Lauren Frayer

Congress has until December 31 to renew the FISA Amendments Act or it will expire, and with it, the highly controversial, large-scale surveillance authorities under Section 702. As Congress debates whether to renew Section 702, it must consider needed reforms so that surveillance will be narrowly tailored to the law’s stated purpose - stopping both terrorism and espionage - and so that millions of Americans’ communications will no longer be swept up in its net. The Open Technology Institute’s Section 702 reform priorities include:

• Limit the Scope of Collection Under Section 702
• Enhance Post-Collection Protections for Americans’ Communications that are Swept Up Under Section 702
• Increase Transparency for the Government and Companies

We asked more than two dozen people who think deeply about the intersection of technology and civics to reflect on two straightforward questions: Is technology hurting democracy? And can technology help save democracy? We’ll publish a new essay every day for the next several weeks, beginning with Shannon Vallor’s “Lessons From Isaac Asimov’s Multivac.”

After a month worrying about the fate of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the hundreds of community organizations that the agency supports nationwide, the arts world found hope in congressional leaders’ agreement April 30 that would not only maintain NEA funding for fiscal year 2017 but increase it by $2 million. In a statement May 1, the NEA struck an optimistic note, pointing out that the proposed appropriation of about $150 million was the level of funding that it requested from Congress in February 2016. “This morning Congress released the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017, a bipartisan agreement that will fund the government for the remainder of FY 2017,” the NEA wrote. “In this bill, the NEA is funded at its FY 2017 request level of $149.849 million. … The agency has been operating at its FY 2016 appropriation of $147.949 since October 1, 2016. Congress is expected to pass this bill later in the week, and the President is expected to sign it.”

Open internet principles were not the only value in classifying broadband under Title II. Like our telephone networks used to be, access to broadband has become necessary for full participation in society. Therefore, Title II classification is critical in protecting our fundamental values of universal service and consumer protection when accessing broadband networks.

While the Federal Communications Commission forebore from applying the majority of Title II to broadband networks, the agency kept a number of provisions in place to ensure consumers have ubiquitous and affordable connectivity, privacy, and other consumer protections when online.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) issued a statement commending Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai: “for taking bold action . . . to turn back this portion of the Obama Administration’s eight-year regulatory assault on all aspects of our economy.”

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) praised the effort to restore Internet freedom: “Chairman Pai’s announcement that the FCC will roll back these regulations is welcome news. Congress is committed to working with the Trump administration to enact policies that protect consumers and ensure Americans have access to a free and open internet.”

[Commentary] Dear Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai,
We are writing to express our opposition to your effort to repeal network neutrality protections. Our committee and the American public are again paying close attention. The public does not accept Republicans taking away their rights online in the name of corporate profit. Just a few weeks ago, Republicans underestimated the public’s outrage at the successful repeal of privacy protections for users online.

Like with the Republican repeal of the FCC’s online privacy rules, there is little public support for your actions. Following an onslaught of public furor, congressional Republicans regretted voting to repeal online privacy protection for the public. We believe that public uproar was just a preview of what you can expect as you initiate a proceeding to eliminate net neutrality protections. In your speech to announce the end of net neutrality, you said “this is a fight that we intend to wage and it is a fight that we are going to win.” We commit to opposing you and fighting for strong rules that protect users and access to a free and open internet.

April 29 marked the end of the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Shortly after Donald Trump was elected, I wrote about how Free Press would approach this era: “This isn’t a time to tinker around the edges. There is no compromise or engagement strategy that can meet these serious threats. The only option is resistance.” We launched our 100 Days of Disruption campaign the day Trump was inaugurated. Thousands of you did something daily as part of this effort to resist Trumpism (which goes beyond the man to all those enabling him or exploiting this political moment).

ogether we’ve fought back, stood up for communities under attack, experimented with new forms of activism and built new alliances across the resistance. As we enter the next 100 days, the need to resist is no less urgent. And the attacks in Free Press’ corner of the world — at the intersection of media, technology and democracy — have only intensified. In the weeks ahead, you’ll see us resisting and refocusing on the issues and in the areas where we can make the greatest difference and our allies need us the most.

Hillary Clinton attributed her defeat in the 2016 presidential election to interference by Russian hackers and FBI Director James B. Comey, and declared herself to be “part of the resistance” to Donald Trump’s presidency. “If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” Clinton told moderator Christiane Amanpour, the CNN anchor, at a Women for Women event in New York. “I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off,” Clinton said. Clinton talked about “the unprecedented interference” by a foreign leader “who is not a member of my fan club” — a reference to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, with whom she tangled as secretary of state.

[Commentary] Global press freedom has long been in decline and is now at its lowest point in the past 13 years, according to Freedom House’s latest assessment. What is new, and especially disquieting, are the mounting pressures on the media in the United States, including sharp attacks on reporters by the Trump administration. This raises the question of whether America will continue to serve as a model for other countries.

The United States remains an oasis, one of the few places in the world where aggressive journalistic investigation can be practiced with few legal restrictions and little physical danger to reporters. But even here, press freedom has been weakening for some time, well before the inauguration of Donald Trump. Since Trump’s rise to the presidency, however, matters have taken a turn for the worse. The new White House derides and belittles journalists and media organizations in the hope of undermining the credibility of the press. In so doing, the administration is aggressively promoting the notion that nuance and facts are irrelevant — a staple concept of Russian information warfare.

[Michael Arbramowitz is the president of Freedom House. Arch Puddington is a distinguished fellow for democracy studies at Freedom House.]

A recent meta-analysis of 166 studies, including 75,269 participants of 34 countries, explored the so-called “privacy paradox,” that is, the puzzling fact that people’s concerns about privacy rarely appear to translate into protective behaviors. Contrary to previous studies, the findings of the meta-analysis revealed that individuals who are more concerned with and informed about privacy tend to use fewer online services, set stronger security settings, and disclose less personal information.

However, when it comes to social media use, there is indeed a privacy paradox, as even individuals who express concerns behave quite carelessly, engaging in uncensored or inappropriate self-disclosure, making a great deal of their digital footprint public, and allowing a wide range of external apps to access their data. It has been estimated that nearly 40% of Facebook content is shared according to the (rather unsafe) default settings, and that privacy settings match users’ expectations only 37% of the time. Thus, it appears that no amount of privacy concerns will make social media users more cautious.