January 23, 2014 (PCLOB: NSA phone data program is illegal and should end)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014
Teaching a communications class? See how Headlines in the Classroom can help http://benton.org/headlines/classroom
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Independent review board says NSA phone data program is illegal and should end
President Obama Goal For Quick Revamp Of NSA Program May Be Unworkable, Some US Officials Fear
Half of Americans heard ‘nothing at all’ about the president’s NSA speech [links to web]
Sen Leahy: NSA surveillance ‘not making us safer’ [links to web]
Microsoft to shield foreign users’ data
Marissa Mayer calls for more NSA transparency [links to web]
Verizon transparency report reveals 320,000 data requests in 2013
Verizon Releases First Transparency Report [links to web]
Verizon’s first transparency report sheds no light on NSA data collection - analysis
SECURITY/PRIVACY
The Internet of things needs a new security model. Which one will win?
Consumer Watchdog files Google+ complaint with FTC
Finding a Needle in a Digital Haystack - op-ed
BROADBAND/TELECOMMUNICATIONS
CIGI and Chatham House launch Global Commission on Internet Governance - press release
The Buck Stops at the FCC - op-ed
Net neutrality nightmare unlikely, Netflix says
Why Netflix is not the next Covad - analysis
What the heck is “net neutrality” anyhow? - analysis
AT&T U-verse with GigaPower to Reach Twice as Many Austin Households in 2014 Expansion - press release [links to web]
What Happens When The Whole World Is Wired?
SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
Statement Of FCC Commissioner Clyburn On H Block Auction - press release
Gartner Says by 2017, Mobile Users Will Provide Personalized Data Streams to More Than 100 Apps and Services Every Day - press release [links to web]
NPD: US Smartphone Penetration Reaches 60% [links to web]
Hyundai Connects With Verizon to Bring Wireless to Its US Cars [links to web]
TELEVISION
Report: FCC’s Wheeler Putting Brakes on SSAs
NPD Backpedals: Says Report on Premium TV Decline Shouldn’t Have Mentioned Showtime, HBO
ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
Leaning Right in Hollywood, Under a Lens
EDUCATION
Districts Get Creative to Build Faster Internet Connections
LOBBYING
Security fears stoke tech spending on lobbying
TIA Announces its Tech & Telecom Policy Priorities for 2014 [links to web]
COMPANY NEWS
TiVo refutes rumors, says hardware is a 'core business' [links to web]
T-Mobile will cash your checks: how it works [links to web]
Netflix wants to introduce three pricing tiers for new members [links to web]
Judge Says Dish Properly Withdrew LightSquared Bid [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
“Chinaleaks” Stories Censored In Mainland China
Discovery to Take Control of Eurosport International [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
PCLOB SAYS NSA PHONE PROGRAM IS ILLEGAL
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ellen Nakashima]
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) has concluded that the National Security Agency’s long-running program to collect billions of Americans’ phone records is illegal and should end. In a strongly worded report, the PCLOB said that the statute upon which the program was based, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, “does not provide an adequate basis to support this program.” The board’s conclusion goes further than President Barack Obama, who said that he thought the NSA’s database of records should be moved out of government hands but did not call for an outright halt to the program. The board had shared its conclusions with President Obama in the days leading up to his speech. The divided panel also concluded that the program raises serious threats to civil liberties, has shown limited value in countering terrorism and is not sustainable from a policy perspective. The 238-page report is arguably the most extensive analysis to date of the program’s statutory and constitutional underpinnings, as well as of its practical value. It rejects the reasoning of at least 15 federal surveillance court judges and the Justice Department in saying that the program cannot be grounded in Section 215. That statute requires that records sought by the government -- in this case phone numbers dialed, call times and durations, but not call content -- be relevant to an authorized investigation. But the board found that it is impossible that all the records collected -- billions daily -- could be relevant to a single investigation “without redefining that word in a manner that is circular, unlimited in scope.”
