No Matter Who Our Next President Is, They Won't Understand Technology

from the that-seems-like-a-problem dept

Politico has an article with a misleading title -- the return of the Luddite president -- which discusses how neither of the two major party Presidential candidates are even remotely tech savvy. The headline is an unfortunate oversell. Luddites aren't just people who don't know anything about technology. They're people who actively dislike certain technologies, in the belief that such advances will harm their own livelihoods. In a broader sense, the term is used to discuss people who generally dislike the march of technological progress. Again, that does not appear to be the case with either of the two candidates, who (at best) might just be described as agnostic to/indifferent to new technologies and somewhat ignorant on what that might mean from a policy perspective.

Clinton's tech travails are all over the headlines, including the lax security of her home-brewed email server and her documented struggles with fax machines — and the recently disclosed hacking of the Democratic National Committee's emails won't do much to burnish her party's image of cyber competence.

But Trump's hardly a candidate for the Geek Squad either, despite the prolific round-the-clock tweeting strategy he uses to dominate the headlines. He has boasted that he hardly ever sends emails — and, like Clinton, he often relies on staff to print news articles off the internet.

“I’m just not a believer in email,” Trump said during a news conference Wednesday where he criticized Clinton's use of a private server when she was secretary of State.

Of course, this is still problematic! Technological innovation is going to have a massive impact on a huge list of issues that any President is going to face over the next four years. And not understanding those issues, let alone how they may impact the policy choices that are being made is worrisome -- just not as worrisome as someone who actively dislikes technological progress.

Still, there are reasonable concerns here:

“These are two candidates who don't have their hands on the technology, and that’s unfortunate, because without that it’s difficult to understand this stuff on a deeper, more visceral level,” said Peter Leyden, a futurist and former managing editor of Wired who was an early Obama backer in Silicon Valley....

[....]

“We're on the verge of a fundamentally different economy that’s being absolutely transformed by the next wave of technology,” Leyden said. “It will have huge ramifications on society. And someone running the goddamn country has to know that."

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem likely. And that's probably going to keep us at Techdirt pretty busy for the next four years.

Filed Under: donald trump, hillary clinton, innovation, policy, politics, president

Clinton Friend, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, Now Pretends Hillary Never Supported TPP

from the that's-just-wrong dept

The whole silliness around Hillary Clinton and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement just keeps getting sillier. She should admit what pretty much everyone already recognizes: she supports the deal. She could then explain why she supports it and perhaps the public could have an honest and open conversation about the nature of these agreements. As we've noted more than once, we tend to support free trade here at Techdirt, but the TPP agreement is barely about free trade. It's mostly about investment and creating other regulatory/protectionist barriers. But Clinton's constant flip flopping on the issue is silly. Back in 2012, she declared the TPP to be "the gold standard" in trade agreements. It was only last fall, after she started facing primary pressure from Bernie Sanders, who was against the agreement, that she flip flopped and said:

“As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it,” Clinton said, later adding, “I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set.”

It got so ridiculous that Clinton deleted the section of her memoir where she talks about her support of the TPP. That's just literally trying to rewrite history.

Meanwhile, pretty much everyone has assumed that after the election, she'd flip flop right back into supporting the TPP. Back in February, the head of the US Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue, made it clear that he fully expected she'd flip back, and this week a US Chamber of Commerce employee who spoke at the Democratic Convention (officially as a member of "Republican Women for Hillary") has also said she expects Hillary to flip back and support the agreement.

But, of course the bigger headlines came when the Clintons' close family friend and advisor, current Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, admitted that he fully expected she'd support the TPP after the election. As we noted, this resulted in a bunch of other Clinton supporters to scream loudly about how this was crazy and Hillary was never going to support TPP. Apparently the message got back to McAuliffe, who when approached at a bar late at night by a Gawker reporter now claims not only that Hillary will never support the agreement, but that she never did in the past either.

She’s wrong. I support it. She doesn’t. She never supported it. I create jobs in Virginia, I always supported it. We’re best friends. She has never supported it.

