SESTA's Sponsors Falsely Claim That Fixing SESTA's Worst Problem Harms Hollywood

from the say-what-now? dept

Earlier today, in discussing a long list of possible fixes for SESTA, we noted that the only one that even has a remote chance (i.e., the only fix that actually has the potential of being considered by the Senate) is Senator Wyden's amendment, which is designed to solve the "moderator's dilemma" issue by clarifying that merely using a filter or doing any sort of moderation for the sake of blocking some content does not automatically append liability to the service provider for content not removed. Senator Portman -- the sponsor of the bill -- has insisted (despite the lack of such language in the bill) that this is how SESTA should be interpreted. Specifically, Portman stated that SESTA:

...does not amend, and thus preserves, the Communications Decency Act’s Good Samaritan provision. This provision protects good actors who proactively block and screen for offensive material and thus shields them from any frivolous lawsuits.

Except, that's not what the bill actually says. Which is why the language in the Wyden amendment is so important. It basically adds into the law what Portman pretends is already there.

Thus, you would think that Portman and the other Senators backing SESTA should also support the Wyden amendment. They do not. Senator Richard Blumenthal -- who has spent years attacking the internet, and who has already stated that if SESTA kills small internet businesses he would consider that a good thing -- is opposed to the amendment, and sent out a letter supposedly co-signed by other SESTA supporters:

Senators Blumenthal, McCaskill and the other bipartisan sponsors of SESTA oppose the Wyden amendments. These amendments threaten to derail the bill and they would make it even more difficult than current law to hold websites that sexually traffic minors like Backpage.com accountable….The safe harbor amendment would provide websites like Backpage.com with even stronger legal protections than they enjoy today. It also has the potential to disrupt other areas of the law, such as copyright protections. This “bad Samaritan” amendment is not a clarification or a protection for good actors–it is an additional tool to protect traffickers and illegal conduct online.

Here's the problem with that. Almost everything stated above is 100% factually wrong. And not just a little bit wrong. It's so wrong that it raises serious questions about whether Blumenthal understands some fairly fundamental issues in the bill he's backing. Professor Eric Goldman has a pretty concise explanation of everything that's wrong with the statement, noting that it -- somewhat incredibly -- shows that SESTA's main sponsors don't even understand the very basic aspects of CDA 230, as they insist on changing the law.

There are at least three obvious problems with this email. First, the amendment would indeed protect good actors because it would eliminate the Moderator’s Dilemma. The authors of this email still don’t understand, or have decided to ignore, the Moderator’s Dilemma. Second, the proposed amendment would not help Backpage–at all. The Senate Investigative Committee report highlighted voluminous facts about Backpage’s knowledge, so I can’t see how Backpage’s purported filtering would come up in any SESTA/FOSTA enforcement.

Third, the email indicates that the amendment “has the potential to disrupt other areas of the law, such as copyright protections.” This is where the screen freezes, the record scratches, and the narrator says in a deadpan, “No, it wouldn’t.” Section 230(e)(2) expressly carves out “intellectual property” claims–including copyright–from Section 230’s coverage. Anyone with even a basic understanding of Section 230 knows this. Yet, the sponsors, on the eve of a decisive vote with monumental stakes for Section 230, appear to be demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of what Section 230 says and does. That is very, very confidence-rattling.

Worse, the email has it precisely backwards. The amendment would HELP, not DISRUPT, copyright protection efforts. If services stuck in the Moderator’s Dilemma decide to turn off proactive moderation efforts, that will include turning off copyright filtering. In other words, SESTA/FOSTA may have the unwanted consequence of encouraging Internet services to do LESS copyright filtering. (This is just one of many examples of my claim that SESTA/FOSTA may counterproductively increase anti-social content). The amendment would fix that by not holding their copyright filtering efforts against Internet services for sex trafficking or prostitution promotion purposes, i.e., by filtering for copyright, the Internet services won’t fear that a court will ask why their filters missed promotions for sex trafficking or prostitution. So if Congress wants to avoid “disrupting” efforts to combat online copyright infringement, the amendment is essential.

