Daily Digest 9/7/2018 (Broadband Connects America Coalition)

Benton Foundation
Table of Contents

Broadband/Internet

Groups Launch Broadband Connects America Coalition to End Rural Digital Divide  |  Read below  |  Daiquiri Ryan  |  Op-Ed  |  Benton Foundation
Press release: Consumer Groups Launch Broadband Connects America Coalition to End Digital Divide  |  Public Knowledge
Starry, the startup that is trying to beam cheap internet into low-income communities  |  Read below  |  Eillie Anzilotti  |  Fast Company
What They're Saying About the FCC's Connect America Fund Auction  |  Federal Communications Commission
Net Neutrality Has Always Been a Bipartisan Issue  |  Read below  |  Eric Null  |  Analysis  |  New America
Baltimore public housing residents given tablets, internet connection under initiative to connect more online  |  Read below  |  Yvonne Wenger  |  Baltimore Sun

Wireless

Commissioner Rosenworcel Remarks at Silicon Flatirons  |  Read below  |  FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel  |  Speech  |  Federal Communications Commission
Verizon and Nokia complete first over-the-air data transmission on a commercial 5G NR network  |  Verizon

Privacy

If Privacy Is Dead, Some Argue People Should Sell Their Own Data  |  Read below  |  Michelle Jamrisko, Mark Miller  |  Bloomberg
Chamber of Commerce calls for Congress to block state privacy laws  |  Hill, The
As efforts to increase citizen privacy in a digital world gain ground, what does that mean for government?  |  Government Technology
IBM Used NYPD Surveillance Footage to Develop Technology That Lets Police Search By Skin Color  |  Read below  |  George Joseph, Kenneth Lipp  |  Intercept, The

Ownership

How the Antitrust Battles of the '90s set the Stage for Today's Tech Giants  |  Read below  |  Adi Robertson  |  Analysis  |  Vox
Updating antitrust enforcement for the 21st century: A long-read Q&A with Nicolas Petit  |  American Enterprise Institute
Op-Ed: At $1 Trillion, Amazon Should Fear Regulators More Than Rivals  |  Wired
What’s the FTC Hearing before their Hearings on the Unlevel Playing Field?  |  Scott Cleland

Platforms

Twitter permanently bans Alex Jones and his 'Infowars' show  |  Read below  |  Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, Ars Technica
Google leaves an empty chair at Senate hearing on internet companies  |  Read below  |  Tom Wheeler  |  Analysis  |  Brookings
James Pethokoukis: Will Silicon Valley’s political hell ever end?  |  American Enterprise Institute
Axios Poll: Two-third of Republicans say search engines are biased to favor liberals  |  Axios
Racism and anti-Semitism surged in corners of the Web after Trump’s election, analysis shows  |  Read below  |  Craig Timberg, Drew Harwell  |  Washington Post

Journalism

Fake news is about to get so much more dangerous  |  Read below  |  Thomas Kent  |  Op-Ed  |  Washington Post
Amid nationwide strike, media access to prisons is limited  |  Columbia Journalism Review
5 Questions for Journalist-Supporting Philanthropist Craig Newmark  |  Philanthropy News Digest
Reade Brower, the man behind Maine’s unparalleled consolidation of local news  |  Columbia Journalism Review

Government & Communications

President Trump hits the 'deep state,' the 'left' and the media in wake of anonymous op-ed  |  Read below  |  Brett Samuels  |  Hill, The
White House slams media for 'obsession' with 'anonymous coward'  |  Hill, The
President Trump jokingly praises congressman for assaulting a reporter  |  Washington Post
Mike Allen, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Draft Sharing  |  Washington Post

Security

6 Ways to Fight Election Hacking and Voter Fraud, According to an Expert Panel  |  New York Times
House passes bill to allow DHS to ban foreign contractors over supply chain concerns  |  Hill, The
FTC Takes Action against the Operators of Copycat Military Websites  |  Federal Trade Commission
What to expect when the internet gets a big security upgrade -- problems reaching websites  |  Network World

