December 2013

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

A NEW NETWORK COMPACT
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang, Ted Gotsch]
[Commentary] On December 19, 1913, AT&T Vice President Nathan Kingsbury sent a letter to US Attorney General George McReynolds in hopes of putting AT&T’s business practices “beyond fair criticism” of anticompetitive behavior. In the letter, AT&T promised to sell its stake in Western Union Telegraph, resolve interconnection disputes, and refrain from acquisitions if the Interstate Commerce Commission objected. The letter became known as the “Kingsbury Commitment”. One hundred years later, AT&T and other landline telephone carriers seeks to retire the copper-based phone system. But the nation cannot retire the commitment Attorney General McReynolds understood to create “full opportunity throughout the country for competition in the transmission of intelligence by wire.” Given shrinking wireline telephone subscribership, incumbent telecommunications companies and their supporters say it makes no sense for them to sink more dollars into “legacy” phone networks when the future is in Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure. Of late, much attention has been focused on a petition filed last year by AT&T that asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to move forward on what’s being called the IP transition. The FCC is now in the beginning stages of what will be a years-long process to improve the nation’s infrastructure to better suit America’s 21st century communications needs. Eventually, all telecommunications infrastructure likely will be IP-based. And few doubt that the IP infrastructure of the future is the better technology and the better path for the U.S. in the long run. But what will become of the tens of millions of Americans who already face hurdles in accessing existing telephone and broadband networks? How can we ensure them easy and affordable access to future networks?
http://benton.org/node/170411
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THIS 100-YEAR-OLD DEAL BIRTHED THE MODERN PHONE SYSTEM. AND IT’S ALL ABOUT TO END.
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
One hundred years ago Dec 19, one man sent a letter that would transform the telephone industry. The letter gave rise to the country's last and most powerful monopoly. And like the Internet of this century, it gave millions of ordinary people the chance to stay in touch more easily than they ever had before. The letter's author was Nathan C. Kingsbury -- a vice president of AT&T many have since forgotten. But his 1913 correspondence rapidly made its way from Kingsbury’s desk to the attorney general's, and soon after, to President Woodrow Wilson's. Wilson's administration was threatening a legal assault on AT&T. The telephone company had been aggressively buying up its competitors around the country -- maybe too many. Perhaps AT&T should be broken up, Wilson mused. Perhaps the government should take control. Then came Kingsbury's letter. In under 900 words, Kingsbury smoothed everything over. The White House’s antitrust concerns were resolved practically overnight. But the letter's impact can still be felt today.
benton.org/node/170867 | Washington Post
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100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE KINGSBURY COMMITMENT
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai]
In light of the anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment, an agreement between AT&T and the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commissioner Ajit Pai made the following remarks at the TechFreedom’s Forum about what a new commitment would look like. “There shouldn’t be a new Kingsbury Commitment. We don’t need a new Kingsbury Commitment for the wireless world, and we don’t need one for an all-IP world either.” Instead, he said, the lessons from history should be:
Government should not try to manage competition.
Government should not confuse the goal of protecting competitors with the objective of promoting competition.
Beware of businesses bearing commitments. Companies do not offer commitments out of the goodness of their hearts. Instead, as in the case of the Kingsbury Commitment, these commitments are generally designed to serve a company’s self-interest.
Finally, Commissioner Pai concluded, “We should view that agreement not as an inspiration for the future but rather as a warning. It is a warning that regulatory capture is a real risk.”
