May 2015

Google raising stakes on diversity

Google is raising the stakes in its bid to attract more women and minorities, Nancy Lee, Google's vice president of people operations, said. In 2014, Google spent $115 million on diversity initiatives. In 2015, it's planning to spend $150 million on a far-reaching campaign that stretches from inside the walls of Google into the industry at large, Lee says. That spending over two years illustrates the urgency and ambition of Google's diversity efforts. "Our strategy is extremely long term. Sure, we are doing things that can show an impact maybe this year, maybe next year. But we recognize that there is not enough talent entering into our industry and that we have a lot of work to do," Lee says.

Diversity strategist Joelle Emerson says other technology companies are learning from Google, which is taking an innovative and data-driven approach to closing the gender and racial gap. "Google is the first company that has been talking publicly about anything innovative," said Emerson, founder and CEO of Paradigm. "So much of what we are all doing is watching what Google is trying and trying similar things." Among the key initiatives: Employees can volunteer 20 percent of their time to work on diversity projects through a program called Diversity Core. In 2015, more than 500 Google employees will work on projects at Google and in local communities, Lee says. More than half of Google's nearly 56,000 employees have attended a 90-minute seminar on unconscious bias. Now Google is offering "bias busting" workshops, hands-on sessions that give Google employees practical tips on addressing unconscious bias. Nearly 2,000 have taken the workshop.

Cashing In on Public Interest Programming

[Commentary] As part of an 80-year-old bargain under the Communications Act, local television and radio broadcasters license “public airwaves” from the government for free in exchange for increasingly minimal public interest obligations to serve local communities. But those same airwaves -- also called electromagnetic spectrum, or just, spectrum -- could also be used by telecommunications companies like AT&T and Verizon to expand Internet access to our mobile phones and devices. Because it would be politically impossible to simply cancel the free licenses for broadcasters, and auction them off to Internet giants, Congress is offering broadcasters a cut of the auction proceeds if they give up their licenses.

No one doubts this country’s insatiable love for, and dependence on, mobile devices. Also, the government stands to make billions of dollars after the companies like AT&T and Verizon buy airwave space, having raised almost $45 billion at the last spectrum auction. But what effect could this have on public television? With the Federal Communications Commission promising broadcasters billion-dollar payouts in exchange for their licenses, even the most dedicated public broadcasting affiliate must give serious thought to cashing in. That could spell the end of PBS as a national network, and would end our greatest effort to dedicate a portion of the public airwaves to the public.

[Feld is the senior vice president of Public Knowledge]

We Need Better Infrastructure for Better Wi-Fi

[Commentary] If fiber-optic lines ran to every business and residence in the country, we'd have a cloud of unlimited Wi-Fi connectivity everywhere we work, live and play. Only fiber can handle the tsunami of data uploaded by mobile devices and sensors Americans are going to use. The Federal Communications Commission took a major step in the direction of this vision by voting to open up a wide swath of frequencies for Wi-Fi use that had been previously controlled by the Department of Defense. But this will make little difference for consumers if the wires needed to facilitate Wi-Fi access in America are second-rate and controlled by the cable industry, and there is no plan for the country to upgrade to fiber.

The cable industry already controls the Wi-Fi market with its wires. This is great for cable: It can sell Wi-Fi services for a fee without having to invest a dime in new infrastructure. But consumers are stuck with the cable companies' proprietary Wi-Fi as well as their second-class wires. What’s most needed to improve wireless communication is for cities to call for publicly owned, privately built open access fiber networks -- with these in place, we'd have a cloud of free, public Wi-Fi in every part of our lives, not just more cellular service.

[Crawford is a visiting professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School]

Why I Will Participate in the Spectrum Auction

[Commentary] As the owner of KDOC-TV in Los Angeles, I believe the Federal Communications Commission spectrum auction will be very positive for consumers, as well as the broadcast industry. KDOC is able to participate in this auction, and sell back some of the airwaves, via a channel sharing arrangement with another Los Angeles-based television station — in this case, a major network affiliate. We will sell the spectrum of one of our two stations and continue broadcasting our same channel line-ups, without change, on the airwaves of the remaining “shared” station. Consumers won't even have to adapt to a new TV station.

Current technology will enable both TV stations to broadcast two separate full HD signals over one broadcast channel. Consumers will continue to see the programming from both stations via their existing “virtual” channels. After the auction, television viewers in Los Angeles will have to re-tune their TV sets once to accommodate the changes, but they will continue to view KDOC-TV and our sharing partner station on the same (separate) TV channels that they always have. We will invest our joint proceeds from the spectrum auction into better local entertainment, news and sports programming.

[Ellis is the chairman and chief executive officer of Ellis Communications and the owner of KDOC-TV in Los Angeles]

Broadcasters and Consumers Should Be Wary

[Commentary] If the government’s auction of some of the most valuable broadcast spectrum succeeds, broadcasters and consumers should be wary. Once broadcasters relinquish their valuable spectrum, who will inherit their longstanding commitment to local service? The broadcast industry may have its warts, but when it comes to meeting the information needs of local communities, nobody does it better -- not cable and not the Internet or wireless service providers. When the flood waters rise or the cell towers fail, local broadcasters are the go-to medium for news, weather and safety information from coast to coast. The arcane regulatory distinction between cable and broadcast television stands at the very core of this issue.

Simply put, by well-settled law, broadcast is highly regulated and cable is not. Broadcasters have public service obligations -- wireless providers, not so much. Ultimately, the Federal Communications Commission is duty-bound to uphold the public interest. Local broadcasters have expanded those obligations as responsible custodians of the public airwaves. Can we expect the same from the new owners, or will policymakers need to write new rules for getting important public service information to communities?

