Lauren Frayer

By this Public Notice, the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau announces the rollout of Version 3.0 of the Network Outage Reporting System (NORS). Under Part 4 of the Commission’s rules, certain communications providers (e.g., wireless, wireline, cable, satellite communications and interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)) must report significant disruptions or outages to their communications systems.

NORS Version 3.0 improvements will enhance the overall security and reliability of NORS and allow future evolutions to better support new analytic methods. The new version of NORS has four interfaces: (1) a web-based interface, (2) a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) Application Programming Interface (API), (3) a Representational State Transfer (REST) API and (4) an Extensible Markup Language (XML) interface. The SOAP API, REST API and the XML interfaces are intended for use by companies that want to automatically file outage reports.

A Q&A with Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion, Russian pro-democracy leader, and chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation since 2012.

Asked, "What do you see as the greatest threat to press freedom right now in Russia and the US?" Kasparov said, "As for America, the greatest threat is apathy. Trump may end up saving American journalism for a generation, indirectly of course, much as the resistance to him is already educating Americans about the separation of powers and why participating in politics matters even in the affluent free world. Market forces worked against quality journalism in the US because civic responsibility has been waning for decades. The extremists, the entertainers, and polemicists, were winning that free-market battle because the stakes in quality journalism were seen as very low by a majority of Americans. Suddenly the stakes have been raised very high, and I hope this means US citizens and institutions will continue to react by defending democratic institutions like the free press, and not by polarizing even further. Americans have taken their democracy and their affluence for granted for so long that they were vulnerable to someone like Trump. You can say the same for the media, which is still figuring out how to report on Trump accurately. If they don’t figure it out, Trump will only be the beginning."

[Commentary] Cell phone privacy, network neutrality and encryption are some of the many tech-related issues that Neil Gorsuch could rule on if he’s successfully appointed to the US Supreme Court. Although Gorsuch has been dubbed “Scalia 2.0,” his record as a Tenth Circuit judge indicates he may actually be a downgrade when it comes to technology law.

The good news is: like Scalia, Gorsuch appears to be a strong defender of free speech, including online speech. But, in contrast to Scalia, Gorsuch has been inconsistent in defending digital privacy rights. In addition, Gorsuch’s support of net neutrality isn’t guaranteed. He “may rule to strike down net neutrality regulations,” predicts Richard Stiennon, chief strategy officer at Blancco Technology Group.

[Mark Grabowski is a lawyer and associate professor of communications at Adelphi University in Long Island, where he teaches Internet law.]

When Michael Flynn, President Trump’s short-lived national security advisor, resigned last month, Mark Levin was outraged. Not because Flynn had falsely denied speaking with the Russian ambassador about US sanctions before Trump took office. Rather, the conservative talk radio host was furious that US surveillance had picked up Flynn’s venture into freelance diplomacy.

“How many phone calls of Donald Trump, if any, have been intercepted by the administration and recorded by the Obama administration?” Levin demanded on his program, which reaches millions nationwide. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is the real scandal.” With that, what began as rumors and unverified accounts percolating through right-wing media coalesced into a wild conspiracy theory adopted by a president with an itchy Twitter finger, a penchant for intrigue and eagerness to embrace information — however sketchy — that reinforces, rather than tests, his beliefs. Trump’s unfounded claim that President Obama had wiretapped his telephone ricocheted throughout the country, shook Washington and stunned disbelieving US allies. The fallout continues to rattle the embryonic Trump White House.

The president’s own Justice Department, the head of the FBI and the bipartisan leaders of two congressional oversight committees have all said they’ve found no evidence to substantiate the outlandish assertion. But the president and his chief spokesman, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, have refused to back down, aligning themselves with Levin and others operating in what amounts to a hall of mirrors, where the unproven claims of one media outlet are cited as evidence by another and facts are twisted, misdirected or ignored in the service of political propaganda.

What everyone actually knows, or should by now, is that while President Donald Trump claims to hate “the media,” he is himself an active publisher. And when the Trump Administration talks about the press as “the opposition,” that may be because President Trump is himself competing with traditional outlets in the same media environment, using the same publishing tools. It’s no wonder there was so much speculation about President Trump possibly launching his own TV network to rival Fox. It’s also no wonder that President Trump recently suggested he owes his presidency to Twitter, which he has used to blast critics and spout conspiracy theories since at least 2011.

The House Communications Subcommittee, chaired by Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), held a hearing examining barriers to broadband deployment throughout the country. In addition to receiving testimony from two panels of witnesses, the subcommittee looked at two discussion drafts aimed at alleviating the burden and eliminating the red tape when it comes to deploying broadband throughout the country.