This isn't a matter of differing opinions. This is the main backers of a bill to drastically change CDA 230 insisting that (1) their bill does something it does not and (2) a fix to their bill that would bring it into line with what they claim their bill does... actually does a bunch of things it absolutely does not.

At this point, you have to start wondering what the hell is happening in the Senate, and in particular in Senator Blumenthal's office. He is not just doing a big thing badly -- he is gleefully spouting the exact opposite of basic facts about both the existing law, and the bill he sponsored. I know that politicians aren't exactly known for their honesty, but he seems to be taking this to new levels -- and causing massive harm in the process.

Filed Under: cda 230, claire mccaskill, copyright, fosta, intermediary liability, moderator's dilemma, richard blumenthal, rob portman, ron wyden, sesta

After Basically No Debate, And No Opportunity For Amendments, Senate Votes To Expand NSA Surveillance

from the not-unexpected,-but-dumb dept

As was unfortunately expected, after a very short (and fairly stupid) debate that was full of misleading statements that focused more on "but... but... terrorism!" than anything substantive, the Senate has voted for cloture on the same bill the House approved last week that extends and expands the NSA's 702 surveillance program, opening it up to widespread abuse and refusing to do simple things like adding in a warrant requirement when used to spy on Americans. The vote was actually surprisingly close -- going right down to the wire. They needed 60 votes to get this bill over the top and they almost didn't get them. The final vote was 60 to 39 with the final vote (well over an hour after the vote starting) coming from Senator Claire McCaskill in favor of warrantless spying on Americans.

This is not all that surprising, even if it's disappointing. It follows the pattern that we've seen with surveillance programs over the past decade. Whenever they are up for renewal, Congress refuses to debate or discuss serious reforms until there's like a week left... and then they have a simplistic and rushed debate that basically consists of the hawks freaking out about how we're all going to die if the NSA can't keep spying on people, and civil liberty defenders pointing to the 4th Amendment, only to have the surveillance state supporters push back that the NSA protects us and is full of good people and how dare you question their good nature by insisting on petty little things like "warrants" as required by the Constitution.

The cloture vote is not technically the final vote. It just shuts down debate and blocks the ability to raise any amendments. There will be a final vote soon, but the cloture vote is, effectively, the important vote here, and having voted for cloture the bill will pass -- and despite President Trump's confusion last week, he will sign the bill, and the NSA will get to turn back on its "about" surveillance capabilities it had been forced into shutting down last year, and the FBI will continue to get full, warrantless access to the "backdoor" or "incidental" collections of the communications of many, many Americans without a warrant and without anything approaching probable cause.

While this was expected to turn out this way, it's still bad. It's our Senate (and the House and the White House) purposely spitting on the 4th Amendment of the Constitution to appease the NSA and the FBI. And, as with last week, it's especially incredible to see a number of Senators who have spoken out against Donald Trump -- including Senators Jeff Flake and Dianne Feinstein -- then turn around and vote for this. Last week, Flake compared Trump to Stalin. And just days later he votes to give that same Trump vast surveillance powers over Americans. Incredible. Meanwhile, Trump has been attacking Claire McCaskill left and right as she's up for re-election... and she repays that by giving him more surviellance power and selling out the American public. Missouri voters should remember that.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, claire mccaskill, dianne feinstein, jeff flake, nsa, privacy, ron wyden, section 702, surveillance