benton.org/node/172951 | Washington Post | NY Times
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PRESIDENT OBAMA GOAL FOR QUICK REVAMP OF NSA PROGRAM MAY BE UNWORKABLE, SOME US OFFICIALS FEAR
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Sari Horwitz, Ellen Nakashima]
US officials directed by President Barack Obama to find a way to end the government’s role in gathering Americans’ phone records are deeply concerned that there may be no feasible way to accomplish the task soon, according to individuals familiar with the discussions. Even among US officials who applauded the recommendation in principle, there is a growing worry that the President’s goals are unattainable in the near future, officials said. Telephone companies have said they do not want to be responsible for the database, and no one has come up with a workable idea for how a third party could hold the records. No meeting has been scheduled between government officials and the phone companies to discuss the issue, and no decision has been made about approaching the companies to further discuss the possibility of them holding the records. Other officials, including many in the intelligence community, said they are skeptical that a new system could balance national security and privacy interests better than the one that exists. Some former intelligence officials said they thought President Obama’s team would pull through. “Clapper and Attorney General Holder will meet the deadline because that’s what you do,” said John McLaughlin, a former deputy CIA director. He added: “I’m guessing they’ll present some options. What the president would be looking for is a playbook -- not just a concept but, ‘Here’s how we would propose to do it . . . and here’s how you would turn it on.’ ”
benton.org/node/172866 | Washington Post
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MICROSOFT OFFERS OVERSEAS DATA STORAGE IN RESPONSE TO NSA CONCERNS
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: James Fontanella-Khan, Richard Waters]
Microsoft will allow foreign customers to have their personal data stored on servers outside the US, breaking ranks with other big technology groups that until now have shown a united front in response to the American surveillance scandal. Brad Smith, general counsel of Microsoft, said that although many tech companies were opposed to the idea, it had become necessary following leaks that showed the US National Security Agency had been monitoring the data of foreign citizens from Brazil to across the European Union. “People should have the ability to know whether their data are being subjected to the laws and access of governments in some other country and should have the ability to make an informed choice of where their data resides,” he said. Smith added that customers could choose where to store their data from a variety of existing Microsoft data centers. For example, a European client could choose to have their data stored in the group’s Irish data center.
benton.org/node/172883 | Financial Times
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VERIZON TRANSPARENCY REPORT REVEALS 320,000 DATA REQUESTS IN 2013
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
Verizon says federal, state and local authorities asked it to hand over user data 321,545 times in 2013, in a report it vowed to produce following the National Security Agency revelations made by former contractor Edward Snowden. The vast majority of requests, about 164,000, came from law enforcement subpoenas, followed by about 71,000 court orders. In 2013, the company fielded 7,800 requests for real-time information about a person's outbound and inbound calls — but of those, only about 1,500 were actual wiretap requests leading to the surveillance of a call's content. The report also shows a growing government appetite for location data. In 2013, the company saw 35,000 requests for such information. Some 3,200 constituted "tower dumps," or information on all the calls logged by a cell tower within a certain time frame. This information can be used to track a suspect's movements and behavior. According to a congressional probe, law enforcement agencies made 9,000 tower dump requests in 2013 -- meaning Verizon was the recipient of more than a third of them.
benton.org/node/172887 | Washington Post | Verizon | nextgov | B&C
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VERIZON’S FIRST TRANSPARENCY REPORT SHEDS NO LIGHT ON NSA DATA COLLECTION
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Kevin Fitchard]
Anyone hoping to get insight into Verizon’s cooperation with National Security Agency will be sorely disappointed. Verizon prohibited from revealing any information about Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders, which are at the heart of an international controversy over the NSA collecting subscriber metadata indiscriminately from phone companies. The closest Verizon got was to reveal that it had received between 1,000 and 1,999 national security letters (NSLs) from the FBI. NSLs are requests for specific subscriber data pertaining to an ongoing terrorism or national security investigation, and they don’t need the signature of a judge. But they’re not the same things as FISA orders. Verizon isn’t being cagey. Everyone in the tech industry is under a similar gag order when it comes to FISA and the government’s secretive spy courts. Still, the information Verizon did reveal in its report was interesting. The greatest number of (non-FISA) requests it received came in the form of law enforcement subpoenas for subscriber information. It processed 164,184 of those subpoenas in 2013. It received 70,665 court orders to provide subscriber historical subscriber data or real-time info via pen registers or trap-and-traces, as well as 36,696 warrants mostly for stored content or location information.
benton.org/node/172929 | GigaOm
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SECURITY/PRIVACY
THE INTERNET OF THINGS NEEDS A NEW SECURITY MODEL. WHICH ONE WILL WIN?