Policymakers

 
FCC Seeks Nominees to Oversee $10 Billion Universal Service Fund  |  Read below  |  Public Notice  |  Federal Communications Commission
Senate Commerce Committee Approves Kelvin Droegemeier as Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy  |  nextgov
John Dunbar to step down as CEO of the Center for Public Integrity  |  Center for Public Integrity

Stories From Abroad

European Commission clears Apple's purchase of Shazam  |  Read below  |  Reuters
Op-ed: China’s Lessons for Fighting Fake News  |  Foreign Policy
Facebook is spending $1 billion on its first data center in Asia  |  CNN
Today's Top Stories

Broadband/Internet

Groups Launch Broadband Connects America Coalition to End Rural Digital Divide

Daiquiri Ryan  |  Op-Ed  |  Benton Foundation

Public Knowledge joined 17 other organizations (including the Benton Foundation) to form the Broadband Connects America coalition. The Coalition is comprised of a wide range of consumer, rural, and social justice organizations committed to closing the digital divide. Coinciding with today’s launch, Broadband Connects America released the Principles to Connect Rural America -- five principles to serve as a foundation for policymakers and advocates to promote policies that work to bring broadband to millions of rural Americans. We believe in a level playing field for all Americans everywhere, a field on which there are no obstacles to the websites, products, and services we all want and need. Closing the rural digital divide won’t be easy and won’t happen overnight. But, the Principles to Connect Rural America provides a great roadmap to start. Learn more about the Broadband Connects America coalition and the Principles to Connect Rural America at broadbandconnectsamerica.com.

Starry, the startup that is trying to beam cheap internet into low-income communities

Eillie Anzilotti  |  Fast Company

Based in Boston, the internet provider Starry has launched Starry Connect, an initiative that equips the common areas, computer rooms, and hallways of the Boston Housing Authority’s Ausonia Apartments with free 5G internet for residents. More public housing developments, both in Boston and in other cities like Los Angeles, will come online soon through the program. And soon, Starry Connect will roll out in affordable housing developments managed by Related Properties, a developer that, in addition to a range of market-rate properties, owns around 45,000 units of affordable housing across the country. Through the partnership with Related Properties, Starry Connect will also be making in-home Wi-Fi available to low-income residents–anyone receiving a housing subsidy–across the US for less than $20 per month, steeply discounted from the standard $50 flat rate. Starry’s ultimate goal is to prioritize serving people who traditionally lack internet access over turning a massive profit.

Net Neutrality Has Always Been a Bipartisan Issue

Eric Null  |  Analysis  |  New America

Congressional and state actions to preserve strong net neutrality protections have bipartisan support—while the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal had bipartisan opposition. Put another way, net neutrality is, and has always been, a bipartisan issue, and more Republicans, in particular, should follow suit. Here’s why:

  • Net Neutrality Efforts Have Spanned Multiple Administrations and Political Parties
  • Members of Congress from Both Sides of the Aisle Have Pushed Back on Pai’s Ill-Advised Repeal
  • There’s Also Been Bipartisan Movement on the State Level

[Eric Null is policy counsel at New America's Open Technology Institute, focusing on internet openness and affordability issues, including network neutrality, Lifeline, and privacy]

Baltimore public housing residents given tablets, internet connection under initiative to connect more online

Yvonne Wenger  |  Baltimore Sun

The Housing Authority of Baltimore City gave away 500 tablets with two-year internet subscriptions to their tenants as part of an effort to confront the digital divide, the virtual disconnect from information and opportunities that disproportionately affects low-income and minority families. Under the initiative, the housing authority selected 500 residents who are enrolled in various self-sufficiency programs to receive the devices. In exchange, the residents committed to staying active in the programs for the next two years. They get to keep the tablets. The housing authority’s initiative is aligned with a sweeping US Department of Housing and Urban Development goal to address the national disparity by leaning on nonprofits and companies to help connect families.

Wireless

Commissioner Rosenworcel Remarks at Silicon Flatirons

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel  |  Speech  |  Federal Communications Commission

Today, in the spirit of learning from the past and building a brighter future, I want to focus on two specific bands where I believe we can do better—the 5.9 and 2.5 GHz bands. I want to walk you through their history and then—no shame—provide some ideas about what we can do right now to ensure these airwaves become the stuff of spectrum success.