Except, of course, she has supported it, quite clearly in the past. And almost certainly still is. I understand the political calculations here. Historically, Democrats (especially the progressive wing) have generally been against free trade. So these agreements (even when they're actually good!) are usually a tough sell to Democratic voters. But this is a weird year. Because while these agreements have almost universally been supported by Republicans, this year Donald Trump suddenly hates them -- not for all the legitimate reasons to hate them, but mainly because he doesn't understand how international trade works.

But wouldn't it be nice if Clinton could just come out and say what she really thought about the TPP and have an open conversation about it, rather than playing this "wink wink nod nod" game where basically everyone knows her true position, but she won't say it?

Filed Under: hillary clinton, politics, terry mcauliffe, tpp, trade agreements

'Wish I Had The Power' To Hack Enemies' Emails, Says Man Very Close To Having Such Power

from the maybe-time-to-pull-back-nsa-powers dept

This weird presidential election continues to get weirder. Donald Trump, perhaps upset about being overshadowed this week by the Democratic Convention, held a press conference on Wednesday morning where he said a whole bunch of completely nutty stuff. A lot of the attention is being placed on his weird possibly half-joking request that Russia hack into Hillary Clinton's emails and reveal the 33,000 that were deleted (or maybe just give them to the FBI, as he later said in a tweet). That was bizarre on a number of levels, including coming right after denying he had any connection to Russia and the possibility that they had hacked the Democratic National Committee's computer system.

But it was his follow up comment that should be a hell of a lot more terrifying. He claimed that he "wished" he had the power to hack her emails:

"Honestly, I wish I had that power," Trump responded. "I’d love to have that power."

Now, again, there's an argument that this comment was sarcastic in the same manner as the "please, Russia" comment that everyone's been focusing on.

But here's the thing: in just a few months he very well might have that power. The NSA certainly has the ability to hack into just about anyone's emails should they want to. And no matter what we feel about whether or not the NSA has or is currently abusing that power, at the very least the level of abuses aren't nearly as bad as they could be in the hands of someone who just doesn't seem to give a fuck about the Constitution or the law.

As we noted a few months ago, surveillance powers should be designed as if the person you least trust in the world had control over the systems. Whether -- to you -- that's Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton or someone else entirely doesn't really matter. It's a pretty clear reason that we should be massively curtailing the surveillance powers granted by the US government to both the intelligence community and the law enforcement community.

Here we have the nominated presidential candidate joking that he'd make use of the power -- which he'd have -- to hack into the communications of political enemies. And while some will argue this is yet another on the long checklist of reasons why Trump is not fit for the job, it's even more a condemnation of our surveillance powers today. Whatever people think of the candidates, it seems like the one thing we should agree on is vastly limiting the surveillance powers.

Filed Under: donald trump, emails, hacking, hillary clinton, nsa, power, russia, surveillance

Clinton Friend Admits What Everyone Knows Is True: Clinton Still Supports TPP & Will Back It

from the but-of-course dept

If you've followed the whole TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) thing at all, and/or the Presidential election this year, you probably already know that Hillary Clinton famously flip-flopped on TPP. She was for it, before she was against it (and tried to rewrite history to hide her support of it). Of course, basically everyone recognized that her newfound concerns about TPP were made up, as a response to (at the time) surging support for Bernie Sanders, who was vocally against the agreement. But, of course, as tons of people have been saying all along, everyone expects that after the election she'll magically flip flop back to supporting TPP.

But, of course, because we're doing this big elaborate stage play called an election, no one's supposed to admit that's what's happening. Someone apparently forgot to tell that to Terry McAuliffe, current Virginia governor and long term best buddies with the Clintons. On Tuesday, he said what everyone already knows: Clinton will absolutely support the TPP after the election:

“I worry that if we don’t do TPP, at some point China’s going to break the rules -- but Hillary understands this,” he said in an interview after his speech on the main stage at the Democratic National Convention. “Once the election’s over, and we sit down on trade, people understand a couple things we want to fix on it but going forward we got to build a global economy.”

Pressed on whether Clinton would turn around and support the trade deal she opposed during the heat of the primary fight against Bernie Sanders, McAuliffe said: “Yes. Listen, she was in support of it. There were specific things in it she wants fixed.”

And, of course, her Vice Presidential pick Tim Kaine did an even faster flip flop. Last Thursday, before he was announced as the running mate, he spoke out in support of TPP.

