July 2016

[Commentary] The week of July 4, we objected to the Senate moving forward on the 2017 Intelligence Authorization bill. 

We are concerned that this bill would undermine a federal board that serves as an independent watchdog for intelligence agencies. We are even more concerned that this bill includes an unnecessary, sprawling expansion of the FBI’s ability to spy on what websites Americans visit and who they talk to on e-mail or in text messages and chats—all without obtaining a warrant, or any court oversight whatsoever.
 Given what web browsing history can reveal, there is little information that could be more intimate.

If you know that a person is visiting the website of a mental health professional, or a substance-abuse support group, or a particular political organization, or a particular dating site, you know a tremendous amount of private and personal information about him or her. That’s what you get when you can get access to their web browsing history without a court order.

The reality is that getting access to people’s web browsing history is almost like spying on their thoughts. This level of surveillance absolutely ought to come with court oversight. Yet a number of senators are moving to go in the opposite direction.

The annual intelligence bill would let any FBI field office issue something called a National Security Letter to demand this information. These letters are essentially administrative subpoenas and often come with gag order. Allowing government agents to see Americans’ web browsing history without court oversight is a half-baked solution that won’t make our country any safer, and the American people deserve better.

A pair of powerful Democratic Sens have called on the Federal Trade Commission to protect consumers from digital advertising fraud, which they suggest is rampant, including potential regulation of reform of ad exchanges. In a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, Sens Mark Warner (D-VA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) -- members of the Senate Banking Committee as well as active on communications and tech issues -- pointed to recent studies that have found "rampant fraud" in the $60 billion digital ad market, including one finding that as much as 98% of all ad clicks on major ad platforms, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and LinkedIn, were not by human fingers but by computer-automated bots.

"The ad fraud market has scaled to such an extent that it has attracted participation by organized crime," to put an even tougher point on the issue. “Bots plague the digital advertising space by creating fake consumer traffic, artificially driving up the cost of advertising in the same way human fraudsters can manipulate the price of a stock by creating artificial trading volume," they told Chairwoman Ramirez, suggesting regulation or legislation may be needed to stem the tide.

[Commentary] Mark Twain deliciously mocked James Fenimore Cooper for creating characters that appeared not to be able to jump onto a boat one foot from the river bank, and moving at a snail’s pace. The Federal Communications Commission has similarly, and indefensibly, missed the boat with its proposal to retain and even toughen outdated media ownership rules. These are the same broadcasters being moved to smaller spectrum quarters, which for some means giving up spectrum that could be used for digital multicasting and other services that would provide more programming in the marketplace.

The FCC appears to see—through a “glass eye darkly,” we would add—a marketplace filled with thriving newspapers and a powerful broadcasting industry that lacks video competition. Fifty years ago, maybe, but today? That’s like calling myopia “focus.” Instead of finally getting rid of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rules, or abandoning the plan to tighten joint sales agreements remanded by the courts, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has doubled down on regulation. “Our analysis indicates that the ownership restrictions remain necessary in the public interest,” the Chairman said in an overdue ownership review that came in both late and way off the mark. That is even more reason for the FCC to give broadcasters some purchase on the future via ATSC 3.0.

Digital age platforms are providing researchers the ability to outsource portions of their work – not just to increasingly intelligent machines, but also to a relatively low-cost online labor force comprised of humans. These so-called “online outsourcing” services help employers connect with a global pool of free-agent workers who are willing to complete a variety of specialized or repetitive tasks. Because it provides access to large numbers of workers at relatively low cost, online outsourcing holds a particular appeal for academics and nonprofit research organizations – many of whom have limited resources compared with corporate America.

For instance, Pew Research Center has experimented with using these services to perform tasks such as classifying documents and collecting website URLs. And a Google search of scholarly academic literature shows that more than 800 studies – ranging from medical research to social science – were published using data from one such platform, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, in 2015 alone. The rise of these platforms has also generated considerable commentary about the so-called “gig economy” and the possible impact it will have on traditional notions about the nature of work, the structure of compensation and the “social contract” between firms and workers. Pew Research Center recently explored some of the policy and employment implications of these new platforms in a national survey of Americans.