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September 2013

Police should be able to seize a suspect’s phone — sometimes

[Commentary] The Obama administration has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a case that would decide whether law enforcement has the constitutional right to perform a warrantless search of someone’s cellphone at the time of arrest. In numerous cases, courts have found that, at such a time, the Constitution allows police to search certain objects in a suspect’s immediate possession. But the law governing cellphone searches ought to be updated to ensure that a suspect’s reasonable expectation of privacy is protected.

I side with the administration. It’s well established that police may search evidence accompanying a suspect that is relevant to the crime of arrest, such as a suspect’s car, address book or diary. The cellphone in the 2007 case — an older, flip-screen model — was with the suspect when he was arrested and was relevant, as police believed he had arranged drug transactions by phone. The type of police search that led to his address — looking through the phone’s call log — is no different from flipping through an address book or journal. Smartphones, however, are a different matter. The rapid advancement of smartphone and tablet technology demands that we address these issues before they become even more complex. The Fourth Amendment sets the standard for searches at the time of arrest: the reasonable expectation of privacy. Anything infringing that threshold requires a warrant and must be based on probable cause.

[Gary Shapiro is president and chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association]

How Britain’s new cyberarmy could reshape the laws of war

[Commentary] The cultural norms against waging war in cyberspace are slowly eroding. The UK government announced it that it's actively building an offensive cyber capability, making it the first government to openly admit doing so. Britain will have "hundreds" of hackers at its disposal, defending the country's digital infrastructure, but also developing the power to deter and to strike. The act of putting together a cyberarmy is hardly worth mentioning; Britain's national security strategy documents from 2010 telegraph that pretty well. Besides — if you're a world leader and you're not investing in online defenses, you're doing it wrong.

Senate to move on NSA legislation

The Senate Intelligence Committee is set to vote on legislation aimed at restoring public trust in the National Security Agency following a summer of damaging leaks by Edward Snowden. But the bill, authored by Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and ranking member Sen Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), is unlikely to go far enough to appease privacy advocates. The bill would tweak — but not end — the NSA’s controversial program to collect records on all US phone calls. It would also require that the Senate confirm the NSA director and instruct the agency to produce annual reports containing statistics on its surveillance activities. Although Chairman Feinstein says some changes are necessary to promote trust in the NSA, she argues that the surveillance programs are legal and are critical for national security.

Nielsen Completes Acquisition of Rating Rival Arbitron

Nielsen Holdings said it completed its $1.3 billion acquisition of Arbitron, a competitor in media and marketing research. In order to get approval for the acquisition Nielsen agreed to conditions including allowing another company to use Arbitron's personal people meter technology. By adding Arbitron Nielsen now measures eight hours a day per person of media consumption.

Apple to pay $40 to iPad 3G owners shut out of all-you-can-eat data plans

Apple and AT&T are set to resolve a long-running class action suit over the companies’ decision in June, 2010 to end unlimited data plans for the iPad 3G tablet.

In a ruling issued in San Jose (CA), US District Judge Ronald Whyte signed off on a plan that will see Apple pay $40 to everyone in the US who bought or ordered an iPad 3G before June 7, 2010. In addition, those who did not sign up with AT&T will get a $20/month discount on the carrier’s 5GB monthly plan for up to a year. Under the deal, which is set to receive final approval in February, Apple will attempt to contact everyone who is eligible, and will send them a $40 check.

A La Carte Journalism: Where People (and Reporters) Set the Agenda

[Commentary] The conundrum in journalism today is that most people are not willing to pay anything for content. At the same time, there is a small pool of consumers that is willing to pay a large amount of money to see a story covered or content produced on a specific topic. So what do journalists and media organizations do? Tap into the generosity of a few to fund production for many.

As “On the Media's” Brooke Gladstone pointed out recently, "consumer surplus" is the latest, and arguably one of the most successful ways, to pay for media productions. This is the reason for the success of independent crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In a journalism landscape where it is getting harder and harder to obtain revenue through page views and subscriptions, perhaps carefully cultivating and pursuing your audience, however esoteric, may not be such a bad idea. With crowdfunding, these same journalists can sell their journalism directly to readers without news organizations as mediators. Perhaps more importantly, it could be a model for true a la carte journalism consumption.

