Daily Digest 3/29/2018 (Privacy; Elections)

By now, most consumers understand that data collection is a core part of advertising-based businesses such as Facebook, Google and Snapchat. The practice can often be a boon to consumers: The more people share with the companies, the better they are able to serve up ads, search results, product recommendations and music and movie suggestions tailored to an individual's liking. Yet many remain unaware of the type of data collected and what companies ultimately do with it. While the answers often lie in privacy policies and terms of service agreements, few take the time to look them over. A 2017 Deloitte survey found that more than 90% of people agree to terms and conditions without reading them. The problem isn't that Facebook and other companies are failing to get users' consent or that they're not disclosing details on the data they collect, according to design critics. It's that when the companies ask for consent, they use interfaces designed to get users to opt in without second thought.

Cox Communications and US Ignite designated Las Vegas as the newest US Ignite Smart Gigabit Community (SGC). US Ignite’s SGC program is creating “living lab” environments for the next generation of gigabit applications. Las Vegas is the 25th community designated as an SGC. The designation is designed to facilitate collaboration among US Ignite, universities, municipalities, community anchor institutions like hospitals and schools, nonprofits, network carriers and ISPs. Together, these organizations are focused on developing smart gigabit applications that can address local community needs, such as education, workforce development, public safety and community health. Each community joining the network has made a significant commitment toward embracing next-generation smart city and Internet technologies to keep pace with the world’s rapidly changing technology and economy. Additionally, each member of the program has committed to develop two gigabit applications or gigabit services per year that provide advanced technology solutions to issues faced by that community. Members also agree to share those applications with the others in the Smart Gigabit Communities program.

Federal Trade Commission acting Chief Technology Officer Neil Chilson says that the FTC has the tech expertise to enforce network neutrality in the absence of Federal Communications Commission rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, but that it does not need a "granular, micromanaging" level of technical detail to protect consumers and competition -- it is not writing specific rules -- but rather to focus on the end effects of a particular practice. Chilson was featured on a USTelecom-hosted webinar. He made it clear that he was speaking for himself, not the agency, but he is the top tech official at the agency. Asked if the FTC could ban paid prioritization, he pointed to a 2007 Broadband Connectivity Competition Report in which the FTC concluded that prioritization had pro-competitive applications that argued for a case-by-case review rather than a ban. USTelecom's Diane Holland pointed to critics who have said the FTC does not have the technical expertise to oversee network access, Chilson begged to differ.

[Op-ed] Publicly owned broadband networks exist for one purpose: to give the most people the best service at the lowest possible prices. They do this because they know it benefits their residents’ quality of life and incomes. Verizon, Comcast and other big internet providers don’t like localities encroaching on their business, and they have gone to court to stop public broadband networks from being established. They have lost these cases, but defending them costs governments time and money. More successfully, the private companies have persuaded state legislatures to pass laws restricting municipalities from setting up community networks. I believe that the political climate is getting better. With the increasing attention given to internet access as an engine of economic development, it’s getting harder for a state legislator to argue with a straight face that it’s in the public interest to stop towns or smaller cities from providing it, particularly when the big private-sector companies have been so slow to wire them up. Most such laws were passed years ago, but today there are efforts to repeal or bypass them. While providing good internet service publicly has the whiff of socialism, at a local level such efforts don’t divide neatly into red-blue political categories. Plenty of publicly owned broadband networks are located in Republican-leaning states and counties. Good internet service can cut through ideological lines.

[Alex Marshall is a Senior Fellow at The Regional Plan Association in New York City]

Yomura, a UK-based wholesale fiber services provider for Europe and North America service providers, sees an opportunity to help struggling US municipal broadband providers. “In some cases, there are municipalities that have built a network and they are hemorrhaging,” said Owen Stephens, marketing director for Yomura. “These are the sort of networks we want to talk to and we believe we can turn a profit for them.” The question is how Yomura can help US-based municipal providers get around legal and financial challenges. Municipal broadband continues to be a controversial issue with communities trying to take their own service destiny into their own hands while powerful ISPs argue that public funds should not be used to fund competitors.

For all the hype and potential benefits that stem from 5G, there are few parts of the world that will actually see deployments in the next few years. Other countries are still moving to 4G, or even struggling to offer any level of internet connectivity. The Alliance for Affordable Internet's (A4AI) 2017 affordability report found that only 19 countries can say they have affordable internet. Overall, the digital divide between rich and poor was found only to be widening. A new set of advantages for the connected only look set to leave the unconnected even further behind. "5G has great potential," said Sonia Jorge, executive director of A4AI. "It is fantastic. But in the markets where we work, it's a very small opportunity still." The focus of 5G carriers isn't on the unconnected but rather on bringing better and more sophisticated services and products to those already connected. While Jorge sees the potential for 5G costs to come down, there's still a long way to go. After all, the price of a 5G device and service has to realistically be cheaper than 3G for anyone to use the service. "The possibilities of great exclusion are very real and we're already seeing them," she said.

Can a US technology company refuse to honor a court-ordered US search warrant seeking information that is stored at a facility outside the United States? Oral arguments in a pending case took place at the Supreme Court in February 2018, and they did not go well for Microsoft, the tech giant that is challenging a warrant for information stored at its facility in Ireland. But, amazingly, just three weeks after the Supreme Court argument, lo and behold, a Congress famous for gridlock passed legislation to modernize the law in question. Titled the CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data), the statute was attached to the 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill. In a letter to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Noel Francisco informed the justices that the administration intends to file a new brief addressing "to what extent" passage of the CLOUD Act nullifies the Microsoft case as a live controversy. While the CLOUD Act does not, in fact, give Microsoft much to be happy about, it does give the tech industry a couple of victories. The first is in the area of public relations. The industry can portray itself as having fought to protect its customers' privacy. Second, until passage of the new statute, foreign countries were threatening to send tech company employees to jail if they complied with US warrants. Now the legal lay of the land is much clearer.