Op-Ed

[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 27)

[Commentary] Since the Justice Department named a special investigator, Robert Mueller, to handle the government’s official inquiry into Russian meddling in the U.S. election, the weight of public expectation has largely fallen on his shoulders. While the two congressional panels, the Senate and House intelligence committees, continue to hold hearings and question witnesses, both are led by members of a party that is, with the exception of Charlottesville, skittish about criticizing the president. The two intelligence committees should act as if their investigations will be the final (and possibly the only) ones — because they may be.

A central role for Congress is the only real way to guarantee a full report, with conclusions and recommendations, for the American people. I oversaw a similarly complex and politically fraught inquiry as co-chairman of the joint congressional inquiry into 9/11, so I know what it takes — as a matter of resources, time, perseverance and, yes, occasional political courage — to run an investigation of this size and importance. And I know this, too: The congressional intelligence committees, as they are constituted today, are not ready for this burden.

[Bob Graham was a U.S. senator from Florida from 1987 to 2005. He served as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 2001 to 2003 and as co-chairman of the Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.]

[Commentary] Six years ago, I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google’s monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished. I was working for Forbes at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google’s then-new social network, Plus. The Google salespeople were encouraging Forbes to add Plus’s “+1" social buttons to articles on the site, alongside the Facebook Like button and the Reddit share button. They said it was important to do because the Plus recommendations would be a factor in search results—a crucial source of traffic to publishers.

[Commentary] We have come to the end of the comments period set by the Trump Federal Communications Commission (FCC) during which the public could respond to the FCC’s efforts to deregulate high-speed Internet service and roll back network neutrality rules that designate the Internet a utility. There have been over 22 million comments to the FCC’s proposed rule making, or ‘rule unmaking’ — surely a testament to the Internet’s potential to encourage participation — and it appears the huge majority of those comments have spoken against the FCC’s proposal to deregulate.

The public now understands, just as the courts have always understood, the the Internet is an incredible information transmission utility that has fallen into the hands of monopolists and should be regulated in the public’s interest. But the Trump FCC has only free market solutions to problems we don’t have in 2017, so it is highly likely that this FCC will indeed do away with the Net Neutrality rules set forth by the FCC in 2015.

[Fred Johnson is a documentary maker and telecom policy analyst]

[Commentary] Is broadband internet an “information service,” as concluded repeatedly over two decades by Democratic and Republican commissioners, or a “telecommunications service” as a partisan majority decreed two years ago? This is a distinction with a profound legal difference under the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Telecommunications services are subject to the same restrictions and government controls that applied to the old Bell monopoly starting in the 1930s. Information services have far more freedom to compete and innovate. The real-world effects of this heavy vs. light regulation are dramatic, and they turn on the question of how consumers use broadband internet. 72% of U.S. adults frequently read or watch news, sports or other content online. Sixty-one percent use search engines; 52% purchase items online, and 48% check or post on social media. Smaller percentages store photos, grocery lists and other items. That broadband internet access that enables these activities is precisely what makes broadband an “information service” under the statute. It is impossible to make use of popular video-rich information applications on today’s internet using old-fashioned dial-up access because of the need for higher speeds and lower latency. Returning to the longstanding light-touch framework will offer many benefits to American consumers and encouraging Congress to do its job and modernize the Telecommunications Act for the broadband era, developing and passing bipartisan legislation that ensures the open internet, protects consumers and maintains investment in the nation’s high-speed broadband networks.

[Bruce Mehlman is a lobbyist for broadband service providers]

[Commentary] In Houston, local journalists were leading the effort to inform people on the ground, explaining how to get rescued, where to go and what to do. What if they hadn’t been there? Melanie Sills, a former editor at the Raleigh News & Observer, argues that extra effort will have to be made to shore up local reporting in the months to come, from national-local partnerships, public-service journalism and elsewhere, and she’s right. For those who want to find charities to support in the days to come, here’s an idea: Alongside shelters and immediate rescue operations, think about finding a way to support local journalism. You never know when you might need it yourself.

[Applebaum writes a biweekly foreign affairs column for The Washington Post]

[Commentary] At the moment, the Federal Communications Commission defines home “broadband” as providing 25 mbps download and 3 mbps upload (“25/3”). Many communities can only get that speed from a cable provider – assuming they have one that serves their communities. If the FCC discovers that certain identifiable groups of people, like rural Americans, don’t have access to broadband that meets the standard, then the law requires the FCC to take steps to ensure that those left behind get the access they need. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s Proposal: Lower the Standard for Broadband So We Can Say Everyone Has Access.

Rural Americans who care about getting real broadband not only need to file at the FCC, but also need to contact their Senators and members of Congress. Members of Congress from both parties have made it clear to the FCC that rural Americans continue to lack choices for affordable broadband that meets their needs.

[Harold Feld is senior vice president of Public Knowledge]

[Commentary] The think-tank world has come to be dominated by a distinctly modern kind of doublethink, which combines a rational understanding that corporations spend money to influence public policy with an instinctual belief that some of the institutions that benefit from it–often those that employ the thinker or his friends–function with complete independence. The New America Foundation runs several programs, including the Open Technology Institute , which researches issues that affect Google directly. The scholars who work on those projects don’t think of themselves as Google shills, and it’s hard to believe that they significantly changed their opinions in order to secure think-tank gigs. But it’s also hard to believe that their research isn’t affected by the funding that allows them to do the work they do.

Which leads us to the other big problem in the think-tank world–how the presence of so much corporate money distorts what work gets funded in the first place.

[Robert Levine is an author and journalist who writes about the media and technology businesses]

[Commentary] The Federal Trade Commission can challenge harmful non-neutral practices on a case-by-case basis under its antitrust authority and under its consumer protection authority. These complementary tools ensure that consumers can effectively pursue their many, varying market preferences, including preferences for values of openness and free expression online.

First, the FTC’s antitrust tools protect the competitive process, which motivates companies to deliver what consumers want. Second, the FTC uses its consumer protection authority to ensure that consumers get the benefit of the bargain they strike. This two-pronged competition and consumer protection enforcement approach is case-by-case. We evaluate each practice to see if it actually harms consumers. Such an approach has advantages over prescriptive regulation, which prejudges, in the abstract, entire categories of business practices. In dynamic, fast-changing industries, case-by-case enforcement better protects consumers and promotes innovation because it focuses agency resources on actual consumer injury and doesn’t require regulators to predict the future.

[Maureen K. Ohlhausen is acting chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.]

[Commentary] There is a national conversation taking place on how to get broadband providers to go the last mile, and strike a balance with electric utilities to utilize their existing or planned infrastructure. And, private investment remains an essential component to any broadband buildout. The Energy and Commerce Committee, of which I am a member, is currently considering legislation to streamline federal permitting processes, create common contracts for siting wireless facilities on federal properties, and create an inventory of federal assets. One of the key roles of Congress is to facilitate policy and programs that help unserved or underserved communities. The infrastructure bill that will likely be debated later this year must include provisions for rural broadband deployment.

Many bureaucrats in Washington simply don’t understand the challenges we here in Eastern and Southeastern Ohio face. We will not be left behind anymore. There’s a lot of intellectual capital here in rural Appalachia…and, America needs to start tapping into it.