Friends Without Benefits

As quickly as new social media appears, teens seem to find ways to use it to have sex, often sex devoid of even any pretense of emotional intimacy. There’s sexting. “Social media is destroying our lives,” a 16-year-old girl from LA said. But without it, she says, she “would have no life.” Much has been written about hook-up culture lately, notably Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men (2012) and a July New York Times article, “Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game Too,” both of which attributed the trend to feminism and ambitious young women’s desire not to be tied down by relationships. But Donna Freitas, a former professor of religion at Hofstra and Boston Universities, who conducted research for over a year on seven college campuses, tells a different story. “Both young women and young men are seriously unhappy with the way things are,” she said. “It’s rare that I find a young woman or a man who says hooking up is the best thing ever.”

Feds Targeted Snowden’s Email Provider the Day After NSA Whistleblower Went Public

When on June 9 Edward Snowden stood up in Hong Kong and revealed himself to the world as a National Security Agency whistleblower, the Justice Department wasted little time in targeting his e-mail provider.

A new appeals court filing shows the government served a court order on Texas-based Lavabit the very next day, demanding metadata on an unnamed customer that the timing and circumstances suggest was Snowden. The June 10 records demand was issued under a 1994 amendment to the Stored Communications Act that allows law enforcement access to non-content Internet records without demonstrating the “probable cause” needed for a search warrant. That order was followed on June 28 with a so-called “pen register order”, which provides the same information prospectively — recording the metadata for every new email sent or received. Ladar Levison, owner of Lavabit, may have balked at actively circumventing the privacy system he built for users. After shutting down the site, Levison appealed on August 29. His opening brief in his appeal is due October 3. “He’s optimistic that we use this opportunity to possibly get some good law,” Lavabit attorney Jesse Binnall told said.

Why the Internet Infrastructure Coalition is Essential in the Post Snowden World

The way it stands today every new economic growth opportunity seems to have a large online component. Watching the Internet infrastructure industry is therefore like watching a canary in a coal mine. If it is thriving and healthy, then the rest of the digital economy – and indeed the general economy – is likely to be on a path of growth as well.

If growth slows in the industry, it tends to be as a result of one or more of these factors:
1) Existing businesses opting not to modernize or expand
2) Developing nations and communities slowing their migrations online
3) The startup economy not flourishing and innovating

While many sources contribute to influencing these three factors, consumer confidence is one of the most important. Internet legislation, and the way governments treat data, are key to consumer confidence and adoption online. This goes far beyond economically driven uses for Internet infrastructure. The Internet is changing the world in a myriad of ways, including ones that aid in the fight for human rights, the fight against war, poverty, famine and lack of education or access to information. The resources that the companies who build the Internet provide are changing the world.

Rather than focusing on an aspect or type of market within the Internet community, i2Coalition’s member companies are the root of the online ecosystem. As i2Coalition seeks to quantify the potential ramifications of the Snowden revelations on consumer confidence online, we will continue to educate lawmakers about the potential ramifications of bad Internet policy to help preserve the global Internet growth economy.

September 30, 2013 (NSA Gathers Data on Social Connections)

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

Fiber-to-the-Home and Incentive Auctions on today’s agenda http://benton.org/calendar/2013-09-30/


GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
   NSA Gathers Data on Social Connections of US Citizens
   US officials dodge questions on scope of surveillance
   US government given December deadline to unseal more NSA documents
   Which World Governments Are Most Likely to Snoop on Your Facebook?
   For Journalists, More Firepower to Protect Sources and Secrets - analysis [links to web]
   GAO: Fifty Percent of Feds aren’t Informed on Cyber Risks [links to web]
   NSA Internet Spying Sparks Race to Create Offshore Havens for Data Privacy [links to web]
   New York City’s Web Site is Redesigned for First Time in a Decade [links to web]

BUDGET
   Library of Congress and FTC will take their sites offline if government shuts down [links to web]
   FCC Details Shut-Down Skeleton Crew [links to web]

PRIVACY
   No, Gmail’s ad-targeting isn’t wiretapping - analysis

CONTENT
   The Fault in Those Web Site Stars - editorial [links to web]
   How a Net Neutrality Video Used John Hodgman and a Goofy Premise to Go Viral [links to web]

BROADCASTING
   FCC Announces Opening Of Filing Window For 2013 Biennial Ownership Reports
   Sacramento watchdog groups to challenge KDND broadcast license

WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
   Improving the Resiliency of Mobile Wireless Communications Networks/Reliability and Continuity of Communications Networks - public notice
   Crush the Carriers!

