September 5, 2017 (Lessons from the Cuban missile crisis)

COMMUNICATIONS & DEMOCRACY

THE FAKE-NEWS FALLACY
[SOURCE: New Yorker, AUTHOR: Adrian Chen]
The online tumult of the 2016 election fed into a growing suspicion of Silicon Valley’s dominance over the public sphere. Across the political spectrum, people have become less trusting of the Big Tech companies that govern most online political expression. Calls for civic responsibility on the part of Silicon Valley companies have replaced the hope that technological innovation alone might bring about a democratic revolution. Despite the focus on algorithms, A.I., filter bubbles, and Big Data, these questions are political as much as technical. Regulation has become an increasingly popular notion; the Sen Cory Booker (D-NJ) has called for greater antitrust scrutiny of Google and Facebook, while Stephen Bannon reportedly wants to regulate Google and Facebook like public utilities. In the nineteen-thirties, such threats encouraged commercial broadcasters to adopt the civic paradigm. In that prewar era, advocates of democratic radio were united by a progressive vision of pluralism and rationality; today, the question of how to fashion a democratic social media is one more front in our highly divisive culture wars.
benton.org/headlines/fake-news-fallacy | New Yorker
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ELECTIONS 2016

SOFTWARE GLITCH OR RUSSIAN HACKERS?
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Nicole Perlroth, Michael Wines, Matthew Rosenberg]
After a presidential campaign scarred by Russian meddling, local, state and federal agencies have conducted little of the type of digital forensic investigation required to assess the impact, if any, on voting in at least 21 states whose election systems were targeted by Russian hackers, according to interviews with nearly two dozen national security and state officials and election technology specialists. The assaults on the vast back-end election apparatus — voter-registration operations, state and local election databases, e-poll books and other equipment — have received far less attention than other aspects of the Russian interference, such as the hacking of Democratic e-mails and spreading of false or damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Yet the hacking of electoral systems was more extensive than previously disclosed. Beyond VR Systems, hackers breached at least two other providers of critical election services well ahead of the 2016 voting, said current and former intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information is classified. The officials would not disclose the names of the companies.
benton.org/headlines/software-glitch-or-russian-hackers-election-problems-draw-little-scrutiny | New York Times
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EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

LESSONS FROM THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
[SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, AUTHOR: Newton Minow]
[Commentary] As one of the few remaining members of the Kennedy administration who participated in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, I was an eyewitness to the crucial role that telecommunications played in averting nuclear disaster. As chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at that time, we created a “hotline” with the Soviet Union in the belief that improved communications would help avoid conflicts between nations in the nuclear era. Today, telecommunications have improved in ways we could not have imagined. They are faster, stronger, clearer, more accessible and higher resolution. News on television, radio and the internet is far more comprehensive, multisourced and instantaneous. Some of those new technologies have undermined the very tools President John F. Kennedy needed to avert war. President Kennedy once gave me a top-secret assignment. The Russians had jammed the Voice of America. My job was to enlist eight American commercial radio stations whose signals reached Cuba to carry key messages from Voice of America to the Cuban people. Before confiding in the stations, I asked each station owner to swear that they would not share the information with their news division until the embargo was lifted. Every one of them agreed and kept their word, ultimately playing a useful role in averting nuclear war. Would broadcasters today be willing to do the same?
[Chicago attorney Newton N. Minow was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1961 to 1963] [Aug 28]
benton.org/headlines/newt-minow-lessons-cuban-missile-crisis | Chicago Tribune
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HARVEY AND 911
[SOURCE: CNN, AUTHOR: Heather Kelly]
As flood waters began swallowing roads and homes during Tropical Storm Harvey, panicked Houston residents did what everyone in the US is programed to do in an emergency. They dialed 911. But the emergency number struggled with record high call volume. At the peak of the storm, the service received around 80,000 calls in a 24-hour period. The Harris County area typically gets around 8,000 calls a day. Some people were unable to get through at all, and those who did were put on hold while a recording -- which promised the call was being processed -- looped. Desperate residents took to social media to post their addresses in the hopes that someone would get the information to the right authorities or a friend with boat. The requests went viral, leaving many wondering why 911 wasn't able to do more. Like most 911 systems in the U.S., Houston's is based on outdated telephone network technology.
benton.org/headlines/harvey-highlights-issues-aging-911-tech | CNN
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

