Ars Technica

A local attorney has sued the City of Chicago and numerous police officials in a proposed federal class-action lawsuit, claiming that he and countless others were unconstitutionally searched when the police used a cell-site simulator without a warrant. In the suit, Jerry Boyle, who describes himself as an “attorney and longtime volunteer legal observer with the National Lawyers’ Guild,” alleged that while attending the “Reclaim MLK Day” event in Chicago nearly two years ago, his phone was targeted by the Chicago Police Department’s device, better known as a stingray. Boyle argued that his Fourth Amendment and First Amendment rights were violated as a result.

Stingrays are used by law enforcement to determine a mobile phone's location by spoofing a cell tower. In some cases, stingrays can intercept calls and text messages. Once deployed, the devices intercept data from a target phone along with information from other phones within the vicinity. At times, police have falsely claimed the use of a confidential informant when they have actually deployed these particularly sweeping and intrusive surveillance tools. Often, they are used to locate criminal suspects.

Verizon Wireless is now charging a $30 upgrade fee when customers switch to a new phone, up from the previous fee of $20. The $30 upgrade fee must be paid "if you purchase a new device at retail price or through [Verizon's] device payment program," Verizon notes. The fee increase went into effect on January 5. In another change, Verizon stopped offering two-year contract renewals and device subsidies to existing customers (Verizon had already stopped offering contracts and subsidies to new customers).

When asked why the upgrade fee was raised, a Verizon spokesperson said, "These fees help cover increased cost to provide customers with America’s largest and fastest 4G LTE network." But Verizon's wireless capital expenditures have decreased, according to the company's latest earnings report. In Q3 2016, Verizon Wireless capital expenditures were $2.77 billion, down from $2.92 billion in Q3 2015, a decrease of 5.1 percent. The decrease was even bigger when looking at the first nine months of 2016. In that period, Verizon Wireless capital expenses were $7.78 billion, down from $8.47 billion for the first nine months of 2015, a drop of 8.2 percent. Verizon's total wireless operating expenses also declined more than 5 percent between 2015 and 2016. Verizon’s wireless operating revenue also declined in 2016, a fact that may help explain the fee increase.

Canada's telecommunications regulator declared that broadband Internet must be considered "a basic telecommunications service for all Canadians" and created a fund to connect rural and remote communities. With this decision, high-speed broadband is now treated as an essential technology similar to voice service. All Canadians should be able to purchase home Internet with 50Mbps download speeds and 10Mbps uploads, and they should have the option of purchasing unlimited data, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announcement said.

A new fund will make $750 million available over the next five years to support projects in areas where that level of broadband isn't available. Money will be distributed to applicants based upon a competitive process. Funding can be used either for fixed broadband service or to upgrade mobile networks, but the goals of 50Mbps/10Mbps and unlimited data for all is specifically for home Internet service. Currently, about 18 percent of Canadians, representing 2 million households, don't have access to 50Mbps/10Mbps service.

The Federal Communications Commission's two Republican members, Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly, told Internet service providers that they will get to work on gutting network neutrality rules "as soon as possible."

Commissioners Pai and O'Rielly sent a letter to five lobby groups representing wireless carriers and small ISPs; while the letter is mostly about plans to extend an exemption for small providers from certain disclosure requirements, the commissioners also said they will tackle the entire net neutrality order shortly after President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20. "[W]e will seek to revisit [the disclosure] requirements, and the Title II Net Neutrality proceeding more broadly, as soon as possible," they wrote, referring to the order that imposed net neutrality rules and reclassified ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. Commissioners Pai and O'Rielly noted that they "dissented from the Commission's February 2015 Net Neutrality decision, including the Order's imposition of unnecessary and unjustified burdens on providers."

AT&T and Verizon on Dec 16 urged the Federal Communications Commission to drop a network neutrality investigation into the companies' practice of exempting their own video from mobile data caps while charging competitors for the same exemptions. The wireless carriers have a good chance of avoiding any punishment because the FCC next month will switch to Republican control under President-elect Donald Trump, an opponent of net neutrality rules. For now, the companies are cooperating in the case, with each carrier sending replies to the FCC by the commission's deadline. AT&T lets its subsidiary DirecTV stream video without counting against AT&T mobile customers' data caps, while Verizon's Go90 video service doesn't count against data caps on the Verizon Wireless network. Other video providers must pay AT&T or Verizon to get the same data cap exemptions, also known as "zero-rating."