"I am having discussions with a lot of groups around Virginia about the treaty itself. I see much in it to like,” Kaine said Thursday during a series of roundtable events in suburban northern Virginia. “I think it's an upgrade of labor standards, I think it's an upgrade of environmental standards. I think it's an upgrade of intellectual property protections."

The very next day he was named the VP pick, and suddenly he's against TPP:

Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate, has gone on record saying he cannot support the Trans-Pacific Partnership in its current form— a stance calculated to make him more appealing to supporters of Bernie Sanders who revile the deal.

Kaine spokeswoman Amy Dudley said Saturday that the Virginia Democrat shared his negative views on the trade deal with Clinton this week, confirming a report by The Washington Post. “He agreed with her judgment that it fell short” when it came to protecting wages and national security, a Clinton aide reportedly told the newspaper.

Of course, now that McAuliffe blabbed the not-very-secret strategy of the Democratic Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates flat out lying... the Clinton campaign went into damage control mode and insisted "nuh-uh, she really is against TPP." They trotted out an "adviser," Gene Sperling to insist there's no flip flop planned:

“What she has said is she is against it now, she is against in the lame duck and she’s against it afterwards, and I do believe that when she starts her administration, she is going to want to be focused on unifying Democrats,” he said.

Then, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta also stepped up to insist that Clinton would not flip flop after the election: Keep those links handy, folks, because after the election they may be useful. I'm posting that Podesta tweet as a screenshot, in case it magically disappears from Twitter...

Of course, the truly amazing thing here? For the longest time, it's been the Republicans who were the driving force on agreements like the TPP, and there was only pressure on getting enough Democrats to support those agreements. Now we have a Republican Presidential candidate who seems to be vehemently against the TPP (though for thoroughly clueless reasons) and a Democratic Presidential candidate who is secretly supporting it. This election season is topsy turvy.

Filed Under: donald trump, flip flop, gene sperling, hillary clinton, john podesta, politics, terry mcauliffe, tim kaine, tpp, trade

Could Donald Trump Block Hillary Clinton's Campaign From Visiting His Website Via The CFAA?

from the who-the-hell-knows dept

In the past few weeks, we've written about two troubling rulings in the 9th Circuit appeals court concerning the CFAA, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That law, that was literally written in response to Ronald Reagan being freaked out by the (fictional) movie War Games, was designed to go after hackers and make computer hacking into other people's computers a crime. The law is woefully outdated and unfortunately vague, with terms like "unauthroized access" and "exceeds authorized access." For years, many of us have been pushing for Congress to reform the law to make it not quite so broad, because in its current setup it's the law the DOJ relies on when all else fails. That's why the DOJ loves it. If you did something it doesn't like on a computer, it'll try to use the CFAA against you.

The two recent cases were not helpful. The first, called Nosal II (because it was the second CFAA case involving David Nosal trying to use data from his former employer), found that convincing a former colleague to share their password with you could violate the CFAA. The court tried to limit the impact of this, by adding some caveats, and insisting that mere password sharing wouldn't qualify without some additional event that indicated a lack of authorization, but it does still seem like a vague standard that many will try to use going forward. The second case, Facebook v. Power, found that Power violated the CFAA by continuing to access Facebook accounts, with permission of those Facebook users, after Facebook had sent a cease-and-desist. The court found that the cease-and-desist acted as a clear point that said "you're not allowed here."

But it's difficult to square that with the original Nosal ruling (Nosal 1) which found that merely violating a terms of service was not a CFAA violation. So ignoring a terms of service is not a CFAA violation, but ignoring a cease-and-desist letter is. It's not clear why one has power over the other, though perhaps there's an argument that a cease-and-desist is a proactive action towards an individual by a website, whereas a terms of service is broadly applicable. Still, it feels weak.

And, it raises tricky situations like the following, first raised by Andy Sellars, about a situation in which one individual alerts another that they can no longer visit a website. Let's say this happened between two presidential candidates. Hypothetically. And, as Eriq Gardner at the Hollywood Reporter notes in response, the answer is totally unclear. And that seems really problematic. I had tossed out some hypotheticals in my original post on the Facebook v. Power ruling, but this is a good one as well, because you could absolutely see some political candidates issuing that kind of cease-and-desist. There may be arguments about whether then accessing such a website would create a loss necessary to qualify for the CFAA, but it's still quite worrisome that the court has now put in place a vague standard that at least suggests that you can bar someone from a website by merely telling them not to go there. That's going to create a bunch of messy litigation going forward.

