Vice

On Dec 6, as President-elect Donald Trump continued finalizing his cabinet from his transition base atop Trump Tower, a group of thirty demonstrators gathered below to make a very specific recommendation: “That Donald Trump put America first and name John McAfee, the most qualified expert, to be our nation’s Cybersecurity Czar.” The event was part of a public campaign organized by the hacking collective Anonymous, aimed, oddly enough, at “securing America from Hackers.”

For the remainder of the day, the protesters alternated between chants of “Make the internet safe again” and “We want McAfee,” as they distributed flyers highlighting the software magnate’s unique qualifications to confused passersby. While not all of the protesters were affiliated with Anonymous, the requisite Guy Fawkes mask was worn by nearly everyone.

The controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is on its deathbed. After international outcry and intense grassroots organizing, US lawmakers from both parties rejected the 12-country deal, including every leading presidential candidate. The president-elect has said he’ll withdraw from the pact on day one. The TPP’s demise is a huge blow to the hundreds of corporate lobbyists who worked closely with government officials to craft the agreement in secret. But it’s a major victory for free speech and civil liberties in the digital age. While many of the largest technology companies struck a deal with the White House and ended up supporting the TPP, it has long been condemned by tech experts, free speech advocates, startups, and civil society groups, along with some of the biggest websites on the Internet like reddit and Wikipedia, who have long championed the open web.

I’m a member of FOI-L, a listserv for serial Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requesters to discuss the intricacies of government sunshine laws. In the days after Donald Trump’s election, members of the listserv have been discussing what FOIA—which allows citizens to request specific government documents from federal agencies—will look like under President-elect Trump.

While we have no way of knowing what President-elect Trump will do for sure, open government and journalists are bracing for an administration that could be more obstructionist. One thing we’re very likely to see in the next administration is a flurry of new FOIA requests and lawsuits from reinvigorated liberal nonprofit groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which, to be fair, were active FOIA requesters during the Obama administration as well. You should also keep an eye on Judicial Watch, a conservative group dedicated to filing FOIAs to expose government misconduct that currently has more than 20 open lawsuits against Hillary Clinton and sued the Obama administration more than 300 times.

A global conference of senior military and intelligence officials taking place in London the week of Nov 14 reveals how governments increasingly view social media as “a new front in warfare” and a tool for the Armed Forces. The overriding theme of the event is the need to exploit social media as a source of intelligence on civilian populations and enemies; as well as a propaganda medium to influence public opinion. A report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Oct revealed how a CIA-funded tool, Geofeedia, was already being used by police to conduct surveillance of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to monitor activists and protesters. Although Facebook and Twitter both quickly revoked Geofeedia’s access to their social feeds, the conference proves that social media surveillance remains a rapidly growing industry with no regulatory oversight. And its biggest customers are our own governments.

Network neutrality can’t be torpedoed overnight. The Federal Communications Commission rules prohibiting online fast lanes and discriminatory broadband practices are now US policy, and they can’t be dismantled at the whim of an authoritarian president. But a Trump-backed, Republican-led FCC could simply stop enforcing the net neutrality policy, rendering it essentially toothless. That could unleash the nation’s largest cable and phone companies, including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, to expand controversial practices like “zero-rating” that are designed to circumvent net neutrality.

In order to fully kill the FCC’s net neutrality protections, President-elect Trump will most likely have to work with GOP lawmakers like Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) to re-write the Communications Act to strip out the FCC’s Title II authority regulating the nation’s largest broadband companies as “common carriers.” Or the Republican-led Congress could simply remove funding for the FCC’s ability to enforce the net neutrality policy through language in the next must-pass budget bill, which would certainly be signed by President-elect Trump.

Merely a few hours after Donald Trump declared his stunning victory, a group of hackers that is widely believed to be Russian and was involved in the breach of the Democratic National Committee launched a wave of attacks against dozens of people working at universities, think tank tanks, NGOs, and even inside the US government.

