Lauren Frayer

[Commentary] Standing before the cheering throngs at the Republican National Convention last summer, Donald Trump bemoaned how special interests had rigged the country’s politics and its economy, leaving Americans victimized by unfair trade deals, incompetent bureaucrats and spineless leaders. He swooped into politics, he declared, to subvert the powerful and rescue those who cannot defend themselves. “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” To Trump’s faithful, those words were a rallying cry. But his critics heard something far more menacing in them: a dangerously authoritarian vision of the presidency — one that would crop up time and again as he talked about overruling generals, disregarding international law, ordering soldiers to commit war crimes, jailing his opponent.

Remember that President Trump’s verbal assaults are directed at the public, and are designed to chip away at people’s confidence in these institutions and deprive them of their validity. When a dispute arises, whose actions are you going to consider legitimate? Whom are you going to trust? That’s why the public has to be wary of Trump’s attacks on the courts, the “deep state,” the “swamp.” We can’t afford to be talked into losing our faith in the forces that protect us from an imperial presidency.

Foreigners who want to visit the US, even for a short trip, could be forced to disclose contacts on their mobile phones, social-media passwords and financial records, and to answer probing questions about their ideology, according to Trump administration officials conducting a review of vetting procedures. The administration also wants to subject more visa applicants to intense security reviews and have embassies spend more time interviewing each applicant.

The changes could apply to people from all over the world, including allies like France and Germany. The measures—whose full scope haven’t yet been publicly discussed—would together represent the “extreme vetting” President Donald Trump has promised. The changes would be sure to generate significant controversy, both at home, from civil libertarians and others who see the questions as overly intrusive, and abroad, with experts warning that other nations could impose similar requirements on Americans seeking visas.

An inside look into the strange symbiosis between Jeff Zucker and the president he helped create.

By the time Jeff Zucker’s name came up for the CNN job in 2012, both he and the 24-hour news network seemed to some people like relics of a different era in television. One of those who lobbied on his behalf was Donald Trump. He sang Zucker’s praises to Turner Broadcasting System’s chief executive at the time, Phil Kent, who was in charge of hiring for the position, when the two were seated next to each other at a black-tie charity dinner at the Plaza Hotel hosted by the American Turkish Society. Zucker and Trump spoke every month or so during the Republican primaries. CNN’s anchors — Jake Tapper in particular — did some of the toughest interviews with Trump, who would sometimes call Zucker afterward to complain, often going on expletive-laden rants. After securing the nomination, though, Trump made the calculation that he would be better off simply turning against certain media outlets. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, carried the message to Zucker in June, not long after CNN took the unprecedented step of fact-checking Trump’s statements — a large number of which were completely untrue — in real-time with on-screen chyrons. Kushner told Zucker over the phone that in the future, Trump would be doing interviews with only friendly outlets.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced the formation of the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force to implement the upcoming Universal Service Fund-related auctions. The Task Force will oversee both the Connect America Fund Phase II (CAF-II) and Mobility Fund II (MF-II) auctions. The CAF-II auction will offer almost $2 billion to bidders to connect unserved and underserved locations over the next decade. The MF-II auction will make available more than $4.5 billion in new funding over ten years for expanding 4G LTE mobile coverage across rural America and in Tribal lands. Chairman Pai named Chelsea Fallon as Director of the Task Force, with Michael Janson and Kirk Burgee as Deputy Directors. Thom Parisi will serve as the Chief of Staff of the Task Force.

FirstNet is pleased to announce, after a thorough search by our Board Chair Sue Swenson, and Board Vice Chair Jeff Johnson, Tom Sorley has been selected to serve as the new Chair of the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC).

Sorley has served as a PSAC Vice Chair for four years, and is the PSAC representative from the US Conference of Mayors. As the current Deputy Chief Information Officer (CIO) - Public Safety for the City of Houston Information Technology Services (HITS), he is responsible for direct oversight of radio communications and IT services for the Houston Emergency Center, the city’s combined dispatch and emergency operations center. Sorley’s more than 30 years of public safety experience also includes work as the Public Safety Communications Division Manager for Orange County (FL). He holds a Bachelor's degree in Professional Management as well as a Masters of Business Administration from Nova Southeastern University.

Yahoo and AOL are expected to form a new company under Verizon called Oath. The new company is expected to launch summer 2017 after Verizon's acquisition of Yahoo is completed. Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's CEO, is not expected to join the new company.

My top priority is making sure that any American who wants high-speed Internet access is able to get it. Today, we take another step toward achieving that goal.

[In 2016], Charter Communications agreed to build broadband out to two million new customers as part of its merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission appended an ‘overbuild’ condition to the order, requiring that half of those new locations be already served by another provider. Since these one million overbuilt deployments would be credited against the total, it would substantially reduce buildout to unserved areas. This is like telling two people you will buy them lunch, ordering two entrées, and then sending both to just one of your companions. This condition was not and is not in the public interest, and it runs directly against the goal of promoting greater Internet access for all Americans. Following our decision today, Charter Communications is still obligated to build out to two million new locations. The difference now is that the beneficiaries will be consumers currently on the wrong side of the digital divide. That’s a major difference, and one that will go a long way toward helping deliver online opportunity to all Americans.

Technicians for Best Buy’s “Geek Squad City” computer repair facility had a long, close relationship with the FBI in “a joint venture to ferret out child porn,” according to claims in new federal court documents, which also note that Best Buy’s management “was aware that its supervisory personnel were being paid by the FBI” and that its technicians were developing a program to find child pornography with the FBI’s guidance.

The allegations are made by lawyers for a California doctor charged with possessing child pornography, after the doctor took his computer to a Best Buy store for repair. Computers which require data recovery are typically sent from Best Buy stores around the country to a central Geek Squad City facility in Brooks (KY) and customers consent to having their computers searched — and turned over to authorities if child porn is found. While there is no question that Geek Squad technicians have notified authorities after finding child porn, the new court documents assert that there is a deeper relationship than has previously been revealed between the company and federal authorities.

The Trump Administration has quietly issued new policy guidance that would make it harder for companies to use the H-1B visa program to bring foreign computer programmers into the US. A policy memo from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services changes the way the agency will process visa applications for computer programming positions, making companies jump through extra hoops to fill those jobs with foreign workers.

"Based on the current version of the Handbook, the fact that a person may be employed as a computer programmer and may use information technology skills and knowledge to help an enterprise achieve its goals in the course of his or her job is not sufficient to establish the position as a specialty occupation," the memo reads.

On March 23rd, Reps Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and John Conyers (D-MI) introduced a controversial bipartisan bill with over 100 years of history behind it, though you wouldn’t know it from its boring name. It’s called the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act of 2017 — the key part is that it makes the Register of Copyright a political position appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. That’s in contrast to the current state of affairs, which has been in existence since the creation of the Copyright Office in 1897.

This seemingly small change could have a big impact on a variety of different issues concerning how the internet functions. The simple version is that the music and movie industries have always had an uneasy relationship with the internet, and they worry that the Library of Congress might appoint a Register of Copyrights who thinks expanding copyright protections might not be the best thing for the public or individual creators. And one of the best ways to prevent that from happening is to have much more control over who will be in charge of the Copyright Office. The new bill gives the copyright industry the means to do that by lobbying the president and Congress directly. The long version is a fascinating glimpse at the collision of politics, the internet, and history.