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
The internet of things is an entirely new way of building out networks and services, so why would we use old client-server or even cloud-tested forms of security? What comes next? One idea gaining ground is that we will accept that the system is insecure and then develop software and procedures to determine what we can trust on the fly. It has the same underlying assumption that influences Netflix’s Chaos Monkey concept, which is to assume systems will break and prepare for it in all manner of ways. In a related concept, perhaps instead of stopping data breaches we’ll stop those who profit from them, from actually making money. And finally there’s the concept of designing with security in mind, which is of course a lot harder than it might seem. But this is the approach most security researchers are advocating, with some even encouraging government agencies to impose fines of consumer electronics companies if their products are hacked.
benton.org/node/172872 | GigaOm
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CONSUMER WATCHDOG FILES GOOGLE+ COMPLAINT WITH FTC
[SOURCE: IDG News Service, AUTHOR: Grant Gross]
Google, through its plan to link Gmail addresses to its Google+ social network, is violating a privacy agreement the company made with the Federal Trade Commission, a longtime critic of the company's privacy practices said in a complaint to the agency. Google+ also has a "flagrant and fundamental privacy design flaw" because it allows any user to add other users to his circles without their permission, Consumer Watchdog said in the complaint. "A user can be forced to be publicly associated with someone with whom they do not wish to be associated," wrote John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog's Privacy Project director. Compounding the problem is Google's plan, announced in early January 2014, to merge Google+ and Gmail contact lists, Consumer Watchdog said. The change will allow a Gmail user to send an unsolicited e-mail message to another user without knowing the second person's Gmail address, by adding the intended recipient to his Google+ circles. That merger of Google+ and Gmail accounts violates a March 2011 privacy settlement between Google and the FTC over Google Buzz, the company's failed first social networking experiment, Consumer Watchdog alleged.
benton.org/node/172927 | IDG News Service
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FINDING A NEEDLE IN A DIGITAL HAYSTACK
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Tim White]
[Commentary] Last year the private sector spent $67.2 billion on cybersecurity services. Nevertheless, according to a recent investigation by Verizon, 60 percent of successful hacks were not detected until months after the attacks began. In the wake of recent high-profile hacker attacks against Target, Neiman Marcus and other retailers, the obvious question is: Why hasn’t all that money done any good? The problem is that many organizations simply don’t know how to arrange the data to identify suspicious patterns and weaknesses, at least not fast enough. There’s too much data, and not enough perspective. What we need, then, is not necessarily more money or information, but a better way of knowing what it means -- of interpreting the data to discover an unknown attack as it happens or, even better, anticipate the next attack.
[White is the global head of government and intelligence for YarcData, a data analytics firm.]
benton.org/node/172949 | New York Times
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BROADBAND/TELECOMMUNICATIONS
CIGI AND CHATHAM HOUSE LAUNCH GLOBAL COMMISSION ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE
[SOURCE: Centre for International Governance Innovation, AUTHOR: Press release]
Carl Bildt, Sweden’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, will chair a new Global Commission on Internet Governance, launched by The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). The Global Commission is a two-year initiative that will produce a comprehensive stand on the future of multi-stakeholder Internet governance. The commission will include about 25 members drawn from various fields and from around the world, including policy and government, academia and civil society. The Global Commission on Internet Governance will encourage globally inclusive public discussions and debates on the future of Internet governance through a public consultation platform, and through other institutional, media, and academic channels. It will create and advance a strategic vision for the future of Internet governance that can act as a rallying point for states that are striving for a continued free and open Internet. The commission will focus on four key themes: 1) Enhancing governance legitimacy; 2) Stimulating innovation; 3) Ensuring human rights online; and 4) Avoiding systemic risks.
