Sam Gustin

March 8, a bipartisan group of US Senators introduced the Inmate Calling Technical Corrections Act that aims to restore federal authority to crack down on what prison reform advocates call the “usurious,” “abusive,” and “exploitative” business practices of a small handful of companies that dominate the $1.2 billion US prison phone industry. For Sen Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), who introduced the bill, addressing the problem of predatory prison phones rates is a practical, as well as moral, imperative.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, a former Verizon lawyer, met on April 4 with broadband industry officials to discuss how best to dismantle the legal basis underpinning the FCC's 2015 Open Internet net neutrality policy. "If the FCC's Open Internet rules are directly jeopardized—either by the Trump administration and the FCC, or by Republicans and Democrats in Congress—we will work with our allies to mobilize on a mass scale," said Mark Stanley, a senior official at the progressive organizing group Demand Progress.

The inside-the-Beltway mechanics of how precisely Chairman Pai and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill plan to dismantle the FCC's net neutrality policy are already the subject of DC parlor games. But the procedural details should not obscure the core net neutrality principles at stake: Online innovation, civic empowerment, individual privacy, and free speech. It's these principles that net neutrality activists across the country are now mobilizing to defend. "It took a decade to win the fight for net neutrality, and people will not sit by silently when politicians threaten to take it away," said Craig Aaron, President and CEO of DC-based public interest group Free Press. "They will defend the open internet and the free expression, economic innovation and popular organizing it makes possible. The system may be rigged in favor of corporate giants, but Donald Trump is about to find out the hard way what happens when you mess with the internet."

Open internet advocates are developing political strategies and street-level tactics designed to hold Republicans accountable in the 2018 midterm elections for what privacy watchdogs are calling one of the most brazen corporate giveaways in recent US history. "The [Federal Communications Commission] privacy rollback bill is going to be a big 2018 campaign issue," said Gigi Sohn, a Fellow at the Open Society Foundations who previously served as a top counselor to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. "You can't put lipstick on this pig. It's profoundly anti-consumer."

"Broadband privacy won't simply be a big issue in 2018, it will be one of the biggest," said Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice. "Those members of Congress who recently took a big bite out of the protections that allow internet users to browse the web safely can expect that we will expose their positions, protest at their headquarters, and pressure all those that support them."

As President Trump's Republican Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai moves to roll back a variety of Obama-era initiatives, the agency's sole remaining Democrat, Mignon Clyburn, is mounting a vigorous defense of the FCC's pro-consumer policies. During a wide-ranging interview, Clyburn vowed to continue fighting to advance net neutrality, as well as her other signature priorities, including expanding affordable broadband access for low-income and underserved communities, and addressing what she calls the "extreme market failure" that forces prison inmates and their families to pay wildly exorbitant phone rates just to stay in touch with their loved ones.

President Donald Trump's newly-installed Federal Communications Commission chief moved to halt a key policy protecting online privacy and data security on March 1, in what public interest advocates called the latest Trump-era attack on FCC consumer safeguards. The data security rule was approved in 2016 by the Obama-era FCC as part of a suite of privacy safeguards designed to give consumers more power over how Internet service providers use their personal information.

The full privacy package, which is now on the Trump FCC's chopping block, requires ISPs to obtain "opt-in" consent from consumers before they use or sell sensitive personal information, including browsing activity, mobile app data, and emails and online chats. Consumer advocates say the FCC's data security rule, along with the broader privacy policy, is necessary at a time of increasing cyberattacks against internet users. The FCC's action drew a strong rebuke from the agency's lone Democratic commissioner and other public interest advocates.

"Net neutrality is not simply about technology," said Steven Renderos, Organizing Director at the Center for Media Justice. "It's about the everyday people who use it and whether they will have the right to be heard online. Two years ago, the [Federal Communications Commission] affirmed that everyone, regardless of class or race, deserves access to a media platform that does not discriminate."