SECTION 706 REPORT
[SOURCE: US Senate, AUTHOR: ]
Twelve senators sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Pai and Commissioners Clyburn, O’Rielly, Rosenworcel and Carr on August 31, 2017, expressing concern that the FCC appears ready to decide that mobile broadband could be a substitute, rather than a complement, to fixed broadband service, and that slower-speed mobile service substitutes as effectively. They noted the FCC’s current policy provides that Americans need access to both mobile and fixed broadband services, with speeds of at least 25 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload. They said such substantial shifts in policy require greater consideration and debate, and urged the Commission to grant an extension of 30 days for both the initial and reply comment periods for the Section 706 Advanced Telecommunications Capabilities Report Notice of Inquiry (NOI).
benton.org/headlines/senators-urge-more-time-debate-section-706-report | US Senate
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OWNERSHIP

THE ANTIMONOPOLY PARTY
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: David Weigel]
A messy, public brawl over a Google critic’s ouster from a Washington think tank has exposed a fissure in Democratic Party politics. On one side there’s a young and growing faction advocating new antimonopoly laws, on the other a rival faction struggling to defend itself. At issue is a decades-long relationship between Democrats and tech companies, with Democratic presidents signing off on deregulation and candidates embracing money and innovations from companies like Google and Facebook. Now, locked out of power and convinced that same coziness with large corporations cost them the presidency, Democrats are talking themselves into breaking with tech giants and becoming an antimonopoly party.
benton.org/headlines/breaking-tech-giants-democrats-consider-becoming-antimonopoly-party | Washington Post
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GUARDIAN VIEW ON GOOGLE
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Neither Google, nor Eric Schmidt, told New America to fire Barry Lynn or his colleagues. They did not have to. Academics fill an intellectual gap that regulators often don’t have time to fill themselves. They supply the knowledge that politicians either don’t possess, or have no time to ponder. Whether it’s because the whole system is increasingly marketised and reliant on corporate funding, or just that big corporates have switched on to this as a way to pursue their agenda, the pressure on experts to alter their testimony to serve the interests of business is only going to increase. Silicon Valley is subtler, too. If you control the research that happens, you change the entire tack of the conversation. Furthermore, you change the perception of reality itself. If the academics arguing that modern platform monopolies cause damage to the competitive landscape are drowned out by hundreds more funded by technology firms arguing that everything is fine, they look like a lunatic fringe no matter how strong their arguments.
benton.org/headlines/guardian-view-google-overweening-power | Guardian, The
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CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

FCC’S BROKEN COMMENTS SYSTEM COULD HELP DOOM NET NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Klint Finley]
The Federal Communications Commission’s public commenting process on network neutrality was such a debacle that the legitimacy of the entire body of comments is now in question. Many of the comments were filed with obviously bogus names. Among the more visible cases of name theft: journalist and net neutrality advocate Karl Bode's identity was used without his consent for a comment favoring a roll back of the rules. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's name was used on hundreds of comments opposing his proposal, some threatening him with death or using racial slurs. John Oliver's name was used on more than 2,000 of comments as well. On a case by case basis, these forgeries are easy enough to spot. But in aggregate, they're making it harder to draw conclusions about the overall public sentiment of the proceeding. In May 2017, the FCC's site was also hit with what appeared to be a spambot submitting hundreds of thousands of anti-Title II comments with the exact same boilerplate language. The broadband industry is now using the chaos of the comments process to claim that the public actually supports repealing Title II. Former FCC special counsel Gigi Sohn said, "I can’t imagine there is nothing they can do, and I’d love to see a citation to anything that says that they cannot remove a comment that has been proven to be fake." If anything, she says, the agency might have an obligation under the Administrative Procedure Act to remove fake comments from its consideration. "At a bare minimum, they should investigate these comments and if they can’t actually remove the comments, they can and should disregard them as part of their consideration of record."
benton.org/headlines/fccs-broken-comments-system-could-help-doom-network-neutrality | Wired
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POLICYMAKERS

PAI ANNOUNCES NEW BDAC CHAIR AND MEMBER
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public notice]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has made two appointments to the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC). First, Chairman Pai has appointed BDAC member Elizabeth Bowles to serve as Chair of the BDAC. Bowles is President and Chairman of the Board of Aristotle, Inc., an Arkansas-based wireless Internet service provider. In addition, the Chairman has appointed Larry Hanson, a member of the BDAC’s Model Code for Municipalities working group, to serve on the BDAC. Hanson represents the City of Valdosta (GA) where he is city manager.
benton.org/headlines/chairman-pai-announces-new-broadband-deployment-advisory-committee-chair-and-new-member | Federal Communications Commission
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September 5, 2017 (Lessons from the Cuban missile crisis)