Filed Under: cease and desist, cfaa, donald trump, hillary clinton, hypotheticals, public website

FBI: Clinton 'Should Have Known' Private Email Server 'No Way To Handle Classified Info', But No Charges Will Be Sought

from the not-even-the-sting-of-a-wrist-slap dept

FBI Director James Comey just held a press conference detailing the FBI's findings during its investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. The findings are irrefutably ugly.

The FBI, "painstakingly" reassembling emails scattered to the digital wind by device abandonment, multiple server upgrades, lawyers' brute-force attempts to separate personal emails from work-related emails, and a general lack of professionalism across the board, found that Clinton's private email server contained :

• 110 classified emails in 52 chains
• 8 top secret emails
• 36 "secret" emails
• 8 "confidential" emails

All were clearly designated as such at the time sent or received. Additionally, another 2,000 emails had been "up-classified" to confidential after being sent or received.

It also found several work-related emails Clinton's staff did not include with the 30,000 handed over to the State Department for release to FOIA requesters.

There was no built-in archival function in Clinton's private server setup, a basic feature considered essential by professionals. This slowed the FBI's investigation as it was forced to reconstruct emails from the digital detritus left behind by "routine purging" and device deactivation.

As noted above, Clinton's lawyers made several efforts to delete "personal" emails, but they did so by using searches and header info, rather than actually reading the emails' content. The FBI did read the content of what it could recover, finding it likely that some work-related emails vanished during these purges. It also discovered Clinton hired some smart lawyers: "lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery."

But at the end of it all, the FBI found Clinton's use of private email server to be severely stupid, rather than criminal. Comey says the FBI found no signs of "intentional misconduct" by lawyers during personal email deletions or routine purges. Likewise, there was "no clear evidence of intentional misconduct by staffers," but Clinton's emails were "clearly mishandled."

The FBI's final conclusion is damning, but only in terms of harsh words, not actual punishment. Clinton and her staff "knew or should have known" a private email server was "no way to properly handle classified email" -- especially when housed on private server with "no full-time staff" or anything approaching the level of service one would equate with email services like Gmail. Comey also noted that Clinton used her personal domain "extensively" outside of the US, needlessly exposing sensitive information in the "presence of hostile actors."

James Comey also took a little time to bash her agency, stating that the FBI found the "security culture" of the State Department to be "lacking."

But for anyone who was hoping this would result in criminal charges, the FBI has nothing in the way of good news. Comey says it's not the FBI's call to pursue prosecution, but stated that "no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case" against Clinton, despite her repeated careless handling of sensitive info via her barely-competent private email service.

Final call, according to Comey: Clinton, staffers may be subject to security or administrative sanctions, but "no [criminal] charges are appropriate" in this case.

Clinton walks. The FBI has determined there was no malice in her actions. Being stupid and dishonest is no crime, at least not as far as the FBI is willing to push it. The DOJ has the final call, but it's highly unlikely it will override the FBI's recommendation. The decision is one that people in Clinton's position are far more likely to receive. Others lower on the political ladder -- or, god forbid, just average voting Americans -- are far less likely to receive this much deference from the nation's top prosecutors.

Filed Under: fbi, hillary clinton, james comey, state department

Hillary Clinton's Intellectual Property Platform: Too Vague & Confusing

from the take-a-stand dept

Yesterday, Karl covered Hillary Clinton's newly released platform on technology & innovation as it related to broadband policy and encryption. Today I wanted to look through what it said on another set of key issues to folks around Techdirt: copyright and patent policy. And, as with Karl's post yesterday, there appear to be some things that sound good, but are so vague and devoid of actual nuance as to be laughable. I get it: this is the political platform of someone running for President, and thus it's going to be worded in a vague and noncommital way on these issues, because these aren't issues that lead people to decide whether or not to vote for someone as President.