Without net neutrality, these corporate giants could slow down or even block rival services, not to mention the next generation of startups that depend on internet freedom. If these broadband titans are allowed the right to stifle online creativity and entrepreneurship, it could snuff out the very engine of innovation that has generated billions of dollars of US economic activity and created millions of jobs.

"Donald Trump is going to have to pry net neutrality from my cold dead hands," said Winnie Wong, a leading political organizer and co-author of the Women's March on Washington unity principles. "We will organize huge numbers of people to turn out in the streets to protect the open internet." For Wong, network neutrality means more than just commerce or inside-baseball DC intrigue. It's about free speech and the ability to reach her colleagues and constituents online to coordinate the movement of movements, and the delegation of distributed direct action across the country and around the world. "The architects of the internet and the defenders of net neutrality are the people who have created the conditions that allow progressive activists to organize and build our networks of opposition to Trump at scale," Wong said. "We will fight to defend the open internet."

The decade-long war over net neutrality has taken on new urgency with Trump's decision to appoint Republican Ajit Pai to lead the Federal Communications Commission. Pai, a former Verizon lawyer, has made clear that he intends to dismantle the legal basis underpinning net neutrality, in a move that will delight the nation's largest cable and phone companies.

If you like your online privacy rights, can you keep them? Under President Donald Trump, the chances are grim. Federal regulations protecting consumers from broadband industry privacy abuses will soon be eliminated if the nation’s largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and their Republican allies on Capitol Hill have their way.

The US broadband privacy safeguards, which were approved last year by the Federal Communications Commission, require ISPs like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to obtain “opt-in” consent before they “monetize” sensitive consumer data, including online browsing activity, mobile app data, and emails and online chats. As President Trump and GOP lawmakers move swiftly to remove regulations across large swaths of the economy, the nation’s biggest ISPs are working overtime to ensure that the FCC’s privacy policy is part of the regulatory rollback. The broadband industry is pursuing a dual-track strategy by pressuring the FCC to halt the privacy policy, while simultaneously lobbying Congress to rescind the rules outright. Under the recently-approved FCC policy, consumers must affirmatively give their ISP opt-in permission to use private information for marketing purposes. The big ISPs, not surprisingly, want the right to monetize such data by default, with the burden falling on the user to opt-out.

Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), the arch-conservative who has received mountains of campaign cash from the telecommunication industry, has been chosen by the GOP to lead the House Communications Subcommittee, a key Congressional subcommittee with broad jurisdiction over cable, phone, and internet issues.

Rep Blackburn has waged a relentless campaign against the Federal Communications Commission’s policy safeguarding network neutrality, the principle that all internet content should be equally accessible, which she has disparaged as “socialistic.” She has also opposed efforts to promote community broadband networks, to make internet access more affordable for underserved communities, to increase competition in the video “set-top box” market, and to protect consumer privacy from broadband industry abuses. As a result, Rep Blackburn has earned a reputation among public interest advocates as the biggest enemy of internet freedom, openness, accessibility, and affordability on Capitol Hill. Among her other beliefs, Rep Blackburn has rejected the scientific consensus that humans contribute to global warming—she’s actually claimed that the Earth is cooling and questioned whether human activity is the “cause for carbon emissions”—and has stated that she does not believe in the theory of evolution.

When Tom Wheeler was tapped by President Barack Obama to lead the Federal Communications Commission in 2013, many public interest advocates were skeptical, if not downright hostile, toward his appointment, because of his lengthy background as a top lobbyist for the cable industry, from 1979 to 1984, and the wireless industry, from 1992 to 2004. But over the next three years, Chairman Wheeler won over the public interest community, and infuriated his former clients in the cable and wireless industries, by successfully spearheading the most pro-consumer telecom policy reforms in a generation, including the agency’s landmark policy protecting network neutrality, and agency rules protecting consumers from broadband industry privacy abuses.

“Tom Wheeler has been—by far—the best FCC Chairman in the 45 years I have practiced communications law,” said Andrew Schwartzman, Benton Senior Counselor at the Public Interest Communications Law Project at Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation.