February 2013

US tech groups criticized for EU lobbying

The head of the European coalition of data protection authorities has sharply criticized intensifying pressure from US lobbyists on behalf of Google and Facebook to relax EU privacy laws to suit Silicon Valley businesses.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and several other top US tech companies, with the help of the Obama administration, have been increasing pressure on European lawmakers in recent months. They want standardized privacy laws across borders to make their business operations flow more easily, which would mean more lax EU legislation at a time when the bloc is proposing exactly the opposite. Jacob Kohnstamm, head of the Article 29 Working Party, which represents EU privacy and data protection regulators, told the FT that European lawmakers were “fed up” with US tech companies trying to put their corporate interests ahead of laws that protect what Europe sees as fundamental rights.

European Snub of 4G Prices Spurs Rate Cuts

Europe’s wireless carriers are falling behind their U.S. rivals in efforts to boost tariffs as they introduce faster service, with price cuts in France and Britain indicating phone bills will shrink further.

EE, the U.K. mobile-phone company owned by Deutsche Telekom AG and France Telecom SA, last month reduced rates for its fastest fourth-generation services, and Vivendi SA’s SFR unit slashed prices in France by as much as 25 percent on packages built around quicker data transfers. In Germany, the first major western European market with 4G, Vodafone Group Plc has cut the cost of its most expensive plans. The discounts, announced just a few months after EE and SFR began offering 4G, suggest that carriers may be giving up on a bet that European consumers will pay more for faster downloads of music, YouTube videos, and other data-heavy content.

Foxconn plans Chinese union vote

Foxconn, the contract manufacturer whose biggest customer is Apple, is preparing genuinely representative labor union elections in its factories in China for the first time, a powerful sign of the changes in the workshop of the world demanded by an increasingly restive workforce. This would be the first such exercise at a large company in China, where labor unions have traditionally been controlled by management and local government. Foxconn is the country’s largest private sector employer with 1.2m mainland workers. The Taiwanese company, the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, said that the new election process would see a larger representation of junior employees and no management involvement.

The real Gigabit Challenge is getting ISPs to think like tech firms

[Commentary] As cities around the US look at gigabit connections and see the future infrastructure that they ought to provide to ensure their citizens have access to 21st century jobs and remain (or maybe even become) hotbeds of innovation, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has also hopped on board the train. The Chairman, playing the role of chief cheerleader called for a Gigabit Challenge three weeks ago: asking that every state in the U.S. get at least one gigabit city by 2015. But he had it wrong.

No matter what the FCC does, there will be gigabit cities in most states by 2015, or those networks will be under construction. The real gigabit challenge is to get the telcos to think like tech companies or to get them out of the way. If we accept that broadband is the silicon of the next fifty years — providing the platform for technological innovation and advancement that chips had done from 1960 on — then we need the providers of broadband to think like tech firms. If ISPs had been thinking like tech firms they would have realized that their goal was to connect everyone to the internet, deliver the Internet everywhere and invest in applications that would drive demand for faster speeds. ISPs should have beat Boingo and Wayport to the Wi-Fi hot spot business. They should look at the Internet of things and see opportunities for delivering quality of service and prioritization and create services for that. And fundamentally, they should be playing a game where they want to get to a gigabit, because if everyone wants a gigabit connection, they will have to get wireline connections for home and still have their Wi-Fi and cellular for everywhere else.

Shutting Down the Phone System: “IP” Does Not Equal “Fiber,” “Fiber Does Not Equal IP.”

[Commentary] Decisions made by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the years have fragmented our various policies and regulations about phones into a crazy-quilt of different rules tied sometimes to the technology (IP v. traditional phone (TDM)) and sometimes to the actual medium of transmission (copper v. fiber v. cable v. wireless). This wacky set of FCC decisions has produced a great deal of confusion about what we are talking about when we talk about the upgrade of the phone network. As a result, people keep pointing out the same two things to me over and over and over. “AT&T is not switching to fiber to the home! Their upgrade is still copper!” The other is: “Verizon is pulling up all their copper in New York City (and everywhere else in the Sandy zone) and shifting customers from copper to FIOS without getting any permission from anyone!” Allow me to debunk the Cult of the Copper Snake. You can have an all IP network that runs on copper, and you can run a traditional TDM-based network over fiber that is treated like a phone service. Both of these are different from a TDM-system that runs on copper. All three are treated differently from each other from a regulatory perspective.