On the good-sounding side, there are promises about dealing with the orphan works problem and the patent troll problem. But they're weighted down with language that is quite vague and could mean almost anything, including lots of bad policy proposals.

Effective Copyright Policy: The federal government should modernize the copyright system through reforms that facilitate access to out-of-print and orphan works, while protecting the innovation incentives in the system. It should also promote open-licensing arrangements for copyrighted material supported by federal grant funding.

Now, just the fact that a Presidential campaign mentions that there's a problem with copyright law blocking access to content is somewhat revolutionary, so kudos to whoever got that into the plan. But the weird "while protecting the innovation incentives in the system" trailing line could mean anything and is designed to be just vague enough for anyone to read anything into it. What are the "innovation incentives in the system" right now? Well, on that, people totally disagree. Some people think that fair use, user rights and DMCA safe harbors are the innovation incentives in the system. Others, of course, argue it's long copyright terms and insane statutory damages. These two groups disagree and the Clinton platform offers no further enlightenment.

The fact that the orphan works problem gets called out is exciting, but even then the solution isn't clear. The only real solution to the orphan works problem is to go back to a system of formalities, requiring registration to get a copyright. Then place stuff that isn't registered and where there's no way to contact the copyright holder in the public domain. Boom. Problem solved. But it seems unlikely that that's where Clinton is going with this.

In the more detailed fact sheet, the expansion of these ideas is basically just the same thing as the condensed version but with way more words:

Effective Copyright Policy: Copyrights encourage creativity and incentivize innovators to invest knowledge, time, and money into the generation of myriad forms of content. However, the copyright system has languished for many decades, and is in need of administrative reform to maximize its benefits in the digital age. Hillary believes the federal government should modernize the copyright system by unlocking—and facilitating access to—orphan works that languished unutilized, benefiting neither their creators nor the public. She will also promote open-licensing arrangements for copyrighted material and data supported by federal grant funding, including in education, science, and other fields. She will seek to develop technological infrastructure to support digitization, search, and repositories of such content, to facilitate its discoverability and use. And she will encourage stakeholders to work together on creative solutions that remove barriers to the seamless and efficient licensing of content in the U.S. and abroad.

Open licensing is good. Removing barriers to effective licensing is also good. But there's no plan here. People have talked about these things for ages and never gotten anywhere because entrenched interests don't want this kind of thing to happen at all.

Also, there's a weird call out to SOPA -- but not in the copyright section. Rather, she mentions it in the net neutrality section because whatever, no one cares:

She also maintains her opposition to policies that unnecessarily restrict the free flow of data online –such as the high profile fight over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

The language choices here appear to have been workshopped by a committee of hundreds. What the hell does this mean? Does it mean that she would oppose the fight over SOPA? Or SOPA itself? Because it's pretty clear that she's implying that she would oppose things like SOPA (which, again, had nothing to do with net neutrality). But she also was a SOPA supporter -- at least until it was politically inconvenient. During the height of the SOPA battle, she sent a letter insisting (contrary to the statement in her new platform) that there was "no contradiction" between supporting the free flow of information and enforcing strict copyright laws:

"There is no contradiction between intellectual property rights protection and enforcement and ensuring freedom of expression on the internet."

So if she believes that, then SOPA wouldn't have restricted the free flow of data. Of course, once the public tide turned against SOPA -- guess what -- so did Hillary, suddenly making it out to have been an important fight for internet freedom, even though she denied that very point just months earlier:

“The United States wants the Internet to remain a space where economic, political, and social exchanges flourish. To do that, we need to protect people who exercise their rights online, and we also need to protect the Internet itself from plans that would undermine its fundamental characteristics.”

In other words, like a standard politician, we've got vague promises and flip flops -- along with ignoring previous positions when convenient.

As for patents, for the short version, we've got:

Improve the Patent System to Reward Innovators: Hillary will enact targeted reforms to the patent system to reduce excessive patent litigation and strengthen the capacity of the Patent and Trademark Office, so that we continue to reward innovators.