benton.org/node/172864 | Centre for International Governance Innovation | GigaOm
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THE BUCK STOPS AT THE FCC
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Michael Copps]
[Commentary] Since the DC Court threw out the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet rules last week, “network neutrality” is a glaring problem that demands prompt action. The good news is that the solution is pretty simple. It doesn’t require a new telecommunications statute replete with time-consuming years of legislative horse-trading and special interest lobbying. All it requires is an FCC big enough to own up to its previous mistakes and courageous enough to put our communications future back on track. The solution: reclassify broadband as “telecommunications” under Title II of the Communications Act. The time for action is now. Soon a coalition of citizens will deliver petitions to the FCC calling on the agency to take the obvious step of reclassifying broadband to protect consumers, innovation, and online free speech. Hundreds of thousands of everyday people from across the land have already signed on, and there is still time to add your name. Do it today -- then ask your friends to do the same.
http://benton.org/node/172880
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NET NEUTRALITY NIGHTMARE UNLIKELY, NETFLIX SAYS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Kate Tummarello]
Internet service providers are likely to keep an open Internet, despite the recent fall of the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet rules, Netflix said. “The most likely case … is that ISPs will avoid this consumer-unfriendly path of discrimination,” Netflix wrote. ISPs “are generally aware of the broad public support for net neutrality and don’t want to galvanize government action,” the company said. ISPs are also looking to expand, not hinder, their already profitable broadband services, Netflix said. “Consumers purchase higher bandwidth packages mostly for one reason: high-quality streaming video,” and Internet providers are working with companies like Netflix to ensure the quality of that video streaming, the company wrote. If Netflix faces the “draconian scenario” of having to pay an Internet provider or face degraded access to its subscribers, the company “would vigorously protest and encourage our members to demand the open Internet they are paying their ISP to deliver.” Additionally, “more regulation would clearly be needed” if Internet providers were to start degrading certain Internet traffic, Netflix said.
benton.org/node/172936 | Hill, The | Netflix | Business Insider
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WHY NETFLIX IS NOT THE NEXT COVAD
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: John Shinal]
[Commentary] After a federal appeals court swept aside rules that required Internet service providers to share their networks equally with all users, I wondered whether Netflix might become the next Covad Communications, a failed poster child of the late-1990s telecommunications investment boom. Now that Netflix has reported another quarter of healthy subscriber growth, I'm reminded that the chances of it happening are slim. Yet, the chances of large telecom and cable providers cutting into Netflix's future growth are much higher than that, thanks to that court ruling, and a brief history of Covad shows how it could happen. Like Netflix, Covad had a pioneering online business model that required the help of federal government regulation to get off the ground. For Covad, that regulation was the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and subsequent Federal Communications Commission rules that required Verizon, AT&T and the other regional Bells operating companies (RBOCs) to share their networks to competing broadband service providers for a nominal cost. Netflix was similarly protected by the FCC's so-called network neutrality rules, which prevented large Internet service providers from charging more to Netflix, Google's YouTube unit and other firms that hog lots of bandwidth on their broadband networks. That protection has allowed Netflix to become the No. 1 provider of online movies and TV shows. Netflix, though, has one strategic advantage lacked by Covad, whose main value proposition was that it could deliver the same service as its larger rivals for a fraction of the cost. By contrast, and thanks to its wide assortment of licensing deals, Netflix has access to movie and TV content that Verizon and the other giants can't offer. At least, not yet. No sooner had the ink dried on the appeals court ruling than Verizon agreed to buy the Web TV assets of chip giant Intel, in a move to help it expand its own digital entertainment offerings. If the giants can soon offer what Netflix can, the upstart's key differentiation will be on price alone. Sound familiar?
benton.org/node/172935 | USAToday
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WHAT THE HECK IS “NET NEUTRALITY” ANYHOW?
[SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute, AUTHOR: Richard Bennett]
[Commentary] The root of network neutrality is the fear that we’re getting a raw deal on Internet service. This fear -- grounded in the fact that it’s more expensive to build a network that covers a dispersed population than to cover one that lives in high-rise buildings -- is combined with a theory about network design and network quality that’s fundamentally defective. Network neutrality advocates believe that broadband information networks are very, very simple, somewhat like the water system. All it takes to supply a city with water is a well, a pump, and some pipes, so hooking the city up to the Internet should just be about some wires, some switches, and a little bit of electricity. The wires may break from time to time, but when that happens you just patch ‘em up and it all works like magic. It would be great if things were really like that, but they simply aren’t. Broadband is like a water system that pumps fifty percent more water each year to each home for the same price. That would be pretty hard for most water systems to do unless they were massively overbuilt to begin with.
