September 2013

Big V, for verified account, is the widely used moniker for the most influential commentators on China’s growing microblog sites — online celebrities whose millions of fans read, discuss and spread their outpouring of news and opinions, plenty of which chastise or ridicule officials. And the Communist Party has turned against them in the most zealous crackdown on the Internet in years.

Worried about its hold on public opinion, the Chinese government has pursued a propaganda and police offensive against what it calls malicious rumor-mongering online. Police forces across the country have announced the detentions of hundreds of microblog users since last month on charges of concocting and spreading false claims, often politically damaging. For weeks, a torrent of commentaries in the state-run news media have warned popular opinion makers on China’s biggest microblog site, Sina’s Weibo service, to watch their words.

The National Security Agency's searches of a database containing phone records of millions of Americans violated privacy protections for three years by failing to meet a court-ordered standard, intelligence officials acknowledged.

They said the violations continued until a judge ordered an overhaul of the program in 2009. Since the breadth of the phone-records collection came to light through leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, lawmakers and top US officials have defended the program. They have said that for all queries of the database, the NSA must show a "reasonable articulable suspicion" that the phone number being targeted is associated with a terrorist organization. The revelations called into question the NSA's ability to run the sweeping domestic surveillance programs. Top US officials, including Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA,, have repeatedly reassured lawmakers and the public that the phone-records program has been carefully executed under oversight from the secret national security court. "This is not a program where we are out freewheeling it," Gen. Alexander said in June. "It is a well-overseen and a very focused program." The documents released "are a testament to the government's strong commitment to detecting, correcting and reporting mistakes," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said. He blamed the errors on the "complexity of the technology."

The government ombudsman for evaluating agencies’ compliance with the Freedom of Information Act should be more aggressive, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said.

The four-year-old Office of Government Information Services, or OGIS, should be more proactive and comprehensive in suggesting improvements to proposed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regulations and in assessing agencies’ compliance with current law. OGIS has begun developing a standard methodology for reviewing agency FOIA compliance but should establish a timeline for when that methodology will be complete, GAO said.

[Commentary] In May 2013, Verizon announced it would replace the copper phone network on Fire Island destroyed by Hurricane Sandy with their new “Voice Link” service. From the beginning, we expressed grave concerns with forcing storm victims to take an unproven technology in place of the traditional copper-line phone and DSL broadband they had before Sandy struck.

Verizon acknowledged that many of its customers do not find Voice Link an acceptable substitute for their pre-Sandy copper landline and DSL. Verizon has therefore agreed to deploy FIOS Internet and voice service to Fire Island before Memorial Day 2014 but will make Voice Link available for those customers who want a low cost alternative. Otherwise, folks have the option to upgrade to fiber. There are still a number of loose ends that need to be addressed and lessons to learn. Most importantly, the Federal Communications Commission still needs to provide guidance to carriers on their responsibilities when a natural disaster destroys their existing copper network. Much of the expense and confusion around this process could have been avoided if Verizon had a clear understanding of what the law required. Americans rebuilding their communities have a right to expect a communications network as good, or better, than what they had before they lost everything in a disaster.