Tom Wheeler was sworn in to the Federal Communications Commission in November 2013, and he knew the industry well because he was a former lobbyist. From 1979 to 1984, he led the cable industry's top lobby group, and from 1992 to 2004 he was the chief lobbyist for the mobile phone industry. Looking back, Chairman Wheeler says it was easier being a lobbyist. "To make decisions that are in the common good is tough," Chairman Wheeler said. "Remember: I have been on the other side. Making demands that benefit a specific constituency is easy, as is attacking the decision-makers when you don't like that decision."

Chairman Wheeler said his greatest lesson from being chairman "is how malleable the definition of the public interest becomes when it comes to protecting self-interest. Good people would come into the office and explain that what benefited them was in the public interest, and those of an opposing view would argue that the public interest was only as they defined it." Chairman Wheeler said he concluded that "I needed to define the public interest as the common good. At a time when everyone is wrapping their self-interest in their definition of public interest, the question has to be what is the best way to serve the common interests of the most [people]."

The Nashville (TN) metro government wants a court to throw out a Comcast lawsuit that seeks to overturn rules designed to speed up deployment of Google Fiber. Nashville filed a motion to dismiss Comcast's lawsuit in US District Court in Tennessee on Nov 30, saying that Comcast incorrectly claimed Nashville's rules are preempted by state and federal law. The case is about Nashville's "One Touch Make Ready" ordinance that gives Internet service providers faster access to utility poles. One Touch Make Ready (also known as "Climb Once") lets new competitors move existing ISPs' wires in order to make room for new pole attachments, instead of having to wait for the incumbent ISPs to send work crews to move their own wires. The metro government passed the rules to help Google Fiber install wires faster, but both AT&T and Comcast are seeking to invalidate the ordinance.

President-elect Donald Trump announced a third advisor to oversee the Federal Communications Commission's transition from Democratic to Republican control. Roslyn Layton, Trump's new addition, joins Jeffrey Eisenach and Mark Jamison on the FCC transition team. All three are outspoken opponents of the FCC's Title II network neutrality rules and are affiliated with the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Layton argued on the AEI blog that government regulations aren't necessary to protect net neutrality.

"Regulation proponents argue that without such rules your Internet provider would speed up or slow down websites," she wrote. "There have never been rules against this, but Internet providers don’t do it anyway. Simply put, the business opportunity to deliver an open Internet is far greater. Failing that, antitrust laws deter discriminatory behavior, already ensuring net neutrality." Layton opposed proposed rules intended to provide alternatives to set-top boxes that must be rented from cable TV companies and customer privacy rules for Internet providers. She also supports ISPs' right to accept money in exchange for exempting some services from data caps.

President Obama weighed in on the matter of pardoning National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden on Nov 18. During his European tour, he was interviewed by Der Spiegel—the largest newspaper in Germany, a country where Snowden is particularly popular. After discussing a wide range of issues, he was asked: Are you going to pardon Edward Snowden?President Obama replied: "I can't pardon somebody who hasn't gone before a court and presented themselves, so that's not something that I would comment on at this point."

He continued, "I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system. At the point at which Mr. Snowden wants to present himself before the legal authorities and make his arguments or have his lawyers make his arguments, then I think those issues come into play. Until that time, what I've tried to suggest -- both to the American people, but also to the world -- is that we do have to balance this issue of privacy and security."

[Commentary] Proving whether fake news influenced the election more than the usual political propaganda is impossible. What's certain is that fake news on Facebook is a symptom of a larger problem: the company is trying to play contradictory roles as both trustworthy news publisher and fun social media platform for personal sharing.

The problem is that it cannot be both—at least not without making some changes. When you log into your Facebook account, your default page is dominated by a cascading "news feed," automatically selected for your pleasure, which consists of whatever your friends have shared. The company uses a mix of secret-sauce algorithms to choose which pieces of news you see. Some items are displayed based on what you've responded to before. For example, if you always like or reply to news from Trevor but ignore news from Mike, you're going to see more Trevor and less Mike. Other news that Facebook thinks you probably want to see is fed to you based on your profile. The Wall Street Journal has an incredible infographic on this, showing how Democrats on Facebook see liberal-leaning stories and Republicans see conservative-leaning ones.

Mark Zuckerberg has protested since the election that it's preposterous to believe that Facebook could change anyone's minds based on their news feed—yet the company behaves as if it does. Given that Facebook's main goal is to serve you ads and get you to buy things, their number-one priority is keeping you glued to your feed. If you see a bunch of things you hate in your feed, you're going to stop looking at it and take your clicks elsewhere. Common sense dictates that Facebook should avoid showing you news that will upset you or make you angry.