Idea #1: Let’s Rethink the 5.9 GHz Band. It’s time to take a fresh look at this band and see if we can update our commitment to safety and also develop more unlicensed opportunities for Wi-Fi. This is a subject I’ve worked on with my colleague Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. I’s the ideal place to explore Wi-Fi expansion because it’s adjacent to an existing unlicensed band. That means we have the opportunity to introduce new wideband channels—channels that will be able to take advantage of new standards and deliver speeds even faster than 1 gigabit per second. In other words, this is where we can develop next generation Gigabit Wi-Fi. 

Idea #2: Let’s Rethink the 2.5 GHz Band. The FCC has unused 2.5 GHz licenses in inventory. It also has the authority to hold another voluntary spectrum incentive auction. Doing so would require addressing license size, long-term leasing, and other issues unique to the band. But if we were to combine these sources of 2.5 GHz spectrum, we would be able to hold a substantial nationwide auction for new, flexible commercial use of key mid-band airwaves important to 5G service. Then the funds in excess of those required to run the auction and pay for spectrum contributions from existing licensees could be turned into a Homework Gap initiative. This initiative could help fund the connectivity needs of 12 million students who lack broadband at home—through library loans of Wi-Fi hotspots and other creative ideas that help ensure no child is left offline.

Privacy

If Privacy Is Dead, Some Argue People Should Sell Their Own Data

Michelle Jamrisko, Mark Miller  |  Bloomberg

If privacy is truly a thing of the past, then people should at least profit off their own personal information, says data rights advocate Brittany Kaiser. “The digital assets that you produce every day are your own human value. You should be able to own them and you should be able to share in the monetization of that.” It’s a perspective shared by an increasing number of online users around the world, who’re waking up to the fact that Facebook and Google’s online empires are built on data they signed away without compensation. The question is how. From a personal perspective, real ownership and control of data means having all your information -- from political leanings and product preferences to medical records -- in one place, so people can decide who gets to access it and on what terms. That could mean anything from selling it to granting limited use in exchange for a free service (such as Facebook) -- or keeping it completely private.

IBM Used NYPD Surveillance Footage to Develop Technology That Lets Police Search By Skin Color

George Joseph, Kenneth Lipp  |  Intercept, The

In the decade after the 9/11 attacks, the New York City Police Department moved to put millions of New Yorkers under constant watch. Warning of terrorism threats, the department created a plan to carpet Manhattan’s downtown streets with thousands of cameras and had, by 2008, centralized its video surveillance operations to a single command center. Two years later, the NYPD announced that the command center, known as the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, had integrated cutting-edge video analytics software into select cameras across the city. The video analytics software captured stills of individuals caught on closed-circuit TV footage and automatically labeled the images with physical tags, such as clothing color, allowing police to quickly search through hours of video for images of individuals matching a description of interest. At the time, the software was also starting to generate alerts for unattended packages, cars speeding up a street in the wrong direction, or people entering restricted areas. In 2011, Inspector Salvatore DiPace, then commanding officer of the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, said the police department was testing whether the software could box out images of people’s faces as they passed by subway cameras and subsequently cull through the images for various unspecified “facial features.” While facial recognition technology, which measures individual faces at over 16,000 points for fine-grained comparisons with other facial images, has attracted significant legal scrutiny and media attention, this object identification software has largely evaded attention. How exactly this technology came to be developed and which particular features the software was built to catalog have never been revealed publicly by the NYPD. Now, thanks to confidential corporate documents and interviews with many of the technologists involved in developing the software, we know IBM began developing this object identification technology using secret access to NYPD camera footage. With access to images of thousands of unknowing New Yorkers offered up by NYPD officials, as early as 2012, IBM was creating new search features that allow other police departments to search camera footage for images of people by hair color, facial hair, and skin tone.