Senate's Latest Attack On Backpage Will Be Massively Counterproductive, Create Tremendous Harm

from the this-is-a-bad-approach dept

It's no secret that there are a bunch of folks in the Senate who really, really, really dislike the fact that the site Backpage has been abused by some users for sex trafficking. They should be happy that through a lot of public pressure, Backpage has shut down its adult section.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, many people seem to blame Section 230 of the CDA for the fact that sex traffickers have used Backpage.com. This is... weird and doesn't make much sense. After all, Section 230 doesn't apply to federal crimes around sex trafficking. So, if the platform itself is violating the law, the DOJ has the power and every right to go after the platform. Furthermore, as we've noted time and time again, these platforms have actually been tremendously helpful in allowing law enforcement to track down those responsible for trafficking and to help victims of trafficking. Still, because of this misplaced focus on CDA 230, earlier today, a bunch of Senators released a counterproductive and dangerous bill that would blow a massive hole through CDA 230, and it's clearly written 100% to focus on Backpage. Nearly all of the quotes about the bill from the Senate co-sponsors mention Backpage.

And that's... odd. Because just two years ago, Congress passed, and President Obama signed, another anti-trafficking bill that had provisions that were similarly designed solely to target Backpage. So why aren't those actually being used if Backpage is such a problem (and, again, the DOJ could easily go after Backpage for violating trafficking laws if it actually did so). It's especially odd that none of the supporters of this new bill even mention the fact that they passed a similar "kill Backpage" bill just two years ago and no one's tried to use it.

And even worse, the approach in this new bill, dubbed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, will be massively counterproductive to the goal of stopping sex trafficking. While the bill's supporters claim it is "narrowly focused," it is anything but that. It opens up a giant hole in CDA 230 -- the law that protects internet platforms from being blamed for the actions of their users -- saying that if federal sex trafficking violations (which, again, are already NOT covered by CDA 230) are involved, state Attorneys General and private individuals can now sue platforms -- especially if the platforms have "knowledge" of how they're being used for trafficking.

Law professor Eric Goldman has a thorough description of the problems with the bill.

what online services will be regulated other than Backpage? The press release accompanying the Senate bill draft references Backpage a half-dozen times. Is this law only about making sure a single company, Backpage, is dead dead dead? Or will the bill reach other online services? If so, who? The most likely answer is that this law potentially implicates every online service that deals with user-generated content, which would make this an unusually wide-ranging bill.

what about the SAVE Act, the law (sponsored by Rep. Wagner) that Congress passed in 2015 to kill Backpage? The bill’s press release doesn’t mention the SAVE Act once, even though it was designed to accomplish the same policy goals. Why not? Did Congress misjudge the policy efficacy of that law? Or perhaps it’s too early to judge the SAVE Act’s efficacy? A federal grand jury in Phoenix is considering indicting Backpage or its executives, and the odds are that the SAVE Act would be key ground for such an indictment. So perhaps Congress has already enacted all of the legislation it needs to kill Backpage…? If so, a new and major exclusion to Section 230 would not add any new policy benefits but would come with substantial policy costs.

does the elimination of a centralized online prostitution ad venue actually improve the situation for victims of sex trafficking? This is the fundamental policy objective of the bill, but I have yet to see any good evidence demonstrating this outcome. Maybe it’s so intuitive (shut down Backpage, victims are better) that members of Congress don’t expect to see any proof, but this is hardly intuitive to me. We’ve seen over and over again that anti-prostitution regulations redirect the demand for prostitution elsewhere. If this bill accomplishes its goal, where will that demand get redirected, and how will that affect victims? We’ve also seen many successful victim protection efforts by law enforcement using the public ads as leads/evidence. What will happen to those enforcement efforts, and what does that mean for the overall protection of victims?

what existing laws will be newly excluded from Section 230, and how will plaintiffs use those laws? I am extremely confident that none of the bill co-sponsors have comprehensively inventoried the existing state laws that will have tenable causes of action against online intermediaries once Section 230’s immunity is lifted. It could be zero laws (unlikely); it could be hundreds or thousands of new laws. Shouldn’t we model these effects before unleashing those laws?

I'd argue there are even bigger problems with the bill as well, focused on this: the end result will almost certainly be seriously counterproductive to the goal of ending trafficking. CDA 230 has two provisions that work together in unison: one that protects platforms from liability for actions of their users and a second one that is equally important (but often forgotten) that says that if a platform does moderate content, that moderation does not introduce new liability. The combination of these two provisions actually encourages platforms to monitor and police themselves, without adding a risk of new liability.