[Bennett is a visiting fellow at AEI]
benton.org/node/172862 | American Enterprise Institute
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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD IS WIRED?
[SOURCE: Fast Company, AUTHOR: Margaret Rhodes]
[Commentary] In our hyper-wired world, it’s hard to imagine that just a skimpy 35% of the global population has Internet access. The promise of getting that remaining 65% -- or at least some of it -- is a cornucopia of economic temptation. “Broadband is one of the most enabling technologies of our lifetime,” says Steve Collar, CEO of O3B Networks. “But you can’t run fiber through the Amazon, or through the mountains of Pakistan.” Instead, by the end of 2014, Collar’s Stockholm-based company plans to put 12 satellites into orbit that will deliver 3G networks to large swaths of emerging markets. But unlike the satellites that already deliver a connection, O3B’s infrastructure will live much closer to Earth’s surface. So while Direct TV’s satellites hover at 22,500 miles away from Earth, O3B’s are at 8,000 -- cutting down costs. That proximity eliminates the signal delay, but still offers enough coverage per satellite. “We can just get more data through and more bandwidth through,” Collar says. “We’re really in the sweet spot.” O3B is testing in the Cook Islands in March, with a projected launch in May 2014.
benton.org/node/172931 | Fast Company
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SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER CLYBURN ON H BLOCK AUCTION
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn]
To say that a spectrum auction is long overdue is an understatement. This will be the Federal Communications Commission's first major auction since 2008, and it comes at a time when the commercial market and consumer demand for mobile wireless services are skyrocketing. This auction has revived spectrum which not too long ago was forlorn. The 1915-1920 MHz and 1995- 2000 MHz bands have been designated for auction for nearly a decade, but were mired in difficult interference disputes. Since the enactment of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, FCC staff has worked diligently and creatively during the AWS-4 and H Block proceedings, to resolve disputes and produce new technical rules that now allow the H Block to be valuable for mobile broadband use. Congress directed the FCC to consider several methods when designing auctions, including the setting of a reserve price and minimum opening bids. The rules for the H Block auction ensure that it meets the statutory mandated objectives, including promoting the efficient use of the spectrum. We live in an “always-on” mobile environment. The high level of interest, and the overall record in this proceeding, reaffirm the importance of this auction to help industry meet the nation's ever-increasing demand for mobile services. Both consumers and providers stand to gain by our decision to bring this highly valued resource to market.
benton.org/node/172918 | Federal Communications Commission
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TELEVISION
PUTTING BRAKES ON SSAs
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Doug Halonen]
Apparently, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has put a hold on station sale applications that include shared services agreements that allow broadcasters to set up sidecar companies to control key aspects of multiple TV stations in the same market -- until he decides how he wants to handle sidecar deals in the future, according to unnamed sources. Station transactions that include shared services and related joint sales agreements have been routinely approved by the agency in the past.
benton.org/node/172945 | TVNewsCheck
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NPD BACKPEDALS
[SOURCE: The Wrap, AUTHOR: Brent Lang]
NPD Group is backing away from a recent study that claimed the rise of subscription video on demand services such as Netflix may be leading to a decline in premium cable subscriptions and says that its findings may have been misstated. After HBO, Starz and Showtime all hit back at its conclusions, arguing that were experiencing customer growth, not defect, the market research firm was forced to clarify its data. In a statement, NPD said it “…should not have called out declines in subscribers for specific premium TV channels, HBO and Showtime.” “Upon further examination of the results, there is data supporting the conclusion that individual subscribers are either subscribing to more channels, or adding channels over time,” NPD said in a statement. “In that case, faithful premium channel subscribers are becoming more so – which would be consistent with the subscription increases being reported by individual channels.”