Progress Update: How the FCC is Expanding Broadband Connectivity for Health Care

Broadband connectivity is transforming America’s health care system, creating better, faster, and more cost-effective health care across the country. The sector represents almost 18 percent of the nation’s GDP, and increased efficiency has the power to lower costs, create better results for patients, and trigger economic growth. At the January 31 Open Commission Meeting, Julius Knapp, Chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology and Linda Oliver from the Wireline Competition Bureau delivered an update on the Commission’s work to support wireless and wireline connectivity for health, including the new Healthcare Connect Fund and the FCC’s ongoing work to expand spectrum access for wireless medical devices. The FCC also hosted a telemedicine demonstration by the Georgia Partnership for Telehealth (GPT), which focuses on increasing access to health care through innovative use of technology.

FCC shows little interest in policing indecency on TV

A Supreme Court decision last year upheld the Federal Communications Commission's authority to fine television stations for airing indecent material, but the agency has shown little interest in exercising that power.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is facing pressure from lawmakers and family values groups to crack down on TV stations that broadcast nudity, curse words or other offensive material, but aggressive enforcement could cause a backlash from broadcasters and civil liberties advocates. Observers predict that Chairman Genachowski, who is widely rumored to be planning to step down this year, will leave the issue for his successor to handle. “They've waited a long time, and if the chairman waits a little bit longer, he may be gone. So it'll be somebody else's headache,” said Andrew Schwartzman, a media attorney opposed to the indecency fines. “All indications are that Chairman Genachowski does not want to deal with this,” said Dan Isett, director of public policy for the Parents Television Council, which favors aggressive enforcement. “I suspect the chairman is trying to run out the clock.” Asked whether the FCC plans to act on any indecency complaints, an agency spokesman pointed to a statement from last September in which Chairman Genachowski said the FCC is still reviewing its enforcement policy.

Will Conservative Talkers Take on Immigration?

Nearly six years after the U.S. Senate defeated President George W. Bush's immigration policy overhaul, there is another major legislative effort to change the nation's immigration system.

Back in 2007, the most vocal opponents of the Bush plan included conservative talk hosts, according to PEJ research. On the airwaves, they took credit for defeating the measure and in a sign of their impact, then Republican Senator Trent Lott reacted to the bill's derailment by saying that "talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem." Will the influential conservative talk masters attempt to galvanize public opinion against this bill to the same degree and with the same ferocity as last time? The early indications are perhaps not. In 2007, the anti-immigration reform charge was led by hosts such as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs (then at CNN) and Michael Savage. During the crucial period when the bill's fate was being decided, (from mid-May through mid-June, 2007), those conservative talk show hosts made immigration their No. 1 topic, filling nearly a quarter (23%) of their airtime discussing legislation they labeled "amnesty," according to a PEJ study during that time. Indeed, they devoted about seven times more attention to the subject than the liberal talk hosts. Today, some of these hosts seem to have softened their stance on the issue.

Chinese hackers suspected in attack on The Post’s computers

A sophisticated cyberattack targeted The Washington Post in an operation that resembled intrusions against other major American news organizations and that company officials suspect was the work of Chinese hackers, people familiar with the incident said. Post company officials confirmed the broad outlines of the infiltration, which was discovered in 2011 and first reported by an independent cybersecurity blog on Friday. But they did not elaborate on the circumstances, the duration of the intrusion or its apparent origin. “Like other companies in the news recently, we face cybersecurity threats,” Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti said. “In this case, we worked with [security company] Mandiant to detect, investigate, and remediate the situation promptly at the end of 2011. We have a number of security measures in place to guard against cyberattacks on an ongoing basis.”

FTC, Path settlement shows online privacy goes beyond the policy

Much of the conversation about online and mobile privacy focuses on using clear language, but Web and app developers may also want to mind the p’s and q’s of good graphic design to stay out of hot water.

On February 1, the Federal Trade Commission announced it had settled with the social network Path concerning charges that Path improperly collected user data. What’s interesting about the charges, said Jules Polonetsky, director and co-chair of the Future of Privacy Forum, is that the FTC didn’t fault the network for misrepresenting its privacy policy. Instead, he noted, Path’s privacy problems lay in a design flaw. Path CEO Dave Morin later apologized to users, saying that the way it designed the feature was “wrong.” Polonetsky said it’s notable that the FTC cited this as a user interface issue in its complaint. That focus on clear design and timing in apps also popped up frequently in the mobile privacy guidelines the FTC released Feb 1, which suggested app developers design icons or “just-in-time” notifications that make it clear and obvious when users are sharing personal information.

Benton

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