BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY, MAY 24
Today’s busy agenda https://www.benton.org/calendar/2017-05-24
COMMUNICATIONS AND DEMOCRACY
Ex-CIA Chief Reveals Mounting Concern Over Trump Campaign and Russia
Speech restrictions in the early 1900s – Excerpted from “The Soul of the First Amendment” [links to Washington Post]
On government transparency under Bush, Obama, and Trump [links to Columbia Journalism Review]
Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats declines to comment on Washington Post report that President Trump asked him to deny evidence of collusion with Russia [links to Washington Post]
BUDGET
Federal Communications Commission FY 2018 Budget Estimates to Congress - press release
FCC Proposes Cutting Budget, Staff [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
FY 2016 Annual Performance Report [links to Federal Communications Commission]
FTC Submits Annual Budget Request, Performance Plan and Performance Report to Congress [links to Federal Trade Commission]
Statement from CPB on the President’s FY 2018 Budget Proposal Eliminating Funding for Public Media [links to Corporation for Public Broadcasting]
Statement from PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger On Proposed Cuts to Federal Funding for Public Broadcasting [links to Public Broadcasting Service]
APTS Statement on the President’s Fiscal Year 2018 Budget [links to America’s Public Television Stations]
Target will pay $18.5 million in settlement with states over 2013 data breach [links to Los Angeles Times]
Here’s How the Trump Budget Treats Cyber [links to nextgov]
The Bumps, Cuts and Zeros in Trump’s Tech Budget [links to nextgov]
Here's Trump's plan to destroy the US science budget [links to Vox]
LOBBYING
Cable Industry Lobbyists Write Republican Talking Points on Net Neutrality
INTERNET/BROADBAND
18 Cable Companies Promise To Support Net Neutrality; None Will Guarantee You In Writing [links to Consumerist]
Legislative Efforts In Missouri, Tennessee Leave Broadband Advocates Hopeful - Craig Settles op-ed
Google Fiber Lifts Off in Huntsville - press release [links to Benton summary]
Fight for the Future Claims Comcast Censorship
GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE
Examining the FCC claim that DDoS attacks hit net neutrality comment system
BROADCASTING
FCC Stands Down on Stephen Colbert’s Trump Joke
PTC Praises FCC Closing of Colbert Content Review [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
CONTENT
What Ariana Grande Represents to Her Fans [links to New York Times]
AT&T’s Vision of TV: ‘Game of Thrones’ in Mobile-Size Bites? [links to Wall Street Journal]
ADVERTISING
Google now knows when its users go to the store and buy stuff
Amazon hit by protests over ads on Breitbart [links to CNN]
WIRELESS
$20 Billion Verizon 5G [links to Benton summary]
Remarks of FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly Before the 2017 Wireless Infrastructure Show, [links to Federal Communications Commission]
SECURITY/PRIVACY
Fifth Circuit creates split on whether prospective cell-site collection is a Fourth Amendment ‘search’ - op-ed [links to Benton summary]
Apple just revealed a declassified government order, but thousands more are still secret [links to Vox]
POLICYMAKERS
FCC Chairman Announces Monteith Will Serve As Wireline Bureau Chief - press release
COMPANY NEWS
Amid turmoil, is Fox News losing its perch as cable news leader? [links to Los Angeles Times]
Reasons why Fox News is losing its ratings dominance: Trump-Russia a turnoff for Fox News viewers; Bill O’Reilly is a tough act to follow [links to Los Angeles Times]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Op-ed: How China Managed to Muffle the Voice of America [links to Wall Street Journal]
Conspiracy Bill Advances in Japan Despite Surveillance Fears [links to New York Times]
MORE ONLINE
Eliminating the Human [links to David Byrne]
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COMMUNICATIONS AND DEMOCRACY
TRUMP AND RUSSIA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Matt Apuzzo]
John Brennan, the former CIA director, described a nerve-fraying few months in 2016 as American authorities realized that the presidential election was under attack and feared that Donald Trump’s campaign might be aiding that fight. Brennan, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, said he was concerned by a series of suspicious contacts between Russian government officials and Trump’s associates. The CIA learned about those meetings just as it was beginning to grapple with Russian hackers and propagandists trying to manipulate the presidential race. His remarks were the fullest public account to date of the origins of an FBI investigation that continues to shadow the Trump administration. “I know what the Russians try to do,” Brennan said. “They try to suborn individuals and try to get individuals, including US individuals, to act on their behalf, wittingly or unwittingly.” When he left his post in January, he said, “I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting US persons involved in the campaign or not to work on their behalf.”