[Hoffman, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, is the founder and chairman of Business in the Public Interest]

How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text

Most people realize that e-mails and other digital communications they once considered private can now become part of their permanent record. But even as they increasingly use apps that understand what they say, most people don’t realize that the words they speak are not so private anymore, either. Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored. The documents show NSA analysts celebrating the development of what they called “Google for Voice” nearly a decade ago. Though perfect transcription of natural conversation apparently remains the Intelligence Community’s “holy grail,” the Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and “extract” the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest.

The documents include vivid examples of the use of speech recognition in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Latin America. But they leave unclear exactly how widely the spy agency uses this ability, particularly in programs that pick up considerable amounts of conversations that include people who live in or are citizens of the United States. Spying on international telephone calls has always been a staple of NSA surveillance, but the requirement that an actual person do the listening meant it was effectively limited to a tiny percentage of the total traffic. By leveraging advances in automated speech recognition, the NSA has entered the era of bulk listening. And this has happened with no apparent public oversight, hearings or legislative action. Congress hasn’t shown signs of even knowing that it’s going on.

Expect Court to Partially Stay FCC’s Title II Internet Reclassification

[Commentary] In the coming weeks, expect the DC Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court to grant a partial stay, of only the Federal Communications Commission’s Title II reclassification of broadband and its new “Internet conduct standard” (not the FCC’s net neutrality prohibitions of blocking, throttling or paid prioritization), even though stay requests normally have a low probability of success, because petitioners must convince the court that they are likely to win on the merits and that the opposed action will cause irreparable harm. Why?

First, these broadband provider requests for a partial stay are highly-targeted exactly and only where the petitioners’ arguments are strongest and the FCC’s defenses are weakest and most vulnerable. Second, broadband providers only need one successful argument on the merits to win a partial stay, yet they enjoy a phalanx of seven free-standing, strong arguments, each of which is sufficient to win a partial stay, and collectively, are quite formidable and mutually-reinforcing. Third, context proves this to not be a “normal” petition for a stay, because the DC Circuit has already overturned the FCC twice on the matter of asserting more Internet authority than the law provides, and this latest assertion of FCC Internet authority dwarfs the FCC’s previous overreaches. Fourth, a partial stay would maintain the status quo. It would not harm consumers, innovation or the public interest, because the partial stay would only stay prophylactic rules. There are multiple real and immediate harms to broadband providers which would be subject to immediate, substantial, broad and ill-defined new obligations and liabilities. The harms case is supported by over twenty affidavits of multiple claims of similar irreparable harms from a wide array of companies of different sizes and approaches. The petitioners provide substantial compelling evidence and precedent to prove the FCC’s Title II reclassification unlawful in at least seven different ways legally by:

Conflicting with the plain language of the Communications Act;
Conflicting with the Supreme Court’s Brand X precedent;
Conflicting with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Verizon v. FCC precedent;
Conflicting with multiple cumulative FCC information services precedents over decades;
Conflicting with the CMRS mobile provisions of the Communications Act and FCC precedent;
Being arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA and due process; and
Failing to provide APA notice of the fundamental approach and rationale of the reclassification.

Building for the Future: A New Federal Guide to Infrastructure Planning and Design

The White House convened the nation’s leading thinkers on infrastructure planning and design to highlight how projects like new roads and transit lines can be designed to foster economic opportunity and increase resilience to the impacts of climate change. To help communities seeking to expand their pipelines of well-designed projects, the Administration is also releasing a Federal Guide to Infrastructure Planning and Design. This community resource guide incorporates programs and opportunities from eight federal agencies and lays out a new set of principles to inform the work of local and State governments, public and private utilities, planners and other stakeholders around the US. The guide is part of the Build America Investment Initiative, an Administration-wide effort to help communities design and finance more and better infrastructure projects. As dozens of studies have suggested, the United States is currently underinvesting in our infrastructure by hundreds of billions of dollars per year. And by 2045, our population will grow by 70 million people, and the demands on our infrastructure systems will grow in parallel.

Arkansas launches $13 million school broadband upgrade

As school broadband access becomes critical for student success, states are beginning to evaluate their broadband infrastructure to determine if upgrades and modernization are necessary. Arkansas started investing in technology for its K-12 system in the early 1990s through the development of the Arkansas Public School Computer Network. The network linked schools together, but in 2015, broadband internet connectivity is lacking. Recently elected Gov Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) recognized a need for its students to get connected and the state is now launching an upgrade -- totaling about $13 million annually -- to its fiber infrastructure that will bolster education efforts and provide a stepping stone for further broadband development in the state.

Sen Cantwell Wants to Connect More Federal Buildings to the Internet of Things

Federal buildings may be the newest "smart" entities to join the Internet of Things, if a recently introduced Senate bill gains traction. In April, Sen Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced legislation encouraging more federal agencies to embrace new technologies -- digital air conditioning units that can be controlled and monitored remotely or window blinds that automatically raise or lower depending on incoming sunlight, for instance -- in an effort to cut energy use. But despite enthusiasm in the private sector for connected buildings, some critics warn against systems that could make federal buildings more vulnerable to cyberattack.

The Smart Building Acceleration Act directs the Energy Department to observe new technology in the private sector and to document the costs and benefits of using this emerging technology in federal buildings. The bill focuses on automated energy systems that can be remotely monitored and can communicate with utilities and other third-party commercial entities. The bill also directs the energy secretary to establish a "smart building accelerator," in consultation with private sector property owners, to research and develop technology for potential deployment in federal buildings. Still, the Government Accountability Office has raised concerns about cybersecurity risks in high-tech access control systems in federal buildings. In December 2014, GAO issued a report warning that the Department of Homeland Security hadn't sufficiently preparing for cyber threats to physical buildings and access control systems.

Benton

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