1) Discussion Draft to facilitate the deployment of communications infrastructure, would: Create an inventory of federal assets that can be used to attach or install broadband infrastructure; Require all landholding agencies to use common templates when leasing space for wireless broadband attachments, and; Streamline processes for communications facilities locations applications at the Department Interior and Forest Service.
2) Discussion Draft Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2017, would: Mandate the inclusion of broadband conduit during the construction of certain highway projects that receive federal funding.

Joanne S. Hovis, President of CTC Technology and Energy, spoke to the importance of public-private partnerships when deploying broadband, stating, “By working cooperatively with state and local governments, the private sector stands to benefit in multiple ways – as partners, as users of the networks to market their goods and services in the rapidly emerging information-based global economy, and as contributors to the next generation of innovations.”

“We are all tired of hearing stories about parents driving their children to the local McDonald’s for Internet access in order to finish their homework assignments. We owe them better, period. The 5G revolution is upon us and we should modernize our laws to address issues such as tower siting and federal rights of ways, which are tying the hands of the private sector,” concluded Chairman Blackburn. “Unleashing broadband will create economic, educational and healthcare opportunities for millions of hardworking taxpayers.”

Your trust in news shared over social media may depend more on the person who shared the news than the news source itself, new research suggests. The results suggest opportunities for news organizations in building strong online followings -- and challenges for social media in countering fake news. An online sample of 1,489 US adults participated in the experiment, conducted by The Media Insight Project, a collaboration of the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Those who got the news from a person they trusted were more likely to say the story was well-reported, correct and contained diverse points of view. For instance, 51% of those who got news from a trusted sharer said the information was well-reported and trustworthy, while only 34% said so if they got the news from a non-trusted sharer. Trusted sharers influenced outcomes in other ways, too. When the story is passed on by a trusted figure and the article was attributed to The AP, 52% of respondents said the article got the facts right. When the article was attributed to The AP, but the person passing it on is less trusted, only 32% say the facts were right.

Petitions with more than 660,000 signatures to save the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding will be presented to Congress March 21 after a rally for parents and kids near the Capitol. The event is sponsored by five advocacy organizations including the progressive hub MoveOn.org, media reformer Free Press and ParentsTogether Action, a family issues nonprofit. PBS is not a co-sponsor. The petitions urge members of Congress to reject President Donald Trump’s initial budget proposal, which calls for zeroing out of CPB funding.

Trump’s decision to end CPB support “was expected from a president who believes the media are enemies of the American people,” Free Press CEO Craig Aaron said. “But members of Congress should do themselves a favor by listening to the voices of their many constituents. These people believe in overwhelmingly numbers that support for NPR and PBS programming, including PBS Kids, is taxpayer money well spent.”

[Commentary] The cultural-political revolution of the Nixon era was neither televised nor sponsored. If you listen to the coolest protest anthem ever, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” by Gil Scott-Heron, you’ll hear that it was not “brought to you by Xerox,” did not “go better with Coke,” did not have stars like Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen or the entertainment value of “Green Acres.”

The Trump era’s #Resistance is flipping all of that on its head. It’s being televised, podcasted, hashtagged, Snapped, Facebooked, Twittered and Periscoped. It doesn’t yet go better with Coke. But it does go better with a good night’s sleep in Parachute sheets, a slick new web page designed with Squarespace and an affordable shave with Harry’s razors — bearded Bernie bros notwithstanding. Just go check out an episode of “Pod Save America,” one of the big breakout hits of the nascent resistance movement. Running twice weekly, it has all of the above-named brands and sponsors, stars several members of former President Barack Obama’s inner circle and seeks to entertain as much as it tries to inspire anti-Trump action.

Rep Dave Trott (R-MI) had just wrapped up a boisterous town hall meeting in Novi, northwest of Detroit, and he was headed backstage — where a member of his team brainstormed an angle for the news media. After Rep Trott defended the Trump administration’s budget increase for defense funding, paid for by cuts to discretionary spending, he was booed in a politically potent way. “We’re going to take that part where they’re booing funding the military, and I’m gonna get somebody to write a story, and we’re going to promote the s— out of that,” Republican strategist Stu Sandler could be heard saying on a video recorded by local TV station WDIV and uploaded by the district’s local branch of the Indivisible project. “It’s un-American crap.”

Sandler confirmed that he was the voice on the tape, telling The Post that he was genuinely put off by the crowd’s reaction. “I was shocked and appalled at the majority of the audience that booed Congressman Trott when he stated ‘I support more funding for our military,’ Sandler explained in an email. “Our troops deserve better equipment and more pay.” On “Fox and Friends,” a morning show that President Trump watches regularly, co-host Ainsley Earhardt framed the moment exactly the way Sandler wanted it. In a short segment, Rep Trott portrayed himself as a defender of pay raises for the military, standing up to “Bernie Sanders socialists” and other malcontents.