1. Monthly archive
  2. December 2016

December 2016

For new infrastructure, apply Republican approach to power and communications

[Commentary] The incoming Trump administration and the new Republican Congress seem interested in providing tax advantages and new debt availability for infrastructure spending. But project developers will need revenue to pay off debt. So the infrastructure has to generate income. To pay back debt and guarantee that infrastructure spending is productive, projects need user fees. The problem is that more than 90% of transportation infrastructure is publicly owned, publicly funded and used for free. Without revenue prospects, private sector developers are not going to enter the business of rebuilding most roads, bridges, tunnels, sewers, water systems, and dams.

On the other hand, almost all 21st century infrastructure is privately owned, funded by users through various fees and charges, and ripe for huge new private spending. To really make America great, the new administration and Congress should make the tax advantages and finance benefits for infrastructure applicable to the 21st century infrastructures of power and communications.

[Reed Hundt is the CEO of Coalition for Green Capital and a former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission]

Verizon wants to switch copper retirement notifications from paper to electronic copies

Verizon’s ongoing copper retirement efforts may be controversial, but the telecommunication company says the process would be more efficient if it could provide the notifications electronically. In a recent Federal Communications Commission filing, Verizon asked the regulator to clarify its copper retirement notification requirements by confirming that telcos can provide interconnection partners and local public utility commissions a paper copy of the notice and a hyperlink to a searchable online list of addresses or locations where copper is to be retired in lieu of a paper copy of the address list. Verizon has also petitioned the FCC to waive any requirement that any affected party be served with a paper address list when providers instead provide a copy of the notice and a hyperlink to a searchable online list.

However, Verizon said that will “continue to send paper copies of its copper retirement notifications, excluding the address lists, to state public utility commissions, state governors, tribal entities, the Secretary of Defense, and all interconnecting entities operating in the state in which the copper retirement will occur.”

Law Enforcement's Use of Facial Recognition Technology Is Racially Biased and Threatens Our First Amendment Rights

[Commentary] Recently, a broad coalition of civil rights, civil liberties, privacy and immigrant-rights groups met with representatives from the FBI and Justice Department to demand more transparency around the use of an increasingly popular law enforcement tool: facial recognition technology. The meeting was in response to a recent report from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology that found that law enforcement agencies across the country are adding this technology to their arsenal of investigatory tools.

While the report found that the practice affects over 117 million people, agencies across the board have failed to put in place safeguards to protect our privacy. Worse yet, while the technology potentially threatens the rights of everyone in America, the report uncovered damning racial biases within the systems.

Amazon Echo Privacy: Is Alexa listening to everything you say?

When Amazon released its voice-controlled personal assistant in November 2014, an important question was raised about the hands-free speaker: if the Amazon Echo is voice-controlled, then is it always listening? Essentially, all voice-controlled assistants — Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Google's AI assistant, etc. — work the same way: The device activates once it detects the "wake word." For the Amazon Echo, the wake word is the assistant's name, Alexa. But in order to detect its name, the Echo has to be listening in at all times on some level.

For Millions of Immigrants, a Common Language: WhatsApp

Messaging app Whatsapp has quietly become a mainstay of immigrant life. More than a billion people regularly use WhatsApp, which lets users send text messages and make phone calls free over the internet. The app is particularly popular in India, where it has more than 160 million users, as well as in Europe, South America and Africa.

Because it’s free, has a relatively good record on privacy and security, and is popular in so many parts of the world, WhatsApp has cultivated an unusual audience: It has become the lingua franca among people who, whether by choice or by force, have left their homes for the unknown.

Windstream-EarthLink Merger Clears Antitrust Hurdle

The Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission have given a clean antitrust review bill of health to the proposed $1.1 billion merger of Internet service providers Windstream and EarthLink. The deal was listed among those that had been granted early termination of their Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust reviews. Those are conducted by either the Justice Department or Federal Trade Commission—they never say which reviewed a deal when granting early termination, but Justice usually handles telecom transactions. Early termination means they are done with the review and are not suggesting that the merger be blocked or are suing to insure that certain conditions are applied.

The Federal Communications Commission will also need to sign off, but that process will take a while longer. The FCC opened its review docket on the deal Dec. 2 and reply comments are not due until Dec. 23, so there will likely be no decision before early next year. The companies signaled they did not expect the deal to be able to close until first quarter 2017. The companies announced Nov. 7 they had reached a deal for an all-stock deal of $1.1 billion, including debt.

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