the National Consumer Law Center, Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, the Benton Foundation, the Center of Media Justice, Connecticut Legal Services, the Low Income Utility Advocacy Project, the Legal Services Advocacy Project, New Jersey SHARES, Inc, the Ohio Poverty Law Center, Open Access Connections, Pro Seniors, and Springwire.
The groups argue that the Lifeline program:
- Provides Affordable No-Frills Voice Service
- Enhances the Network Effect
- Is a lifeline for the working poor and the unemployed
- Enhances the efficient operation of other assistance programs
- Helps the medical community provide care
- Is essential in emergency situations
- Has Undergone Serious Reforms That Should be Allowed to Play Out
- Recent surveys of wireless Lifeline customers show:
- Around half are over 45 to 50 years of age, with a substantial percent over sixty.
- Veterans participate.
- Consumers with disabilities participate.
- A large percent are unemployed or underemployed and use their Lifeline service to find work.
- Lifeline service provides access to healthcare.
- Lifeline service provides an introduction to wireless service.
Public Interest Advocates Defend Lifeline Program
Congress is now set to clarify electronic privacy rules, bringing a quarter-century-old law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) in line with the Internet age.
On April 25, the Senate Judiciary Committee will start deliberating a measure that would require the government to get a search warrant, issued by a judge, to gain access to personal e-mails and all other electronic content held by a third-party service provider. The current statute requires a warrant for e-mails that are less than six months old. But it lets the authorities gain access to older communications — or bizarrely, e-mails that have already been opened — with just a subpoena and no judicial review. The law governs the privacy of practically everything entrusted to the Internet — family photos stored with a Web service, journal entries kept online, company documents uploaded to the cloud, and the flurry of e-mails exchanged every day. The problem is that it was written when the cloud was just vapor in the sky. Silicon Valley companies as well as advocacy groups from the political left and right have been lobbying for change for many years, and reform legislation seems to be gaining broad political support.
Updating an E-Mail Law From the Last Century Congress set to tackle email privacy (The Hill)
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said that his committee will launch a sweeping review of the country's copyright law and hold a series of hearings on the matter "in the months ahead."
In remarks at the Library of Congress, Chairman Goodlatte argued that existing copyright law lags behind the rapid pace of technology, forcing policymakers to make challenging decisions based on these outdated rules. "It is my belief that a wide review of our nation’s copyright laws and related enforcement mechanisms is timely. I am announcing today that the House Judiciary Committee will hold a comprehensive series of hearings on U.S. copyright law in the months ahead," Chairman Goodlatte said. "The goal of these hearings will be to determine whether the laws are still working in the digital age."
House Judiciary Chairman to launch sweeping review of US copyright law
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV) lambasted the digital advertising industry for failing to voluntarily honor privacy requests from online consumers called “Do Not Track” signals.
Negotiations between advertising groups and privacy advocates have bogged down over basic questions of how exactly to define, standardize and respond to the privacy signals. Although major browsers now allow users to express their preferences about online tracking, very few companies now honor browsers’ don’t track me flags. Frustrated by the seemingly slow progress, Sen Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, grilled industry representatives at a hearing about Do Not Track. Do Not Track “is still just an idea, not a reality,” said Chairman Rockefeller. “What exactly is the holdup?” Although the industry ad choices program does put some limits on its members’ use of consumer data — restricting it to activities like fraud prevention and security — Chairman Rockefeller says the industry’s exceptions for market research and other uses promote unfettered data collection about consumers’ online activities. The senator introduced a bill in February that would direct the Federal Trade Commission to create standards for Do Not Track mechanisms as well as develop rules that prohibit companies for collecting data about consumers who opt out of tracking. “I do not want to hear assertions that the current self-regulatory scheme fulfills Do Not Track requests,” Chairman Rockefeller said.
The Digital Ad Industry Gets Dressed Down in Washington Sen. Rockefeller rips 'repulsive' online tracking (The Hill) Rockefeller Hammers Online Ad Industry (B&C) Rockefeller Goes On a Do Not Track Rant in Hearing (AdWeek) Senate chairman calls for 'Do Not Track' bill (Associated Press)
[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission is considering modifications to the statutory plan to auction off spectrum that could cause the auction to fail.
