AT&T, Comcast & Verizon Pretend They Didn't Just Pay Congress To Sell You Out On Privacy

from the trust-is-more-than-just-a-five-letter-word dept

Large ISPs like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast spent a significant part of Friday trying to convince the press and public that they didn't just screw consumers over on privacy (if you've been napping: they did). With the vote on killing FCC broadband privacy protections barely in the books, ISP lobbyists and lawyers penned a number of editorials and blog posts breathlessly professing their tireless dedication to privacy, and insisting that worries about the rules' repeal are little more than "misinformation."

All of these posts, in lock step, tried to effectively make three key arguments: that the FTC will rush in to protect consumers in the wake of the FCC rules being repealed (not happening), ISPs don't really collect much data on you anyway (patently untrue), and that ISPs' lengthy, existing privacy policies and history of consumer respect mean consumers have nothing to worry about (feel free to pause here and laugh).

For more than a decade, large ISPs have used deep-packet inspection, search engine redirection and clickstream data collection to build detailed user profiles, and their longstanding refusal to candidly talk about many of these programs should make their actual dedication to user privacy abundantly clear. Yet over at Comcast, Deputy General Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer Gerard Lewis spent some time complaining that consumer privacy concerns are little more than "misleading talk" and "misinformation and inaccurate statements":

"There has been a lot of misleading talk about how the congressional action this week to overturn the regulatory overreach of the prior FCC will now permit us to sell sensitive customer data without customers’ knowledge or consent. This is just not true. In fact, we have committed not to share our customers’ sensitive information (such as banking, children’s, and health information), unless we first obtain their affirmative, opt-in consent."

So one, the "commitment" Comcast links to in this paragraph is little more than a cross-industry, toothless and voluntary self-regulatory regime that means just a fraction more than nothing at all. And while Comcast insists it doesn't sell its broadband customers' "individual web browsing history" (yet), they do still collect an ocean of other data for use in targeted ads, and there's really little stopping them from using your browsing history in this same way down the road -- it may not be "selling" your data, but it is using it to let advertisers target you. Comcast proceeds to say it's updating its privacy policy in the wake of the changes -- as if such an action (since these policies are drafted entirely to protect the ISP, not the consumer) means anything at all.

Like Comcast, Verizon's blog post on the subject amusingly acts as if the company's privacy policy actually protects you, not Verizon:

"Verizon is fully committed to the privacy of our customers. We value the trust our customers have in us so protecting the privacy of customer information is a core priority for us. Verizon’s privacy policy clearly lays out what we do and don’t do as well as the choices customers can make."

Feel better? That's the same company, we'll note, that was caught covertly modifying user data packets to track users around the internet regardless of any other data collected. That program was in place for two years before security researchers even noticed it existed. It took another six months of public shaming before the company even provided the option for consumers to opt out. Verizon's own recent history makes it clear its respect for consumer privacy is skin deep. And again, there's nothing really stopping Verizon from expanding this data collection and sales down the road, and burying it on page 117 of its privacy policy.

AT&T was a bit more verbose in a post over at the AT&T policy blog, where again it trots out this idea that existing FTC oversight is somehow good enough:

"The reality is that the FCC’s new broadband privacy rules had not yet even taken effect. And no one is saying there shouldn’t be any rules. Supporters of this action all agree that the rescinded FCC rules should be replaced by a return to the long-standing Federal Trade Commission approach. But in today’s overheated political dialogue, it is not surprising that some folks are ignoring the facts."

So again, the FTC doesn't really have much authority over broadband, and AT&T forgets to mention that its lawyers have found ways to wiggle around what little authority the agency does have via common carrier exemptions. And while AT&T insists that "no one is saying there shouldn't be any rules," its lobbyists are working tirelessly to accomplish precisely that by gutting both FTC and FCC oversight of the telecom sector. Not partially. Entirely. Title II, net neutrality, privacy -- AT&T wants it all gone. Its pretense to the contrary is laughable.