benton.org/node/170865 | Federal Communications Commission
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100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE KINGSBURY COMMITMENT
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Jodie Griffin]
[Commentary] In honor of its 100th anniversary, it is worth pausing to remember how the Kingsbury Commitment set a national goal to ensure interconnection and provide at least basic telephone service to all Americans. Our country has not wavered from that fundamental commitment since. As we now move into new IP-based phone networks and communications infrastructure, we must hold fast to this commitment to make sure no one is left behind in the phone network transition. Through smart policy decisions guided by the basic principles of interconnection, service to everyone, and consumer protection (which Public Knowledge has paired with network reliability and public safety in our Five Fundamentals framework), our government seized the opportunity to create a telecommunications infrastructure that became the envy of the world. The story of the Kingsbury Commitment shows us that the core public interest features of our current network are not inherent physical characteristics of the materials used to build the networks or the protocols used on them, but rather are the result of policy decisions and rules that established the minimum public interest protections that society expected from carriers. The Kingsbury Commitment's anniversary reminds us that the success of our communications networks depends on our commitment to certain fundamentals public interest values. As we move forward into new technologies, these lessons do not change and our reliance on those values should remain.
benton.org/node/170862 | Public Knowledge
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JUDGE BLOCKS GEORGIA’S $5 FEE ON CELLPHONE SERVICE FOR POOR
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jacob Gershman]
A federal judge has stopped Georgia from charging residents to participate in a federal program that provides low-cost or free cellphone service for low-income people. The decision to halt the $5-a-month fees comes two months after Georgia became the first state to impose fees on people who receive subsidized phone service through the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program. Georgia decided in favor of the $5 charge in order to rein in abuses and discourage aggressive sales tactics. The rule, which was set to take effect in January, required participating carriers to bill Lifeline consumers $5 every month or provide them with 500 minutes of call time per month. Currently, carriers typically provide much less than that. The rationale is that having to offer the extra minutes would be enough to deter companies from aggressively -- and perhaps fraudulently -- hawking free phones. CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group that represents the wireless industry, sued the Georgia Public Service Commission, claiming that the fees would harm customers who couldn’t afford to pay them and were preempted by federal law that prohibits states from regulating phone rates. US District Judge Richard W. Story agreed with CTIA, granting a temporary injunction that suspends the fees as the litigation plays out. “[W]hile the status quo may permit some level of fraud to continue, the public interest tilts in favor of providing telephone services to low-income households that otherwise would be unable to afford mobile phones,” Judge Story wrote in a six-page decision.
benton.org/node/170763 | Wall Street Journal
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FCC BEGINS TRACKING LIFELINE USE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
The Federal Communications Commission began to compile a database of subscribers to its phone subsidy program. The database is intended to help the FCC crack down on waste and fraud in the $1.85 billion program for the poor, called Lifeline. Mark Wigfield, a Federal Communications Commission spokesman, said the agency began collecting data on Lifeline subscribers in five states: Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma and Washington. The agency plans to expand the database to include information on all subscribers nationwide by the end of March, Wigfield said. The database will help the FCC ensure that multiple companies are not receiving subsidies to sign up the same subscribers.
benton.org/node/170761 | Hill, The
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

