Ars Technica

Sen Cory Booker (D-NJ) may not generate the same attention as our current tweeter-in-chief, but he embraces social media just as much. When serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Sen Booker gained a reputation for regularly interacting with constituents on Twitter. And today, as a US senator, he continues to post across a variety of media. Booker's been doing Facebook videos from his office at nearly a weekly clip since early December, and so far the senator finds the platform unparalleled when it comes to generating a response.

"At times, I see [Facebook videos] as more valuable than a speech on the senate floor," Sen Booker told a capacity crowd during his keynote at the 2017 South By Southwest conference. "These are videos I put up for an audience to explain policy. In the senate, there are maybe 14 people watching me on C-SPAN, plus my mom makes 15. But my last Facebook video got something like one million views."

Ostensibly, Booker's speech served as the kick-off for the interactive portion of SXSW. But he often took the opportunity to touch on what he viewed as pressing political issues of the day: everything from the dangers of Attorney General Jeff Sessions for a criminal justice system that's overly reliant on incarceration to the broken US food system (where tax dollars fund ads for food, fund campaigns telling you not to eat those foods, and then fund health resources to combat problems caused in the first place by government-supported foods). No matter the topic, Sen Booker kept coming back to an overarching message about the need for love at this time of great division.

When he did talk about tech, Booker spoke of innovation as a double-edged sword.

Republican Sens March 8 claimed that network neutrality rules are hurting broadband network investment and urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to overturn them. Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI) agreed that net neutrality rules harm Internet service provider investment and offered a lengthy analogy to explain why.

Sen Johnson said he wants to cut through the “rhetoric, slogans, and buzzwords,” before saying that enforcing net neutrality rules is like letting too many people use a bridge and ruin people’s lawns. Net neutrality rules, he said, also give adult content the same level of network access as remote medical services. The net neutrality rules passed in 2015 when the FCC was controlled by Democrats prevent fixed and mobile ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful Internet traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment. Sen Johnson seems to be mostly concerned about an alleged inability of doctors and healthcare organizations to pay for priority over illegal and adult content. Net neutrality protections apply only to lawful Internet content, so the FCC rules do not prevent ISPs from blocking the illegal content that Sen Johnson is worried about.

Just a few weeks after escaping a network neutrality investigation into data cap exemptions, Verizon has decided to let its FiOS mobile video stream on its wireless network without counting against data caps. Customers who have Verizon FiOS TV at home and a Verizon Wireless smartphone plan can watch TV outside their homes without using up the data allotments on limited mobile plans.

Just two months ago, the Federal Communications Commission accused Verizon Wireless of violating net neutrality rules by letting its Go90 video service stream without counting against customers' data caps as the company charged other video providers for the same data cap exemptions (also known as "zero-rating"). But the FCC's new Republican leadership rescinded that claim and ended the investigation last month, giving carriers the green light to expand data cap exemptions. Verizon's Go90 mobile video service hasn't been a smashing success, and 155 employees were reportedly laid off as a result in January. But Verizon has 4.7 million FiOS TV subscribers, and the data cap exemptions might make them more likely to pay for Verizon's mobile service as well.

The world’s largest technology investor is preparing to ramp up his bet on the Trump economy. Masayoshi Son, the billionaire technology entrepreneur from Japan, promised President Trump late in 2016 that he would create 50,000 new jobs in the United States through a $100 billion technology fund. Now, Son and his financial advisers are weighing several major possible deals for Sprint, the struggling American wireless operator controlled by Son’s SoftBank.

Be it a tie-up with T-Mobile US, Sprint’s closest competitor, or a more ambitious marriage with the cable colossus Comcast, a transaction would allow Son to fulfill a long-held ambition to invest aggressively in wireless networks in the United States and enable next-generation mobile technology. In Feb, several executives from SoftBank spent a day in Washington talking to senior members of Trump’s economic team, according to bankers briefed on these meetings. The talks and the rush to assess potential deals for Sprint, the country’s fourth-largest mobile operator, highlight how the Trump administration’s push for lighter regulation and lower taxes has been a powerful lure for cash-rich investors the world over.

[Commentary] In today’s economy, it is equally important that access to the backbone of twenty-first century infrastructure, the Internet, be similarly unfettered. That is why it is critical that we maintain the net neutrality protections and clear oversight authority that the Federal Communications Commission put in place in 2015 through the Open Internet Order. The Open Internet order is working well as it is and should remain undisturbed.

To prohibit ideological political appointees from unilaterally dismantling the order, we would welcome the partnership of our Republican colleagues to codify into statute the full protections of net neutrality, including the authority and ability of the FCC to adapt regulations to changing conditions. If President Trump and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai want to demonstrate that they indeed serve the American people rather than a few corporate friends, they should make clear immediately that they do not support any undoing of the protections of net neutrality. If not, they can expect a wall of resistance from Senate Democrats, who will continue fighting tooth and nail to protect fair and equal Internet access for all Americans.