However, this new law completely undermines that. It includes a provision that says "knowing conduct" makes you liable for assisting, supporting or facilitating trafficking. And how might one "know" of such conduct? If you know how your platform is being used. Thus, the end result of this bill would be the exact opposite of what its sponsors are seeking. It will encourage platforms to turn a blind eye to what's happening on their platform, out of fear that reviewng or moderating content might be used as evidence of "knowledge." Yikes!

Even worse, this will undermine a bunch of ongoing projects that the tech industry has put together to help stop trafficking already. If you look at what programs are actually effective, they tend to involve tech companies actively working on solutions and information sharing. But, now, if a tech company works on one of those programs, that could be used as evidence by grandstanding state Attorneys General or trial lawyers as "evidence" of "knowledge" of their platforms facilitating trafficking! Why would any tech company continue working on these effective programs when the "thanks" they'll end up getting are a bunch of lawsuits?

And, we've already seen years of state AGs grandstanding on issues by blaming tech companies for things their users do, as well as hundreds, if not thousands, of frivolous lawsuits where private individuals and companies sue platforms over actions of their users, all trying to find holes in CDA 230. And this bill opens up a wide one. Just make some halfway credible claim that someone somehow engaged in trafficking uses the platform and voila. The liability for platforms is going to be amazing, and the end result is... what? Backpage has already shut down its adult section, and sex trafficking has just moved elsewhere. The bill doesn't target the actual perpetrators at all. It will just make them harder to find.

Tech companies who currently help catch traffickers will now be told not to do that out of a fear of liability. Platforms that already cut off traffickers from using the platform will now have the incentive to turn a blind eye (and certainly not to help law enforcement). And a ton of frivolous lawsuits will likely be filed. And it's all to "stop" Backpage -- a company that has already decided to stop accepting such ads.

Sex trafficking is a real and serious problem. But this weird sledge hammer approach directed at one particular company -- Backpage -- is misguided on so many levels. It doesn't provide the DOJ with any more tools than it already had to go after Backpage, if the company violated the law. It only provides more tools to state AGs and trial lawyers to bring frivolous lawsuits and fishing expeditions against tons of other companies, many of whom have actively helped to attack the problem of trafficking. And, the bill is designed in a way that encourages them to stop helping.

And make no mistake, those who speak up against this bill will be unfairly attacked with a broad brush, with claims that they're "supporting" trafficking by opposing this bill. But the opposite is true. This bill will not help stop trafficking. In all likelihood it will make the problem worse.

Filed Under: bob portman, cda 230, claire mccaskill, good samaritan, richard blumenthal, section 230, sex trafficking, trafficking
Companies: backpage

Backpage Kills Adult Ads On The Same Day Supreme Court Backed Its Legal Protections, Due To Grandstanding Senators

from the someone-teach-the-senate-the-law? dept

A few years back, we detailed how ongoing grandstanding and toothless legal threats finally forced Craigslist to shut down its "adult services" section. None of that did anything to stop prostitution or human trafficking online. It just moved to other sites -- which was particularly ridiculous, given that Craigslist had been proactive in working with law enforcement to help them track down the actual perpetrators of crimes via the site. And, the illegal behavior just moved on to somewhere else -- as did the ridiculous grandstanding. The main target since Craigslist shut down its services: Backpage.com, the Craigslist-alike site that spun off from Village Voice Media. And now, after an even more intense grandstanding and legal campaign, Backpage has also been pressured to shut down its adult section. If you go to it now, you'll see this instead: And here's the craziest part. This happened on the same day the Supreme Court basically said Backpage is legal and the legal claims against it are bogus. But the law is apparently meaningless in the face of a pair of grandstanding Senators who want their names in the headlines, pretending they care about human trafficking, while actually making the problems worse.

