The 114th Congress (2015-2016) convened with Republican control of both the U.S. House and Senate. Authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline and repeal of the Affordable Care Act appear to be top priorities for Republican leadership. Below we track the bills moving through Congress on issues that may not draw as much attention in the press but promise to have a major impact on our communications future.
A tentative agreement to defuse a newsroom strike by Chinese journalists over censorship controls in this southeastern provincial capital had been reached by early Jan 9, and some reporters working for Southern Weekend, the newspaper at the heart of the dispute, were told that the paper would publish as usual on Jan 10, one journalist in the newsroom said.
With a number of celebrities and business leaders rallying online to the liberal cause, senior propaganda officials in Beijing began this week to roll out a national strategy of demonizing the rebel journalists and their supporters. The Central Propaganda Department issued a directive to news organizations saying the defiant outburst at Southern Weekend, also known as Southern Weekly, had involved “hostile foreign forces.” The order, translated by China Digital Times, a research group at the University of California, Berkeley, that studies Chinese news media, said that Chinese journalists must drop their support of Southern Weekend and insisted that “party control of the media is an unwavering basic principle.” An editor at a party news organization said the term “hostile forces” had been used in an internal discussion with a senior editor about the Southern Weekend conflict.
The attackers hit one American bank after the next. As in so many previous attacks, dozens of online banking sites slowed, hiccupped or ground to a halt before recovering several minutes later. But there was something disturbingly different about the wave of online attacks on American banks in recent weeks. Security researchers say that instead of exploiting individual computers, the attackers engineered networks of computers in data centers, transforming the online equivalent of a few yapping Chihuahuas into a pack of fire-breathing Godzillas.
The skill required to carry out attacks on this scale has convinced United States government officials and security researchers that they are the work of Iran, most likely in retaliation for economic sanctions and online attacks by the United States. “There is no doubt within the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks,” said James A. Lewis, a former official in the State and Commerce Departments and a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
American businesses want more help from government officials in fighting cyberattacks, although they continue to oppose government-prescribed safeguards, MasterCard Chief Executive Ajay Banga said.
Banga is head of the information and technology committee at the Business Roundtable, a trade group that is set to start a push for closer cooperation with Washington on computer security. The effort is, in part, intended to head off a push by some policy makers for more regulation of private sector computer security. Last year, business interests helped soften and ultimately defeat a Senate cybersecurity bill that would have created a new regime of voluntary cybersecurity standards. Since then, American banks have continued to fend off harassment from Iranian hackers. The White House is preparing an executive order that could press some companies to do more to secure their computer networks, and Congress may take another stab at passing legislation this year. Some lawmakers and security officials say it may be necessary to impose requirements on companies to protect critical infrastructure such as the power grid and banking system.
Satellite TV player Dish Network has made an unsolicited offer to buy out Clearwire, the wireless broadband service that’s mostly owned by Sprint, for $3.30 a share, or about $5.15 billion.
Clearwire said the Dish offer amounts to only a preliminary indication of interest, and that while it intends to hold discussions with Dish, its ability to enter into strategic transactions is limited by its current relationship with Sprint. Dish’s counterbid for Clearwire has analysts wondering about Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen’s motivations. “It’s hard for me to imagine that what Dish wants is Clearwire,” said Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “It could be a chess move to get a partnership with Sprint.” The offer may disrupt Sprint’s proposal to acquire full control of Clearwire. Clearwire said it plans to talk to Dish and will keep its options open by not drawing on financing offered by Sprint. Dish already has airwave licenses that it could use to offer wireless downloads and voice calls. Ergen’s company has been looking to bring those services to consumers by seeking partners with network equipment and tools, assets that Clearwire doesn’t have and Sprint does.
Google filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission to terminate its attempt to stop Microsoft from using video compression technology on the Xbox. Microsoft wants to license two standards-essential patents for H.264 that Google controls now that it owns Motorola — but not on Google’s proposed royalty terms. This is exactly what the U.S. Federal Trade Commission had sought to stop in its recently proposed consent order on Google, which said Google had to license patents used in standards to willing parties. However, the FTC settlement announcement had been oddly unclear about whether existing cases would have to be dropped. Now it seems that issue has worked itself out.
After many politicians get elected, their focus shifts to their official government websites, and their personal Web presence atrophies, disappears or falls low in Google rankings. “It’s obnoxious, and it’s poor behavior on the part of the campaign,” said Jonathan Karush, owner of Liberty Concepts, an online campaign firm that designed sites for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other candidates. “It’s a systemic oversight. When the election ends, so does the online campaign. But if you’re not working all the time building a follower base and raising money online, you’re leaving yourself extremely vulnerable to challengers.”
The devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy and the shooting in Newtown (CT) are renewing a push by emergency responders to expand a low-power AM radio service used to give travelers traffic information.
From California to New Jersey, public safety officials are urging the Federal Communications Commission to allow them to expand the information they can broadcast on the stations beyond congestion and traffic issues that are the staple of the service. “Prior to and during emergency situations like superstorm Sandy and the Newtown (CT) school shootings, TIS outlets need the utmost leeway broadly to broadcast information to protect life and property,” explained Frank Jazzo, an attorney for the American Association of Information Radio Operators, which represents Travelers’ Information Service operators. According to letters from public safety officials, the service is underused. “Please re-craft the content rules to specifically state that weather forecasts, warnings, [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] rebroadcasts and emergency preparedness information can be broadcast at any time, before, during and after a disaster — as a means of mitigating loss of life and damage to property,” wrote David Kircher, emergency management coordinator for the borough of Manasquan (NJ).
Europeans, take note: The U.S. government has granted itself authority to secretly snoop on you. That’s according to a new report produced for the European Parliament, which has warned that a U.S. spy law renewed late last year authorizes “purely political surveillance on foreigners' data” if it is stored using U.S. cloud services like those provided by Google, Microsoft and Facebook.
Europeans were previously alarmed by the fact that the PATRIOT Act could be used to obtain data on citizens outside the United States. But this time the focus is a different law—the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Amendments Act—which poses a “much graver risk to EU data sovereignty than other laws hitherto considered by EU policy-makers,” according to the recently published report, Fighting Cyber Crime and Protecting Privacy in the Cloud, produced by the Centre for the Study of Conflicts, Liberty and Security.
Europe’s top telecoms executives are discussing the creation of a pan-European infrastructure network to unite the continent’s fragmented national markets, following prompting from Brussels to consider more radical options.
The idea of pooling telecoms infrastructure emerged at a private meeting between Joaquín Almunia, the EU’s competition chief, and bosses of Europe’s biggest groups, including Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Telecom Italia and Telefónica. According to several people familiar with the discussions, the industry attendees left the meeting intent on exploring the idea, given their frustrations that Europe’s disjointed market has impeded their ability to compete. The executives’ companies, which dominate the EU market through their various national subsidiaries, have been caught out by the continent’s wider financial difficulties and face new challenges from rival global technology groups that use their networks.
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