RESEARCH
   For researchers, useful datasets and potential questions - press release

POLICYMAKERS
   Intel’s James Tapped for National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee - press release
   Julius Genachowski, telecoms and Internet expert

STORIES FROM ABROAD
   The need for speed: How does US broadband measure up? - analysis [links to web]
   UK Warns Against New EU Roaming Regulations
   France sanctions Google for breaking privacy rules
   UK to create new cyber defense force [links to web]

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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

NSA COLLECTS SOCIAL MEDIA CONNECTIONS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: James Risen, Laura Poitras]
Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials. The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine Americans’ networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after NSA officials lifted restrictions on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former NSA contractor. The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track” connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an NSA memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners. The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents.
benton.org/node/161348 | New York Times
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DODGING SURVEILLANCE QUESTIONS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ellen Nakashima]
US officials declined to directly answer lawmakers’ questions about the full scope of the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ data, including whether it has ever sought to acquire large volumes of cellphone location information or other records. NSA Director Keith Alexander dodged questions by a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee about whether the agency has ever tried to augment its broad collection of virtually all Americans’ phone-call records by gathering data that would indicate the callers’ locations. He noted that intelligence officials had given a classified answer to the question. “If you’re responding to my question by not answering it because you think it’s a classified matter, that is your right,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) told Gen Alexander at a hearing about the government’s intelligence-gathering programs. “We will continue to explore that,” Sen Wyden said, “because I believe this is something that the American people have a right to know — whether the NSA has ever collected or made plans to collect cell site information.” Questions by Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) suggested that the agency has at least sought if not won permission to expand its domestic collection activities beyond what has been publicly acknowledged.
benton.org/node/161346 | Washington Post
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DECEMBER DEADLINE
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Nathan Mattise]
A federal judge has ruled that the US government must unseal more documents related to the NSA spying program by December 20. The news comes from an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) press release after the organization found some recent success in its long-running Jewel v. NSA lawsuit. (The EFF initially filed suit in 2008 in response to Bush administration revelations about the existence of NSA spying programs.)
benton.org/node/161344 | Ars Technica
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GOVERNMENT PRYING INTO FACEBOOK
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: John Metcalfe]
Want to avoid the government prying into your Facebook? Then move to Barbados. There, tens of thousands of years will roll by before you even reach a 1 percent probability the Man will scoop private data from your account. That's according to an occasionally anxiety-provoking map of Facebook security created by Anselm Bradford, a digital-media lecturer (on leave) in New Zealand and a 2013 fellow at Code for America – mission, "to improve the relationships between citizens and government." This enlightening cartography will hardly make privacy advocates want to snuggle with the bureaucratic machine if they live in the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia. These nations have the worst respective rates of governmental intrusion into Facebook accounts, to judge from the service's own admission.
benton.org/node/161342 | Atlantic, The
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PRIVACY

GMAIL AD-TARGETING
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Timothy Lee]
[Commentary] A federal judge in California has ruled that Google may have committed wiretapping when it used the contents of e-mails to choose ads to display to its own customers. The poorly reasoned decision isn't just unfair to Google, it threatens to impose unpredictable legal liability on other online businesses. The plaintiffs' argument goes like this: When Google receives an e-mail on your behalf, it doesn't just deliver it to your inbox. It also "intercepts" the e-mail and "reads" it to scan for ads. That, in the plaintiffs' view, violates the wiretapping provisions of the Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA). The plaintiffs should have lost right there. To provide a useful e-mail service, Google needs to perform a number of complex operations on each e-mail a user receives. Google servers read e-mail headers to decide whom to deliver the e-mails to, scan e-mails for spam and viruses, index them to aid in searching, categorize them for its priority inbox feature, convert them to HTML for display in the user's browser, and, yes, scan them to help select ads to display next to each e-mail. If "reading" an e-mail for ad-serving purposes is "interception" under the wiretap act, those other functions could be illegal wiretapping, too. And that would create a huge headache for anyone who runs an e-mail service or social media site.
benton.org/node/161333 | Washington Post
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BROADCASTING