A LEGACY IN THE BALANCE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Peter Baker]
For President Barack Obama, the proposed overhaul of the American surveillance state confronts him with a fundamental choice: Will he become the commander in chief many expected in 2008 or remain the one he became in 2009? Or is there a balance in between? At the heart of the report by a White House advisory group is a challenge to Obama’s conception of his presidency. A candidate who promised to reverse what he saw as excesses in the war against terrorists wound up preserving and even amplifying many of the policies he inherited. With his last election behind him, he is being challenged to decide if that is still the right approach. “Whether he implements these recommendations will go a long way toward determining the legacy of his presidency,” said Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “My own sense is the President is deeply conflicted about where’s the right place to end up. He’s still at his core a constitutional lawyer who understands the importance of these issues, but the realpolitik of the office set in rather quickly.”
benton.org/node/170879 | New York Times
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SECURITY VS PRIVACY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Sanger]
If President Barack Obama adopts the most far-reaching recommendations of the advisory group he set up to rein in the National Security Agency, much would change underneath the giant antennas that sprout over Fort Meade (MD) where America’s electronic spies and cyberwarriors have operated with an unprecedented amount of freedom since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. No longer would a team of two dozen or so agency analysts be able to type into a computer that there was a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” about the person behind an American telephone number and, in seconds, see every call made to and from that phone -- followed by the same records for hundreds or thousands of their contacts. Instead, an individual court order would have to be obtained -- a far slower process that, just months ago, Obama’s intelligence team insisted would be too cumbersome in halting attacks. On the same guarded campus, military and civilian computer hackers working for the United States Cyber Command would be barred from using one of the most important building blocks of their growing arsenal of sophisticated cyberweapons. Every day they exploit previously unknown flaws in computer programs, known in the industry as “zero-days,” to conduct both surveillance and attacks. A handful of such flaws -- named for the fact that they have been known to the world for zero days, and thus cannot be defended against -- were central to attacking Iran’s nuclear plant at Natanz. Already, critics of the advisory report have called it a form of unilateral disarmament.
benton.org/node/170877 | New York Times
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NSA’S BUSINESS MODEL
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Siobhan Gorman]
The National Security Agency's core operational model is called into question in one little-noticed recommendation by the review panel evaluating the spy agency, and is likely to reignite a contentious debate within US intelligence circles. The current NSA model relies largely on amassing as much data as it can obtain and trying to sort through it all later. In its place, the presidentially appointed review panel suggested a drastic and fundamental change in the 20th of 46 recommendations in its report: "Software that would allow…intelligence agencies more easily to conduct targeted information acquisition rather than bulk-data collection." The panel proposed a feasibility study. But former NSA officials say such a transition is certainly doable. "That's exactly what we did," says former NSA official Ed Loomis. "It's not only feasible -- the government threw away the software that did it."
benton.org/node/170874 | Wall Street Journal | The Hill
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HOW WE KNOW OBAMA WILL IGNORE HIS NSA REVIEW GROUP: HE ALREADY HAS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
[Commentary] President Barack Obama has already decided against one of the recommendations he received from the review of National Security Agency surveillance practices. The White House said that it would be keeping the NSA and the Pentagon's cyberwarfare directorate under the command of a single military leader. The current "dual-hatted" head of NSA and Cyber Command, Gen Keith Alexander, has been at the center of the furor over NSA surveillance. But Gen Alexander plans to step down in 2014, which raised the possibility several weeks ago of President Obama changing the rules for Gen Alexander's successor -- or successors, as civil liberties advocates had hoped. As Brookings' Benjamin Wittes points out, the results of the panel actually turned out rather awkwardly for the President. But as we've now seen with President Obama's decision on NSA/CYBERCOM leadership, that doesn't mean he's going to listen.
benton.org/node/170824 | Washington Post
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NSA REFORM PANEL: FOREIGNERS ACTUALLY HAVE PRIVACY RIGHTS, TOO!
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Nate Anderson]
The Report and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies is absolutely stuffed with references to the privacy considerations owed to non-US citizens. And while some of this is of course a mere damage control exercise in the face of world outrage, the rhetoric does at least occasionally rise to striking heights. "There are sound, indeed, compelling reasons to treat the citizens of other nations with dignity and respect," the report says in an entire chapter devoted to surveillance of non-US persons. This is due in part to self-interest, since "if we are too aggressive in our surveillance policies under section 702 [allowing non-FISA warrantless collection and targeting of non-US persons], we might trigger serious economic repercussions for American businesses, which might lose their share of the world’s communications market because of a growing distrust of their capacity to guarantee the privacy of their international users. Recent disclosures have generated considerable concern along these lines." But the report takes a more principled position, too. “Perhaps most important, however, is the simple and fundamental issue of respect for personal privacy and human dignity -- wherever people may reside.” In other words, the report calls for an international right to digital privacy.
benton.org/node/170803 | Ars Technica
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WHAT TRANSPARENCY REPORTS DON'T TELL US
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Ryan Budish]
There was a time in the not so distant past when hardly any Internet company wanted to release a transparency report -- a report that summarized the number of law enforcement and intelligence requests that they received and responded to. What started with just Google and Twitter in 2010 and 2012, respectively, has become a steady stream of companies joining the bandwagon in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations. Companies that had no interest in reporting in 2012 by the end of 2013 are holding out their reports in an attempt to earn back eroded customer trust. The problem is that transparency reports actually tell us very little about whether we should trust these companies. According to Google’s latest transparency report, in the first six months of 2013, they received 25,879 requests for user data, and complied with 65 percent of them. Sounds like big numbers. And they are. As Google points out in their report, the number of requests has doubled since 2010. But what does that tell us about Google? Less than you might think. The numbers in transparency reports can actually mislead us about company trustworthiness.
benton.org/node/170849 | Atlantic, The
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CYBERSECURITY

