Washington Post

FCC chair responds to net neutrality backlash: ‘I could not agree with you more’

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler responded to some of the most vocal critics of his proposal to allow Internet providers to charge content providers like Netflix for faster access to customers. In a letter to a tech coalition that includes Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and nearly 150 other companies, Chairman Wheeler said he will regulate broadband companies more heavily if the situation called for it.

Chairman Wheeler added that as an entrepreneur, he has also been "subject to being blocked from access to cable networks." "It is an experience that made me especially wary of the power of closed networks to innovate on their own agenda to the detriment of small entrepreneurs," Chairman Wheeler wrote. He also said his proposal is an attempt to adhere to the roadmap laid out by a federal court when it struck down the FCC's old net neutrality rules in January.

The FCC's newest proposal, which will be outlined to the public May 15, has drawn criticism from high-tech start-ups and consumer groups that fear that only the richest companies will be able to afford tolls exacted by Internet service providers.

Why Apple is so interested in Beats: It’s not about the headphones

Apple is reportedly buying Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion -- a whopping sum for a brand that, although popular, tends to be scoffed at by audiophiles.

So everyone wants to know: Why is Apple buying Beats when it could be investing in practically any other company?

One answer floating around is that Beats gives Apple valuable street cred among the cool kids. While Beats is undeniably cool, this theory seems hard to swallow. It's not like Apple is uncool. More compelling is the idea that Apple wants to get its hands on Beats's technology.

Some see the potential acquisition as play for Beats Music, Beats Electronics’ streaming music service. More broadly, Apple faces a long-term challenge. People turn to Apple for hardware -- iPhones, iPads, and the like -- but the future is all in online services.

Ninety percent of Americans have a cellphone these days, and more than 60 percent own a smartphone. Sales of mobile devices are flagging. Wearable technology is still being refined. Apple needs to find a winning formula in the cloud. And soon.

On network neutrality, the FCC’s chairman increasingly stands alone

First came the tech companies, almost 150 of them. Then it was the investor class, clamoring that the Federal Communications Commission's plan for net neutrality would create an uneven playing field between established companies and young startups.

Protesters -- usually more common on the National Mall than at the FCC's secluded offices in Southwest Washington -- camped out at the commission's front doors.

To outsiders, the FCC may seem like a black box: We haven't even seen a draft of the proposed rules that have critics so alarmed. But on the inside of the commission, a charged political battle is playing out that could set the tone for the commission's future. And the fault lines are mostly leaving the agency's head, Tom Wheeler, cut off from the rest of his colleagues.

Chairman Wheeler has pushed back against claims that his draft rules on net neutrality would allow for an Internet fast lane. At a recent speech in Los Angeles, he told cable industry executives that he would not hesitate to regulate broadband companies more heavily if the situation called for it. That hasn't stopped a more recent rush of criticism -- including from within the FCC itself.

While it is less surprising to see Commissioner Ajit Pai criticize Chairman Wheeler, using the moment to undermine the Chairman’s early tenure, to see Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel break so publicly from Chairman Wheeler is unusual. The widening rifts suggest internal deliberations on net neutrality may either have broken down or never took place.

Some say the revolt -- not to mention the chairman's decision, for the most part, to ignore it -- is evidence of Chairman Wheeler’s isolation.

Now dozens of high-profile VCs are protesting the FCC’s net neutrality rules, too

Mere hours after a group of top tech companies wrote to the Federal Communications Commission to oppose the agency's proposed rules for net neutrality, nearly 50 venture capitalists are doing the same.

The letter -- which is signed by high-profile investor Ron Conway, GigaOm founder Om Malik and reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian -- argues that small startups would be harmed by the FCC rules, which would allow broadband providers to charge Web companies for better access to consumers.

"If established companies are able to pay for better access speeds or lower latency, the Internet will no longer be a level playing field," the letter addressed to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler reads. "Entrepreneurs will need to raise money to buy fast lane services before they have proven that consumers want their product. Investors will extract more equity from entrepreneurs to compensate for the risk."