Ownership

How the Antitrust Battles of the '90s set the Stage for Today's Tech Giants

Adi Robertson  |  Analysis  |  Vox

The 1980s saw major changes in the tech and telecommunications landscape, primarily the breakup of AT&T, which agreed to end its telecom monopoly by splitting into a number of “baby bells.” At the start of the ‘90s, the Federal Trade Commission was already scrutinizing computerized systems that seemed to facilitate entirely new monopolistic and collusive schemes. In 1992, for instance, the Justice Department sued eight major airlines for running a price-fixing scheme through their computerized reservation system. Companies would signal their fares in obscure ticket metadata, creating what the complaint called an “electronic smoke-filled room.” (The case eventually went to a settlement.) Meanwhile, the newly ascendant Microsoft was gaining a startling amount of power in the personal computing market. Microsoft and regulators were in nearly constant conflict throughout the decade, starting in 1989, when the FTC flagged an agreement between Microsoft and IBM as potential collusion. Microsoft spent the first half of the ‘90s largely dismissing these concerns. It agreed to a 1994 consent decree that supposedly limited its ability to lock out competitors, but Bill Gates’ one-word assessment of its effect was “nothing.” This changed after Microsoft was hit by what Gates, in a 1995 memo, termed the “internet tidal wave.”

Platforms

Twitter permanently bans Alex Jones and his 'Infowars' show

Twitter is permanently banning right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his “Infowars” show for abusive behavior. Twitter said Sept 6 that Jones won't be allowed to create new accounts on Twitter or take over any existing ones. The company said Jones posted a video Sept 5 that violated the company's policy against “abusive behavior.” The video in question showed Jones shouting at and berating CNN journalist Oliver Darcy for some 10 minutes between two congressional hearings focused on social media. Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey testified at both hearings, but he did not appear to witness the confrontation. Twitter previously suspended Jones for a week, but had resisted muzzling him further. Other tech companies have limited Jones by suspending him for longer periods, as Facebook did, and by taking down his pages and radio stations. Jones is currently active on Facebook; his suspension there recently expired. 

Google leaves an empty chair at Senate hearing on internet companies

Tom Wheeler  |  Analysis  |  Brookings

The United States Senate Committee on Intelligence convened on Sept 5 to review the practices of internet platform companies, especially as they relate to protecting against any further election interference. What was notable was who refused to participate: the alpha dog of the internet—Google. Instead of an open back-and-forth that would educate both the senators and the public, Google determined that written testimony from their general counsel was sufficient. As someone who represented emerging industries in Washington for decades and went on to become a regulator, Google’s decision not to be part of the discussion is a strategic mistake of virtually incalculable proportions for both themselves as well as the Silicon Valley companies they have come to represent. When the Congress of the United States decides to inquire into your activities, the choice is simple: you can either be at the table and meaningfully engaged, or you can be on the table as your business practices are dissected by others.

The reality for Google—and for other Silicon Valley companies—is that the good old days of the public and policy makers standing in awe of what they built is over.  There is a window of opportunity to effectively engage with the Congress. Stonewalling is not a strategy for such engagement. Clearly, Facebook and Twitter have determined to seize the opportunity for such dialog. Whatever the rationale behind Google’s absence, it was a huge mistake not to engage with the Congress of the United States. Continued evasion can only have negative consequences, not just for Google, but also for the companies they have come to represent.

[Tom Wheeler is the former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission]

Racism and anti-Semitism surged in corners of the Web after Trump’s election, analysis shows

Craig Timberg, Drew Harwell  |  Washington Post

Racist and anti-Semitic content has surged on shadowy social media platforms — spiking around President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day and the “Unite the Right Rally” in Charlottesville (VA) — spreading hate speech and extremist views to mainstream audiences, according to a recent analysis. The findings, from a newly formed group of scientists named the Network Contagion Research Institute who studied hundreds of millions of social media messages, bolster a growing body of evidence about how extremist speech online can be fueled by real-world events. The researchers found the use of the word “Jew” and a derogatory term for Jewish people nearly doubled on the “Politically Incorrect” discussion group on 4chan, an anonymous online messaging board, between July 2016 and January 2018. The use of a racial slur referring to African Americans grew by more than 30 percent in the same period. “There may be 100 racists in your town, but in the past they would have to find each other in the real world. Now they just go online,” said one of the researchers, Jeremy Blackburn, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “These things move these radicals, these outliers in society, closer, and it gives them bigger voices as well.”