The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 is intended to obtain 120 megahertz of spectrum currently allocated to TV and auction it off to wireless carriers—giving these carriers more capacity to complete cellphone calls and enhance Internet access. In most markets, the FCC will be able to simply "repack" the existing TV stations' six MHZ of spectrum into tighter blocks, freeing up spectrum space to be auctioned off. But in the biggest, most congested urban markets (such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Los Angeles), there are too many TV stations to get the needed spectrum through repacking. In those markets, the legislation calls for the FCC to pay stations to go off the air. If the auctions are conducted as Congress envisioned, they will entice broadcasters to sell their spectrum and yield $7 billion in surplus revenue to fund the planned First Responders Network and apply the rest toward reducing the federal deficit. The success of the congressional plan crucially depends on attracting, through the prospect of large payments, enough TV stations to surrender their channels. And that requires a robustly competitive auction among wireless carriers. Unfortunately, instead of conducting a straight-up, unbiased auction to recover TV channels, the FCC has proposed a "scoring system" that assigns different prices to TV stations based on the opinions of FCC staff regarding the value of those stations.
[Padden is executive director of the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition, a group of more than 40 major-market TV stations potentially willing to participate in the FCC's Incentive Auction]
FCC Static Will Distort the Spectrum Auction
[Commentary] The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that triggered an avalanche of corporate political spending also contained a proposal for greater public disclosure from corporations that would prefer to write their checks in the shadows. Transparency, the court advised, would let voters decide for themselves “whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.” Since that 2010 decision, corporate and Republican opposition has snuffed out Congressional attempts to require donor transparency and accountability. All the more compelling then that the Securities and Exchange Commission, following an impressive petition campaign, is considering a regulation mandating that publicly traded corporations disclose all their political donations to their shareholders. Mary Jo White, the new SEC chairman, has promised dynamic changes in corporate oversight. The looming disclosure fight provides a test.
Corporate Donations and the SEC
The short-lived hoax on Twitter won't deter companies from disseminating market-moving information using social-media sites. Meanwhile, Wall Street firms are plowing ahead with plans that could give some employees access to these sites at work.
After a fraudulent Associated Press tweet claiming that two explosions at the White House had injured President Barack Obama, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 145 points in an instant. The market quickly recovered. Securities and Exchange Commission member Luis Aguilar called on his agency to look into the Twitter hoax and said the SEC hadn't yet determined who carried it out or why. "Where it appears that the securities markets have been manipulated in violation of the federal securities laws, the SEC should undertake a serious inquiry," Commissioner Aguilar said.
Hoax Won't Deter Tweeting As Wall Street relies more on technology, social media can tilt the markets (Washington Post) Like Wall Street banks, Twitter may be too big to fail (San Francisco Chronicle)
Along with the obligatory replica of the Oval Office, the George W. Bush Presidential Center will house a less conventional collection of presidential artifacts: Millions of e-mails.
The one billion pages or so in electronic White House correspondence during George W. Bush's eight years in office are unprecedented in the history of presidential libraries, scholars said. They promise to offer an unvarnished look at the inner workings of the Bush administration that hasn't been possible for other presidencies. But first, the roughly 200 million emails have to be reviewed by the center's archivists, a process that could take a long time. With current technology, archivists can only review about 800,000 pages a year. The Bush library is at the forefront of a growing problem for the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the federal agency that keeps the nation's trove of historic documents. The digital stacks of information it has to process are rapidly expanding as more of the government's business is conducted via e-mail.
E-mail Trove Is Big Job for Bush Library
Verizon Communications has hired advisers to prepare a possible $100 billion cash and stock bid to take full control of Verizon Wireless from its partner Vodafone, two people familiar with the matter said.
Verizon, which already owns 55 percent of the company, has not put a proposal to Vodafone yet but it has hired both banking and legal advisers for a possible bid, the sources said. Verizon, which has made little secret of its wish to buy out its British joint venture partner, has ramped up the pressure in recent months, and London-based analysts and investors interpreted the latest move as an attempt to force Vodafone in to serious talks. The sources said Verizon was now ready to push aggressively for a deal. It hopes to start discussions with Vodafone soon for a friendly agreement but is prepared to take a bid public if the British company does not engage, one of the sources added.
Verizon eyes $100 billion bid for Vodafone's Wireless stake