What's more, the letter warned, investors themselves might be deterred from backing new projects if they believe Internet providers see a threat in a new company. "They will use the same technical infrastructure to advantage their own services or use network management as an excuse to disadvantage competitive offerings," the VCs wrote.

Federal Election Commission approves bitcoin donations to political committees

The Federal Election Commission gave a green light to donating bitcoins to political committees, one of the first rulings by a government agency on how to treat the virtual currency.

In a 6-to-0 vote, the panel said that a PAC can accept bitcoin donations, as well as purchase them, but it must sell its bitcoins and convert them into US dollars before they are deposited into an official campaign account. The commission did not approve the use of bitcoin to acquire goods and services.

After the vote, however, individual commissioners offered sharply divergent views on whether their decision limits bitcoin donations to small amounts -- creating more uncertainty about how much of the Internet currency that political committees can accept. Because the commission only approved the acceptance of bitcoin as specifically described in the request by the Make Your Laws PAC, the decision does not permit contributions of more than $100, she said.

Google, Netflix lead nearly 150 tech companies in protest of FCC net neutrality plan

Nearly 150 Internet firms are banding together to call for more stringent net neutrality regulations on broadband providers. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, the companies asked federal regulators to reconsider a proposal that critics fear would allow Internet providers to charge for faster, better access to consumers.

The list includes Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, along with dozens of other firms that called the prospect of paid fast lanes "a threat to the Internet."

With just a week to go before the Federal Communications Commission meets to consider its proposed new rules for ISPs, the letter represents a late attempt by Silicon Valley to take a stance on the open Internet.

"Instead of permitting individualized bargaining and discrimination," the companies wrote, "the commission's rules should protect users and Internet companies on both fixed and mobile platforms against blocking, discrimination and paid prioritization, and should make the market for Internet services more transparent."

The companies have not gone so far as to demand the FCC "reclassify" Internet providers under Title II of the Communications Act -- a move that would allow the commission to regulate ISPs more heavily, as it does with phone companies. The letter does not offer an alternative proposal. Even as the companies were writing to the commission, however, some at the agency were suggesting that the May 15 meeting be delayed.

A House committee has voted unanimously to rein in the NSA

A key House committee has approved a package of National Security Agency reforms that would end the spy agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records, nearly a year after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed the program's existence.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 32-0 to rein in the NSA with the USA FREEDOM Act, a measure that places new requirements on the government when it comes to gathering, targeting and searching telephone metadata for intelligence purposes. In addition to prohibiting the NSA from engaging in what the bill's sponsors have called "dragnet surveillance," the bill would also require authorities to get permission from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on a case-by-case basis.

It would establish a panel of privacy experts and other officials to serve as a public advocate at the court. And it would also give businesses more latitude to tell the public about requests it receives from the government for user data.

The bill represents "the best chance in a decade" to correct an imbalance between national security and privacy, said co-sponsor Rep Jerry Nadler (D-NY) It is the first surveillance reform bill to proceed to the House floor.

Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who helped write the bill and introduced a version of it in the Senate in October, vowed to bring up the measure there this summer. "The committee’s overwhelming, bipartisan vote makes clear that there is broad support in Congress, after years of debate, to recalibrate the nation’s surveillance authorities and put a real oversight structure in place," Sen Leahy said.

Civil liberties advocates are calling the measure a modest step; a number of amendments by Rep Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) to strengthen the bill failed to pass.

Political data, once the reserve of presidential campaigns, is spreading to local races

The November midterms aren't the only race Republicans and Democrats are running in 2014. As Election Day approaches, both parties are rushing to put new political technology into the hands of smaller campaigns that may lack the resources or staff of a major presidential effort.

Candidates competing for seats in state and local races are increasingly gaining access to sophisticated databases and predictive modeling tools, much like those that earned President Barack Obama so much attention in 2012. As a result, the 2014 election season is likely to see a much wider use of data to target likely voters, organize volunteers and consolidate voter lists.

The Republican National Committee said that it's trying to persuade conservative campaigns to adopt a suite of free tools it has developed in recent months to give candidates an edge. The package includes a massive voter file known as OneData, which contains information on 190 million active US voters gathered from all 50 states.