Like the other two providers, AT&T trots out this idea that the FCC's rules weren't fair because they didn't also apply to "edge" companies like Facebook or Google (which actually are more fully regulated by the FTC). That's a flimsy point also pushed by an AT&T and US Telecom Op/Ed over at Axios, where the lobbying group's CEO Jonathan Spalter tries to argue that consumers shouldn't worry about ISPs, because their data is also being hoovered up further down the supply chain:

"Your browser history is already being aggregated and sold to advertising networks—by virtually every site you visit on the internet. Consumers' browsing history is bought and sold across massive online advertising networks every day. This is the reason so many popular online destinations and services are "free." And, it's why the ads you see on your favorite sites—large and small—always seem so relevant to what you've recently been shopping for online. Of note, internet service providers are relative bit players in the $83 billion digital ad market, which made singling them out for heavier regulations so suspect."

Again, this quite intentionally ignores the fact that whereas you can choose to not use Facebook or Gmail, a lack of competition means you're stuck with your broadband provider. As such, arguing that "everybody else is busy collecting your data" isn't much of an argument, especially when "everybody else" is having their behaviors checked by competitive pressure to offer a better product. As well-respected security expert Bruce Schneier points out in a blog post, these companies desperately want you to ignore this one, central, undeniable truth:

"When markets work well, different companies compete on price and features, and society collectively rewards better products by purchasing them. This mechanism fails if there is no competition, or if rival companies choose not to compete on a particular feature. It fails when customers are unable to switch to competitors. And it fails when what companies do remains secret.

Unlike service providers like Google and Facebook, telecom companies are infrastructure that requires government involvement and regulation. The practical impossibility of consumers learning the extent of surveillance by their Internet service providers, combined with the difficulty of switching them, means that the decision about whether to be spied on should be with the consumer and not a telecom giant. That this new bill reverses that is both wrong and harmful."

This lack of competition didn't just magically happen. As in other sectors driven by legacy turf protectors, the same ISP lobbyists that just gutted the FCC's privacy rules have a long and proud history of dismantling competitive threats at every conceivable opportunity, then paying legislators to look the other way. That includes pushing for protectionist state laws preventing towns and cities from doing much of anything about it. It's not clear who these ISPs thought they were speaking to in these editorials, but it's certainly not to folks that have actually paid attention to their behavior over the last fifteen years.

The EFF, meanwhile, concisely calls these ISPs' sudden and breathless dedication to privacy nonsense:

"There is a lot to say about the nonsense they've produced here," said Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel at EFF. "There is little reason to believe they will not start using personal data they've been legally barred from using and selling to bidders without our consent now. The law will soon be tilted in their favor to do it."

Gosh, who to believe? Actual experts on subjects like security or privacy, or one of the more dishonest and anti-competitive business sectors in American industry? All told, you can expect these ISPs to remain on their best behavior for a short while for appearances' sake (and because AT&T wants its Time Warner merger approved) -- but it's not going to be long before they rush to abuse the lack of oversight their campaign contributions just successfully created. Anybody believing otherwise simply hasn't been paying attention to the laundry list of idiotic ISP actions that drove the FCC to try and pass the now-dismantled rules in the first place.

Filed Under: broadband, congress, fcc, ftc, lobbying, politics, privacy
Companies: at&t, comcast, verizon

Majority Of Intuit's Lobbying Dollars Spent Trying To Stop IRS From Making It Easier To File Your Taxes

from the death-and-taxes dept

There has been an effort underway these past few years to make tax season less stressful, less complicated, and less expensive for a large swath of Americans. These efforts have produced plans to make tax season "return free" for many, with pre-populated tax forms prepared by the government that can either be signed if accurate, or ignored if not with a separate filing then being produced by the person in question. That is, since the IRS already should have most of the details on how much you earned from the companies that paid you, it can send you a pre-filled out tax return document, rather than forcing everyone to redo the same work with the same documents hoping that you don't make some mistake that will make the IRS man mad. Again, for those who want to go a different way, they can. But for those who find the IRS's pre-filled documents to be okay, it will make tax filing significantly less of an issue. If you live outside the US, this may sound strange to you, because much of the rest of the world alread does it this way. In a recent episode of Planet Money, the analogy is made that the way we do taxes in the US would be like if credit card companies sent you a "bill" that was a blank sheet of paper, expecting you to fill out all your charges over the past month, and if you got anything wrong, you'd be punished. On taxes, most of the rest of the world the taxes are more like your credit card bill. In the US, it's more like a blank sheet of paper. And, as in years past, some are finally trying to fix things in the US.

