October 2013

How cable companies have quietly dominated public Wi-Fi

Next time you pack your beach bag, make sure you pack your laptop and tablet along with your sunblock and trashy novel. Cable Wi-Fi service might soon be available at a seashore near you. Surfing the Web while watching the waves? Sounds funny, but it's already possible in many places along the Jersey Shore, and at Santa Monica Beach and Manhattan Beach in Southern California.

Even more surprising than the availability of Wi-Fi at the beach is the provider: More likely than not, it's a cable company, pursuing an aggressive policy among US cable providers of bringing Wi-Fi services to just about every place their coax cables run. With more than 200,000 Wi-Fi hotspots launched in the past few years, big US cable providers are the runaway leaders in providing public Wi-Fi, already eclipsing traditional providers such as big cellular carriers and coffee shop chains. Though the explosion in cable Wi-Fi hotspots is unlikely to challenge the cellular networks' overall mobile supremacy anytime soon, the growing availability of fast, sometimes free Internet access will likely have some positive benefits for many consumers. In particular, it may enable them to save money by jumping off the cellular network and onto free Wi-Fi more often, resulting in lower data bills. Or they could skip buying a data plan for devices like tablets altogether, and instead rely solely on Wi-Fi. From a market standpoint, what's most interesting is the way the biggest cable companies -- which don't compete against each other, owing to their regional distribution -- have banded together to make their Wi-Fi deployments even more appealing to customers who might otherwise turn to cellular for mobile data needs.

Yeah, Who DOES Need the FCC?

[Commentary] I think that most people, even many who work at the Federal Communications Commission, will admit that some of the FCC’s work is unnecessary, either because the regulatory initiatives weren’t a good idea in the first place, or because the world has changed and they are no longer necessary. Some of the more egregious examples, like the comparative hearing process, have been eliminated, but others remain. Even a fan of the regulatory state should be able to admit that there are ill-advised, outdated or unnecessary FCC regulations that can and should be jettisoned. But in the spirit of fairness, I’ll take the three core functions of the FCC which Mitchell highlighted in his post as my focus here.

Licensing: There’s no reason why the licensing function of the FCC could not be replaced by a private ownership of spectrum rights, which would be analogous to private ownership of real estate.
Technical Rules: There are specialized courts which handle bankruptcy, immigration, military, patents and other technical and complex issues -- surely there could be one to adjudicate radio interference issues (particularly if Congress would fully fund the Courts).
International Treaty Negotiations: By narrowly circumscribing the authority of a department within an agency (like the State Department) through clearly limited delegation of power, we could ideally prevent the gradual accretion of power that can occur in a stand-alone independent agency.

On the NSA, the media may tilt right

Since June 6, 2013, the world has been roiled by an ongoing series of disclosures based on Edward Snowden’s document leaks, with coverage led by the Guardian and the Washington Post, about clandestine mass surveillance conducted, with little oversight, by the National Security Agency and its international partners. Public perceptions of these surveillance revelations are affected not only by the NSA’s actual actions, but also by the news coverage of the government’s spying programs.

Our analysis of total press coverage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) between July 1 and July 31 (July was the first full calendar month after the initial disclosures in June) revealed that the widely held assumption that major media outlets uniformly tilt to the left does not match reality. If anything, the media appears to tilt to the right, at least on this issue. Of the 30 traditionally pro- or anti-surveillance terms we examined in four newspapers (The New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post), key words generally used to justify increased surveillance, such as security or terrorism, were used much more frequently than terms that tend to invoke opposition to mass surveillance, such as privacy or liberty.

Our findings indicate that the intense public concern about the NSA’s activities is not merely an artifact of biased coverage, since the media actually appears to be biased in the opposite direction. Public opposition to the government surveillance might be even more pronounced if overall media coverage was neutral and unbiased.

1 in 7 Americans is offline. Why? It's complicated

A small and persistent swath of Americans remain offline -- 15 percent of adults ages 18 and older, as of May 2013 -- and in most cases were never online to begin with. Are offline adults abstaining from Internet use due to a lack of interest, or are they prevented from logging on due to a lack of access? Even with our latest data, it's a tricky question to sort out.

As with many technology adoption trends, Internet use remains strongly correlated with age, education and household income. Groups with lower levels of Internet adoption than average include:

Adults ages 65 and older (56 percent use the Internet)
Adults who did not complete high school (59 percent) and those who completed high school but did not attend college (78 percent)
Hispanic adults (76 percent)
Adults in households earning less than $30,000 per year (76 percent)
While seniors account for almost half of offline adults overall, age isn't the whole story. For instance, most non-Internet users did not attend college; offline adults are also more likely to be retired than their online counterparts, and more likely to live in lower-income households in general. While most of these offline adults don't cite price or a lack of physical access to the Internet as the main reason they don't go online, their general lack of experience with and knowledge of the online world suggest that most would not be able to choose to go online tomorrow if they wished.

