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March 2017

Save the internet, skip Title II

[Commentary] Everyone in this country passionately supports an open internet. In many respects, the so-called Title II debate reflects everything voters most resent about Washington: Fear-mongering, Armageddon-style arguments with a dubious connection to the facts. The central fact of this debate is its true subject: This policy battle is not about whether we safeguard an open internet. It's about how we go about doing so.

The application of these retro rules to our modern internet is the policy equivalent of using a sledgehammer to deal with a mosquito on your arm. Technically, it may get the job done. But everything breaks in the process. If we don't want to continue what our nation has long enjoyed — an open, innovating, strong, dynamic, pro-consumer internet, then by all means let's keep Title II. But if we do want to advance the opportunities the internet brings to our economy, nation and consumers — and keep the progress and investment coming—then it's high time we embrace a more constructive path forward.

[Jonathan Spalter is President and CEO of USTelecom.]

The Battle Over Your Political Bubble

As the media class struggles to understand an election result few foresaw, some have blamed a quirk of modern technology. So media and tech companies are pivoting, selling us a whole suite of offerings aimed at bursting the bubbles they helped to create.

In his manifesto, Mark Zuckerberg spoke of the need to grow local news outlets (which have seen their prospects plummet even further as Facebook tightens its grip as a leading source of news) and present people with a range of perspectives. Whether those sentiments make their way into every feed remains to be seen — after all, Facebook became an internet superpower by serving up easy, compulsively clickable content. Some Americans are interested in peeking outside their filter bubbles right now, which gives tech companies an incentive to cater to their desires. Will they feel the same way when they’re winning again?

CNN president: Trump 'spends his days and nights watching CNN'

CNN President Jeff Zucker said President Trump is obsessed with his cable news network, spending "his days and nights watching it” despite constantly attacking it in public. "A lot of this is red meat for his base," Zucker said. "He claims that CNN is unwatchable, but the only way he knows that is because he's watching it obsessively. We know that he spends his days and nights watching CNN." CNN has been targeted as “fake news” by Trump more than any other broadcast news outlet.

Trump team's push to stop leaks quickly leaks to press

President Donald Trump's latest attempt to stop the damaging leaks coming from the White House has been leaked to the press. Current and former officials told said that in an effort reduce leaks to the media, the White House has limited access to its classified computer systems.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also dedicated his first senior staff meeting in Feb to underscoring that he will not tolerate leaks to the media. Trump's administration is increasingly committed to reducing the amount of leaks coming from the White House in recent months. The flurry of leaked documents and reports has undermined Trump's key policy positions, including his ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. Some officials also told the news agency that they fear a witch hunt is on for a Department of Homeland Security official who leaked the draft intelligence report to the press.

While pundits swooned over Trump’s speech, reporters plugged away at the real story

[Commentary] Call it the revenge of the reporters over the pundits. Feb 28 was a low point for “the media” — if such a multi-headed beast can be described in those two words — as cable-news talking heads gushed over President Trump’s address to Congress. But as if to say that not all media are created equal, along came two blockbuster stories from two longtime rival newspapers.

First, on March 1, with an 8:01 news alert, the New York Times dropped its triple-byline blockbuster: that the Obama administration had scattered a trail of bread crumbs, evidently so that contacts between Trump’s associates and the Russians would not be lost to a coverup by the new administration. Then, with a 9:04 p.m. news alert, The Washington Post published a shocker on the same general subject: that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had met with the Russian ambassador to the United States twice and failed to disclose that during his Senate confirmation hearings. Because of dogged reporting, and to some extent on intelligence-community leaks that Trump has found so outrageous, both stories hit hard.

China’s Response to Reports of Torture: ‘Fake News’

“FAKE NEWS,” a Twitter post declared. “Prejudice-based,” another said. “Cleverly orchestrated lies,” a news article asserted. President Donald Trump’s harangues against the American news media appear to have inspired a new genre of commentary in China’s state media, whose propagandists spiced up social media posts and news articles with Trumpian flourishes this week. People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, mimicked Mr. Trump’s characteristic bluster — and his fondness for capital letters — on March 3 in denouncing Western news coverage of a Chinese lawyer and human rights advocate who said he had been tortured.

Online Businesses Could Do More to Protect their Reputations and Prevent Consumers from Phishing Schemes

In a study released March 3, the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Technology Research and Investigation (OTech) reports that most major online businesses are using proper email authentication technology to prevent phishing e-mails, but few of these businesses are taking full advantage of the latest technologies to combat phishing.

Phishing is a type of online scam that targets consumers by sending them an e-mail that appears to be from a well-known source such as an internet service provider, a bank, or a mortgage company. It asks the consumer to provide personal identifying information, and then the scammer uses the information to open new accounts or invade the consumer’s existing accounts.

California Supreme Court: No, you can’t hide public records on a private account

The California Supreme Court ruled that state and local officials must disclose public records even if those "writings" are held on private devices or accounts. The City of San Jose and the County of Santa Clara had argued that such records could be exempted from the California Public Records Act. The case dates back to 2009, when Ted Smith, a local environment activist, filed a public records request about various San Jose officials' requests concerning local development efforts. When records came back that did not include materials from personal devices or accounts, he sued.

The state Supreme Court was unequivocal in its conclusion: "CPRA and the Constitution strike a careful balance between public access and personal privacy. This case concerns how that balance is served when documents concerning official business are created or stored outside the workplace. The issue is a narrow one: Are writings concerning the conduct of public business beyond CPRA's reach merely because they were sent or received using a non governmental account? Considering the statute's language and the important policy interests it serves, the answer is no. Employees' communications about official agency business may be subject to CPRA regardless of the type of account used in their preparation or transmission."

The Secret History of a Fleeting Pre-Internet Digital Media Channel: Teletext

Teletext, an information service for transmitting text and graphics to a television set, was, 30 years ago, slated to revolutionize information retrieval. Back then, when the average media consumer couldn't envision reading script on a screen, well-moneyed news services were exploring teletext as an ultramodern avenue for on-demand, 24/7 news delivery to living rooms across the globe. Immediate access to stock quotes and international headlines was a sci-fi caprice that has today become a law of nature. Absentminded Yelping and indifferent glances at New York Times push notifications may now be taken-for-granted byproducts of the digital revolution. But in 1974, this user-to-information proximity was practically unfathomable, an anomaly seven years before IBM introduced its Personal Computer, the first computer of a size and price that was attractive for individual use. Teletext, according to those who worked with it, struck technologists and journalists alike as a diviner of the tech utopia to come.

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