1. Monthly archive
  2. July 2017

July 2017

Net neutrality is dying with a whimper

Prior to the July 12 protest, news outlets were warning their readers to “prepare to be assaulted” by the extent of the protest, after major players like Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon announced their participation in the Day of Action. But as many of those same news outlets have since pointed out, the aforementioned major players barely did anything to promote the protest where it counted: on their most visible and highly trafficked homepages and within their mobile apps. “If you blinked, you missed yesterday’s net neutrality protest,” Recode declared, while Politico hedged that it “may have flown under some radars.”

Protests in support of net neutrality have occurred almost semiannually since 2010, with major events taking place in 2012 and 2014 to comment on pending regulations. The 2012 net neutrality blackout, which successfully campaigned against the restrictive Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), was particularly notable because major websites like Wikipedia, Reddit, Tumblr, and Google went dark or displayed prominent site interruptions for the full day. These stances were dramatic — especially compared with the mild, unintrusive efforts made during the July 12 protest.

Silicon Valley mostly quiet in internet surveillance debate in Congress

Apparently, Facebook, Alphabet's Google, Apple, and other major technology firms are largely absent from a debate over the renewal of a broad US internet surveillance law, weakening prospects for privacy reforms that would further protect customer data. While tech companies often lobby Washington on privacy issues, the major firms have been hesitant to enter a fray over a controversial portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), industry lobbyists, congressional aides and civil liberties advocates said. Among their concerns is that doing so could jeopardize a trans-Atlantic data transfer pact underpinning billions of dollars in trade in digital services, apparently.

Technology companies and privacy groups have for years complained about the part of FISA known as Section 702 that allows the US National Security Agency (NSA) to collect and analyze e-mails and other digital communications of foreigners living overseas. Though targeted at foreigners, the surveillance also collects data on an unknown number of Americans - some privacy advocates have suggested it could be millions - without a search warrant. Section 702 will expire at the end of 2017 unless the Republican-controlled Congress votes to reauthorize it. The White House, U.S. intelligence agencies and many Republican senators want to renew the law, which they consider vital to national security, without changes and make it permanent. A coalition of Democrats and libertarian-leaning conservatives prefer, however, to amend the law with more privacy safeguards.

Has President Trump Turned CNN Into a House of Existential Dread?

After relentless attacks from President Donald Trump and his allies, a series of journalistic problems, and in the shadow of a possible merger, the network’s CEO, Jeff Zucker, is feeling the heat. “I think there’s a real chance that Zucker is being forced out,” said one employee. “That’s going to blow up this organization like nothing in the history of CNN.”

The ‘huge issue’ with identifying original content from media outlets

[Commentary] Fakes in the world of print publishing are relatively easy to discredit if not always to spot. Inconsistencies, errors, and—perhaps most importantly—widely accessible originals, make the job of persuasively forging content a significant challenge. In digital publishing, however, even maintaining original content cannot be taken for granted.

Being able to identify genuine digital material is “a huge issue,” says David Schulz, a prominent First Amendment lawyer and director of the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School. Given the increasing sophistication of fake digital content, Schulz asks, “How do you prove something was ‘out there’? How do you prove it’s authentic?” If reputable news organizations digitally sign their content, it would increase the difficulty of creating fake news by raising doubts about material that isn’t similarly authenticated. Likewise, developing such a standard would support archives that can withstand attempts to reauthor history. Although the technical challenge is substantial, it’s also one that is important to take on, as new organizations strive to rebuild public trust and set their work apart from that of content mills and fake news factories.

[Susan McGregor is Assistant Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Assistant Professor at Columbia School of Journalism.]

Telecom Lobbyists Downplayed ‘Theoretical’ Security Flaws in Mobile Data Backbone

Apparently, wireless communications lobby group CTIA took issue with an in-depth report by the Department of Homeland Security on mobile device security, including flaws with the SS7 network.

In a white paper sent to members of Congress and the Department of Homeland Security, CTIA, a telecom lobbying group that represents Verizon, AT&T, and other wireless carriers, argued that "Congress and the Administration should reject the [DHS] Report's call for greater regulation" while downplaying "theoretical" security vulnerabilities in a mobile data network that hackers may be able to use to monitor phones across the globe. However, experts strongly disagree about the threat these vulnerabilities pose, saying the flaws should be taken seriously before criminals exploit them.

Google's confidentiality rules discourage whistleblowers, US labor official warns

The US Department of Labor has raised concerns that Google’s strict confidentiality agreements have discouraged employees from speaking to the government about discrimination as part of a high-profile wage inequality investigation. Following a judge’s ruling that Google must hand over salary records and employee contact information to federal regulators investigating possible systemic pay disparities, a labor department official said the agency was worried that the technology corporation’s restrictive employee communication policies could impede the next phase of the inquiry.

“We have had employees during the course of the investigation express concerns about whether they are permitted by Google to talk to the government, because the company policy commits them to confidentiality,” Janet Herold, labor department regional solicitor, told the Guardian in an interview after the judge’s order. “When even a single employee expresses that, that means many more people are too concerned to make the call or have the conversation. The chilling effect is quite extreme.”

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