Last May, we wrote about an excellent 1st Circuit appeals court victory for Backpage.com, which (like nearly every other court before them) found that the site was clearly protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. As we've discussed many, many times, there are a number of people out there who would like to ignore the fact that while some users of Backpage may be violating the law to engage in prostitution, the proper response is to go after those actually breaking the law, and not the platform they're using. That's the very heart of Section 230, and it's exactly what many, many courts have realized. The case we wrote about last May (and also wrote about when Backpage prevailed at the district court level the previous May) involved three clear victims: women who were forced into selling sex as teenage runaways. Their situation is undoubtedly awful -- but it was the fault of those who exploited and abused them, and not the online service they happened to use.

On Monday, the Supreme Court effectively put its stamp of approval on the 1st Circuit appeals court ruling by denying the plaintiff's petition to hear an appeal on that ruling. While it's not quite the same as saying that the Supreme Court fully endorsed the opinion of the 1st Circuit saying that Section 230 clearly protects Backpage from being blamed for how people use the site, it certainly suggests that the court didn't see any major problems with the ruling.

But... there's just something about Backpage that makes politicians want to stupidly and misleadingly grandstand. Just hours after the Supreme Court effectively blessed the 1st Circuit ruling saying Backpage hadn't broken the law, Senator Claire McCaskill released a report (with Senator Rob Portman) that blasts Backpage for "knowing facilitation of online sex trafficking." This is in advance of a grandstanding Senate hearing that McCaskill/Portman have prepared to parade out the executives of Backpage to yell at them for facilitating sex trafficking, even just as the Supreme Court has basically said this entire line of argument is completely bogus.

The report is a joke. The crux of the report is that, via subpoena, the Senate staffers were able to determine that Backpage edits and or bans certain words that indicate an ad is for prostitution. Let me repeat that: the Senate is mainly annoyed that Backpage proactively looks for and blocks situations where it appears that the ads may be for prostitution -- especially involving children. Yet, the Senate investigators twist this to make it sound like a bad thing.

Over time, Backpage reprogrammed its electronic filters to reject an ad in its entirety if it contained certain egregious words suggestive of sex trafficking. But the company implemented this change by coaching its customers on how to post “clean” ads for illegal transactions. When a user attempted to post an ad with a forbidden word, the user would receive an error message identifying the problematic word choice to “help” the user, as Ferrer put it. For example, in 2012, a user advertising sex with a “teen” would get the error message: “Sorry, ‘teen’ is a banned term.” Through simply redrafting the ad, the user would be permitted to post a sanitized version.

I'm not entirely clear what they're complaining about here. You could also quite clearly see this as Backpage letting users know that it is not a place that should be used for sex trafficking, because it clearly alerts them to things that they don't want on the site. But the Senate staffers seem to have intentionally spun this to appear in the absolute worst light.

On top of that, Section 230 is again quite clear that any effort a platform does take to moderate stuff doesn't change the fact that a site is protected from liability. And that's to encourage exactly the type of behavior that Backpage is already doing: which is choosing voluntarily to block certain types of ads that they don't want. Now, I'm sure some will argue, as the Senate report tries to say, that because Backpage then allows another ad without the "banned" words through, that it's not stopping the underlying activity, but that's basically mandating that any online platform have incredibly adaptive and complex filters to make sure that anyone who tries to get around their filters cannot do so. That's a very dangerous precedent, and would basically make it impossible for any online service to exist, without being massive.

The report argues that the "editing" of posts by Backpage takes away 230 immunity:

Backpage and its officers have successfully invoked Section 230 in at least two other cases to avoid criminal or civil responsibility for activities on the site. In neither case, however, did the court have before it evidence that Backpage had moved beyond passive publication of third-party content to editing content to conceal illegality.

