Daily Digest 11/01/2017 (For All the Saints)

The guilty plea of a 30-year-old campaign aide — so green that he listed Model United Nations in his qualifications — shifted the narrative of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia: Court documents revealed that Russian officials alerted the campaign, through an intermediary in April 2016, that they possessed thousands of Democratic emails and other “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. That was two months before the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee was publicly revealed and the stolen emails began to appear online. The new court filings provided the first clear evidence that Trump campaign aides had early knowledge that Russia had stolen confidential documents on Sec Clinton and the committee, a tempting trove in a close presidential contest. By the time of a crucial meeting in June 2016, when Donald Trump Jr. and other senior Trump campaign officials met with a Russian lawyer offering damaging information on Sec Clinton, some may have known for weeks that Russia had material likely obtained by illegal hacking, the new documents suggested. The disclosures added to the evidence pointing to attempts at collaboration between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, but they appeared to fall short of proof that they conspired in the hacking or other illegal acts. The improbable figure at the center of the new information was a “foreign policy adviser” to Donald Trump, George Papadopoulos. It was Papadopoulos, one of three men whose charges were announced, who appears to have been the first campaign aide to learn about the Russian hacking of Democratic targets.

Facebook, Google and Twitter arrived on Capitol Hill for two days of marathon hearings that started on Oct 31 with the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism. Top executives for the social media giants are being grilled by lawmakers investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, including how the online platforms were used to spread misinformation and propaganda. Ahead of the hearings, all three companies announced on Oct 30 that the number of Russian-linked accounts on their sites were higher than previously disclosed. Facebook said agents using those accounts disseminated information that reached 126 million users.

Facebook, Google and Twitter are set to divulge new details showing that the scope of Russian-backed manipulation on their platforms before and after the US presidential election was far greater than previously disclosed, reaching an estimated 126 million people on Facebook alone, according to people familiar with the matter, prepared copies of their testimonies and a company statement. Facebook estimates that 470 Russian-backed accounts connected to a single pro-Kremlin firm, the Internet Research Agency, churned out 80,000 posts on Facebook between January 2015 and August 2017, the social-media company plans to tell congressional investigators. Twitter, meanwhile, has identified and removed 2,752 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency. Google has discovered 1,108 videos uploaded to its YouTube video site, which were viewed a total of 309,000 times in the U.S. from June 2015 to November 2016, by accounts linked to Russian operatives.

[Commentary] By the time you finish reading this article, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter will have made billions of decisions about what you and hundreds of millions of others will see next. Each time you log into a social media platform, its algorithms — sophisticated mathematical models designed by a few thousand engineers in Northern California — decide what information you should consume. These decisions have deep repercussions on us as individuals and as a society, whether it’s by enabling revolutions that topple dictators, by feeding us fake news and micro-targeted advertisements to manipulate election results or by preying on our insecurities to fuel mental health crises. The time has come to end the opacity and secrecy surrounding social media. If social media platforms are truly committed to being the productive, responsible and ethical force in society they have the potential to be, there are crucial steps they must take. 

The Internet Association, a trade group representing internet platforms like Facebook and Google, outlined principles for what the industry would like to see in online ad disclosure legislation. The wish list includes oversight from the Federal Election Commission and a set of uniform rules applied to all websites equally. "Internet Association members are committed to working with policymakers and other stakeholders on legislation that will improve transparency and stop bad actors while protecting privacy, free speech, and internet-enabled political debate," Michael Beckerman, the group’s CEO, said in a statement. The trade association wants any new law to put the burden on advertisers to disclose information about political ads to the platforms on which they’re published. The Internet Association doesn’t want platforms to be held liable for advertising content run by their advertisers, saying it could threaten online political speech.

The Campaign Legal Center is teaming up with a pro-Trump PAC to try and force the Federal Election Commission to establish strong online ad disclosure rules. CLC has teamed up with the Take Back Action Fund (TBAF) to file an advisory opinion request with the FEC that they say requires the commission to address the issue of online ad transparency by the end of 2017. They don't want a new election cycle to rev up without the protective gear of strong disclosure. By law the FEC must respond to the request within 60 days, they said. Anything that boosts disclosure could potentially shrink the political ad spending or redirect it elsewhere by cutting out those who don’t want to have to identify themselves. "The FEC may not write new online ad rules for quite some time. And legislation may not be enacted any time soon.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) and Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) have circulated the draft of a bill that would speed the deployment of 5G, just one a host of moves to goose the buildout of high-speed broadband. The bill would limit the ability of state and local governments to restrict access to poles and rights of way except in specific circumstances -- insufficient capacity, safety and reasonable concealment, for example -- according to a copy of the discussion draft. It also includes help for cable franchise buildouts and their accompanying broadband component so governments are equal-opportunity broadband facilitators. The bill would limit state and local governments' ability to impose a "de facto" moratorium on accepting or processing permits, or their ability to make it harder for tech or capacity upgrades, and addresses other "regulations by a state or local government ... that prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the provision of wireless services," according to the draft. It also imposes a shot clock of 90 days on government decisions regarding various requests.