TARGET HACK
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Nicole Perlroth]
Target may have been an easy bull’s-eye for criminal hackers intent on stealing credit card information. Security experts say the Target hack is a reminder of security problems facing many retailers that won’t easily go away: There are weaknesses in the way payment information travels between retailers and banks. There is plenty of money to be made on the black market selling stolen credit card numbers, which can go for as little as a quarter or as much as $45 each. And American companies have been reluctant to adopt smart-chip cards, a type of credit card widely used in Europe that provides better security. Target said that from Nov. 27 to Dec. 15 hackers stole customer names, credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates and three-digit security codes for 40 million customers who had shopped in its stores. It is currently working with a forensic team from Verizon to investigate the breach, according to one person involved in the inquiry. But there was no word as to who was behind the attack, how they got in, or what the total cost to Target may be.
benton.org/node/170872 | New York Times | NYTimes – Target |
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OPEN GOVERNMENT

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SUED OVER ITS SECRETIVE TRADE NEGOTIATIONS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Timothy Lee]
For the last few years, the Obama Administration has been negotiating a treaty known as the Trans Pacific Partnership. While the treaty is officially focused on promoting international trade, it also includes language on a number of other issues. Critics have warned that the "intellectual property" section could force the United States to adopt legal changes favorable to copyright holders. But when critics of these policies have sought details about what the Obama Administration is negotiating, they have been rebuffed. So the news site IP Watch filed a lawsuit to force the US Trade Representative to release more documents related to the treaty. The lawsuit argues that USTR failed to adequately respond to a Freedom of Information Act request the news organization filed more than a year ago. "It's really only the American public that's been shut out of access to these documents," says Joshua Weinger, a law student at Yale. The Obama Administration has shared some of the documents at issue in the lawsuit with foreign governments and others with domestic industry groups. But the documents are not available to the general public, and academics and public interest groups interested in IP issues have struggled to obtain information about the treaty. Weinger is part of a team of students in Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic that has been helping IP Watch reporter William New seek access to TPP-related documents. "It seems puzzling to us that any of these documents should be classified," Weinger argues, since the documents they're seeking relate to copyright and patent law, not normally regarded as national security issues.
benton.org/node/170827 | Washington Post
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FEDERAL RECORDS MUST GO DIGITAL, BUT MANAGERS SAY THEY CAN'T DO IT WITHOUT MORE RESOURCES
[SOURCE: nextgov, AUTHOR: Joseph Marks]
Nearly half of federal records managers believe the Obama Administration’s goals for making all new records digital and electronically searchable by 2019 is unrealistic, a new study has found. That deadline, introduced in an August 2012 presidential directive, upset transparency advocates who said it gave agencies a pass to delay transitioning to digital records management systems and would result in even transparency-friendly agencies putting their limited resources toward other priorities. Now, records managers say even that far off deadline won’t be achievable without more funding and better trained records management professionals, according to the study released by MeriTalk, a public-private partnership focused on improving how the government manages information technology. The study was underwritten by the information management company Iron Mountain. Most importantly, just 54 percent of survey respondents said they’d be able to meet a mandate in the directive to identify all permanent records that must be digitized by Dec. 31. Only 18 percent of respondents said they’d made significant progress in actually digitizing permanent records, while 70 percent said they had little progress to report.
benton.org/node/170858 | nextgov
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SPECTRUM/WIRELESS

LTE AND TV
[SOURCE: Fierce, AUTHOR: Tammy Parker]
T-Mobile US says its research shows that LTE networks could operate side by side with co-channel, broadcast TV signals even in some of the nation's most densely populated areas. LTE services can operate "in the presence of co-channel, over-the-air television operations in geographically nearby market areas, even in a region as densely populated as the northeastern United States when sufficient terrain and distance separation exists," said T-Mobile in an ex parte filing with the Federal Communications Commission.
benton.org/node/170751 | Fierce
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EDUCATION

THE POWERFUL COMPUTER IN YOUR POCKET: USING SMARTPHONES IN THE CLASSROOM
[SOURCE: Education Week, AUTHOR: Jody Passanisi, Shara Peters]
[Commentary] Many schools ban phones in classrooms. Why? Well, students may text with the phones -- they could be sending messages from their pockets and under the desks during lectures. They could play games and go on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, disengaging from what they are supposed to be doing in the classroom. The smartphone's plight is compounded by the reality that there really is no substitution in the old classroom model that would require a student to have a smartphone in class. To even imagine the uses of a smartphone in the classroom, a teacher would need to begin climbing up the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) ladder pretty quickly from the substitution level. And so, if the benefits of technology seem to not outweigh the risks, teachers and administrators can come to the conclusion that there is no reason to employ them in the classroom. But there are reasons. With smartphones, students can quickly use apps like Socrative to input answers, allowing teachers to gather more quantitative data about what students understand in the moment. Students can more easily engage with information on a creative level, taking pictures and video and incorporating them into the way they demonstrate understanding and share what they know. Students can connect with their teachers via text to clarify assignments, video chat with teammates who may be in another class or absent from school, and share ideas on Twitter and other social media. Additionally, with smartphones, students can use a cellular connection instead of Wi-Fi, so that there are fewer hindrances to connectivity. And smartphones are physically smaller, and therefore less of an obstacle to interpersonal interaction, than laptop screens. Teachers are looking for technology to enhance learning, not dominate it; the minimalist nature of smartphones can help tech to be more seamlessly integrated in the classroom.
benton.org/node/170759 | Education Week
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LOBBYING

