October 2013

Greeks Question Media, and New Voices Pipe Up

Late on a recent evening, crowds gathered at the Radio Bubble cafe in downtown Athens, drinking beer and talking politics. The cafe, in the trendy yet rough-around-the-edges Exarchia neighborhood, funds a small leftist online radio station of the same name, which broadcasts from inside.

At the sidewalk tables outside, where guests smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, the conversation inevitably turned to Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s unilateral decision in June to shut down the state broadcaster, the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, known as ERT, overnight, turning an institution once seen as a bastion of patronage hires into a veritable martyr to press freedom. “When a war begins, they send an army to protect public TV,” said Apostolis Kaparoudakis, who was a founder of Radio Bubble in 2007. “Here they sent it to close it down.” Kaparoudakis said he had started Radio Bubble to play good music, “which is a political act,” but also as a challenge to the mainstream news media in Greece, almost all of which is owned by the country’s business elite, who often dictate the editorial line.

Argentina: Court Loss for Media Group

After four years of combat between the government and Argentina’s biggest media conglomerate, the Clarín group, Supreme Court judges declared constitutional a law that forces media companies to shrink their broadcast divisions. The ruling concluded that the law “favors freedom of speech by limiting market concentration.”

Here’s why the NSA should have asked for court approval before tracking cellphone users

Newly declassified National Security Agency documents reveal that the agency didn't ask for court approval before collecting the location data of some cellphone users. That's a problem because location data is far more personal and revealing than other forms of "metadata" that the courts have held the government can access without court approval.

An April 1, 2011 memo to a member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee from an attorney with the NSA's Office of General Counsel states that the Department of Justice advised the agency that collecting cell site location data for testing was fine under the current order. But NSA didn't ask for specific sign-off from the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court (FISC), the secret court that oversees the spy agency's programs. Instead, the memo notes that the NSA believes that Justice "orally advised" the court that the NSA was collecting location data sets for test purposes. Based on the memo’s account, it appears that the FISC did not issue a specific opinion explicitly authorizing the collection of cellphone site location data -- instead, they relied on Justice's legal interpretation of the existing metadata order, likely similar to the Verizon order revealed in June 2013. But Amie Stepanovich, the director of the Domestic Surveillance Project at the Electronic Information Privacy Center believes that bypassing FISC approval for the collection of location data is a troubling practice. "By leaving the FISC out of the decision process," she argues, "the NSA is evincing a wanton disregard for meaningful oversight and for the sensitivity of the information at issue."

Lawmakers propose USA Freedom Act to curb NSA’s powers

Dozens of lawmakers from both parties introduced legislation to rein in the National Security Agency's spying powers. The USA Freedom Act, which has 16 co-sponsors in the Senate and more than 70 in the House, would end the agency's massive phone record collection program -- one of the most controversial revelations from the leaks by Edward Snowden.

The bill was authored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI), the original author of the Patriot Act in 2001. In addition to ending the bulk phone record collection, the USA Freedom Act would strengthen prohibitions against targeting the communications of Americans and would require the government to more aggressively delete information accidentally collected on Americans. The bill would also require the attorney general to disclose significant court decisions related to an interpretation of law. Companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook would be able to reveal more statistics about the information they turn over to the government.

Civil liberties groups cheered the introduction of the USA Freedom Act, saying it would help end the NSA's privacy violations. And, while the National Rifle Association, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Constitution Project and other groups have also endorsed the bill, it is expected to face fierce opposition from the NSA's supporters in Congress, led by the top lawmakers on the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Rep. Terry Defends US Data Economy as 'Gold'

While privacy advocates are looking to Europe to force the US to adopt stricter privacy laws, Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) said not so fast.

Referencing the Direct Marketing Association's recent study that found data-driven marketing contributes $156 billion to the economy, Rep. Terry -- the chairman of the House commerce, manufacturing and trade subcommittee that has jurisdiction over privacy and data security issues -- posited that the US should think of privacy as a trade issue. "Data is the new gold," he said. "It's not just big business that relies on data, but small business."

FCC Announces the Reauthorization of the Intergovernmental Advisory Committee and Seeks Nominations

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn announced the reauthorization of the Intergovernmental Advisory Committee (IAC) and the FCC is seeking nominations for membership.

The IAC -- comprised of fifteen representatives from local, state, and Tribal governments -- advises the FCC on a range of telecommunication issues for which their governments share responsibility with the FCC. The term of operations of the reauthorized IAC will be two years, beginning not earlier than December 3, 2013, upon the expiration of the term of the current IAC, which will end December 2, 2013. Nominations are due 120 days from release, i.e., on or before February 26, 2014.The FCC is especially interested in candidates representing rural and Tribal areas and individuals with expertise in broadband deployment and adoption policy, rights-of-way, as well as public safety and homeland security matters.

Cybersecurity Bills Pass House Homeland Security Committee

The House Homeland Security Committee amended and approved two cybersecurity bills aimed at 1) boosting government cybersecurity research and development in cooperation with industry and 2) ensuring there is a skilled work force to implement protections of critical infrastructure.

The R&D bill would encourage the development of new infrastructure protection technologies and insure information is shared between government and the private sector. Both the Critical Infrastructure Research and Development Advancement Act of 2013 (HR 2952) and the Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act (HR 3107) passed on voice votes, but not without some amendments, and other amendments withdrawn on the promise that there would be further discussion and possible tweaking before a House floor vote. In the executive session marking up the bills, the R&D bill was amended to require the Department of Homeland Security to look beyond traditional terrorist cyberattacks to the broader question of the impact of natural disasters on the security of critical infrastructure.

Comcast Is Better Prepared in Wake of Sandy's Wrath

Oct. 29, 2013 dawned cool and sunny, the kind of fall day savored by Northeasterners. A year earlier, those living in the greater New York metro area were engulfed by Superstorm Sandy, a natural disaster that killed 130 people and caused $65 billion in damages along the entire East Coast. Comcast conducted an extensive post-mortem that has yielded a 33-step blueprint that is now codified across the company as an “Incident Management Plan." While Comcast was in contact with power and local phone companies during Sandy and her aftermath, it has now established a more extensive coordinated contact network with members of OEM, municipal governments, local police and fire officials.

Comcast's ‘Internet Essentials’ Passes 1 Million Mark

Internet Essentials, Comcast’s Internet adoption program for low-income households, has connected more than 1 million Americans, company executive vice president David Cohen announced in testimony to the US Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet.

Now in its third year, Internet Essentials is a voluntary commitment linked to Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal that targets low-income households with school-age children who are eligible to receive free lunches under the federally assisted National School Lunch Program. Qualified households receive discounted Internet service from Comcast at $9.95 per month, the option to purchase an Internet-ready PC for under $150, and access to a free Internet training. In August 2013, Comcast announced it had connected more than 220,000 families and a total of 900,000 Americans. As year three of Internet Essentials got underway, Comcast added several enhancements, including a ratcheting up of the program’s max burst speeds to 5 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. That’s up from a bump to 3 Mbps down/768 kbps upstream that Comcast made in 2012, and well above the max speeds originally supported by Internet Essentials (1.5 Mbps/364 kbps).

Sec Sebelius: Blame Contractors For Obamacare Site

A week after the contractors who built HealthCare.gov blamed the Obama Administration for the site's failures, the Administration is shifting the blame right back.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will tell a House committee the site's botched rollout was the result of contractors failing to live up to expectations -- not bad management at HHS, as the contractors suggested. "CMS has a track record of successfully overseeing the many contractors our programs depend on to function. Unfortunately, a subset of those contracts for HealthCare.gov have not met expectations," Secretary Sebelius said.

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