[Sen Chuck Schumer is the Senate Minority Leader]

[Commentary] Let’s put the scare tactics and apocalyptic rhetoric aside. The Internet worked great in 2014 when there were no net neutrality rules. And it still works great today after the Federal Communications Commission applied Ma Bell regulations from 1934 to broadband. The Internet’s future, however, is uncertain because of ideological bureaucrats at the FCC who adopted a misguided regulatory approach that has chilled investment and offers no protections against excessive bureaucratic interference in the years ahead.

While the FCC’s 2015 rules may soon be consigned to the dustbin of history, the last few months have shown us all that political winds can and often do shift suddenly. The only way to truly provide certainty for open Internet protections is for Congress to pass bipartisan legislation. The certainty of bipartisan law transcends administrations. Over the past few months, many of my Democrat colleagues have grown to appreciate this more. Regardless of what happens at the FCC with the 2015 rules, I again stand ready to work on legislation protecting the open Internet that sets forth clear digital rules of the road for both the Internet community and government regulators. Rather than heavy-handed and open-ended regulations that stifle the Internet, we need a statute offering clear and enduring rules that balance innovation and investment for all parts of the Internet ecosystem.

[Sen Thune is the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee]

The California Supreme Court ruled that state and local officials must disclose public records even if those "writings" are held on private devices or accounts. The City of San Jose and the County of Santa Clara had argued that such records could be exempted from the California Public Records Act. The case dates back to 2009, when Ted Smith, a local environment activist, filed a public records request about various San Jose officials' requests concerning local development efforts. When records came back that did not include materials from personal devices or accounts, he sued.

The state Supreme Court was unequivocal in its conclusion: "CPRA and the Constitution strike a careful balance between public access and personal privacy. This case concerns how that balance is served when documents concerning official business are created or stored outside the workplace. The issue is a narrow one: Are writings concerning the conduct of public business beyond CPRA's reach merely because they were sent or received using a non governmental account? Considering the statute's language and the important policy interests it serves, the answer is no. Employees' communications about official agency business may be subject to CPRA regardless of the type of account used in their preparation or transmission."

The Federal Communications Commission recently gave mobile carriers the green light to expand zero-rating, a method of favoring online content by exempting it from data caps. At the same time, carriers have been competing to offer the best unlimited data plans—and without data caps, there’s no need for zero-rating. But that doesn’t mean zero-rating and similar free data offers are over and done with, because many customers are still going to buy cheaper, limited data plans.

AT&T and Verizon seemed reluctant to make unlimited data plans widely available until they faced competitive pressure to do so. Those two carriers have created new sources of revenue by seeking payments from companies that want to bypass data caps in order to reach more customers. AT&T and Verizon have also made their own video services more attractive by exempting them from caps. You can expect that to continue despite the rise of unlimited data and possibly accelerate because the FCC’s new Republican leadership intends to allow both paid and unpaid data cap exemptions.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said his "light-touch" approach to regulation is already helping consumers in the form of unlimited smartphone data plans from major US carriers. And he predicted that getting rid of "utility-style regulation" over broadband providers will boost Internet access across the US.

There are, however, reasons to think that the FCC's zero-rating decision was not responsible for the new unlimited data offerings. For one thing, selling unlimited data harms the business case for paid data cap exemptions. If carriers don't limit the amount of data mobile customers can use each month, there's no reason for online content providers to pay the carriers for zero-rating. While data caps are hated by customers, they create a scarcity that can be monetized by carriers as long as the FCC allows paid zero-rating. Secondly, there were already unlimited data plans before Pai became chairman. T-Mobile USA introduced its "T-Mobile One" unlimited plan in August 2016, while Democrat Tom Wheeler was still FCC chairman and the FCC was pursuing its net neutrality investigation into zero-rating. Sprint was already selling unlimited data and so was AT&T (although AT&T's unlimited data was only available to DirecTV and U-verse TV customers).

Google Fiber's new wireless Internet division is apparently ready to expand. The company's Webpass subsidiary says in a job listing that it is "searching for a General Manager to launch our Seattle market." The new GM will be "directly responsible for the growth of our local telecom network and revenue" and will oversee construction and installation schedules. Webpass, which offers up to 1Gbps upload and download speeds for $60 a month and without data caps, was purchased by Google Fiber in October 2016 and already sells wireless home Internet service in Boston, Chicago, Miami, San Diego, Oakland, and San Francisco. (Advertised speeds are anywhere from 100Mbps to 1Gbps, depending on location.) The plan would bring Google’s wireless option to Seattle’s dense urban center where creating a new physical fiber network can be expensive and impractical.