Claim on “Attacks Thwarted” by NSA Spreads Despite Lack of Evidence

Two weeks after Edward Snowden’s first revelations about sweeping government surveillance, President Barack Obama shot back. “We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States, but, in some cases, threats here in Germany,” President Obama said during a visit to Berlin in June 2013. “So lives have been saved.” Since then, intelligence officials, media outlets, and members of Congress from both parties all repeated versions of the claim that National Security Agency surveillance has stopped more than 50 terrorist attacks. The figure has become a key talking point in the debate around the spying programs. “Fifty-four times this and the other program stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe -- saving real lives,” said House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers (R-MI) on the House floor in July. But there's no evidence that the oft-cited figure is accurate.

The NSA itself has been inconsistent on how many plots it has helped prevent and what role the surveillance programs played. The agency has often made hedged statements that avoid any sweeping assertions about attacks thwarted. A chart declassified by the agency in July, for example, says that intelligence from the programs on 54 occasions “has contributed to the [US government’s] understanding of terrorism activities and, in many cases, has enabled the disruption of potential terrorist events at home and abroad” -- a much different claim than asserting that the programs have been responsible for thwarting 54 attacks. NSA officials have mostly repeated versions of this wording. When NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander spoke at a Las Vegas security conference in July, for instance, he referred to “54 different terrorist-related activities,” 42 of which were plots and 12 of which were cases in which individuals provided “material support” to terrorism.

8 things you need to know about Sinclair Broadcast Group

Sinclair Broadcast Group has been on a remarkable shopping spree for television stations across the United States. The moves have brought increased attention -- and scrutiny -- including a sharply critical report from media watch group Free Press on how Sinclair circumvents Federal Communications Commission rules to operate several stations in many markets.

Here are eight eye-popping facts about Sinclair included in the report:

In the last two years, Sinclair has closed or announced deals that would increase its holdings from 58 TV stations to 161.
During that time, Sinclair has expanded its reach from 35 US markets to 78.
If all of Sinclair's pending deals close, the company would have access to 38.8 percent of the nation's TV households.
Sinclair in 2012 generated $1.5 billion in local TV ad revenue, according to SNL Kagan.
Sinclair owns 36 Fox affiliates, 29 ABC affiliates, 27 CBS affiliates, 24 CW affiliates, 23 My Network TV affiliates, 15 NBC affiliates, 5 Univision affiliates and two other stations.
Sinclair directly owns 115 stations and operates 46 others through "marketing, services, sales and/or operating agreements," according to Free Press.
Between 1991 and 2002, Sinclair increased its holdings from four TV stations owned or controlled to 62. That number actually declined to 58 by the end of 2010.
Sinclair's first TV station was WBFF-TV (Channel 45) in Baltimore.

Doesn't matter who wins the World Series, networks and advertisers score

The World Series starts in Boston as the Red Sox take on the St. Louis Cardinals. And to networks looking for ad revenue, this live sporting event is the equivalent of a grand slam.

Today, 99 percent watch sports in real time. Advertising Age’s Michael Learmonth says that attracts advertisers who don’t want viewers to fast forward through their messages. And, as its value to advertisers soar, networks and TV providers are paying more for rights to air live sporting events. It’s also the reason subscribers have been seeing their rate packages jump recently. IHS Inc. research director Tom Adams says cable operators realize sports is the glue keeping their business intact.

US businesses are in an unfair fight against cyberthreats

[Commentary] I was disappointed that an Oct. 14 Post editorial argued that American companies and critical infrastructure operators must cope alone with serious cyberthreats. Most American companies work hard to secure their networks, but US companies are targeted daily by nation-state actors such as China and Iran. That’s not a fair fight.

The threat is serious. Rampant cyber economic espionage from China, Iran and other countries is eroding US prosperity. And many of the same vulnerabilities used to steal trade secrets can expose critical infrastructure on which our nation depends. Congress must act, and we must not let a misguided leaker dissuade us from doing our jobs. But the federal government lacks clear legal authority to widely share information about cyberthreats with private companies. Congress must provide that authority and should allow more voluntary, anonymous sharing from the private sector to the government. The law should also allow better sharing of cyberthreat information within the private sector, so US companies have the information to defend against cyberattacks.

[Rep Mike Rogers (R-MI) is chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]

House Intel chairman: CISPA is ill but not dead

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) said that he believes there is still a "path forward" for his cybersecurity bill.

"It's a little ill, but the CISPA bill is certainly not dead yet," Chairman Rogers said, referring to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, during a panel discussion hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Chairman Rogers acknowledged that the revelations about the scope of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs have "damaged the perception" of CISPA. But he said the "sheer determination" of Senate Intelligence Committee leaders Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) give him hope that Congress will move ahead on the bill. He said he is working with the senators on tweaks to the bill to provide more oversight and privacy protections.

Chairman Issa asks Verizon, Google, Microsoft to detail involvement in ObamaCare repairs

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is asking the nation's leading technology companies -- including Verizon, Google, and Microsoft -- to detail their involvement in the scramble to fix the technical problems that have besieged the ObamaCare enrollment website.

Chairman Issa suggested the Administration may be running afoul of federal procurement procedures in the scramble to get the website fixed. “Despite the President’s assertion that ‘we’re well into a “tech surge”’ neither the White House nor the Department of Health and Human Services is providing additional details about which private sector companies have been engaged or whether they are being engaged through the appropriate procurement processes,” Chairman Issa wrote in the letters, which were also sent to Oracle and Expedia.

Benton

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