This plan has unfortunately run into the extreme distrust of all things government currently weaving its way through America and the gobs and gobs of money from Intuit and H&R Block that is making corporate use of that fear. The lobbying efforts of the tax prep industry has been a multi-year campaign (we've been writing about it since at least 2010) in which money is given to politicians essentially to have them work directly against the interest of their constituents on the subject of paying taxes into the government. It's absolutely bonkers (and partially helped along by anti-tax groups saying that anything that makes paying taxes easier should be stopped because taxes are bad).

But since bonkers is quickly becoming SOP in our government, these lobbying efforts have only ramped up recently, with an increase in dollars spent likely correcting for how simple technology is making tax preparation for most Americans.

Intuit spent more than $2 million lobbying last year, much of it spent on legislation that would permanently bar the government from offering taxpayers prefilled returns. H&R Block spent $3 million, also directing some of their efforts towards the bill. Among the 60 co-sponsors of the bipartisan bill: then congressman and now Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.

The bill, called the Free File Act of 2016, looks on the surface to be consumer-friendly. It makes permanent a public-private partnership in which 13 private tax preparation companies — called the “Free File Alliance” —have offered free online tax filings to lower- and middle-income families. The Free File Alliance include both Intuit and H&R Block. But the legislation would also permanently bar the IRS from offering its own free alternative.

There's something especially cynical about a law that is dressed up as a benefit to consumers by creating corporate partnerships making free tax filings available to the constituency, but which likewise prohibit the government from making the collection of its own tax dues more efficient at the same time. This is essentially a jobs program for the tax prep industry, one which that industry has taken to lying to the public through sock puppets in lieu of showing any kind of gratitude. That the industry now has cabinet-level representatives in its bullpen likely means things aren't going to get better for millions of American any time soon.

The reason the industry wants its free filing options codified into law in this way is so that it can upsell the public into paid tax services that it would otherwise not buy and likely doesn't actually need.

In an emailed statement the Free File Alliance’s executive director, Tim Hugo, said that the alliance does not automatically push paid products to those that use the Free File program but the taxpayer does “have the option of ‘opting in’ to receive additional information and offers from the tax preparation company they have selected.”

He said that the lack of awareness of the program is “unfortunate,” and placed blame on the IRS. While the tax agency previously had a large budget to advertise the Free File program, “today that budget is $0, making it difficult to reach the general public,” he said.

While it is indeed a crying shame that the IRS budget to pimp private businesses to the public has been reduced in this manner, it's arguable more of a shame that lobbying money has kept tax season more complicated and costly than necessary. That the industry is spending money to keep a voluntary option for the public beyond reach in favor of upselling that same public is all the more so.

Filed Under: free file, irs, lobbying, ready return, tax returns, taxes
Companies: h&r block, intuit

Apple Says Nebraska Will Become A 'Mecca For Hackers' If Right To Repair Bill Passes

from the nebraska-cornhackers dept

It looks like Apple decided to drop in on flyover country in hopes of thwarting a "Right to Repair" bill pending in the Nebraska legislature. It did not go well.

[T]he prospect of a Cupertino-based megacorporation losing business to local repair shops isn't a very sympathetic argument at the Nebraska statehouse. And so Apple has tried a slew of other tactics, according to state Sen. Lydia Brasch, who was recently visited by Steve Kester, an Apple state government affairs specialist.

"Apple said we would be the only state that would pass this, and that we would become the mecca for bad actors," Brasch, who is sponsoring the bill, told me in a phone call. "They said that doing this would make it very easy for hackers to relocate to Nebraska."

