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February 2017

Trump’s media lap dogs

[Commentary] What does the Feb 13 press conference tell us? Well, presidents change — and so does the approach of certain propagandist outlets. And remember, the press people in question are not opinion columnists but people who bill themselves as “reporters.” Welcome to the right-wing media bubble. Designed to counteract some legitimate claims about mainstream media bias — and omissions in coverage — many of these right-wing outlets became cartoonish versions of the mainstream-media caricature they had set out to compete with for viewers and readers.

Virginia Bill Now Passes Muster With Broadband Authority

The Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority, which has opposed a bill to put conditions on municipal broadband buildouts in Virginia, said the latest iteration of the bill—amended Feb. 13 in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee—is no longer a threat to municipal broadband. The telcom-backed bill—introduced in the Virginia assembly in Jan—would have allowed for municipal buildouts but only if they targeted unserved areas, which it defined as those where the average broadband speed is less than 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. It would also have required an independent study to identify unserved areas before any buildouts and would have put conditions on overbuilding of any existing service at any speed. A municipality would also have had to provide access to rights of way on a first-come, first-serve basis to commercial providers and could not have cross-subsidized its broadband with regulated utility money. The bill was already re-crafted once after the VA governor threatened to veto it.

Missouri Bill Would Condition Muni Broadband Buildouts

A hearing is scheduled for Feb 14 in the Missouri State Senate Local Government and Elections Committee on a bill that would put new conditions on municipal broadband buildouts. The telecom-backed bill would require a feasibility study before any local government could expand broadband infrastructure and any such expansion would have to be approved by a majority of voters. The bill would also prevent a municipality from cross-subsidizing their service with other revenues if they offered the service in competition with a private provider, and could not use any funds unless the voters approved them. In addition, any subdivision of a municipality wishing to use the service would have to pay "fair market value" and the service could not get preferential access to rights-of-way. Any private provider or other party providing a competitive service that believes the government is violating any of those provisions can sue. Commercial ISPs have long argued that municipalities should not be able to overbuild them with public funds, and that those overbuilds will leave, and have left, taxpayers holding the bag when and if the projects prove unsustainable.

Municipal broadband backer, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, calls it another attempt by entrenched "monopoly" providers and their lobbyists to protect themselves.

CenturyLink-Level 3 Merger Gets First State Approvals

Ohio, Utah and Nevada are the first states to sign off on the merger of broadband providers CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications, according to CenturyLink. The merger is valued at $34 billion including debt. The merger was announced Oct 31, and applications were filed with the FCC and for antitrust review by the Department of Justice in December.

ACA to FCC: Consider ATSC 3.0 Impact on Smaller Pay-TV Providers

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai plans a vote on a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) at the Feb 23 public meeting that would allow broadcasters to start rolling out the new ATSC 3.0 transmission standard on a voluntary basis. The NPRM will also ask a lot of questions about how that should happen and its effect on the marketplace. American Cable Association commended Chairman Pai for issuing the draft and for asking all those questions. One of those is: “whether small, rural, low-power, and NCE broadcasters would face unique circumstances with regard to the voluntary provision of ATSC 3.0 that we should consider in this proceeding," followed by suggestions on how to ease those burdens. ACA says that is appropriate, but that the FCC should also ask the same questions about small pay-TV providers and how to ease their burdens as well.

Internet Association rolls out new political fundraising tool

The Internet Association, a trade group representing internet giants including Facebook and Google, is launching a new online political fundraising platform. The program will allow people to ask candidates selected by the group questions and donate money to the association's political action committee to help that candidate. Users will be able to submit questions to lawmakers in livestreamed question-and-answer sessions hosted by the Internet Association. Donations made through the system will be transferred directly to the candidate, and by law will be subject to a contribution limit of $2,700 per election cycle.

“Just as our member companies have done for countless industries, the Internet Association has set out to revolutionize political fundraising,” Michael Beckerman, the group’s CEO, said in a statement. “This fundamentally internet-based approach will democratize political giving — a process traditionally characterized by exclusivity and an overall lack of transparency — and convert it to a public forum that provides everyday internet voters with the ability to participate in a meaningful way.” The new platform will allow the lobbying group to channel crowdsourced fundraising toward lawmakers supported by the internet industry. Rep Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), a member of House GOP leadership, will be the first to participate and will be answering questions submitted to the platform on Feb 15.

Is it time to separate the news from the Facebook newsfeed?

[Commentary] Social media scholars talk a lot about “context collapse,” the term that describes what happens when, on a platform like Facebook, users find that they can’t communicate freely with their friends while their relatives are reading the same posts, or with their relatives while the employers get to read, too, etc. The mix of audiences (on Facebook especially) has led to miscommunications, conflicts and, increasingly, self-censorship. Keeping up with the news is important.

Communicating with friends and family is important, too. But maybe it’s time to separate the “news” from the newsfeed again — not because either of them is unnecessary or frivolous, but because they deserve different kinds of attention. Blended together, they now blur into a whole less meaningful than its parts.

[Irina Raicu is the director of the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University.]

This Cunning, Months-in-the-Making Phishing Campaign Targeted Dozens of Journalists, Activists

In a new report, Amnesty International details a prolonged phishing campaign against journalists, activists and campaigners who work with Qatari labor rights issues.

GAO Report: Cybersecurity: Actions Needed to Strengthen US Capabilities

This statement (1) provides an overview of Government Accountability Office's work related to cybersecurity of the federal government and the nation's critical infrastructure and (2) identifies areas of consistency between GAO recommendations and those recently made by the Cybersecurity Commission and CSIS. In preparing this statement, GAO relied on previously published work and its review of the two recent reports issued by the Commission and CSIS. Over the past several years, GAO has made about 2,500 recommendations to federal agencies to enhance their information security programs and controls. As of February 2017, about 1,000 recommendations had not been implemented.

While previous administrations and agencies have acted to improve the protections over federal and critical infrastructure information and information systems, the federal government needs to take the following actions to strengthen U.S. cybersecurity:

  • Effectively implement risk-based entity-wide information security programs consistently over time.
  • Improve its cyber incident detection, response, and mitigation capabilities. The Department of Homeland Security needs to expand the capabilities and support wider adoption of its government-wide intrusion detection and prevention system. In addition, the federal government needs to improve cyber incident response practices, update guidance on reporting data breaches, and develop consistent responses to breaches of PII.
  • Expand its cyber workforce planning and training efforts.
  • Expand efforts to strengthen cybersecurity of the nation's critical infrastructures.
  • Better oversee protection of personally identifiable information.

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