June 2013

Facebook: We have not given user data to Turkish authorities

Facebook said that it has not provided user data to Turkish authorities despite the requests it has received from the government for information related to protests in the country.

The social network said it rejects all government requests for data from Turkish authorities, and encouraged the country to submit these requests to international law enforcement structures. "More generally, we reject all government data requests from Turkish authorities and push them to formal legal channels unless it appears that there is an immediate threat to life or a child, which has been the case in only a small fraction of the requests we have received," the company said. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been criticized for violently cracking down on protesters rallying against the government in recent weeks.

A Few Agencies Use Internal Apps to Boost Mobility, Collaboration

Agencies are still in the early stages of mobile app development and adoption, with most strained by the lack of staff, leadership and resources to develop enterprise mobile apps and stores, according to a new report.

The new guide – “Making Mobile Matter” – released by GovLoop, found that most agencies do not yet have a mobile strategy in place. Only 25 percent said they have a mobile strategy, while 26 percent said they are developing one. Those results are based on a GovLoop survey of 155 government innovators and employees leveraging mobile. In addition, the majority of agencies (73 percent) have not leveraged mobile apps for internal use, and most (87 percent) are not planning to adopt or develop internal apps.

Penny Pritzker Sworn in as 38th Secretary of Commerce

On June 26, Penny Pritzker was sworn in as the nation’s 38th Commerce Secretary.

As a key member of President Obama’s economic team, Secretary Pritzker will lead the U.S. Department of Commerce in carrying out the important work that gives entrepreneurs and businesses the tools they need to create jobs and keep the American economy growing, two of the administration’s highest priorities. She will also work extensively with the business community, bringing their concerns and ideas to the forefront.

FTC Commissioner Brill Starts ‘Reclaim Your Name’ Campaign for Personal Data

Federal Trade Commission member Julie Brill has proposed an industry-wide initiative to give consumers access to their own records held by data brokers. She envisions an online portal where data brokers would describe their data collection practices and their consumer access policies.

Commissioner Brill has come up with a handy nickname for her proposed effort: “Reclaim Your Name.” “Reclaim Your Name would empower the consumer to find out how brokers are collecting and using data; give her access to information that data brokers have amassed about her; allow her to opt-out if she learns a data broker is selling her information for marketing purposes and provide her the opportunity to correct errors in information used for substantive decisions – like credit, insurance, employment, and other benefits,” Commissioner Brill said in a speech at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in Washington. Participation in a voluntary “Reclaim Your Name” program of the kind Commissioner Brill proposed might help the industry mitigate government efforts toward greater regulation.

San Francisco paper Sues Rival Over Low Ad Rates

The San Francisco Examiner filed a lawsuit alleging that the city's dominant daily newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, has slashed advertising prices to stifle competition.

The suit claims Chronicle owner The Hearst Corp. and officials at the paper took advantage of its greater corporate resources to "selectively and secretly" target Examiner advertisers with "below-cost and discriminatory offers designed to injure the Examiner." The two newspapers shared business operations and revenues from 1965 until 2000, when then-Examiner-owner Hearst acquired the Chronicle and sold the Examiner to a local family. The suit alleges the Chronicle charged significantly higher rates for ad space as expected after selling the Examiner, but reversed course when the new Examiner owners, San Francisco Newspaper Company LLC, took over in 2011. Attorneys said the Chronicle began using the tactic when the new group, which unlike its immediate predecessors, had significant experience operating major newspapers, took over the Examiner and brought the threat of heightened competition.

Sinclair’s Smith: Adopt Next TV Standard Now

A Q&A with Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO David Smith who wants to be seen as an industry visionary.

He practically invented the legal workaround that lets groups operate multiple stations where the FCC rules say they can’t own them. He was early and aggressive in demanding retransmission consent fees, thereby establishing a solid new revenue stream. And he just did the entire industry a favor by rescuing Dielectric, the leading maker of TV antennas and other RF gear that was about to close up shop for good. His current vision is one in which broadcasting goes toe-to-toe with cable, satellite, wireless broadband and any other medium in providing multichannel TV, free or pay, fixed or mobile, and in giving advertisers the ability to target ads to the individual consumers most likely to buy. It’s all possible, Smith insists, if the industry moves quickly and decisively in developing and implementing a new, more capable broadcast standard, even if it is incompatible with the current standard and the tens of millions of TVs in use today.

Bloomberg Wants FCC Action on Comcast Neighborhooding Compliant

Bloomberg is pushing the Federal Communications Commission to come to a final decision on its complaint against Comcast for what Bloomberg alleges is a violation of the news neighborhooding condition the FCC imposed as a condition of allowing Comcast to meld with NBCU.

Bloomberg says the FCC should act "immediately" to move Bloomberg TV into all the standard-definition "news neighborhoods" on Comcast systems in the top 35 markets. The company points out that it has been 29 months since the FCC approved the deal, and almost a year since the Media Bureau said there should be some neighborhooding, then stayed that decision pending review by the full FCC. "[I]t is past time for the Commission to expeditiously act on this matter," said Bloomberg.

NSA takes surveillance fact sheets off website

Following a complaint from Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO), the National Security Agency has removed from its website two fact sheets designed to shed light on and defend a pair of surveillance programs.

Users now trying to access the documents detailing surveillance under legal authorities known as Section 215 and Section 702 receive an error message when they try to load the fact sheets. "After reviewing your letter, I agree that the fact sheet that the National Security Agency posted on its website on 18 June 2013 could have more precisely described the requirements for collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act," said NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander.

Copper Based Broadband Decline is Accelerating, Sort Of

While still the dominant method for broadband access across the world, the decline in copper based broadband connections is accelerating, according to a recent Point Topic report.

That’s not surprising news, especially here in the U.S. where the two largest incumbent DSL providers, Verizon and AT&T, have been hemorrhaging millions of basic DSL subscribers for the past couple years. The rise in fiber and hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) broadband connections are coming at copper’s expense. Point Topic reported that copper based broadband connections had declined for the first time in 4Q12, with 415K copper based broadband subscribers lost. They now report an acceleration in that trend, with over 2.77 million copper based broadband connections lost in the first three months of 2013. Despite my reference to AT&T and Verizon in the U.S., Point Topic points to rapid declines for copper based broadband in Asia as playing a major role in this trend. The U.S. is somewhat unique in the world, given the strong position of cable MSOs with respect to broadband connections. No other region in the world comes close to the percentage that cable holds for broadband, which Point Topic pegs at 50% for the “Americas” region.

What's the Cost of Not Having a Retransmission Agreement? $2.25 Million

[Commentary] We now know what the per-subscriber fee for cable systems lacking retransmission agreements with local broadcast stations is, and it isn't "free."

Section 76.64 of the Federal Communications Commission’s rules requires cable systems to have a written retransmission agreement in place before retransmitting the signal of a station that elected retransmission consent status. Because the law is clear on this point, there have been few cases where the FCC has had to address complaints of illegal retransmission. In the first of these cases, the FCC found the cable system violated its obligation to negotiate in good faith with the broadcaster and ordered retransmission to cease until an agreement was in place. Two later cases for a pair of 34-day violations against one cable system operator resulted in base fine calculations of $255,000 each, but the FCC reduced the fines to $15,000 each based upon the cable system operator's inability to pay.

Now the FCC upped the ante, proposing a fine of $2.25 million for TV Max and related parties for retransmitting six local TV stations to 245 multiple dwelling unit buildings in Houston without a retransmission agreement.

Benton

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