Apple probably expected its heavy-handed (and stupid -- more on that in a bit) "suggestion" to be taken more seriously by podunk legislators in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately for Apple, Brasch isn't just a legislator in a state mainly known for corn and football-as-religion.

Brasch is not only an Apple customer, but she's a farmer who has had to deal with plenty of repair-blocking BS from companies like John Deere. She also has a background in computer science and an apparent tendency to not let corporate lawyers talk down to her.

Not only did Apple pick the wrong legislator to threaten, its threat is incoherent. I've spent most of the last 15 years in the Midwest and, trust me, it would take far more than a right-to-repair bill's passage to make Nebraska a mecca of anything. (Beyond college football, he said to head off the Cornhusker faithful most likely already demanding a retraction…)

Then there's the thing about "hackers." There's more than one type of hacker, but Apple dropped it as a pejorative term in hopes of conjuring images of hoodied figures sitting in dark rooms with the local SWAT team on speed dial and deploying some sort of encryption… you know, the evil kind.

All sorts of nonsensical arguments are already being raised in response to a handful of right-to-repair bills around the nation. The corporate version of "you'll shoot your eye out" has been deployed to portray DIY repair jobs as hospitalizations waiting to happen.

The idea that it's "unsafe" to repair your own devices is one that manufacturers have been promoting for years. Last year, industry lobbyists told lawmakers in Minnesota that broken glass could cut the fingers of consumers who try to repair their screens, according to Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org. Byrne said she will also testify at the Nebraska hearing and "plans to bring band aids."

Apple's take is this: the "hacker mecca" thing plus a very short parade of not-all-that-horribles.

Brasch said the representatives made two other main arguments: They said repair could cause lithium batteries to catch fire, and said that there are already enough authorized places to get iPhones repaired, such as the Apple store.

Define "enough." As Brasch points out, getting her devices repaired "conveniently" involves setting up an appointment at the nearest Apple store, which is 80 miles from where she lives. Apple certainly doesn't mind taking money from rurally-located customers when selling devices. But it's not nearly as willing to make repairing their purchased products actually convenient.

And it's not just Apple. Other phone manufacturers have spoken to Brasch in an attempt to get her to drop the legislation, or at least rewrite it in their favor.

"They said just take out the 'phone' part of the bill and we'll go away," Brasch said. "That's tempting, but we need to repair consumer technology too."

Brasch's bill sprung out of her frustration with repairing her farm's equipment, which has been made increasingly difficult by John Deere's refusal to allow anyone other than repair shops it makes to profit from touching its products. Phone manufacturers have the same attitude. They express faux concern about consumer safety while preventing consumers from having any control over how their purchased devices are repaired. The concern most of these companies have for their consumers only extends as far as their ability to purchase add-ons, new products, and inconvenient repairs at non-competitive prices. The battle is over bottom lines, not consumer safety, no matter how it's spun and no matter how many hacker-based horror stories are spun.

Filed Under: lobbying, lydia brasch, nebraska, right to repair
Companies: apple

MPAA: EFF Just Jealous It Doesn't Control Copyright Office Like Hollywood Does

from the regulatory-capture dept

The bottom line is that the Copyright Office did not approach stakeholders, selectively or otherwise. It spoke with any and all comers who asked for the opportunity. It then examined the issues and met its statutory obligation to advise federal agencies and Congress on the law. Any EFF suggestion to the contrary is entirely false.

Of 310 pages EFF has “uncovered” in a Copyright Office FOIA request, 232 are transmittals of FCC filings, congressional letters, and other documents from all sides that were already public. The remaining 78 are almost all snowballing email chains to schedule meetings and calls—also from parties on all sides, including the FCC itself and device maker TiVo.

The documents reflect what we know to be true. The Copyright Office did not “jump into this fight,” as EFF asserts. Rather, it studiously avoided being brought into the debate until: 1) Chairman Wheeler asked for its analysis, and 2) Members of Congress requested it share that analysis so everyone, not just the FCC, could benefit from its expertise.

Like anyone else, the EFF could have just as easily made its own inquiries, rather than issue a hyperbolic blog complaining about the entirely legitimate practice of a government agency communicating with a range of parties.

