July 2015

Privacy campaigners have secured significant concessions in a key report into surveillance by the British security agencies. The 132-page report, A Democratic Licence To Operate, which Nick Clegg commissioned in 2014 in the wake of revelations by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, acknowledges the importance of privacy concerns.

“Privacy is an essential prerequisite to the exercise of individual freedom, and its erosion weakens the constitutional foundations on which democracy and good governance have traditionally been based in this country,” the report says. It says that there are “inadequacies in both law and oversight that have helped create a credibility gap that has undermined public confidence”. The report proposes that the intelligence services retain the power to collect bulk communications data on the private lives of British citizens, but it also now concedes that privacy must be a consideration throughout the process. The report, written for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) by a panel that includes three former heads of UK intelligence agencies, also calls for an overhaul of existing legislation. Despite its concessions to the privacy lobby, the report overall is more favourable to the police and intelligence services than to the campaigners.

A new study from three researchers at Florida State University suggests that merely receiving a push notification is as distracting as responding to a text message or a phone call. The study asked more than 150 students to complete a well-known test of sustained attentional performance. The researchers found that performance on the assessment suffered if the student received any kind of audible notification. That is, every kind of phone distraction was equally destructive to their performance: An irruptive ping distracted people just as much as a shrill, sustained ring tone. It didn’t matter, too, if a student ignored the text or didn’t answer the phone: As long as they got a notification, and knew they got it, their test performance suffered.

“Our results suggest that mobile phones can disrupt attention performance even if one does not interact with the device,” write the study’s authors. “As mobile phones become integrated into more and more tasks, it may become increasingly difficult for people to set their phones aside and concentrate fully on the task at hand, whatever it may be.” Furthermore, they add, the feeling of “divided attention” may be so uncomfortable that it drives people to look at their phones, even if they know they shouldn’t. “If people are genuinely distracted by notification-induced thoughts, some problematic mobile phone use could be prompted by the desire to escape that feeling,” they write.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s low-income program, known formally as Lifeline, has spent billions of ratepayer dollars to provide phone service for poorer Americans. Because of significant waste, fraud and abuse in the program, however, a good portion of that funding has not been used as intended. More than once, the Government Accountability Office has taken the FCC to task for failing to control the program, evaluate its flaws and improve accountability. In June, the FCC proposed to expand Lifeline to subsidize broadband services without adequate controls to prevent further misuse of funds. We have significant concerns about this new course of action. It is not too late to change direction, but doing so would require the FCC to confront the substantial issues plaguing the program and adopt strong solutions.

While many reforms are appropriate, two in particular are critical, and the FCC has shown little interest to date in fixing them. First, the FCC must set a spending cap for the program. If the FCC fails to control costs, hard-working taxpayers facing higher phone bills may drop service altogether. The FCC, therefore, has a responsibility to set a spending limit that balances the goals of the program against the burden on consumers nationwide. Second, the program must be better targeted to eligible low-income individuals who would not otherwise sign up for service. Given the significant problems with Lifeline, it is not surprising that many have lost confidence in the program. Rather than rush headlong down a path that will increase spending and multiply concerns about waste, fraud and abuse, the FCC needs to reevaluate the program and address its serious flaws. This means, at a minimum, an overall cap and better targeting. To do less would betray the FCC’s responsibility to Americans to ensure that their money is well spent.

Commissioner Julie Brill of the Federal Trade Commission has a pretty good idea what the Internet will look like in five years: It won’t exist. The FTC executive believes everyone will have so many devices deeply woven into the Internet, that the line between online and offline will simply cease to exist. That will present many challenges for the FTC. Continuing to provide consumers with notice and choice about how and why their data will be used is likely to become exponentially more complex. Working as an attorney in consumer protection and antitrust for more than 20 years, Commissioner Brill has become a key player in the country’s digital privacy debate.

Asked if she had the chance to change on thing with respect to technology and privacy in the US, Commissioner Brill said, "I would like to see more significant protections for health information and other sensitive information that is flowing outside of the protected silos of sector-specific privacy laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Fitness bands, wearables and other health-oriented devices, apps and online services provide consumers with enormous benefits, from monitoring their health to answering questions about health conditions and diseases. Yet the information about consumers that flows from these devices, as well as health information that marketers and data brokers infer from other information, can be deeply personal and can cause severe harm to consumers if it is inappropriately used or disclosed."