July 2013

NSA surveillance is within democracy’s bounds

[Commentary] Perhaps it was inevitable that Edward Snowden’s revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) monitoring of Europe would prompt some people to liken the U.S. government to the Stasi, Communist East Germany’s notorious secret police. Fortunately for two important causes — transatlantic relations and sensible political discourse — Chancellor Angela has challenged this spurious equivalency. As Germany’s first chancellor from the east, Merkel spoke with special authority. It’s important, though, to understand specifically why she is right.

The methods of surveillance and intelligence-gathering — bribery, blackmail, wiretapping, infiltration and the rest — are not normal tools of democratic governance. To the contrary: There is a basic tension, or trade-off, between democracy and secrecy, and it’s absurd to deny it. Yet it is equally absurd to suggest, as Jakob Augstein did in Der Spiegel, that “no matter in what system or to what purpose: A monitored human being is not a free human being.” The political goals and institutional context of a given state’s intelligence-gathering make all the difference. Given the threats to democracy, and the technological milieu from which they may emerge, the United States needs to engage in data collection on a wide scale, both at home and abroad. The issue is whether it has checks and balances to ensure that these means remain politically and legally subordinate to legitimate ends. On that score, there’s good news and not-so-good news in Snowden’s revelations.

Merkel Urges Europe to Tighten Internet Safeguards

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is calling for the European Union to adopt legislation requiring Internet companies to disclose what information about users they store and to whom they provide it.

Merkel’s remarks reflected the anger throughout much of Europe, including Germany, over recent accounts of government surveillance by the United States National Security Agency. Those accounts, in government documents leaked by Edward Snowden, included the agency’s compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major American Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Skype. Those companies have already begun aggressive lobbying campaigns to stop or dilute tighter privacy rules, which they say would interfere with their business models and decrease profits and growth. The companies’ efforts are, in turn, supported by countries like England and Ireland that fear that such restrictions would hamper economic recovery.

Do not look to Europe to protect our data

[Commentary] Is personal data better shielded in Europe from the prying eyes of national security investigations than in the US? That is a general assumption of some following the revelations by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. But it may be incorrect.

It is naive to think that European intelligence agencies do not use data collected from phone and internet companies in their investigations. Privacy hawks may also be surprised to learn that the US imposes at least as much due process and oversight on foreign intelligence surveillance as others. Currently, there is quarrelling over how well the judicial and legislative approval process is working in America. But the fact that it exists at all is the critical point because few countries provide the kind of framework of judicial authorization and legislative oversight of national security investigations found in the US. There are no guarantees, in the US or anywhere else, that authorities are abiding by the laws restricting access to personal data in the name of national security. But the degree of authorization required and the kind of review that occurs is relevant indeed to a determination of how well personal privacy and liberty are protected. Viewed that way, the US fares better than many others. European critics of US privacy protections would be well advised to take stock of their own countries’ national security access to personal data.

[Wolf is head of global privacy and information management at law firm Hogan Lovells]

Baidu to Buy Mobile App Store for $1.9 Billion

Chinese search giant Baidu said it would buy one of China's mobile app stores for $1.9 billion as it ramps up to compete for business from China's growing population of smartphone-carrying consumers.

Baidu signed an agreement to buy 91 Wireless Websoft Ltd. from China's NetDragon Websoft Inc. The acquisition would be Baidu's largest to date, and it becomes the most recent in a string of high-profile investments and acquisitions focused on mobile services. Baidu, which operates by far China's largest search engine by revenue and traffic, has had difficulty attracting mobile customers to its service due to the relative unpopularity of search on mobile devices compared with personal computers.

AT&T Bid for Leap Seen Winning Approval of US Agencies

AT&T’s $1.2 billion deal to buy Leap Wireless International would probably win approval from U.S. regulators, who may demand the company give up airwaves where its holdings surpass federal benchmarks.

“This deal is probably achievable, but it will get looked at closely,” said Allen Grunes, an antitrust lawyer with GeyerGorey LLP in Washington. Antitrust officials at the Justice Department and airwaves regulators at the Federal Communications Commission aren’t expected to conclude consumers would be harmed by the loss of Leap as a competitor, said Paul Gallant, Washington-based managing director at Guggenheim Securities LLC. In some markets, the deal may bring the company above the FCC’s thresholds designed to ensure competition by preventing concentrated airwaves holdings. “This is where regulators are likely to focus,” Gallant wrote.