benton.org/node/172943 | Wrap, The
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
FRIENDS OF ABE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Michael Cieply, Nicholas Confessore]
In a famously left-leaning Hollywood, where Democratic fund-raisers fill the social calendar, Friends of Abe stands out as a conservative group that bucks the prevailing political winds. A collection of perhaps 1,500 right-leaning players in the entertainment industry, Friends of Abe keeps a low profile and fiercely protects its membership list, to avoid what it presumes would result in a sort of 21st-century blacklist, albeit on the other side of the partisan spectrum. Now the Internal Revenue Service is reviewing the group’s activities in connection with its application for tax-exempt status. Federal tax authorities presented the group with a 10-point request for detailed information about its meetings with politicians like Paul D. Ryan, Thaddeus McCotter and Herman Cain, among other matters, according to people briefed on the inquiry.
benton.org/node/172939 | New York Times
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EDUCATION
DISTRICTS GET CREATIVE TO BUILD FASTER INTERNET CONNECTIONS
[SOURCE: Education Week, AUTHOR: Benjamin Herold]
Desperate for access to high-speed fiber-optic cable that can meet their demands for bandwidth, and frustrated with the ways in which federal regulations and large telecommunications companies often get in the way, some districts are getting creative. Take the 5,000-student Butte district in southwestern Montana. It recently initiated a public-private partnership to build a brand-new fiber network after its plans for using technology were thwarted time and again. But over the past decade, Butte Superintendent Judy Jonart said, a lack of viable on-the-ground options has left Butte, like thousands of other school districts, struggling with Internet connections far too slow to take advantage of the digital revolution in K-12 education. “We had to do it ourselves," she said. "We didn't have any other choice." Many districts have also struggled to establish internal fiber connections among all of their schools. Experts say changing those realities is the surest way to realize President Barack Obama's goal of bringing high-speed Internet connections to nearly every school within five years. But because installing fiber-optic cable entails significant upfront costs, large telecommunications companies have declined to build out such networks in many rural and remote sections of the country, leaving districts such as Butte with few existing options to tap. This spring, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote on revisions to the E-rate program, the culmination of a long-awaited overhaul. It remains unclear if and how the provisions related to fiber-optic cable will change. In the meantime, districts from Montana to Virginia to New York have become increasingly proactive in finding ways to connect to fiber despite the challenges.
benton.org/node/172889 | Education Week
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LOBBYING
SECURITY FEARS STOKE TECH SPENDING ON LOBBYING
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Julian Hattem]
Major technology companies saw their lobbying fees jump in 2013 as they focused on reforming National Security Agency surveillance programs and other issues. Facebook plowed more than $6.4 million into lobbying in 2013, nearly twice the $3.8 million it spent the year before, according to lobbying disclosure documents. Microsoft spent nearly $10.5 million, a jump from the $8.1 million spent in 2012. Apple spent $3.37 million, up from $1.97 million in 2012. An exception to the rule was Google, which saw its K Street spending drop from $16.5 million in 2012 to $14 million in 2013. A handful of new trade groups and businesses also got into the game for the first time in 2013. The Internet Association, which counts AOL, Amazon, Ebay and Yahoo among its members, only began lobbying in 2013 and spent $1.6 million to influence Congress and regulators. Twitter and Yelp hired their first lobbyists in 2013. The companies’ lobbying spending -- $90,000 and $30,000, respectively -- is just a sliver of the millions that larger companies spend.
benton.org/node/172868 | Hill, The | AdWeek
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
“CHINALEAKS” STORIES CENSORED IN MAINLAND CHINA
[SOURCE: Center for Public Integrity, AUTHOR: Michael Hudson, Marina Guevara, Alexa Olesen]
Chinese authorities moved aggressively to block online access to news reports exposing the secrecy-cloaked offshore holdings of China’s political and financial elites. Internet censors prevented readers in China from seeing investigative stories by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and several of its publishing partners, including Spain’s El País, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., and the UK and US editions of The Guardian, according to reports from news organizations and analytics by GreatFire.org, which monitors web censorship in China. China routinely censors online domestic content and blocks foreign social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook, but the broad news blackout targeting so many international media outlets was unusual in its scope. Individual sites have been targeted in the past, including The New York Times and Bloomberg, which separately saw their sites blocked after releasing reports on elite wealth in China. In Beijing, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang dismissed the story calling it “hardly convincing” and said it raises “suspicions over the motives behind it."
benton.org/node/172923 | Center for Public Integrity
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