Ownership

Apparently, Facebook, Alphabet's Google, Apple, and other major technology firms are largely absent from a debate over the renewal of a broad US internet surveillance law, weakening prospects for privacy reforms that would further protect customer data. While tech companies often lobby Washington on privacy issues, the major firms have been hesitant to enter a fray over a controversial portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), industry lobbyists, congressional aides and civil liberties advocates said. Among their concerns is that doing so could jeopardize a trans-Atlantic data transfer pact underpinning billions of dollars in trade in digital services, apparently.

Technology companies and privacy groups have for years complained about the part of FISA known as Section 702 that allows the US National Security Agency (NSA) to collect and analyze e-mails and other digital communications of foreigners living overseas. Though targeted at foreigners, the surveillance also collects data on an unknown number of Americans - some privacy advocates have suggested it could be millions - without a search warrant. Section 702 will expire at the end of 2017 unless the Republican-controlled Congress votes to reauthorize it. The White House, U.S. intelligence agencies and many Republican senators want to renew the law, which they consider vital to national security, without changes and make it permanent. A coalition of Democrats and libertarian-leaning conservatives prefer, however, to amend the law with more privacy safeguards.

After relentless attacks from President Donald Trump and his allies, a series of journalistic problems, and in the shadow of a possible merger, the network’s CEO, Jeff Zucker, is feeling the heat. “I think there’s a real chance that Zucker is being forced out,” said one employee. “That’s going to blow up this organization like nothing in the history of CNN.”

The US Department of Labor has raised concerns that Google’s strict confidentiality agreements have discouraged employees from speaking to the government about discrimination as part of a high-profile wage inequality investigation. Following a judge’s ruling that Google must hand over salary records and employee contact information to federal regulators investigating possible systemic pay disparities, a labor department official said the agency was worried that the technology corporation’s restrictive employee communication policies could impede the next phase of the inquiry.

“We have had employees during the course of the investigation express concerns about whether they are permitted by Google to talk to the government, because the company policy commits them to confidentiality,” Janet Herold, labor department regional solicitor, told the Guardian in an interview after the judge’s order. “When even a single employee expresses that, that means many more people are too concerned to make the call or have the conversation. The chilling effect is quite extreme.”

Apparently, 21st Century Fox paid off a woman who accused former top executive David Hill of sexual misconduct while he ran Fox Sports. The payment happened in 1998, and suggests Fox had issues with sexual harassment long before the investigations that led to the exits of Fox News star Bill O’Reilly and founder Roger Ailes, and the ouster of Fox Sports President Jamie Horowitz in June. The payment came when Hill was chairman of Fox Sports. Hill, part of Fox chief Rupert Murdoch’s inner circle, was promoted to chairman of Fox Sports Media Group the following year, and had a 24-year career with the company that ended in 2015.

According to Sinclair Broadcasting Group, it's doing a service to its viewers by requiring the many local TV news stations it owns to air unabashedly pro-Trump propaganda on a regular basis. The local TV news giant has been pushing a right-wing slant on local television stations across the country for years. Owned by the Smiths, a family of longtime Republican donors who have all the ambition of News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch but a much lower profile, Sinclair has mostly flown under the radar. But following the election of President Donald Trump, the network has begun adopting the playbook Roger Ailes used to turn Fox News into a conservative media goliath.

Over the last few months, Sinclair has been requiring its stations to run more commentaries from pro-Trump personalities and expanding its reach to greater numbers of unassuming viewers in new local media markets. Now it's defending these clear moves to mimic the aspiring state media over at Fox with warped, brainwash-y logic: The conservative propaganda it pushes on its viewers is necessary because the rest of the media is biased.

Comcast claimed that "the threat of Title II regulation" started harming broadband network investment in 2011—years before the US government decided to apply Title II regulations to broadband. Moreover, Comcast said that net neutrality proponents who claim that investment wasn't hurt by the Title II rules "aren't living in the real world."

This comes less than a week after Comcast accused net neutrality supporters of "creat[ing] hysteria." Comcast's new statements came in comments filed July 17 with the Federal Communications Commission and in a blog post by Senior Executive VP David Cohen, who urged the FCC to stop classifying ISPs as common carriers. Comcast's claims about network investment clash with what ISPs have told their own investors; even Comcast’s chief financial officer downplayed Title II's effect on investment in December 2016. Comcast's arguments about network investment this week also go beyond what even FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has claimed. Pai has continually cited research purporting to show that broadband network investment started declining after the FCC's February 2015 decision to impose net neutrality rules backed by the commission's Title II authority over common carriers.