Republican campaigns will have access to information on another 63 million Americans through data gathered from commercial sources such as Axiom and Experian, the committee said. Altogether, the data tracks nearly two decades of Americans' voting history, including whether they own hunting and fishing licenses that could indicate their positions on political issues.

Cable forces more channels down unwilling viewers’ throats

It's become a cliché: "Why am I forced to buy more cable channels I never watch?"

Now, new data show the common consumer complaint is true.

In 2013, US cable subscribers got a record average of 189 channels in prepackaged bundles but watched only 17 of those channels, according to a report by Nielsen. And the appetite to view more channels, even when offered vastly more television content, hasn't changed much in years.

In five years, cable companies added 60 more channels for the typical subscriber, but viewers haven't increased their consumption of new content. They have consistently watched an average of 17 channels.

"This data is significant in that it substantiates the notion that more content does not necessarily equate to more channel consumption," the Nielsen report said. "And that means quality is imperative — for both content creators and advertisers. So the best way to reach consumers in a world with myriad options is to be the best option."

NSA e-mails purport to show a ‘close’ relationship with Google. Maybe, maybe not.

In the summer of 2012, about a year before former contractor Edward Snowden revealed surprising new information about the extent of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs, the head of the spy agency reportedly traded e-mails with top Google execs 0n cyber-security issues.

Then-NSA director Gen Keith Alexander told Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt that he was organizing a meeting of tech CEOs in Silicon Valley for Aug 8, 2012, and he extended an invitation to Google, according to the e-mails, which were obtained by Al Jazeera America.

The e-mails offer a rare look at the communications between Google and the NSA. It's a relationship that has been prickly lately, given Snowden's disclosures. But the two entities have worked closely in the past on developing defenses against cyber-attack, according to Al Jazeera America.

The military thinks Bitcoin could pose a threat to national security

Does Bitcoin risk endangering the nation's safety? The Pentagon thinks it might.

According to a Defense Department solicitation, virtual currencies represent an emerging technology that could help terrorists and criminals evade law enforcement and launch attacks against the United States.

To prepare, the Pentagon's Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office asked companies in January to help study virtual currencies' potential role in "threat finance." (The study would be conducted as part of a wider investigation into evolving threats, including facial recognition and Web monitoring.)

"The introduction of virtual currency will likely shape threat finance by increasing the opaqueness, transactional velocity, and overall efficiencies of terrorist attacks," according to a CTTSO memo obtained by Bitcoin Magazine.

One reason would-be criminals find Bitcoin so attractive is that it makes anonymous transactions over long distances a cinch. Like cash, it's the perfect financial tool if you're trying to cover your tracks.

How George Washington University is shaping a piece of Google’s smartphone future

In the labs of George Washington University, students are laboring in labs covered in black-and-white dotted paper, puzzling out how to make a machine that understands images like the human brain.

It’s a question that Google is trying to tackle in typical Silicon Valley fashion with Project Tango, a smartphone that will use its sensors to map the environment around its users in real time. But this research isn't restricted to the secret labs of West Coast tech giants.

A piece of it is happening right here in Washington. The vision for Tango is to make a phone that can not only recognize places -- so you can, for example, navigate within a store to find a product on a shelf -- but also potentially tap into large-scale 3-D maps to help the phone better understand the scene. Think of it as more detailed version of Google Maps.

In a mall, a Tango phone could direct you to the nearest restroom by using a meaningful 3-D map of the mall. (Google hasn’t said when the phone could be released.) At George Washington, the scientists have been helping Google deal with the basics: getting the phone to understand its own sensors and the images it sees to understand how what its sensing matches up with what it expects.

AT&T and Verizon got government data requests once every 60 seconds last year. And that’s probably lowballing it.

A University of Ottawa law professor got a set of documents from the Canadian government showing that law enforcement agencies are asking the country's telecom operators for subscriber information every 27 seconds.

That's a staggering amount, but how does it compare to the United States, where authorities are willing to record all of the calls that take place in a foreign country?

To get a sense, I decided to take a look back at the transparency reports from major US phone companies. In 2013, AT&T and Verizon together received more than one request every 60 seconds. Is that a lot? Depends. It's not as high as the rate cited in Canada. But we're also dealing with an incomplete data set here.