Again, vague language that can be taken in many different ways (again, obviously on purpose). The good: highlighting the problem of "excessive patent litigation" is definitely a good sign and is basically an acknowledgement of the problems with the patent system -- mainly patent trolling, but that should include excessive litigation by operating companies as well. But again, that's immediately weighed down by what follows, which could mean basically anything. Strengthening the capacity of the PTO... for what? To reject bad patents? That would be good. To grant more patents? That might be bad. And the whole "so that we continue to reward innovators." What does that mean? If you believe that the patent system itself rewards innovators, then that would mean encouraging more patenting. If you believe that the patent system is stifling innovators, then that should mean ending bad patents that are used to hinder innovation. Which is it? Who the hell knows. And I doubt Clinton herself has any real understanding of the issues here either.

The longer version makes it clear she's supporting some of the current anti-patent troll legislation, which is a good thing:

The Obama Administration made critical updates to our patent system through the America Invents Act, which created the Patent Trial and Appeals Board, and through other efforts to rein in frivolous suits by patent trolls. But costly and abusive litigation remains, which is why Hillary supports additional targeted rule changes. She supports laws to curb forum shopping and ensure that patent litigants have a nexus to the venue in which they are suing; require that specific allegations be made in demand letters and pleadings; and increase transparency in ownership by making patent litigants disclose the real party in interest.

Those are good things. But then we've got the expanded explanation of strengthening the PTO and again it's a giant "huh?"

Hillary believes it is essential that the PTO have the tools and resources it needs to act expeditiously on patent applications and ensure that only valid patents are issued. That is why she supports legislation to allow the PTO to retain the fees it collects from patent applicants in a separate fund—ending the practice of fee diversion by Congress, and enabling the PTO to invest funds left over from its annual operations in new technologies, personnel, and training. Hillary also believes we should set a standard of faster review of patent applications and clear out the backlog of patent applications.

Of course, this is somewhat contradictory with the stuff raised earlier. Fee retention is one of those ideas that perhaps makes sense, but skews the incentives in dangerous ways, possibly pushing the PTO to encourage more patent applications and patents in order to get more fees. Similarly, "faster review" historically has meant lots more crappy patents getting approved -- leading to more patent trolling over bogus patents.

So, basically, she's promising points to the two key sides of the patent debate, without noting how the two plans are in conflict with each other if she's looking to solve real problems.

Again, none of this is a surprise. This kind of wishy washy political language where none of it really means anything is par for the course for just about any major politician, and Clinton has historically made this kind of noncommittal hand-wavy bullshit an artform all her own. She's not looking to solve real problems. She's looking to convince you that she's actually heard of the pet problem you're focused on and she has a vague plan to "solve it." Never mind the details or the fact that the plan conflicts with other parts of her plan.

Filed Under: copyright, hillary clinton, innovation, patents, platform, sopa, technology

Hillary Clinton's Tech Policy Plan Includes Some Empty Broadband Promises And A Continued War On Encryption

from the making-friends-and-influencing-people dept

Hillary Clinton's tech policy plan has been released, and it includes some new, potentially hollow broadband promises, a pledge to continue defending the FCC's net neutrality rules from telecom industry attack, some feel good commentary on the sharing and innovation economies, and continued support for the candidate's absurd war on encryption.

With the FCC's recent net neutrality court victory, the broadband industry's best path forward is to elect a President who'll stock the commission with revolving door regulators who'll simply fail to enforce the rules. But Trump's proven so divisive to some Conservatives, that even AT&T's top lobbyist Jim Cicconi this week came out in gushing support of Clinton:

"Mr. Cicconi, who worked in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said he has backed every GOP presidential candidate since 1976. “But this year I think it’s vital to put our country’s well being ahead of party,” he said in a statement provided by the campaign. “Hillary Clinton is experienced, qualified, and will make a fine president. The alternative, I fear, would set our nation on a very dark path."

Given AT&T's threat to take the neutrality fight to the Supreme Court, Cicconi's support is curious, but may say more about Trump's unpredictability than it does about Clinton. Regardless, the 14-page "technology and innovation agenda" includes upsetting her new BFF by continuing to fight for net neutrality:

"Hillary believes that the government has an obligation to protect the open internet. The open internet is not only essential for consumer choice and civic empowerment – it is a cornerstone of start-up innovation and creative disruption in technology markets. Hillary strongly supports the FCC decision under the Obama Administration to adopt strong network neutrality rules that deemed internet service providers to be common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. These rules now ban broadband discrimination, prohibit pay-for-play favoritism, and establish oversight of “interconnection” relationships between providers. Hillary would defend these rules in court and continue to enforce them."