Journalism

Fake news is about to get so much more dangerous

Thomas Kent  |  Op-Ed  |  Washington Post

The most powerful false-news weapon in history is around the corner. The media industry has only a short time to get ahead of it. If technology continues its current advance, we may soon face totally convincing videos showing events that never happened — created so effectively that even experts will have trouble proving they’re fakes. “Deep fake” video will be able to show people saying, with the authentic ring of their own voices, things they never said. It will show them doing things they never did, by melding their images with other video or creating new images of them from scratch.

Right now, we have a window of opportunity in which most fake videos are far from perfect. This window gives us a chance to sound public alarms about deep fakes, promote basic tips on detecting them and inoculate audiences against the better fakes to come. It’s not an impossible lift; the public is well aware of fabricated pictures and fake news stories (even if, lamentably, they still share them). News coverage of the dangers of deep fakes will find a ready audience. News companies can also publicize analytics sites and browser extensions that can alert viewers to video fakery. Quality media outlets need to emphasize how carefully they vet video. They should make sure their ethics codes and verification procedures adequately address the dangers. Otherwise, audiences will doubt any video — including legitimate and important footage that media outlets gather in their own breaking news coverage and investigative work.

[Thomas Kent is president and chief executive of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.]

Government & Communications

President Trump hits the 'deep state,' the 'left' and the media in wake of anonymous op-ed

Brett Samuels  |  Hill, The

President Donald Trump lashed out at a host of familiar targets early Sept 6 as he grapples with the fallout of a New York Times op-ed in which an anonymous senior administration official wrote that some White House staffers have conspired to push back against the president's instincts. "The Deep State and the Left, and their vehicle, the Fake News Media, are going Crazy - & they don’t know what to do. The Economy is booming like never before, Jobs are at Historic Highs, soon TWO Supreme Court Justices & maybe Declassification to find Additional Corruption. Wow!," President Trump tweeted.

Policymakers

FCC Seeks Nominees to Oversee $10 Billion Universal Service Fund

Public Notice  |  Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission seeks nominations for the following positions on the Board of Directors of the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) for a three-year term.

  • Representative for schools that are eligible to receive discounts pursuant to section 54.501 of the Commission’s rules (position currently held by Dr. Miguel Hernandez, State Superintendent, Office of Coordinated Service and Support, Monticello, AR);
  • Representative for information service providers (position currently held by Olivia Wein, Senior Attorney, National Consumer Law Center)  
  • Representative for rural healthcare providers that are eligible to receive supported services pursuant to section 54.601 (position currently held by Brent Fontana, Technical Business Developer, Amazon Web Services)
  • Representative for state telecommunications regulators (position currently held by Sarah Freeman, Commissioner, Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission)
  • Representative for incumbent local exchange carriers (non-Bell Operating Companies) with more than $40 million in annual revenues (position currently held by Kenneth F. Mason, Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Frontier Communications)
  • Representative for interexchange carriers with annual operating revenues of more than $3 billion (position currently held by Alan Buzacott, Executive Director, Federal Regulatory Affairs, Verizon Communications, Inc.)

All nominations must be filed with the Office of the Secretary by October 8, 2018.

Stories From Abroad

European Commission clears Apple's purchase of Shazam

  |  Reuters

The European Union approved Apple’s planned acquisition of British music discovery app Shazam, saying an EU antitrust investigation showed it would not harm competition in the bloc. The deal, announced in December 2017, would help the iPhone maker better compete with Spotify, the industry leader in music streaming services. Shazam identifies songs when a smartphone is pointed at an audio source.  “After thoroughly analyzing Shazam’s user and music data, we found that their acquisition by Apple would not reduce competition in the digital music streaming market,” EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. “Data is key in the digital economy. We must therefore carefully review transactions which lead to the acquisition of important sets of data, including potentially commercially sensitive ones,” she added.

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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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