benton.org/headlines/ex-cia-chief-reveals-mounting-concern-over-trump-campaign-and-russia | New York Times | Wall Street Journal
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BUDGET
FCC BUDGET
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: ]
The Federal Communications Commission’s fiscal year 2018 budget request. The FCC requests $322,035,000 in budget authority from regulatory fee offsetting collections. This request represents a decrease of $17,809,000 or 5.2 percent from the FY 2017 level of $339,844,000 that excludes the one-time request amount $16,866,992 for the headquarters move/restack. The FCC requests $111,150,000 in budget authority for the spectrum auctions program. This request represents a decrease of $5,850,000 or 5 percent from the FY 2017 level of $117,000,000. To date, the spectrum auctions program has generated over $114.6 billion for government use. The FCC requests 1,448 Full Time Equivalents (FTE’s) for regulatory fee offsetting collections and the spectrum auctions program. This request represents a decrease of 102 FTEs or 6.6 percent from the FY 2017 enacted level of 1,550. This will allow an alignment of the FCC workforce to meet the needs of today and the future rather than the requirements of the past.
benton.org/headlines/federal-communications-commission-fy-2018-budget-estimates-congress | Federal Communications Commission
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LOBBYING
CABLE INDUSTRY LOBBYISTS WRITE REPUBLICAN TALKING POINTS ON NET NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: The Intercept, AUTHOR: Lee Fang, Nick Surgey]
Following the vote by the Federal Communication Commission to unwind the net neutrality rules enacted during the Obama administration, House Republican lawmakers received an email from GOP leadership on how to defend the decision. “Want more information on the net neutrality discussion?” wrote House Republican Conference Chairman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). “Here is a nifty toolkit with news resources, myth vs reality information, what others are saying, and free market comments.” The attached packet of talking points came directly from the cable industry. The metadata of the document shows it was created by Kerry Landon, the assistant director of industry grassroots at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a trade group that lobbies on behalf of Comcast, Cox Communications, Charter, and other cable industry companies. The document was shared with House Republican leaders via “Broadband for America,” a nonprofit largely funded by the NCTA. “The FCC is wisely repealing the reckless decision of its predecessors to regulate competing internet service providers,” reads one of the document’s talking points. “We rightly protest when governments around the world seek to place political controls over the internet, and the same should apply here in America,” according to another. The document also refers GOP caucus members to quotes they can use from other industry-funded nonprofits to defend the decision to repeal net neutrality through the rollback of Title II reclassification.
benton.org/headlines/cable-industry-lobbyists-write-republican-talking-points-net-neutrality | Intercept, The
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
LEGISLATIVE EFFORTS IN MO,TN LEAVE BROADBAND ADVOCATES HOPEFUL
[SOURCE: Daily Yonder, AUTHOR: Craig Settles]
[Commentary] Advocates who say local governments and utility cooperatives should have more freedom to provide broadband in underserved areas scored two legislative victories this spring. In Missouri, a bill that would have restricted the ability of cities, counties, or other public entities to run broadband networks was defeated. In Tennessee, the state passed a bill that expands the ability of electric cooperatives to get into the broadband business.
benton.org/headlines/legislative-efforts-missouri-tennessee-leave-broadband-advocates-hopeful | Daily Yonder
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COMCAST CENSORSHIP
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Fight for the Future is claiming Comcast is trying to censor pro-network neutrality website Comcastroturf.com. The site encourages users to investigate what Fight for the Future says are fake anti-net neutrality comments filed in the Federal Communications Commission docket and "likely" funded by the company, though it does not elaborate on that assertion. The group published a copy of a cease and desist letter that appears to be a legal representative of Comcast. The letter claims the domain name violates Comcast's intellectual property rights because it is "identical or confusingly similar" to Comcast's protected trademark because it "sounds the same, looks the same and is spelled similarly to Comcast." The letter says Comcast is ready to resolve the issue amicably and "without pursuing its claims for damages" but only if the domain is turned over to Comcast ASAP.