FCC ANNOUNCES OPENING OF FILING WINDOW FOR 2013 BIENNIAL OWNERSHIP REPORTS
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
The Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau reminds all commercial broadcast licensees of their obligation to file a 2013 biennial ownership report. The filing window for the 2013 biennial Ownership Report for Commercial Broadcast Stations opens on October 1, 2013 and closes on December 2, 2013. All commercial AM, FM, TV, LPTV, and Class A stations, as well as all entities with attributable interests in such stations, are required to file a Form 323 on or before December 2, 2013. Filings must include information reflecting ownership interests existing as of October 1, 2013. The form must be filed using the FCC’s CDBS database. Paper submissions will not be accepted.
benton.org/node/161328 | Federal Communications Commission
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SACRAMENTO RADIO LICENSE
[SOURCE: Sacramento Bee, AUTHOR: Peter Hecht]
Two Sacramento media watchdog groups said they will challenge the broadcast license renewal of a local radio affiliate held financially responsible for the water intoxication death of a young mother trying to win a video game for her family. Representatives for the Sacramento Media Group and the Media Action Center announced that they intend to file legal challenges with the Federal Communications Commission before the Nov. 1 deadline to contest the station’s pending eight-year broadcast license renewal. Media Action Center founder Sue Wilson, producer of a 2009 documentary, “Broadcast Blues,” that spotlighted the death, said the groups intend to formally serve papers challenging KDND’s license renewal when FCC commissioners meet on Oct. 22. The group’s efforts were also supported by California Common Cause, which advocates on political transparency and media issues.
benton.org/node/161314 | Sacramento Bee
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

MOBILE RELIABILITY
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: ]
In this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), the Federal Communications Commission considers measures to promote transparency to consumers as to how mobile wireless service providers compare in keeping their networks operational in emergencies, which could in turn encourage competition to improve the resiliency of mobile wireless communications networks during emergencies. Specifically, the FCC seeks comment on a proposal to require facilities-based Commercial Mobile Radio Service (CMRS) providers to submit to the FCC for public disclosure, on a daily basis during and immediately after major disasters, the percentage of cell sites within their networks that are providing CMRS. These disclosures would be made with respect to each county in the designated disaster area. The FCC seeks comment on whether public disclosure of this information, which can be derived from information many providers already report to the FCC voluntarily, could provide consumers with a reasonable “yardstick” for measuring how well mobile wireless networks maintain service during disasters. The FCC also seeks comment on whether other measures of service outages may be appropriate, and on certain other approaches to resiliency. In particular, the FCC seeks comment on the following issues:
Whether the proposed reporting and disclosures would provide consumers with useful information for making comparisons about mobile wireless products and services;
Whether such disclosures, by holding providers publicly accountable, could incentivize improvements to network resiliency while allowing providers flexibility in implementing such improvements;
Whether such information would be useful to policymakers at state and local levels;
Whether the proposed disclosures comport with “smart disclosure” principles;
Whether the proposed disclosure would lead to adverse unintended consequences for consumers and mobile wireless providers;
Whether the FCC should consider other measures, including alternative informational disclosures, performance standards or voluntary measures, or refer issues of what information would be helpful to consumers to an advisory committee before acting.
benton.org/node/161326 | Federal Communications Commission | Chairwoman Clyburn | Commissioner Rosenworcel | Commissioner Pai
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CRUSH THE CARRIERS
[SOURCE: Slate, AUTHOR: Matthew Yglesias]
[Commentary] Since it doesn’t cost Verizon anything to let me upgrade my phone—it involves literally no action of any kind on their part—both fairness and marginal cost theory agree that I should be able to upgrade for free. But real businesses don’t care about fairness, and relatively few real businesses operate in the kind of highly competitive markets that introductory textbooks deal with. You can’t just wake up one morning and decide to start a new nationwide mobile phone operator. And if you did, AT&T and Verizon could just take an 18-month break from being jerks, drive you out of business, and then go back to their old ways. So even if you wanted to build a competitor, nobody would give you the money to do it. You’re just screwed. And in fact, you’re more screwed than you realize. Consumers have been trained to think that benevolent mobile phone operators “subsidize” biannual phone purchases. These subsidies are actually loans offered at a crazy-high interest rate. Now that T-Mobile is offering “unsubsidized” iPhones and cheaper data plans, we can calculate the real price of the subsidy fairly precisely. Given the formidable barriers to competition in this industry, carrier malfeasance is a problem that’s genuinely hard to solve. But if the mobile phone industry is to advance, this is where most of today’s big gains are to be had. Faster processors and better cameras will keep coming, to be sure. But whoever takes the next great leap forward in mobile will have to bring the carriers to heel.
benton.org/node/161312 | Slate
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RESEARCH

