May 2013

AP, New York Times will not attend off-the-record DOJ session

The Associated Press and New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson have indicated they will not attend aa session with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss the Justice Department's monitoring of reporters, due to the fact that the meeting is to be conducted "off the record."

"We believe the meeting should be on the record and we have said that to the Attorney General’s office. If it is on the record, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll will attend. If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter," AP spokesperson Erin Madigan said. "We would expect AP attorneys to be included in any planned meetings between the Attorney General’s office and media lawyers on the legal specifics."

“We will not be attending the session at DOJ. It isn’t appropriate for us to attend an off the record meeting with the attorney general. Our Washington bureau is aggressively covering the department’s handling of leak investigations at this time," Abramson said. "Evidently, there will be a future session with department officials on the substance of how the law should be applied in leak cases and I am hopeful that our counsel, David McCraw will be able to participate in that meeting."

Survey: Americans Would Rather Give Up Phone or TV Than PC

Surging production and sales of tablets and smartphones has led many to tout the demise of the PC. Yet the personal computer is the one device Americans would choose to hold on to if they had to choose among PCs, TVs, smartphones or tablets and use one device for a year, according to results of a survey from Clear Channel Media & Entertainment.

Smartphone Adoption Tips Past 50% in Major Markets Worldwide

According to new figures from eMarketer, several markets worldwide reached a milestone in mobile usage last year. By the end of 2012, over half of mobile phone users in six countries had made the switch from feature phones to smartphones.

The coming years will see a domino effect hit regions around the world as smartphones become the norm in more places. The worldwide smartphone penetration rate among mobile users will remain just under one-third in 2013, eMarketer expects, and will approach the halfway point by 2017. In 2012, eMarketer estimates, six countries—South Korea, Norway, Sweden, Australia, the UK and the US—saw smartphone user penetration rates among mobile phone users rise above 50% for the first time. As a percentage of population, a majority of residents in South Korea, Australia, Norway and Sweden will also use smartphones this year, eMarketer estimates, though average penetration worldwide among the total population will come in under 20%. South Korea led the world last year in the share of mobile users who used a smartphone, at 60%. Australia, at 53%, was the only other country in Asia-Pacific to pass the halfway mark in 2012, with Japan set to follow in 2014.

Why Your City Should Compete With Google’s Super-Speed Internet

When it comes to broadband internet access, the U.S. still lags behind other developed nations. We don’t have the broadband connections that other countries have, and fewer people are using them. Google Fiber — the gigabit internet service the company offers in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri — has sparked hope that the U.S. could one day catch up to countries such as South Korea and Japan. But although Google is expanding its fiber services to more cities — and private companies like AT&T and CenturyLink have promised to step up fiber offerings in some areas — we’re a long way from nationwide high-speed internet. Rural communities, in particular, are underserved by broadband providers.

One solution may be municipal broadband services — services owned and operated by local governments, as opposed to independent ISPs. The Media Consortium hosted a conference call with Christopher Mitchell of Institute for Local Self Reliance; Kansas City, Missouri assistant city manager Rick Usher; and Matt Wood, policy director of Free Press, to compare community broadband initiatives with Google Fiber. While Usher praised Google’s efforts in Kansas City on both sides of the state line, Mitchell and Wood highlighted some of the reasons that a community might want both a commercial offering and a municipal broadband network.

Execs Share Details on New Iowa Gigabit Network

The latest entity to offer gigabit service is a community owned network in Cedar Falls, Iowa that is managed by Cedar Falls Utilities. That organization also manages municipally-owned electricity, water and natural gas utilities.

The Cedar Falls network is different from gigabit networks in some other communities in that service in most cases can be turned up immediately, said Betty Zeman, marketing manager for Cedar Falls Utilities. “We’re in almost every property in town with an ONT [optical network terminal] already,” she explained. The new Cedar Falls gigabit network traces back to a hybrid-fiber coax network originally constructed in the 1990s with funding raised through a referendum.

China continues to deny carrying out cyberattacks against US

China again denied that it has used cyberattacks to steal American military and business secrets, following new accusations leveled this week.

