Lauren Frayer

Cybersecurity experts recommend that smartphone owners take a number of steps to keep their mobile devices safe and secure. These include using a pass code to gain access to the phone, as well as regularly updating a phone’s apps and operating system. Many Americans, however, are not adhering to these best practices, according to a Pew Research Center report released earlier in 2017.

More than a quarter (28%) of smartphone owners say they do not use a screen lock or other security features to access their phone. And while a majority of smartphone users say they have updated their phone’s apps or operating system, about 40% say they only update when it’s convenient for them. Meanwhile, some users forgo updating their phones altogether: Around one-in-ten smartphone owners report they never update their phone’s operating system (14%) or update the apps on their phone (10%).

The allegations that Verizon has failed to build out to nearly a million New York City households it is obligated to serve are troubling. Although new broadband deployments are costly and time intensive, broadband providers have a responsibility to comply with their franchise agreements. Moreover, it is imperative that modernization of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure provide an upgrade for all.

While there is disagreement between New York City and Verizon regarding whether the company has met its deployment commitments, this dispute highlights the ongoing need for policymakers to clearly define what they mean when describing the availability of broadband service. There is widespread bipartisan support for promoting broadband deployment to unserved and underserved areas in any federal infrastructure legislation. Lawmakers should ensure that households and multi-dwelling unit buildings are actually able to subscribe to broadband services that are ‘available’ to them, and that ‘availability' includes service options that are affordable for even low-income consumers. It would be easier to achieve this affordability if, for instance, landlords didn’t prohibit the installation of competing service provider equipment in residences due to contracts with existing service providers. This practice harms consumers and competition by driving up costs and needlessly delaying the technology transitions.

The House Communications Subcommittee will hold a hearing March 21 on how to eliminate barriers to broadband infrastructure. On the agenda is a draft bill, “Broadband: Deploying America’s 21st Century Infrastructure," to streamline permitting and siting at the federal level.

"Broadband is a necessity for business in the 21st century and its time our policies reflect that," said Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). "In fact, many communities across the country would rather have better access to broadband than an additional lane on a highway. For too long problems with permitting and siting have held back further investment in expanding broadband infrastructure across the country,” she said in announcing the hearing. “Constituents and businesses back in Tennessee consistently have issues gaining access to broadband. And without a high-speed internet connection, it remains difficult to attract businesses and jobs to these rural areas."

A joint news conference in February between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prompted numerous complaints from big-time media outlets. They’d been shut out of the Q&A session in favor of news outlets that they considered friendly to the interests of the Trump White House.

In a discussion about the kerfuffle, Fox News host Shannon Bream asked colleague Howard Kurtz whether such outlets had fretted in the past, when Fox News had been iced out. “Nobody much cared about that in the mainstream media,” responded Kurtz. “I guess that Fox News is part of the mainstream media, but….” I guess? Whoa for a moment here. This is Howard Kurtz, Fox News media critic and a longtime observer of the national media scene. And he isn’t 100 percent sure whether his employer is part of the club known as the mainstream media?

The Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau announced that the E-rate program funding cap for funding year 2017 is $3,990,207,000. The new cap represents a 1.3 percent inflation-adjusted increase in the $3,939,000,000 billion cap from funding year 2016. The FCC began indexing the funding cap to inflation in 2010 to ensure that E-rate program funding keeps pace with the changing broadband and telecommunications needs of schools and libraries.

San Francisco (CA) Supervisor Mark Farrell has assembled a group of business, privacy and academic experts to discuss crucial, early-stage questions surrounding Farrell’s plan to wire the city with high-speed Internet service. In the coming months, the San Francisco Municipal Fiber Blue Ribbon Panel will conduct research and provide recommendations on the most efficient and effective ways to blanket the city with broadband, an effort that could cost up to $1 billion.

If it becomes reality, San Francisco would be the largest city in the country to implement citywide high-speed Internet. City officials are currently targeting speeds of 1 gigabit per second. The average Internet speed in the US is 31 megabits per second according to the most recent data published by the Federal Communications Commission, so this could be about 30 times faster. Farrell will serve as the panel’s co-chair alongside Harvard Law School Professor Susan Crawford.

[Commentary] In Feb, there was a shakeup at Alphabet’s Access division (the new name for what was originally called Google Fiber). It named a new CEO, Greg McCray, and news outlets reported that hundreds of Access employees were being shifted to other parts of the Google empire. The bumpersticker from defenders of the status quo is that this means the Google Fiber experiment was a disaster. That’s simply not the case. What this set of events does usefully and colorfully signal is that we need an entirely different approach to the country’s desperate need for world-class data transmission....

The only business model for fiber that will work to produce the competition, low prices, and world-class data transport we need — certainly in urban areas — is to get local governments involved in overseeing basic, street grid-like “dark” (passive, unlit with electronics) fiber available at a set, wholesale price to a zillion retail providers of access and services. There’s plenty of patient capital sloshing around the US that would be attracted to the steady, reliable returns this kind of investment will return. That investment could be made in the form of private lending or government bonds; the important element is that the resulting basic network be a wholesale facility that any retail actor can use at a reasonable, fair cost.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School]

CSN Chicago plans to air an original documentary about Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, in which the Chicago Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians in extra innings to win their first championship in 108 years. The documentary, Reign Men: The Story Behind Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, will air March 27 at 9:30 pm CT.

Social media companies including Facebook and Twitter are not doing enough to curb hate speech on their platforms and could face fines of up to $53 million if they do not strengthen their efforts to delete illegal posts, a German government minister said on March 14. The move by the country’s authorities comes as technology companies face increasing scrutiny worldwide over how they police online material including hate speech, possible terrorist propaganda and so-called fake news. The debate has been particularly acute in Germany, which has become a case study for combating such material because of its stringent laws on what can and cannot be published.

For tech companies and free speech campaigners, this global regulatory push could limit how individuals communicate online by restricting people’s digital activities and allowing governments to expand their control over vast parts of the internet.Yet for a growing number of policy makers in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, social media companies have a responsibility to block harmful content from their digital platforms, and they must respect national rules that often run counter to Silicon Valley’s efforts to operate across borders.

Sen Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) is introducing a bill that would give the Justice Department additional authority to investigate Russia's English-language news outlet RT America for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The bill, called the Foreign Agents Registration Modernization and Enforcement Act, would increase the Department of Justice’s power to compel organizations to produce information about their foreign connections and the sources of their funding.

Sen Shaheen said the bill comes in response to a report from the director of national intelligence about Russian influence in the 2016 election, part of which examined RT America. That report stated that RT News was skirting disclosure requirements by using a nonprofit structure and that RT's programming intended to advance stories that benefited Russian interests. “We have good reason to believe that RT News is coordinating with the Russian government to spread misinformation and undermine our democratic process,” Shaheen said in a statement. “The American public has a right to know if this is the case.”