The plan also makes some arguably vague promises on broadband, promising to deliver ubiquitous broadband to all Americans by 2020:

"Hillary will finish the job of connecting America’s households to the internet, committing that by 2020, 100 percent of households in America will have the option of affordable broadband that delivers speeds sufficient to meet families’ needs. She will deliver on this goal with continue investments in the Connect America Fund, Rural Utilities Service program, and Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), and by directing federal agencies to consider the full range of technologies as potential recipients—i.e., fiber, fixed wireless, and satellite—while focusing on areas that lack any fixed broadband networks currently."

While some outlets were quick to call this plan ambitious, historically vague broadband coverage promises haven't meant all that much.

A favorite pastime of politicians is to make broadband promises they know will be completed even if government doesn't lift a finger, then gobble up the easy political brownie points (with ample help from an unskeptical tech press) after the fact. Obama, for example, in 2011 promised wireless broadband coverage to 98% of all Americans, ignoring the fact that industry data at the time suggested we'd already met that mark (albeit poorly) with 2G and 3G wireless. Former FCC boss Julius Genachowski similarly received ample praise for issuing a "gigabit city challenge", knowing full well gigabit service was arriving without much help from him or other politicians at the time (mostly via frustrated towns and cities forced into the broadband business on their own).

And while the FCC will help us get to 100% broadband coverage by opening up spectrum for 5G, moving from the supposed 98% broadband coverage mark to 100% really won't require much government help. 5G is arriving by 2020 or so regardless of what Clinton does, as it's a cornerstone of AT&T and Verizon's plan to hang up on unwanted DSL customers they refuse to upgrade. That doesn't somehow mean the broadband that's "100% available" to you is going to actually be good or cheap, since that would involve the government acknowledging that lack of competition means Americans pay more for broadband than most developed nations. Fixing this will take significantly more than empty promises, and for Clinton, it will certainly involve pissing off new allies like Jim Cicconi.

The lion's share of Clinton's tech agenda consists of ambiguous promises that, as with all campaign promises, may or may not have any actual basis in fact.

Clinton's plan calls for improving government adoption of technology and efficiency, improving our patent system (which the Clinton camp declares "has been an envy of the world"), and other feel good efforts such as "facilitating citizen engagement in government innovation" and using technology to "improve outcomes and drive government accountability" (doesn't that sound lovely?). But Clinton also makes it clear she intends to continue waging war on encryption -- her plan for a "Manhattan Project" to "solve" (read: weaken) encryption still very much on the table:

"Hillary rejects the false choice between privacy interests and keeping Americans safe. She was a proponent of the USA Freedom Act, and she supports Senator Mark Warner and Representative Mike McCaul’s idea for a national commission on digital security and encryption. This commission will work with the technology and public safety communities to address the needs of law enforcement, protect the privacy and security of all Americans that use technology, assess how innovation might point to new policy approaches, and advance our larger national security and global competitiveness interests."

Yes, it's abundantly clear that Clinton and friends continue to struggle with the idea that encryption is simply a tool, and like any tool it can be used for a myriad of purposes. That doesn't mean you unilaterally declare war on said tool -- or work tirelessly to make that tool less useful or more dangerous via backdoors -- a conversation we'll apparently be having over and over and over again should Clinton's presidency ascend beyond the rhetorical, larval stage.

Filed Under: broadband, encryption, hillary clinton, net neutrality, platform

Emails Show Hillary Clinton's Email Server Was A Massive Security Headache, Set Up To Route Around FOIA Requests

from the breaking-badly dept

More bad news for Hillary Clinton and her ill-advised personal email server. Another set of emails released by the State Department shows the government agency had to disable several security processes just to get its server to accept email from Clinton's private email address.

The emails, reviewed by The Associated Press, show that State Department technical staff disabled software on their systems intended to block phishing emails that could deliver dangerous viruses. They were trying urgently to resolve delivery problems with emails sent from Clinton's private server.