The argument here rests on the ruling in the infamous Roommates.com case from nearly a decade ago -- which remains the biggest case where a Section 230 defense failed. But that's a very different situation. Roommates.com failed because the Roommates system itself was asking questions deemed to be illegal under housing law (about racial preferences and such). That was part of the site that was fully created and controlled by Roommates.com. The difference here is that while Backpage may be running some of its posts through a filter, that's to moderate the content to remove descriptions of illegal sex trafficking or illegal prostitution. In other words, what Backpage is doing is actually moderating content, which is explicitly allowed and encouraged by the "Good Samirtan clause" of CDA 230, found in section (c). That part of the law says that the immunity applies even for "any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected." It seems quite clear that Backpage editing posts to remove such content falls squarely into that bucket.

The report is also strange in that it uses Backpage's own helpfulness to law enforcement against it. It highlights how law enforcement regularly gets reports and details of child trafficking because of Backpage:

According to the latest report from NCMEC, 73% of the suspected child trafficking reports it receives from the public involve Backpage. According to the Massachusetts Attorney General, “[t]he vast majority of prosecutions for sex trafficking now involve online advertising, and most of those advertisements appear on Backpage."

In other words, one of the best tools out there for finding and stopping sex trafficking is... Backpage.com. And the Senators response is to blame Backpage and make them legally liable? How does that make any sense at all? Now that Backpage has shut down those ads, they'll scatter elsewhere. Sex trafficking won't stop and it will be harder for law enforcement to track down and find actual perpetrators or save actual victims. Let's be clear: Senators McCaskill and Portman, in an effort to get their names in the headlines, have just made sex trafficking easier, by making law enforcement's job harder.

The report also makes a big deal out of the fact that Backpage's execs know that the site is used for trafficking and prostitution, but, again, so what? That's like the same claims that the legacy entertainment industry made about YouTube. Just because you know that a site can and sometimes is used for illegal behavior does not automatically make the site liable for that illegal activity. That's quite clear under Section 230, yet totally ignored by this report.

The Supreme Court got this right... while Senators Claire McCaskill and Rob Portman appear to be yet another set of politicians who are grandstanding by blaming a platform, rather than doing anything that will actually help stop sex trafficking. And the end result is that Backpage has shuttered that section. This won't stop or even diminish sex trafficking and prostitution online. Just as it moved from Craigslist to Backpage, it will continue to move elsewhere -- and that will probably be to a site that is even less willing to work with law enforcement to help track down and stop real illegal behavior. Similarly, this witchhunt has taught any new platform that any attempt to diminish the blatant use for sex trafficking and prostitution will be twisted to pretend that it's just trying to "hide" that activity.

This is a travesty. McCaskill and Portman will get their headlines, and sex trafficking will continue -- it will just be harder to help actual victims.

Filed Under: cda 230, claire mccaskill, grandstanding, rob portman, section 230, sex trafficking, supreme court
Companies: backpage

Senate Hearing Shows Cable Companies Routinely Overbill Customers, Do Little To Correct Errors

from the wrist-slaps-and-platitudes dept

If you've been distracted by something like a coma, you may have noticed that the cable industry has developed an atrocious reputation for poor customer service, built over a generation of regulatory capture, prioritizing growth over customer service, and just generally not giving much of a damn. By and large, a Congress slathered in telecom and cable campaign contributions has ensured that nothing much changes on that front, with most politicians taking every opportunity to in fact defend this dysfunctional status quo from innovation, competition, or change.

As such, it was marginally adorable to see Congress hold a hearing last week designed to deliver a few light wrist slaps to cable executives for their inability to seriously improve. Senators Rob Portman and Claire McCaskill simultaneously released a study (pdf) exploring how a number of large cable companies routinely overbill consumers, and do little to nothing to actually resolve such errors. In fact, a study released by the Senate found that Charter and its recently acquired subsidiary Time Warner Cable routinely overbill customers to the tune of around $7.2 million per year:

Between January and April 2016, Time Warner Cable overbilled customers nationwide an estimated $639,948. The Subcommittee projects that, in 2016, Time Warner Cable will overbill customers nationwide a total of $1,919,844. Charter has not yet completed the underlying work necessary to determine how much it has overbilled customers. But it has informed the Subcommittee that it overbilled customers by at least $442,691 per month.