In its first-ever transparency report, AT&T reported receiving 301,816 requests for user data from state, local and federal authorities. Verizon's inaugural transparency report, meanwhile, shows it got 321,545. That's the equivalent of 1.2 requests every minute.

A company guide to damage control after a social media blowup

Silicon Valley has been following a tempest surrounding the fallout of now-former PayPal executive Rakesh Agrawal's very public departure.

Agrawal, a noted payments analyst who joined PayPal only two months ago as its director of strategy, submitted his two-weeks' notice to the company. He then let loose on Twitter -- in a series of late-night, disparaging (and since deleted) messages that he said were meant to be part of a private conversation.

It's just the latest in a string of recent departures from tech companies that have played out in the open rather than in the traditional privacy of a human resources office, or even over the phone.

Tech companies are particularly susceptible to having their personnel issues brought into the light, said Peter LaMotte, a senior vice president at the strategic communications firm Levick. "This is the world in which we now live," he said, "especially in these technology-focused companies, where social media is such an integrated part of communication."

The upshot, LaMotte said, is that the skeletons in any company's closet are increasingly likely to get pulled into the open, be it a single employee's personal grudge or evidence of a more systemic cultural problem. In cases such as Agrawal's, where the drama unfolds almost entirely on social media, LaMotte said that companies should address the problem through whatever channel seems best but then step away from the temptation to engage with the situation any further.

"No company should get drawn into the drama," he said. "But if it takes place on social media and is being heavily discussed on social media, a company should at least communicate in that medium."

This AT&T proposal would end the president’s ability to make priority phone calls in a crisis

The Department of Homeland Security says an AT&T plan to test new network technology would degrade a special telephone service reserved for national emergencies and presidential communications.

If implemented, the plan would hamper the ability of first responders and public officials to respond to a crisis of the magnitude of Hurricane Sandy or even 9/11, according to DHS.

The special service, known as the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS), allows the president or any high-level official with a secret PIN to dial a unique phone number and demand priority access to the nation's telephone network. GETS calls automatically take precedence over all other phone traffic, and can even overcome busy tones that an ordinary caller might face during periods of congestion.

About one-tenth of one percent of people in the United States have access to this system -- and AT&T is proposing to strip that priority status from a key stage of the calls.

"If you're not applying priority to the end-to-end call, then it's a straightforward position to say you're putting GETS at risk," said Jason Healey, a security expert at the Washington-based Atlantic Council and a former George W. Bush administration official who oversaw the GETS program.

Snowden: Why hasn’t the Director of National Intelligence been punished for lying to Congress?

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said he came forward because he thought it was "the right thing to do." He repeatedly compared his actions with that of Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, who denied that the NSA was "wittingly" collecting data on millions of Americans in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last spring -- a claim at odds with revelations about domestic phone records collection as a result of documents provided by Snowden. Clapper later apologized to Congress in a letter, saying his answer was "clearly erroneous."

"The oath that I remember is James Clapper raising his hand, swearing to tell the truth and then lying to the American public," Snowden said. "I also swore an oath, but that oath was not to secrecy, but to defend the American Constitution." Snowden recalled raising what he called the "famous lie" with co-workers, questioning why no one did anything about it, only to be warned about potential consequences. Snowden has previously said he raised concerns internally, but that as a contractor, he did not have the same protections as a government employee.

While Clapper has accused Snowden of perpetrating the most "massive and damaging theft of intelligence" in US history, Snowden argues his actions were serving a larger public interest that superseded the national intelligence need for secrecy. Later in the speech, he described Clapper as having "committed a crime by lying under oath to the American people," and questioned why charges were never brought against the director. By contrast, Snowden said, charges were brought against him soon after he revealed himself as the source of the leaks.

If AT&T buys DirectTV, it could go head-to-head with Comcast-Time Warner Cable

AT&T may be getting more involved in the pay-TV business with a bid for DirecTV. If that's true, it could have major implications for the US TV market.

Merging with one of the nation's biggest satellite TV providers would put AT&T on strong footing to compete against an expanded Comcast (if the cable company successfully buys Time Warner Cable).