"This should trump all other activities," a senior technical official, Ken LaVolpe, told IT employees in a Dec. 17, 2010, email. Another senior State Department official, Thomas W. Lawrence, wrote days later in an email that deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin personally was asking for an update about the repairs. Abedin and Clinton, who both used Clinton's private server, had complained that emails each sent to State Department employees were not being reliably received.

After technical staffers turned off some security features, Lawrence cautioned in an email, "We view this as a Band-Aid and fear it's not 100 percent fully effective."

While trial-and-error is generally useful when solving connection problems, the implication is undeniable: to make Clinton's private, insecure email server connect with the State Department's, it had to -- at least temporarily -- lower itself to Clinton's security level. The other workaround -- USE A DAMN STATE DEPARTMENT EMAIL ADDRESS -- was seriously discussed.

This latest stack of emails also exposed other interesting things... like the fact that Clinton's private email server was attacked multiple times in one day, resulting in staffers taking it offline in an attempt to prevent a breach. (h/t Pwn All The Things)

In addition to the security issues, there's also some discussion about why Clinton was choosing to use her own server.

In one email, the State Department's IT person explains the agency already has an email address set up for Clinton, but offers to delete anything contained in it -- and points out that using the State Dept. address would make future emails subject to FOIA requests.

[W]e actually have an account previously set up: SSHRC@state.gov. There are some old emails but none since Jan '11 -- we could get rid of them.

You should be aware that any email would go through the Department's infrastructure and subject to FOIA searches.

So, there's one reason Clinton would have opted to use a personal email address and server. More confirmation of the rationale behind this decision appears in an earlier email (2010) from Clinton to her aide, Huma Abedin.

Abedin: We should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email to the department so you are not going to spam.

Clinton: Let's get separate address or device but I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible.

There appears to be some intent to dodge FOIA requests -- either by ensuring "no documents found" when Clinton's State Department email address was searched, or by being able to control any release by being the chokepoint for responsive documents.

To accomplish this, Clinton's team set up a private email server that was insecure and did not follow State Department guidelines. In fact, her team brushed off the agency more than once before finally informing it that they simply would not comply with State Department regulations.

In a blistering audit released last month, the State Department's inspector general concluded that Clinton and her team ignored clear internal guidance that her email setup broke federal standards and could leave sensitive material vulnerable to hackers. Her aides twice brushed aside concerns, in one case telling technical staff "the matter was not to be discussed further," the report said.

The FBI investigation that Clinton refuses to call an investigation continues. There may be no criminal charges forthcoming, but there's already plenty of evidence that Clinton's use of a private email server was not only dangerously insecure, but put into place in hopes of limiting her accountability.

Filed Under: email, foia, hillary clinton, security, state department, vulnerabilities

Hillary Clinton's Paperback Memoir Deletes Inconvenient Support Of TPP That Was In The Hard Cover Version

from the convenient-deletions dept

I've seen plenty of nonfiction books that add some amount of content in the process from the original hard cover release to the eventual paperback release. But apparently Hillary Clinton went the other direction and conveniently excised all of the stuff about her support of the TPP. It's no secret that, while facing a considerable challenge from Bernie Sanders in the primary contest, Clinton's views of the TPP flip flopped from supporting it to being against it. She did try to explain away the flip flop by saying that it was about the details, but still, if you're going to actually change your position, you should own it. Instead, it looks like Clinton and her campaign are simply trying to rewrite history. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) first noticed a series of big changes in the paperback edition of Clinton's book, including excising the support of the TPP -- such as two full pages about a conference in El Salvador where she spoke in favor of the agreement.

The IBTimes (first link above) has since found even more examples of support of the TPP that was excised from one version of the book to the other, including talking about how the TPP "was important for American workers, who would benefit from competing on a more level playing field." Of course, it's also been kind of comical to see a variety of Republican websites now posting this story and mocking Clinton, considering that Republicans (not Trump, but most of the rest of them) have been the main supporters of the TPP all along. Basically, as with so many of these issues, no one looks good here. Almost no one believes that Clinton's current opposition of the TPP is legitimate. Instead, it's pretty clearly just politically convenient. And attempting to rewrite history to delete those earlier views just looks silly.

Filed Under: biography, hillary clinton, rewriting history, tpp