benton.org/headlines/fight-future-claims-comcast-censorship | Broadcasting&Cable
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GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE
FCC’S DDOS ATTACKS
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Jon Brodkin]
On May 8, when the Federal Communications Commission website failed and many people were prevented from submitting comments about network neutrality, the cause seemed obvious. Comedian John Oliver had just aired a segment blasting FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to gut net neutrality rules, and it appeared that the site just couldn't handle the sudden influx of comments. But when the FCC released a statement explaining the website's downtime, the commission didn't mention the Oliver show or people submitting comments opposing Pai's plan. Instead, the FCC attributed the downtime solely to "multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS)." These were "deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC's comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host," performed by "actors" who "were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather, they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC." The FCC has faced skepticism from net neutrality activists who doubt the website was hit with multiple DDoS attacks at the same time that many new commenters were trying to protest the plan to eliminate the current net neutrality rules. According to FCC CIO David Bray, FCC staff noticed high comment volumes around 3:00 AM the morning of Monday, May 8. As the FCC analyzed the log files, it became clear that non-human bots created these comments automatically by making calls to the FCC's API. Interestingly, the attack did not come from a botnet of infected computers but was fully cloud-based. By using commercial cloud services to make massive API requests, the bots consumed available machine resources, which crowded out human commenters. In effect, the bot swarm created a distributed denial-of-service attack on FCC systems using the public API as a vehicle. It's similar to the distributed denial of service attack on Pokemon Go in July 2016.
benton.org/headlines/examining-fcc-claim-ddos-attacks-hit-net-neutrality-comment-system | Ars Technica
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BROADCASTING
FCC Stands Down on Stephen Colbert’s Trump Joke
PTC Praises FCC Closing of Colbert Content Review [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
NO ACTION ON COLBERT JOKE
[SOURCE: The Wrap, AUTHOR: Sean Burch]
The Federal Communications Commission will not be penalizing “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert after thousands of complaints flooded the government organization. After reviewing the complaints, the FCC “concluded that there was nothing actionable under the FCC’s rules.” Late night shows are given more leeway in what they can joke about, making the fear of being fined by the FCC for indecency more remote.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-stands-down-stephen-colberts-trump-joke | Wrap, The | | The Hill
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ADVERTISING
GOOGLE, ADVERTISING, AND RETAIL
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Elizabeth Dwoskin, Craig Timberg]
Google will begin using data from billions of credit and debit card transactions — including card numbers, purchase amounts and time stamps — to solve the advertising juggernaut’s long-standing quest to prove that online ads prompt consumers to make purchases in brick-and-mortar stores. The advance, which enables Google to tell retailers how many sales they created through their digital ad campaigns, is a step toward what industry insiders have long described as the “holy grail” of digital advertising. If effective, the program could help persuade marketers to choose Google’s services over the television advertising that still gobbles up the lion’s share of retailers’ ad budgets. “Google — and also Facebook — believe that in order to get digital dollars from advertisers who are still primarily spending on TV, they need to prove that digital works,” said Amit Jain, chief executive of Bridg, a digital advertising startup that matches online to offline behavior.
benton.org/headlines/google-now-knows-when-its-users-go-store-and-buy-stuff | Washington Post | Associated Press
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POLICYMAKERS
KRIS ANNE MONTEITH
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Federal Communications Commission Ajit Pai announced that the agency has chosen Kris Anne Monteith to serve as chief of its Wireline Competition Bureau, continuing the work she has been doing as acting chief. Monteith has held several senior leadership positions within the FCC in her 20 years with the agency. She has served as acting chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau as well as chief of the Enforcement Bureau. She has been a deputy chief in the Wireline Competition Bureau she now leads, as well as the Media Bureau and the policy division of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. Before joining the Commission in 1997, Monteith practiced telecommunications law with McDermott, Will, and Emery and Keller and Heckman in Washington, D.C. She received her J.D. from the George Washington University and her B.A. from the University of Colorado.
[more at the URL below]
benton.org/headlines/fcc-chairman-announces-monteith-will-serve-wireline-bureau-chief | Federal Communications Commission
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