AT&T has about 5.7 million TV customers on its U-verse service, while DirecTV boasts about 20 million subscribers. A combined Comcast-Time Warner Cable would control about 30 million customers. The mergers would create two big giants, each controlling around one-third of the US pay-TV market.

One big question is whether AT&T could get a merger past federal regulators, who are already looking closely at the proposed Comcast deal.

A serious move by AT&T to pursue DirecTV (more on that in a bit) would trigger a pretty complicated game of regulatory chess: The Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department would probably need to determine whether or how an AT&T-DirecTV merger would affect a Comcast-TWC merger.

Senator Franken, Comcast’s fiercest critic, tries to lure allies from Silicon Valley

Sen Al Franken (D-MN) has become Capitol Hill's loudest opponent of Comcast's bid for Time Warner Cable. Now, he's trying to root out like-minded critics from Silicon Valley.

In a letter to the trade group Computer & Communications Industry Association, Sen Franken asked for the group's opinion on the $45 billion merger. If approved by federal regulators, Comcast would wind up with 40 percent of the broadband Internet market. Sen Franken said that's too much power in the hands of a single company, which could act as a powerful gatekeeper for Internet content and services into US homes.

"Your organization includes companies from many sectors of our communications and Internet economy, including industry leaders in search, social networking, e-commerce and music and video content delivery. All of these organizations depend on broadband networks to operate," Sen Franken wrote in his letter to CCIA President Ed Black. CCIA's members include Google, Facebook, eBay, Aereo and Yahoo.

Confused by Facebook privacy settings? So is the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a pair of cases that will shape what privacy protections Americans have against warrantless searches of electronic devices.

But during the two-hour discussion, Chief Justice John Roberts touched on a related issue that millions of Americans are challenged by every day: Facebook privacy settings. The privacy settings of the social network and its related applications came up in the discussion of Riley v. California, a case involving a San Diego college student, David Riley, who was pulled over for expired tags, only to have police seize his phone and use a photo on it to convict him for participation in a drive-by shooting.

Litigator Jeffrey Fisher, representing Riley, argued that even flipping through photos on a smartphone draws on a multitude of data that is "intrinsically intertwined" in the device in such a way that implicates the Fourth Amendment.

"Including information that is specifically designed to be made public?" asked Chief Justice Roberts, "I mean, what about something like Facebook or a Twitter account?" Depending on a user's privacy settings, Facebook activity can range from entirely public to only available to an individual user -- although Facebook changes the settings often enough that users aren't always aware of the current setup.

But Chief Justice Roberts went on to say there is not really "any privacy interest" in a Facebook account -- or it's "at least diminished because the point is you want these things to be public and seen widely" -- before asking if there would be a way to create a rule that police could search "those apps that, in fact, don't have an air of privacy about them."

Even Roberts's argument about accessing publicly posted information doesn't seem to be making a lot of sense -- which isn't entirely surprising considering the court's previous problems with technology concepts -- mostly because if something is already public, there would be no need for law enforcement to use an arrestee's device to access it.

Why you should care about the mobile Web’s advertising problem

[Commentary] Remember when using your smartphone or tablet to access the Web was a relatively ad-free experience? Now there are seemingly ads everywhere you go -- pre-roll segments on videos, paywall roadblocks, subscriber messages that ask you to sign up for newsletters, ads in your news feeds, floating ads that cover inconvenient parts of the screen.

Now that the number of mobile Web users has eclipsed the number of desktop Web users, it’s no wonder that companies are introducing a growing panoply of mobile advertising options, all competing for your attention.

By 2017, there will be more money spent on mobile advertising than on radio advertising.

Combined, Facebook and Google now control two-thirds of the mobile advertising market. Expect that number to increase once Facebook launches its new mobile ad network. All of this has very real implications for the way that we use the Internet.

It’s already the case that 86 percent of users access the mobile Web via apps and that percentage could inch even higher as companies dedicate more and more resources to winning the mobile app game.

In short, we’ve quickly transitioned from a situation in which Web companies have a mobile advertising problem, to a situation in which the mobile Web experience has an advertising problem.