FCC DATASETS
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Irene Wu]
The Federal Communications Commission publishes a large amount of information and data, much of it potentially useful for research projects. However, the FCC’s information is organized in ways that facilitate rulemakings, not research; and for those not directly involved in rulemakings, it can be difficult to find the most useful resources, even though the information is public. To help researchers, the FCC is releasing a list of questions that we hope will pique the interest of researchers in the US and around the world, along with some tips as to where the public data already exist. The list includes
1) Public datasets that could be used by researchers, such as
Broadcasting ownership data
International traffic data
Broadband performance data
Consumer complaints
2) Public information that could be used to build a dataset, such as 911 calls
Consumer lookup tools
3) Research questions touching on issues such as
Interpreting broadband service quality and performance
Network configuration options for schools
Price elasticity studies for international calls
IP-to-IP international calling
Cloud computing
benton.org/node/161330 | Federal Communications Commission | FCC
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POLICYMAKERS

RENEE JAMES
[SOURCE: The White House, AUTHOR: Press release]
President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Renée J. James to be a member of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. James is the President of Intel Corporation, a position she has held since May 2013. Previously, from 2005 to 2013, Ms. James served in various roles at Intel Corporation, including Executive Vice President, Senior Vice President, Vice President, and Vice President of Sales and Marketing, and General Manager of the Software & Services Group. From 1998 to 2000, she was Chief Operating Officer of Intel Online Services, Intel's datacenter services business. Previously, Ms. James served as Assistant General Manager of Intel Online Services and as Technical Assistant to Intel Chairman. She joined Intel in 1987 as a Product Manager. Ms. James has been a Director on the Vodafone Group Plc Board of Directors since 2011. She was an Independent Director on the VMware Inc. Board of Directors from 2007 to 2013 and a Director of Intel Online Solutions Board of Directors from 1998 to 2000. She received a B.A. and a M.B.A. from the University of Oregon.
benton.org/node/161318 | White House, The
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JULIUS GENACHOWSKI
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Sarah Gordon]
After Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign in 2008, he asked Julius Genachowski to take over the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the US telecommunications industry. His stint at the FCC is widely regarded as a success. He is credited with transforming the organization to deal with 21st-century challenges. “We modernized it from an agency that had been focused on older communications technologies like broadcast television and we focused it on broadband,” he says. Among his initiatives was to produce a national broadband plan, an endeavor that he sees as crucial for any country hoping to take advantage of the explosion in smartphone and tablet use. The obstacles to expanding broadband access, though, were significant. Getting the legislation for the incentive auctions – planned to kick off next year – through a gridlocked Congress was in itself an achievement. “I worked as hard as I could to keep communications technology issues from becoming polarized and partisan, although polarization in the US does affect everything,” he says. “But the other advantage to the idea that we crafted was that it produced revenue for the US Treasury.” During his tenure, the US also pulled far ahead of Europe in terms of the implementation of 4G. But the success that possibly gained the most attention was his record on “net neutrality” – the principle that internet service providers should not give their own content preferential treatment.
benton.org/node/161332 | Financial Times
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

EU ROAMING
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Frances Robinson, Sam Schechner]
The UK plans to push back against parts of a European Union plan to overhaul telecommunications rules, a new stumbling block for proposals that have already run into opposition from telecom companies. The EU should be wary of burdening itself with extra regulation as it tries to reduce mobile roaming charges and accelerate the allocation of radio spectrum, the British government said in a briefing note, prepared for an EU summit. New roaming rules and harmonizing the EU's patchwork of cellular radio spectrum are key parts of the plan that is being promoted by the European Commission, the EU's executive arm. The UK says that using existing rules to reduce roaming and add high-speed, fourth-generation capacity would do more to help the industry than adding regulations.
benton.org/node/161308 | Wall Street Journal
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FRANCE SANCTIONS GOOGLE
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: ]
France will fine Google more than $400,000 for breaking rules on data privacy. The French agency that regulates information technology says Google hadn't satisfactorily responded to its June decision giving Google three months to be more upfront about the data it collects from users. Regulators also want Google to let users opt out of having their data centralized -- for example, when data from online searches, Gmail and YouTube are crunched into a single location. France’s National Commission on Computing and Freedom, known as CNIL, said Google hasn't made requested changes, including specifying to users what it uses personal data for, and how long it's held. CNIL said it will now launch formal sanction proceedings, a process that could take months.
benton.org/node/161306 | Associated Press
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