Filed Under: copyright office, fcc, lobbying, maria pallante, neil fried, power, regulatory capture
Companies: eff, mpaa

The Reason The Copyright Office Misrepresented Copyright Law To The FCC: Hollywood Told It To

from the so-now-we-know dept

After the FCC announced its intention to break up the set-top box monopoly in February of this year, MPAA quickly called on the Copyright Office to meet on the matter. The documents indicate that the first meeting the Copyright Office held on the set-top box issue was not with the FCC but rather the MPAA. Although both the FCC and MPAA reached out to the Copyright Office in late March, Copyright Office officials met with MPAA on April 11 while postponing and meeting with the FCC a week later. Throughout the spring and summer of this year, the Copyright Office alternated between meetings with the FCC, MPAA, and other major content companies such as Comcast and Viacom. On May 31, just hours after holding a conference call with MPAA, the general counsel of Copyright Office emailed her counterpart at the FCC saying “the proposed rule may in fact implicate some rather serious copyright concerns.”

It seems that despite holding itself out as a neutral expert agency on copyright matters, the Copyright Office regularly engaged in discussions with only one set of parties as it formed its opinion. Not once did the agency reach out to the copyright scholars who explained to the FCC that no copyright interests were harmed by the set-top box proposal. Nor did the agency rethink its position when these same parties made clear that what they want is for the FCC to create new legal rights for them that have nothing to do with copyright law. The Copyright Office did eventually meet with a group of companies who are seeking to build competitive set-top boxes that consumers can buy, but that meeting happened on August 2, just one day before the Office issued its public statement. And that statement gives short shrift to the technology companies’ concerns.

When the U.S. Copyright Office waded into the debate, it could have brought an end to the misleading hand-wringing over copyright. Instead, it did the opposite by echoing the MPAA and cable companies, claiming that if cable operators were required to allow customers to use the devices of their choice to view the programs they pay for, the studios’ copyrights would somehow be violated. They even went so far as to say the current copyright law landscape is insufficient and therefore the FCC must do more to protect rightsholders.

An agency that listens only to the views of some industry groups without seeking out additional opinions cannot be a reliably neutral expert for Congress or the FCC. We hope that the FCC will weigh the Copyright Office’s comments appropriately, and resist efforts to derail the agency's work to end the set-top box monopoly.

Filed Under: competition, copyright, copyright office, fcc, hollywood, jacqueline charlesworth, lobbying, maria pallante, set top boxes
Companies: mpaa

AT&T, Poster Child For Government Favoritism, Mocks Google Fiber For Government Favoritism

from the glass-mansions dept

"Google Fiber will no doubt continue its broadband experiments, while coming up with excuses for its shortcomings and learning curves. It will also no doubt continue to seek favoritism from government at every level. Just last week Google Fiber threatened the Nashville City Council that it would stop its fiber build if an ordinance Google Fiber drafted wasn’t passed. Instead of playing by the same rules as everyone else building infrastructure, Google Fiber demands special treatment and indeed in some places is getting it, unfairly."

"Meanwhile, without excuses or finger-pointing, and without presenting ultimatums to cities in exchange for service, AT&T continues to deploy fiber and to connect our customers to broadband services in communities across the country. Welcome to the broadband network business, Google Fiber. We’ll be watching your next move from our rear view mirror. Oh, and pardon our dust."

Filed Under: broadband, competition, favoritism, google fiber, lobbying
Companies: at&t, google

Why Does The Copyright Office Keep Acting Like A Lobbying Arm For Hollywood?

from the doesn't-seem-appropriate dept

Endorsing SOPA

The Copyright Office famously endorsed the doomed (and downright awful) Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, collectively known as SOPA/PIPA. Despite the fact that the bill attacked safe harbor mechanisms, allowed the US government to censor foreign websites, made posting copyrighted work under any circumstances a felony, and swept together all user-driven sites with upload capabilities as “promoting piracy,” the Copyright Office was unwavering in its support. In testimony before Congress, Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante called the bill “a sound policy choice,” “measured,” and thanked its drafters for drafting language that “would bestow a number of important responsibilities on the Copyright Office.”