Capital expenditures by US internet service providers have declined by $3.6 billion since the Federal Communications Commission adopted its Title II regime for internet regulation in 2015, Comcast regulatory chief David L. Cohen said. Cohen’s blog posting—and the associated comments made to the FCC—continued Comcast’s push to get the now-Republican-led agency to reverse its regulations.

The capex figure was quoted from economist Hal Singer, who said the top 12 ISPs invested 5.6% less in 2016 vs. 2014, before Title II was enacted. “A CTIA study found that capital expenditures declined for wireless providers by 17.4% from 2015-2016,” Cohen added. “A study by Dr. George S. Ford found that the threat of Title II regulation between 2011 and 2015 reduced broadband investment by about 20% to 30%, or about $30 to $40 billion annually. That reduction amounts to "about $150-$200 billion over the five-year period," or the equivalent of losing an entire year’s worth of investment. Those who say investment isn’t impacted by the Title II regime “aren’t living in the real world,” Cohen also said.

T-Mobile said a new report from Ookla indicates its LTE network continues to provide the fastest average download speeds among major US wireless carriers. And the carrier made a point of noting that Verizon's and AT&T's networks have slowed since the bigger carriers have jumped aboard the unlimited bandwagon. T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray claimed in a blog post that fresh Ookla data “based on millions of real-world customer experiences” using the Speedtest app shows that T-Mobile’s network ranked first in speed and LTE availability.

An Ookla representative said that the data has yet to be published but that Ookla reviewed T-Mobile’s claim before Ray’s post was published. “The real news is how dramatically both AT&T and Verizon’s networks have caved since making unlimited available to their customers—all while T-Mobile’s network has continued to soar,” Ray wrote before referring to a chart T-Mobile created based on the data. “That chart? That’s what it looks like when carriers jump into unlimited without doing the hard work to make sure their networks are ready. In that chart, you can see that Verizon has plunged all the way down to third place behind AT&T on network speed. That’s just in the first full quarter since offering unlimited.”

The Trump administration’s attempt to scrap and replace network neutrality rules could open the door for internet providers like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon to charge some companies for faster delivery of their web content or services. It’s not their stated goal, but these so-called online “fast lanes” can’t be completely outlawed under the more lenient approaches to net neutrality advocated by broadband providers at the Federal Communications Commission. Some telecom companies even questioned whether the FCC should play the primary role in enforcing net neutrality at all.

One of the proposals: Telecom giants asked the FCC to consider relying on a different part of federal telecom law to safeguard the open internet. That might sound simple enough, but the portion of law they cite could open the legal door for ISPs to start charging companies like Google or Netflix for faster delivery of their content, a practice known as paid prioritization. They argue that fears of online fast and slow lanes are “baseless,” in the words of AT&T, which further explained that a full-on ban against paid prioritization actually makes it hard for them “to support autonomous cars, remote surgery, and a growing array of other unusually latency-sensitive applications.” Comcast similarly raised self-driving cars in its comment to the FCC.

Coy, cagy media folks often resort to vagueness when they don’t want to talk about money, e.g., “six figures,” “seven figures” and so on. However, the system breaks down with deals for distressed media properties, as “one figure” doesn’t really leave much room for the imagination. Still, that is the price range for the recent sale of Chicago Sun-Times by publisher Wrapports, LLC. It was acquired by an investment group led by Chicago alderman Edwin Eisendrath for the grand sum of $1. (The newsstand price for a single copy of the newspaper.) That's according to a report published by the newspaper, citing an unnamed source familiar with the deal.

The deal also includes the Chicago Reader and the weekly’s syndicated “Straight Dope” column. Both are being absorbed into Answers Media, a multimedia production company simultaneously acquired by Eisendrath. In fairness, that’s not the only financial commitment made by the buyers. As in a number of similar deals in recent years, the investment group, which includes several labor unions, agreed to assume an unspecified amount of debt. It also agreed to pony up $11.2 million in operating funds to demonstrate their intention to keep the newspaper a going concern. The symbolic price tag is reminiscent of a number of other deals over the last decade.