How Washington’s last remaining video rental store changed the course of privacy law

After 33 years, Potomac Video is closing its doors. It was the last remaining brick-and-mortar video rental store in the District -- where big chains and local entries alike have disappeared since the dawn of the streaming era -- and one of the first when it opened in 1981.

But even as the local retail chain lets loose its dying moan, Potomac Video can still claim credit for changing the face of consumer privacy thanks to its role in the creation of the Video Privacy Protection Act, or VPPA.

Flash forward 20 years: that same legislation became a thorn in the side of the video rental industry as it shifted online. In 2008, the now-all-but-dead Blockbuster faced a class action suit alleging that it shared rental information with Facebook's online advertising project Beacon. Netflix, too, faced a suit in 2009 about its release of "anonymized" customer data as part of a context for improving its recommendation engine that may not have been quite so anonymous.

Netflix was so wary of being on the wrong side of the law that it excluded the United States when it first rolled out Facebook sharing in 2011 -- and urged users to lobby their legislators about changing the law. The streaming video did, ultimately, win that battle: The law was amended in early 2013, and Netflix extended Facebook sharing to US users in March 2013.

But even with the changes, the VPPA continues to provide consumers some leeway to keep their video-viewing habits private. Hulu, for instance, is embroiled in a years-long class action suit related to alleged violations.

CodeBabes: the latest thing to make women in tech cringe

Women in tech have yet another Web site to roll their eyes at: "CodeBabes" -- one that's dedicated to using women's bodies to teach basic coding skills.

The site, which appears to have launched earlier in April, features videos of how to do some basic coding.

The first course -- termed the "virgin" class -- features women who are mostly clothed, but the site says they will become more scantily clad as lessons become more difficult.

"Watch the lesson, absorb the info, pass the quiz, and your instructor removes one piece of clothing." Just enough to "motivate" users, it promises.

CodeBabes has not responded to a Washington Post inquiry asking whether it's a joke or a high production value parody that is uneasily close to real life (similar ventures that have leveraged women's bodies to attract interest in the tech world, like "Hot Tech Today," have turned out to be serious).

Low-level federal judges balking at law enforcement requests for electronic evidence

Judges at the lowest levels of the federal judiciary are balking at sweeping requests by law enforcement officials for cellphone and other sensitive personal data, declaring the demands overly broad and at odds with basic constitutional rights.

This rising assertiveness by magistrate judges -- the worker bees of the federal court system -- has produced rulings that elate civil libertarians and frustrate investigators, forcing them to meet or challenge tighter rules for collecting electronic evidence.

Among the most aggressive opinions have come from DC Magistrate Judge John Facciola, a bow-tied court veteran who in recent months has blocked wide-ranging access to the Facebook page of Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis and the iPhone of the Georgetown University student accused of making ricin in his dorm room.

In another case, he deemed a law enforcement request for the entire contents of an e-mail account “repugnant” to the US Constitution.

For these and other cases, Judge Facciola has demanded more focused searches and insisted that authorities delete collected data that prove unrelated to a current investigation rather than keep them on file for unspecified future use. He also has taken the unusual step, for a magistrate judge, of issuing a series of formal, written opinions that detail his concerns, even about previously secret government investigations.

The FCC’s new net neutrality rules will kill Aereo, even if the Supreme Court doesn’t

[Commentary] We heard a lot about Aereo, the startup that could upend the television business if it survives a Supreme Court battle with television broadcasters. But even if it squeaks past the court's technologically challenged justices, it might not matter -- the company is still likely doomed. Here's why.

At heart, Aereo is an Internet company that operates on Internet pipes and serves Internet customers. Yes, the company's main business involves pulling broadcast TV signals out of the air. Critics say that practice violates copyright laws.

But technologically, Aereo stores its customers' TV shows in an online, cloud-based locker. Then it sends those shows, on-demand, over the Internet to its subscribers' waiting PCs, tablets and mobile phones. Incidentally, that makes Aereo subject to the Federal Communications Commission's new rules on network neutrality.

If Aereo loses its Supreme Court bid, the show's over and the question becomes irrelevant. But if Aereo survives, then it would be living in a world filled with Internet fast lanes and paid prioritization.