[....]

A “Making Available” Right that Never Existed

In a 2016 report, the Copyright Office declared that U.S. copyright law had an unwritten right that gave copyright holders the power to dictate how, when, and under what circumstances their works were “made available”--or even offered--to consumers. The Office took a “squint-and-you’ll-see-it” approach, saying that the right existed by implication through a “gestalt”-style reading of the distribution, public performance, and public display rights. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante even commented that “People question if we have ‘making available’ in the US, and we do--via treaties--and this report will make it clear that we have making available already. The question is whether Congress needs to do anything to make that clear or not.”

First, that’s not how treaties (or laws, really) work. Signing a treaty doesn’t make specific rights magically appear in U.S. law. Here--and in most cases--Congress has to actually write statutes to implement treaty requirements. If they decline to write the actual statutes, that’s a pretty clear sign that they’re not interested. And aside from the fact that the right doesn’t actually, you know, exist anywhere in the statute, the Copyright Office conveniently omitted the fact that numerous courts (the majority of those considering it, in fact) have rejected the idea.

The creation of an imaginary right wasn’t the only thing wrong in the office’s report; it also claimed that the Copyright Act’s requirement that a copy be a “tangible medium of expression” didn’t really mean anything and could encompass even offered transmissions of data--accepted or not. Alarmingly, the office decided that merely putting files in an accessible place would make a person just as liable as actually distributing them. As support, they cited a handful of minor district court cases from places such as Massachusetts, ignored higher court rulings to the contrary, deemed it an “unbroken line of authority,” and called it a day.

Yikes.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, library of congress, lobbying, policy

Ted Cruz Pushing Bill Protecting Large ISPs From Competition

from the defenders-of-the-status-quo dept

"FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says those laws are pushed by incumbents to prevent price and service competition and the FCC has stepped in to preempt state laws in Tennessee and North Carolina. The FCC is currently in a court battle over that decision. The amendment, according to the amendment list obtained by Multichannel News/B&C, "Prohibits the FCC form preventing states from implementing laws relating to provision of broadband Internet access service by state and local governments."

Filed Under: broadband, competition, lobbying, muni broadband, states, ted cruz

Chevron Lobbied For Corporate Sovereignty Rights In TAFTA/TTIP To Act As 'Environmental Deterrent'

from the they're-not-even-trying-to-hide-it-anymore dept

Back in 2014, Techdirt noted that arguably the most serious problem with corporate sovereignty was not the huge awards that could be imposed on countries, but the chilling effect the mere threat of those awards could have on national sovereignty. In that post, we quoted from a remarkable 2001 article in The Nation. A former Canadian government official in Ottawa revealed that numerous proposals for new environmental regulations had been dropped in the face of threats that NAFTA's investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) framework would be used against Canada if it brought in new laws. The Techdirt post also mentioned a case in Indonesia, where a mining company dropped a corporate sovereignty case when it was offered "special exemptions" from a new mining law.

More recently, we've seen New Zealand put on hold its plans to require plain packaging for cigarettes, as a result of Philip Morris bringing an ISDS claim against the Australian government for doing the same. The New Zealand government was concerned it too might get hit, and so decided to wait. Now that the Australian case has been thrown out, New Zealand is pressing ahead with its plain packs legislation.

The chilling effects of corporate sovereignty are now so well established that companies are even beginning to cite them as a reason for including it in trade deals. The minutes of a meeting that took place between European Commission officials, and Chevron executives, obtained by The Guardian, make that plain:

"ISDS has only been used once by Chevron, in its litigation against Ecuador," say the minutes of a meeting in April 2014 between unnamed Chevron executives and European commission officials, which the Guardian obtained under access to documents laws. "Yet, Chevron argues that the mere existence of ISDS is important as it acts as a deterrent."

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: chilling effect, corporate sovereignty, isds, lobbying, tafta, tpp, trade agreements, ttip
Companies: chevron