What's more, the study found that these two companies specifically have a habit of doing even less than other upopular cable companies (read: nothing) after customers were overbilled:

During the six and a half year time period covered by the Subcommittee’s investigation, Time Warner Cable and Charter did not automatically refund or credit customers for equipment overcharges they discovered. By contrast, Comcast and DirecTV provided full refunds to overcharged customers, and Dish’s sophisticated billing system is designed to prevent these types of issues from occurring in the first instance.

And as a reminder: Time Warner Cable and Charter just merged, potentially creating a Voltron of errant overbilling. And thanks to binding arbitration mouseprint now buried in every cable and broadband contract under the sun, overbilled customers can't technically sue.

While both Time Warner Cable and Charter have promised to implement systems to avoid overbilling customers moving forward, such inquiries are usually geared toward scoring some cheap political brownie points among cable-loathing constituents, and rarely result in much of a follow-up (and there could be follow-up, since much of this technically constitutes false advertising). Still, to her credit, McCaskill also touched on the practice of misleading below-the-line fees used by cable operators to covertly jack up the advertised rate of services post-sale:

"We found that customers are being charged a host of fees that are not included in advertised pricing, some of which are for programming that used to be included in a customer’s video package. We also found that, just as many customers have long believed, some of these fees, like the HD and DVR service fees, aren’t a true reflection of the cost to the company of the service, but rather are based on the revenue goals of the company, and the price a customer is willing to stomach.”

Again, that has been a problem for years in both cable and telecom, thanks in part to Senators and regulators that have a nasty habit of pretending it's not happening. From "broadcast TV fees" that bury the cost of programming below the line, to bizarre, nonsensical charges like "internet cost recovery fees" -- most of the "innovation" in telecom and cable these days occurs in the realm of adding misleading charges to your bill, not in improving actual service or support.

A second study presented at the hearing goes into more detail, examining how cable providers also make it difficult if not impossible to comparison price shop (another benefit of below the line fees). McCaskill even offered up a recording of her recent call with DirecTV, made after she realized the company for years had been charging her an $8 per month "protection plan" fee she neither wanted nor asked for.

"I said, 'well, were you going to tell me this?' They said, 'no you have to call in and ask,'" McCaskill said at the hearing (you can find a full video of the hearing here). "If I hadn't called in and asked, that $10 could still be on my bill today based on the billing practices of the companies represented at this hearing."

And while cable's best and brightest spent plenty of time at the hearing claiming they've learned the error of their ways and are doing everything under the sun to change, that's the same promise they've given every year for more than fifteen years. Surely this wrist slap will be the wrist slap that sends them running back to the drawing board with a heartfelt desire to change?

Filed Under: cable, claire mccaskill, customer service, fraud, overbilling, tv
Companies: comcast, directv, time warner cable

Senator Tweets About 'Very Uncomfortable' TSA Pat Down: 'OMG'

from the love-pats dept

A few years ago, we wrote about how many elected officials in Congress get to skip through airport security when they fly -- which might explain why they're not so concerned with the intrusive nature (and lack of effectiveness) of today's security theater at airports. It turns out that this only applies when they travel with law enforcement. At other times, if they're traveling alone, they do, in fact, have to go through the standard TSA process, and it appears that Senator Claire McCaskill was not too happy about her latest experience:

Today in my airport screening, test on my hands was positive. Got private, more aggressive pat down. OMG. #veryuncomfortable

— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) March 11, 2013

She later said that this sort of #veryuncomfortable and "OMG" experience is something she's gone through frequently due to the fact that she has a metal knee.

Of course, the real question is whether or not this will actually change anything at all. As some have pointed out, Senator McCaskill has been criticizing such pat downs for years (while also arguing in favor of "full body scanners") and it hasn't changed much. In some ways, it just feels like another piece of the theater act.

Filed Under: claire mccaskill, pat down, security theater, tsa