BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015
EU Privacy Law and Trump's Internet-Closure Flaw
SECURITY/PRIVACY
Appeals Court won’t reconsider ruling upholding NSA spying
Cyber Bill Boosts DHS Cyberthreat Sharing But Critics Fear Backdoor to NSA Surveillance
See also: 10 Tech Takeaways in Spending Bill [links to nextgov]
Restricting encryption is a short-term solution to a long-term problem - James Dempsey op-ed [links to Benton summary]
Why US Surveillance Law Protections Are Better Than Europe Thinks - op-ed [links to Benton summary]
Why 2015 Was a Historic Year for Privacy - editorial [links to Benton summary]
A Secret Catalogue of Government Gear for Spying on Your Cellphone [links to Intercept, The]
President Obama Says the Feds Vet Social Media Before Issuing Visas [links to Wired]
Movement to reform surveillance operations, sparked by the revelations leaked by Edward Snowden, seems to be losing momentum amid renewed fears of terrorism and pushback by the security establishment [links to San Jose Mercury News]
Tim Cook: Americans shouldn't have to choose between privacy and security [links to CNN Money]
Iranian Hackers Infiltrated New York Dam in 2013 [links to Wall Street Journal]
Editorial: Metadata or More San Bernardinos [links to Wall Street Journal]
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Small Business Broadband Study: Minimum Upstream Speed Should Be 4 Mbps
Regulating an obsolete Internet: The FCC’s attempt to erase 15 years of innovation [links to American Enterprise Institute/Richard Bennett]
ELECTION 2016
How Voters Are Consuming Political News on Mobile Devices [links to AdWeek]
Sen Sanders threatens to sue DNC if access to voter list isn’t restored [links to Washington Post]
Greg Sargent: The DNC needs to restore Bernie Sanders’ access to voter data — fast [links to Washington Post]
Why the Press Can’t (and Shouldn’t) Quit Trump - Jack Shafer analysis [links to Benton summary]
OWNERSHIP
FCC OKs Altice-Suddenlink Deal [links to Benton summary]
Jeff Bezos Takes Hands-On Role at Washington Post With a Focus on Customer Experience [links to Wall Street Journal]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
Court Upholds FCC Tower-Citing Decision; Says it does not violate Tenth Amendment [links to Multichannel News]
TELECOM
FCC Fines Purple $11.9 Million for Abuse of TRS Fund [links to Federal Communications Commission]
ELECTION 2016
Clinton and Sanders are fighting about data because campaigns are bad at protecting it [links to Verge, The]
Hillary Clinton on encryption: 'maybe the back door isn't the right door' [links to Verge, The]
TELEVISION/RADIO
NAB: FCC Wants TV Spectrum for 'Google Channels' [links to Benton summary]
Streaming TV Isn’t Just a New Way to Watch. It’s a New Genre. - analysis [links to Benton summary]
CPB Awards $775,000 News Collaboration Grant to Three Alaska Public Media Stations [links to Corporation for Public Broadcasting]
CONTENT
New web error code draws attention to Internet censorship
Jury Sides Against Cox in 'Trailblazing' Music Piracy Case [links to Benton summary]
When is it okay to scrub embarrassing statements from a news story after it’s been published on the Web? [links to Washington Post]
Key to Opting Out of Personalized Ads, Hidden in Plain View [links to New York Times]
TRANSPORTATION
The Life-Saving Train Technology That Congress Isn’t Fully Funding [links to National Journal]
POLICYMAKERS
2015 Is the Year the FCC Finally Grew a Spine - analysis
Five biggest FCC stories of 2015 - analysis [links to Benton summary]
Digital Economy Board of Advisors nomination deadline extended to January 12, 2016 [links to National Telecommunications and Information Administration]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Mexico telecoms regulator backs AT&T and Telefonica spectrum deal [links to Reuters]
danah boyd: What If Social Media Becomes 16-Plus? New battles concerning age of consent emerge in Europe. [links to Medium]
Editorial: Missteps in Europe’s Online Privacy Bill [links to New York Times]
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SECURITY/PRIVACY
APPEALS COURT WON'T RECONSIDER RULING UPHOLDING NSA SPYING
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Julian Hattem]
A federal appeals court declined to take up a lower court’s decision upholding National Security Agency surveillance, in a blow to privacy advocates who have called the agency’s data collection unconstitutional. In an order, Judge M. Margaret McKeown of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that critics of the NSA could not get a final judgment on just one component of their sweeping lawsuit. The potential unconstitutionality of the NSA’s Upstream Internet collection could not be disentangled from the broader set of questions about the spy agency’s collection of people’s records, Judge McKeown insisted. As such, the matter should be considered alongside the full set of 17 charges brought against the NSA seven years ago, she ruled, and not in a “piecemeal” fashion, as the lawsuit attempted to do. “Both sides point fingers as to why no final decision has been reached,” McKeown wrote in the order. “We do not take sides in that debate, except to say that the parties’ and judicial resources would be better spent obtaining a final judgment on all of the claims, instead of detouring to the court of appeals for a piecemeal resolution of but one sliver of the case.”