COMCAST CEO MEETS WITH TOP US COMMUNICATIONS REGULATOR
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Kim White]
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts met with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on Dec 19. This is one of many meetings between Chairman Wheeler and various industry executives since he was confirmed in November. A source familiar with the matter said the two did not discuss possible deals or transactions. Roberts also met with President Barack Obama as part of the tech industry delegation to discuss the healthcare site HealthCare.gov and US surveillance programs.
benton.org/node/170853 | Reuters
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FCC REFORM

MMTC TO FCC: HOW ABOUT A DIVERSITY COMMISSIONER?
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The Minority Media & Telecommunications Council has some reform proposals for the Federal Communications Commission it says can be done now, most of which would not only not cost anything but save the FCC money while creating jobs and diversifying the industry. One idea: designate what would essentially be a Diversity Commissioner to focus on the issue, similar to the designated Defense Commissioner (who is the point person on emergency communications issues). FCC chairman Tom Wheeler charged special counsel Diane Cornell with having an FCC process reform report on his desk by the end of 2013, and sought input from outside as well. MMTC is focused on speeding FCC process, improving multistakeholder processes, and a more inclusive and transparent process, to advance minority and women-owned business engagement. Those recommendations also include instituting shot clocks, streamlined reviews, limit extension of forbearance deadlines, include specific wording in notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), putting individual commissioners in charge of shepherding specific decisions, create a multistakeholder mediation process, create a Civil Rights section of the Enforcement Bureau, and issue a diversity impact statement for NPRMs and orders in major rulemakings.
benton.org/node/170829 | Multichannel News
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

EUROPE REJECTS GOOGLE’S PROPOSALS
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: David Meyers]
The European Commission has turned down Google’s latest antitrust settlement proposals again, meaning the search giant will have to revise those proposals yet again if it wants to avoid big fines or even worse sanctions. European Union competition chief Joaquin Almunia said that Google’s latest proposals “are not proposals that can eliminate our concerns regarding competition.” This is at least the second time the Commission has said no to Google’s evolving settlement offer. Almunia said: “The latest offer as submitted by Google in October, following the series of consultations that we have carried out with more than 100 interlocutors -- those who submitted complaints against Google, the relevant participants in the sector and a lot of other people -- the latest proposals are not acceptable in the sense that they are not proposals that can eliminate our concerns regarding competition and in particular regarding the way Google’s rivals in vertical search -- search for products and price comparison, restaurants, etc. — are being treated.” He added, “At this moment there is little time left, but the ball is still in Google’s court. But within a short timeframe, the ball will then be here and then it will be the moment to take decisions.”
benton.org/node/170871 | GigaOm | Bloomberg
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GOOGLE FINED IN EUROPEAN PRIVACY PROBE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: David Roman]
Spain became the first of six European governments investigating Google's compliance with privacy laws to fine the company. The Spanish Agency for Data Protection is demanding €900,000 ($1.24 million) from Google for three breaches of the laws: gathering data on users, combining the data through several services and keeping the data indefinitely without the knowledge or consent of users. Google said that it was studying the findings to determine its next step and will continue to cooperate with the agency to "create simpler, more effective services." Spain is one of the six countries that have been investigating Google since spring, an extension of a pan-European investigation. The Dutch privacy watchdog has said it may fine Google for breaching data protection law in the Netherlands. It hasn't indicated how big the fine could be but has asked Google to attend a hearing on the matter. In Italy, Google faces a possible fine of more than €1.2 million, while in the German city of Hamburg fines could total €1 million, regulators have said.
benton.org/node/170821 | Wall Street Journal
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Daily Digest

Analysis

December 2013

Spectrum drives consolidation, but future auctions are up in the air: Year in Review 2013

Begich Bill Encourages More Broadband Investment in Rural Communities

Hollywood wants the rest of the world to follow US copyright law

Former FCC chairman: ‘Be careful not to let licensing become a tool of monopoly’

December A Landmark Month for Communications Policy

FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau grants Dish permission to use 20 megahertz of AWS-4 spectrum at 2000-2020 MHz

NFL: We'll Strongly Oppose Lifting Blackout Rules

People Are More Freaked Out by Hacking Than Tracking, Survey Finds

An Economic Framework for Retransmission Consent

December 20, 2013 (Kingsbury Commitment; Weighing Security and Privacy)