“China opposes all forms of cyberattacks. China is also a victim of hacking,” said Assistant Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang during a press briefing previewing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with President Obama next week. Zheng noted that China and the United States have agreed to set up a working group to regularly discuss the issue.

House Judiciary panel launches official probe into whether AG Holder lied

The top two Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have initiated an investigation into whether Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath during his May 15 testimony on the Justice Department’s (DOJ) surveillance of reporters.

Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI), the chairman of the subcommittee on investigations, sent a letter to AG Holder detailing specific aspects of his testimony that they say conflicts with subsequent media reports about Holder’s involvement in the surveillance of James Rosen, a reporter for Fox News. “The media reports and statements issued by the Department regarding the search warrants for Mr. Rosen’s emails appear to be at odds with your sworn testimony before the Committee,” the letter reads in part. “We believe — and we hope you will agree — it is imperative that the Committee, the Congress, and the American people be provided a full and accurate account of your involvement in and approval of these search warrants.”

AG Holder to meet news media chiefs in review of subpoena policy

Attorney General Eric Holder is planning to meet with the Washington (DC) bureau chiefs of major news outlets this week as he reviews the Justice Department’s (DOJ) policies for issuing media subpoenas.

The meetings over the next two days will initiate more lengthy discussions in the coming weeks with representatives from print, radio, television, wire, and online news groups and trade associations, according to a DOJ official. President Barack Obama directed AG Holder to review the department’s media subpoena policies last week after a firestorm of criticism erupted from news organizations and lawmakers over the DOJ’s handling of two separate leaks investigations. A DOJ official, speaking on background, said that Holder’s review is an attempt to ensure First Amendment rights are respected by the department and that it would include conversations with news media executives and general counsels in addition to government intelligence and investigative experts.

Why a Media Shield Law Isn't Enough to Save Journalists

[Commentary] I’m all for a shield law to protect journalists and their sources from government prosecutors. I hope Congress passes one. But I don’t have lots of faith that the ideas under consideration in Congress or any law can protect journalists adequately.

This is one of those areas where custom carries more weight than statute, the custom being the general good sense of prosecutors not to go after reporters for their information. For the most part prosecutors—and by that I mean everyone from county attorneys on up—have refrained from going after reporters, including the notable and obvious exception of the Obama Justice Department. Yes, there are cases where prosecutors have gone subpoena-happy, from the BALCO steroids case to the Aurora shooting to the CIA leak case, where I was caught up in the maelstrom. But, generally, prosecutors don't pursue reporters even when they can. This unspoken compact began to become undone during the Bush administration, and, of course, it has unraveled during the Obama years as the national-security state has expanded. Inevitably, prosecutors have to seek a balance. In the case of James Rosen, even if you grant that the leak of North Korean nuclear-testing information was a huge deal, and you imagine that it may have been dependent on human intelligence in Pyongyang and you fear its revelation led to us having to roll up networks or even harm coming to sources, you can see the fervor with which DOJ, along with the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community, would want to go after such a leak. But from what we’ve heard about the case, it’s hard to see why you’d need to subpoena the reporters e-mails and phone records. The government already has extensive rights to look over the documents of employees with high security clearances. If you have their records, do you really need the Fox ones? Even if you do, is it worth it? For a long time, prosecutors answered the question “no”—not because they were saintly but because it was in their self-interest, and ours.

Treaty for the Blind in Jeopardy, Copyright Zealots to Blame

[Commentary] In a few weeks, the 186 governments that are members of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will gather in Morocco with the goal of crafting a Treaty For The Blind.

The agreement would facilitate global production and lending of audio books, Braille translations, and otherwise enable the visually impaired and those with certain learning disabilities to have affordable access to books. This will most benefit the millions of blind people in the developing world who live in poverty, by adopting many of the rights to translate works into braille or other forms accessible to the visually impaired that are already law in the United States. But last minute lobbying by Hollywood and publishing interests in the U.S. and Europe have threatened to derail the Treaty for the Blind at the last minute.

Benton

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