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February 2017

Not so fast—Comcast told to stop claiming it has “fastest Internet”

Comcast should stop saying in advertisements that it “delivers the fastest Internet in America” and the “fastest in-home Wi-Fi," according to the advertising industry's self-regulation body. The evidence Comcast uses to substantiate those claims is not sufficient, ruled the National Advertising Review Board (NARB).

Verizon had challenged Comcast's advertising claims, leading to the ruling. Comcast said today that it disagreed with the findings but will comply with the decision. Comcast used crowdsourced speed test data from Ookla to make its claim about Xfinity Internet speeds. "Ookla’s data showed only that Xfinity consumers who took advantage of the free tests offered on the Speedtest.net website subscribed to tiers of service with higher download speeds than Verizon FiOS consumers who took advantage of the tests," today's NARB announcement said. The Ookla data's accuracy wasn't questioned, but it was judged to be "not a good fit for an overall claim that an ISP delivers 'America’s fastest Internet.'"

Chairman Blackburn: Let FCC Make First Move on Net Neutrality

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) says she will give the Federal Communications Commission first crack at the Open Internet order before taking legislative steps. That comes amidst some Democratic Sens' and others declaring to fight for the Title II-based net neutrality rules, including any weakening by Congress, while other legislators and industry groups are pushing for a legislative solution.

Chairman Blackburn—joined by Full Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR), was asked what she thought the timetable would be for a network neutrality bill. She said "let's let the FCC go in and do what they are able to do, make the first move on that. I think we allow them to take those first steps." Asked how the FCC's and Congress' role in addressing the rules would dovetail, she said that after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai takes whatever actions he takes, "the opportunity that we will have as a legislative body will be to take action that will move forward on some principles and definitions and make sure we don't end up in the situation again where we had agency overreach and an agency that decides they want to go off script."

US visitors may have to reveal social media passwords to enter country

US Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has informed Congress that the DHS is considering requiring refugees and visa applicants from seven Muslim-majority nations to hand over their social media credentials from Facebook and other sites as part of a security check. "We want to get on their social media, with passwords: What do you do, what do you say?" he told the House Committee on Homeland Security Feb 7.

Trump administration seen as more truthful than news media: poll

The Trump administration is more trusted than the news media among voters, according to a new Emerson College poll. The administration is considered truthful by 49 percent of registered voters and untruthful by 48 percent. But the news media is less trusted than the administration, with 53 percent calling it untruthful and just 39 percent finding it honest. The numbers split along party lines, with nearly 9 in 10 Republicans saying the Trump administration is truthful, compared with more than 3 in 4 Democrats who say the opposite. The Emerson poll found that 69 percent of Democrats think the news media is truthful while 91 percent of Republicans consider the Fourth Estate untruthful. The poll was conducted Feb 5-6 with a sample of 617 registered voters and a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.

In Jessica Rich, FTC loses cornerstone of privacy program

[Commentary] Since the 1990s, the Federal Trade Commission has established privacy and data security as a new regulatory area, through dozens of enforcement actions — which scholars have called “a new common law of privacy” — policy reports, and research workshops. Throughout this period, spanning three decades and a transition from the dawn of personal computing and the commercial internet to an age of machine-to-machine communications, smart cars, wearable devices, big data, and the cloud, Jessica Rich, who announced her departure recently as director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, has conceived, initiated, driven, and spearheaded the agency’s emergence as the nation’s primary technology regulator. Through a long series of cautious, incremental steps, always meticulous, never flashy, and often with a wry joke and a smile, Rich built the foundation for a substantial body of law, setting the standard for technology regulators in the US and abroad.

[Omer Tene is Vice President of Research and Education at the International Association of Privacy Professionals. He is an Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and a Senior Fellow at the Future of Privacy Forum.]

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