Around 9 a.m. ET on Nov 9, the hackers sent a series of phishing e-mails trying to trick dozens of victims into opening booby-trapped attachments containing malware, and clicking on malicious links, according to security firm Volexity, which observed and reported the five attack waves. The targets work for organizations such as Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, the Atlantic Council, the RAND Corporation, and the State Department, among others. One of the phishing emails included a forwarded message appearing to be from the Clinton Foundation, apparently sent by a professor at Harvard. The e-mail used the professor’s real address, and according to Volexity’s founder Steven Adair, it’s likely that the professor got hacked and the attackers then used his account to send out the phishing e-mails.

On, November 8, 26 separate Colorado communities will vote on whether their local governments should build high speed fiber Internet networks to compete with or replace big telecommunication Internet service providers. So-called municipal fiber ballot initiatives have become an annual tradition in Colorado, as roughly 100 communities have voted on measures that provide legal cover to governments who want to build new networks. The initiatives are required under a SB152, a law enacted in 2008 after several lobbying efforts by CenturyLink made it illegal for municipalities to provide fiber Internet to private premises without first obtaining permission in a ballot measure. In 2015, a record 47 communities passed similar referenda; no communities voted it down.

Not every city is going to become its own Internet service provider—the law requires cities to hold referenda even if they plan on partnering with companies on public-private fiber network initiatives. “The law uses broad definitions for what cities can and cannot do,” said Christopher Mitchell, director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative. “We only know of two that have failed in the last six years,” he added. “Many of these networks are tremendously successful.” Colorado is the only state in the country that has a ballot measure requirement for locally run networks; 22 other states have different laws that restrict local broadband efforts. With so many cities overwhelmingly voting in favor of local government-run broadband, Mitchell says that Colorado’s law hasn’t quite had the effect CenturyLink would have liked.

For pretty much any crime involving the Internet, often the first step in an investigation is trying to figure out who is behind an IP address. But, according to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, there is a problem: often it’s unclear which organisations are actually in a position to respond to legal orders for information, because of the way that IP addresses are distributed by Internet service providers (ISPs). In response, several law enforcement agencies are pushing for a change in how WHOIS data, the basic contact information of who is affiliated with an IP address, is recorded. Although likely not a privacy risk, the move, which will probably come into effect sometime in 2017, still presents a significant shake-up in how ISPs retain information.

AT&T’s proposed $85 billion buyout of Time Warner could make a mockery of US open Internet protections if the combined company decides to exploit a loophole in federal regulations in order to favor its own content at the expense of rivals. That was the blunt warning issued by Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) in a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Sen Wyden is particularly concerned that AT&T could use the controversial practice of “zero-rating” to favor Time Warner programming, thereby undermining the FCC’s policy protecting network neutrality. Zero-rating refers to a variety of practices that broadband companies use to exempt certain Internet content and services from data caps, effectively favoring those services by providing consumers with an economic rationale to use them instead of rival offerings. “I am deeply concerned that if AT&T acquires Time Warner's content, the new mega-company will have incentives to prioritize its own content over content created by small business, independent artists or by its rivals,” Sen Wyden wrote.

Fred McLaughlin speaks with a melancholy tinge in his voice. It’s not just caused by his drawn out North Dakotan accent. McLaughlin feels certain that eminent domain practices, which have cleared the path for the Dakota Access Pipeline, are setting up another future showdown. From his back porch on Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation, located near the southern border with South Dakota, McLaughlin can see people arriving to protest against oil being piped under the Missouri River, a source of water for the tribe and 18 million other Americans. But as general manager of Standing Rock Telecom, the tribe-owned local wireless service provider, McLaughlin worries that federal and private entities are coming for the tribe’s cellular spectrum next.

He mapped out this scenario for me while the sun set on the majestic North Dakota plains, closing out a tense day where fellow Native Americans were confronted by the National Guard, private security and militarized police from six states. “It’s a spectacular benefit to have our own telecoms company, and everyone can see this and validate it. It’s a point of pride,” he said. “We as tribal nations have never given up our airspace.” Standing Rock Telecom owns 17 towers and provides month-to-month contracts for 1,600 subscribers (and growing). The strong signal it provides to the reservation, which stretches from Sioux County, North Dakota, to Corson County, South Dakota, covers 3,500 square miles and has played a crucial part in disseminating grassroots media coverage of the pipeline protests.