benton.org/headlines/appeals-court-wont-reconsider-ruling-upholding-nsa-spying | Hill, The
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CYBER BILL BOOSTS DHS CYBERTHREAT SHARING BUT CRITICS FEAR BACKDOOR TO NSA SURVEILLANCE
[SOURCE: nextgov, AUTHOR: Aliya Stenstein]
A funding deal approved by the House and set to clear Congress within days positions the Department of Homeland Security as the front door for hack surveillance intelligence arriving from private industry. The back door, to the chagrin of some privacy activists, is the intelligence community. The 2,000-page $1.1 trillion spending bill rife with unconnected policy measures creates an instant information-sharing regime housed at DHS. One of the provisions aligns very closely with a controversial, years-in-the-making bill called the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA. A separate, related measure empowers Homeland Security to scan data from any agency for telltale signs of hacker operations. Companies within six months will receive procedures for voluntarily sharing with DHS details about malicious network activities, including email data that sometimes could contain personal information. Civil liberties activists say the risk of compromising privacy is greater than the chances of stopping a data breach under the legislation. Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), an outspoken critic of US surveillance programs, tweeted after the deal was revealed late the day before: "Latest, worse version of CISA has no real privacy protections & would do little or nothing to prevent major hacks."
benton.org/headlines/cyber-bill-boosts-dhs-cyberthreat-sharing-critics-fear-backdoor-nsa-surveillance | nextgov
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
SMALL BUSINESS BROADBAND STUDY: MINIMUM UPSTREAM SPEED SHOULD BE 4 MPBS
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
The economic benefits of broadband for businesses are “severely limited” unless the connection provides speeds of at least 4 Mbps upstream, according to new research from Strategic Networks Group. Yet more than 70 percent of small businesses (fewer than 50 employees) have less than 4 Mbps upstream speed, SNG noted. In conducting its research, SNG developed something it calls a Digital Economy index (DEi) – an index of 17 potential “eSolutions” — online activities covering a wide range of business functions. A DEi score of 10 means that all eSolutions are used, with a score of zero meaning that none are used. Researchers found an average DEi score for small and medium size enterprises of 6.6. They also found that SMEs with the highest DEi scores generate 20 percent more of their total revenues from their online activities compared to the average SME. “In a nutshell, the more – and more effectively – you use broadband, the more financial benefits there are to be realized by businesses,” SNG wrote. “Higher utilization by SMEs increases direct revenues (and cost savings), which means greater and faster business growth, more jobs and flow through impacts to the local economy.” Importantly, the companies with upload speeds of 4 Mbps or higher had the highest DEi scores.
benton.org/headlines/small-business-broadband-study-minimum-upstream-speed-should-be-4-mbps | telecompetitor
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CONTENT
NEW ERROR CODE
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Tom Warren]
The Internet might be available worldwide, but varying legal systems in different countries often lead to sites being blocked or filtered for reasons that aren't always clear. A new Internet error code aims to solve the lack of transparency associated with censorship and legal obstacles. If you're browsing the web today and reach a 404 error that typically means the page you were looking for wasn't found. A new 451 error code is designed to notify you that content has been blocked.
benton.org/headlines/new-web-error-code-draws-attention-internet-censorship | Verge, The
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POLICYMAKERS
THE YEAR THE FCC GREW A SPINE
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Klint Finley]
[Commentary] You could be forgiven for thinking that the Federal Communications Commission was a rubber stamp machine for the telecommunications industry. Until this year that is. When the FCC grew a spine. If all the FCC did this year was pass the Open Internet Order, it still would have been a hell of a year for the agency. But it didn’t stop there. Emboldened by the groundswell of support for network neutrality, the agency endeavored to bring the telecommunications industry to heel. The order was quickly followed by a vote to pre-empt state laws that restrict community broadband initiatives from expanding into other regions. In April, Comcast abandoned its bid for fellow Internet provider Time-Warner Cable, largely because it had failed to secure support from the FCC and the Department of Justice. In June, the agency announced its intention to fine AT&T $100 million for throttling connection speeds for customers with unlimited data plans without giving those customers adequate warning. In October, it cracked down on prison telephone companies that charge inmates as much as $14 dollars per minute for calls by capping rates at 11 cents per minute. It also launched an investigation into whether companies like Verizon, Comcast and AT&T overcharged wireless carriers like Sprint for access to their networks.
benton.org/headlines/2015-year-fcc-finally-grew-spine | Wired
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