The number of such markets may become clear in AT&T filings with the FCC, he wrote. AT&T could resolve any concerns by giving up airwaves, said Warren Rosborough, an antitrust lawyer with McDermott Will & Emery LLP. “There could be some local markets where the picture isn’t so good for AT&T, but I don’t think AT&T will have any problems spinning off towers to fix local concentration issues,” Rosborough said.

Leap’s Cricket brand sells to low-income customers, who may be disproportionately affected by Leap’s removal from the market, Harold Feld, senior vice president of the Washington-based policy group Public Knowledge, said in a July 12 statement. He said regulators should reject the deal.

A bird’s eye view of the AT&T-Leap Wireless merger

A look at AT&T’s proposed purchase of Leap. How much spectrum will AT&T get and is it worth the extremely high premium AT&T is offering?

The good people at Moasik Solutions, a company that catalogs mobile coverage worldwide, have generated some detailed maps showing the spectrum positions of both operators as well as what the two operators would look like once combined. Leap, which is known to most of the country by its consumer-facing brand Cricket Communications, isn’t a nationwide carrier, but it does hold a few key licenses that would make any carrier’s mouth water. It owns valuable spectrum on the dense mid-Atlantic seaboard from Philadelphia down to Richmond (VA). But Leap’s big appeal is west of the Mississippi, where it has 26 MHz or more of PCS, Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) and 700 MHz airwaves — all bands where AT&T wants to build mobile broadband networks — in cities like San Antonio, Houston, Denver, Kansas City, San Diego, Phoenix and Portland (OR). Leap also owns smaller chunks of frequencies in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Nashville, Charlotte, New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City. AT&T could put all of those airwaves to work in its 3G HSPA+ and 4G LTE networks. Harvesting that spectrum is almost certainly what AT&T plans given Leap’s primary technology CDMA is entirely incompatible with AT&T’s GSM and HSPA systems.

Would Checking Cellphones After Collisions Truly Help Police?

New Jersey Senate Bill (SB) 2783 would allow police to look through cellphones without warrants and aims to determine whether drivers were texting or talking when a traffic accident occurred should officers have reasonable grounds to believe that may be the case. But as is expected, the bill has drawn suspicion from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, which told CNN that the state and federal constitutions "generally require probable cause before authorizing a search, particularly when it comes to areas that contain highly personal information such as cellphones."

Why the Smart Grid Might be a Dumb Idea

Foreign hackers don't just pose a threat to classified material, corporate secrets, and individual privacy. Security experts say the greatest cyberthreat to the United States is the fact that the Chinese and Russian governments—and possibly other players—have succeeded in hacking into the nation's electric grid, giving them the ability, if they wish, to bring the U.S. economy to a screeching halt with the click of a mouse.

Such an attack—executed not by gun-wielding terrorists on planes but by hackers activating software programs from thousands of miles away—could "deny large regions of the country access to bulk-system power for weeks or even months," concluded a National Academies of Science study declassified late last year. "An event of this magnitude and duration could lead to turmoil, widespread public fear, and an image of helplessness that would play directly into the hands of the terrorists. If such large extended outages were to occur during times of extreme weather, they could also result in hundreds or even thousands of deaths due to heat stress or extended exposure to extreme cold."

Intelligence Community Backs Off Information Sharing

A recent solicitation issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency suggests the intelligence community has started to back away from developing a common technology architecture to foster information sharing -- a concept officials touted in February prior to revelations that National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden was leaking top secret information to the press.

The Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a government and industry group, released a white paper on Feb. 11 based on input for development of a new intelligence community IT environment based on input from the chief information officers of the 16 intelligence agencies. It emphasized a common environment to enhance information sharing.

Protect My Public Media Launches

The 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting campaign has a new name, look, and website. From now on, you can call us Protect My Public Media.

Our name may have changed, but our mission remains the same: to protect the federal investment in public media. Did you know that the cost of public media is just $1.35 per American every year? That’s less than the price of a cup of coffee. With this small investment, over 98% of the U.S. population can enjoy free, over-the-air and online news, educational and cultural programming. Public media stations also provide a ton of local, on-the-ground services that improve and protect their communities.

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