Verizon has asked the Federal Communications Commission to preempt any state laws that regulate network neutrality and broadband privacy. It is possible that state governments might impose their own rules to protect consumers in their states. Verizon said that Congress and the FCC "have recently made great strides toward restoring the light-touch regulatory approach that had successfully applied to Internet Service Providers for most of the last two decades." But "some supporters of stringent regulation of ISPs are now looking to states and localities to frustrate these achievements," Verizon wrote. State broadband laws "pose a real and significant threat to restoring a light-touch, uniform regulatory framework for broadband service," Verizon said.

Access to, and use of, high-speed Internet is critical for today’s communities. Across rural Minnesota are stories of communities putting in the hard work necessary to bring the benefits of broadband home. These stories illustrate the impact that broadband investment can have on a community’s vibrancy. The purpose of these case studies is to determine the value of that broadband based on impact to the members of that community. These five communities provide a model for economic development and community vitality in rural Minnesota. By using advanced broadband networks as a foundation, they are attracting talented people and significant investments to their regions. While past community leadership helped to create these advanced networks, continued leadership will be essential to making full use of Internet-based technologies into the future. These communities are well-positioned to do so.

[Commentary] With the Sprint T-Mobile merger called off, what’s next for the wireless carriers? Many saw the merger as the best move for Sprint, which has been struggling in a competitive wireless market. The merger was less critical for T-Mobile. But that company has been a disruptive force in the wireless industry and hasn’t been one to simply maintain the status quo. In today’s highly-competitive marketplace, wireless carriers seem to have realized that focus on their core business is essential. From T-Mobile’s point of view, a Sprint acquisition probably has more appeal than any other acquisition activity the company might consider. And realizing that Sprint may eventually come around, I would expect T-Mobile to hold off on any other merger deals so that it can retain as much leverage as possible for a potential future Sprint deal.

[Commentary] Big Tech is broken.  Suddenly, a wide range of journalists and politicians agree on this. For decades, most of the media and political establishment accepted Silicon Valley’s promise that it would not “be evil,” as the first Google code of corporate conduct put it. But the past few months have brought a constant stream of negative stories about both the internal culture of the tech industry and the effect it is having on society. The Tech Left believes it must urgently transform the industry in order to stop it from serving nefarious ends. It is not focused on getting Democratic politicians elected. On the contrary, much of the Tech Left distrusts mainstream Democrats. It does not believe that more engagement with digital tools necessarily means more democracy, or that the tech industry will necessarily lead the way to social progress. It is sceptical that people who became billionaires under the current system will transform that system.

In whatever corner of the world Facebook is operating, it has become clear that people are using this powerful platform as a communications tool in ways that Mark Zuckerberg never envisioned. He started the company as a young Harvard undergrad 13 years ago to connect students. It expanded exponentially since then under his supremely techno-utopian vision of connecting the world. For Zuckerberg, connecting the world means bringing people together. But increasingly the platform is being used by some very powerful elements to do the exact opposite: sow divisions. That's led Facebook struggling almost every week to offer explanations for misleading and divisive news on its platform It's a huge blind spot for Zuckerberg, by his own acknowledgement. What's clear is that Facebook is trying to understand its own platform's ability to cause harm. What's unclear is: Can Facebook stop it?

Apple, locked in an intensifying legal fight with Qualcomm, is is designing iPhones and iPads for next year that would jettison the chipmaker’s components. Apple is considering building the devices only with modem chips from Intel and possibly MediaTek because Qualcomm has withheld software critical to testing its chips in iPhone and iPad prototypes.

Just days after being likened to a king by President Donald Trump, President Xi Jinping of China reiterated his commitment to reform while holding court before a group of wealthy and influential business leaders from his country and the United States. President Xi, speaking at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing during an event shown on national television, addressed topics such as globalization, innovation and China’s relationship with the United States at a gathering of executives who included Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple; Stephen Schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone Group; and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive. The reception was one of Xi’s first public appearances with foreign visitors since a key Chinese Communist Party congress elevated him to the same exalted status as Mao Zedong, the country’s founding father, and Deng Xiaoping, who led the country from 1978 until 1989.

In some upside-down logic from the land of down under, Australian consumers have been able to upgrade their broadband internet access to the latest fibre-optic lines, only to receive slower speeds than over ageing copper wires. Such experiences are the absurd result of a grandiose government plan to bankroll what was supposed to be the world’s most advanced broadband network, called NBN. It has backfired spectacularly, triggering a vicious round of political and industry backbiting about who is to blame and sending a warning round the world to governments looking to boost their economies with next-generation networks. However, they have a long way to go to match Australia’s heavy-handed political intervention in the telecoms markets, according to industry experts.