House Transportation Committee Looking To Restart Federal Funding Of Red Light Cameras

from the back-to-buying-stuff-everyone-alreadys-knows-doesn't-work dept

Federal funds -- banned since 2015 from being used by states to purchase red light/speed cameras -- are possibly headed back to buying tech that hasn't done anything to make driving safer.

In 2012, language was added to the federal transportation bill that denied states federal funding for traffic cameras.

"A state may not expend funds apportioned to that state under this section to carry out a program to purchase, operate, or maintain an automated traffic enforcement system…"

But it didn't become law until 2015, and was expanded to exclude automatic license plate readers.

"None of the funds made available by this act may be used to acquire a camera for the purpose of collecting or storing vehicle license plate numbers," the House-passed language states.

Some of that may be rolled back with this year's budget proposal, The Newspaper (which did all the previously-cited reporting) reports:

The US House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Wednesday will review sweeping legislation that would, among other things, encourage local governments to set up speed cameras using federal taxpayer dollars. The move would reverse a ban on federal funding for both red light cameras and speed cameras that has been in place since 2015.

[...]

"Notwithstanding subparagraph (A), a state may expend funds apportioned to that state under this section to carry out a program to purchase, operate, or maintain an automated traffic system in a work zone or school zone," the proposal states.

The bill [PDF] also adds this language, which doesn't do much to clarify what these guidelines might entail.

Any automated traffic enforcement system installed pursuant to subparagraph (B) shall comply with speed enforcement camera systems and red light camera systems guidelines established by the Secretary.

If this passes, it will reverse a half-decade ban on federally funding this mostly-useless tech. As The Newspaper notes, the federal government was an early adopter of traffic enforcement camera systems, providing funds for several pilot programs around the country more than 20 years ago.

But as report after report showed these cameras did little to increase safety, legislators began to reconsider the federal government's involvement in programs that appeared to do nothing more than generate revenue.

And it's not as though the tech has improved over the years. Accuracy isn't necessarily the goal. The more tickets issued, the more every party involved (local governments, traffic cam manufacturers) benefits. Well, not every party. Drivers are part of the equation but they're viewed as little more than mobile ATMs. Automated systems cut down on payroll expenses and replace it with cheap mailed tickets that, in many cases, can't even be challenged in court. Win-win for governments. Lose-lose for the people paying their salaries.

In other words, there are several good reasons for the federal government to stay out of the automated traffic enforcement business. Those reasons apply to local governments as well. But the federal government shouldn't be making it easier for local governments to indulge their desires to turn residents into revenue streams.

Filed Under: congress, funding, redlight cameras, speed cameras

The House Has Proposed An Excellent Broadband Bill. Telecom Lobbyists Will Make Sure It Never Passes.

from the round-and-round-we-go dept

Last week the House unveiled (a previous version of this story incorrectly stated the bill had been passed) the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act. The bill, which died last year after Mitch McConnell's Senate refused to hold a vote on it, includes a lot of great things, including spending $94 billion on expanding broadband into underserved areas. There's a ton of other helpful things in the proposal, like boosting the definition of broadband to 100 Mbps down (and upstream), requiring "dig once" policies that deploy fiber conduit alongside any new highway bills, and even a provision requiring the FCC to create rules forcing ISPs be transparent about how much they actually charge for monthly service.

A summary (pdf) of the bill offers some additional detail, such as the fact the bill includes a mandate that the government (specifically the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within the NTIA) more fully study the impact of affordability on broadband access. In the wake of allegations that the FCC's subsidy auction process is a corrupted and exploited mess, the law also lays down a lot of groundwork to make the subsidization of broadband access more transparent, equitable, and accountable to genuine oversight with an eye on affordability (instead of exclusively focusing on access, which is the DC norm):

"The section also establishes certain requirements for projects funded under the program, including offering broadband service that provides at least 100/100Mbps with sufficiently low latency, offering broadband service at prices that are comparable to, or lower than, the prices charged for comparable service, and offering an affordable service plan. All bidders must meet objective, transparent criteria upfront that demonstrates technical and operational capacity to implement winning projects."

There's several other common sense proposals in the bill, like giving schools and libraries more leeway to use E-Rate funding to help shore up broadband access during the pandemic. I remain nervous about throwing billions in additional subsidies at the industry when the government still can't accurately map where broadband is or isn't available. Many of the same folks who view subsidization as a silver bullet (Democrat and Republican alike) still can't even acknowledge that the two major contributors to US broadband sucking is monopolization, and state and federal corruption. Problems we seem intent on barely acknowledging, much less addressing.

Still, this is a genuinely good bill that includes a lot of common sense solutions for a problem that has taken on greater urgency during a public health crisis. Much like the last time the bill is likely to pass the House, then get blocked in the Senate. It seems unlikely this would win a straight 60 vote majority without demolishing the filibuster or burying it in some broader, much larger infrastructure bill, which seems increasingly possible.

For one thing, broadband monopolies will fight tooth and nail against any effort to increase the standard definition of broadband, just like the last few times the FCC has considered it. Sharing more data on pricing, and boosting the definition of broadband to symmetrical 100 Mbps will only highlight how feckless regulators and monopolization have muted competition, resulting in spotty coverage, high prices, and slow speeds. Make that data far more transparent and accessible, and somebody might just get the kooky idea to genuinely do something about it, and we can't have that.

There's several other things included in the bill that the telecom lobby will simply never allow, like a more competitive and transparent grant and subsidy process, which might (gasp) result in more federal funding going to smaller competitors. There's also some language that requires paying a competitive rate and not scuttling unionization efforts the industry (and its congressional BFFs) will never tolerate. I guess the Democrats assume that because Covid is adding historic pressure on lawmakers to do more about broadband, they can somehow get the GOP (and centrist Democrat) votes needed to push this across the finish line.

But that seems to ignore forty years of history showing that the GOP --and more than a few Democrats-- are opposed to absolutely anything that genuinely holds trusted intelligence partners like AT&T accountable, anything that brings transparency to advertising or pricing, anything that genuinely protects consumers from monopoly harms (be it privacy violations or net neutrality), or anything that even remotely risks hurting incumbent revenues and regional dominance by driving more competition to market. I don't see that suddenly changing here, though I'd love to be surprised.

Filed Under: broadband, congress, digital divide, funding, house, senate

$3.2 Billion FCC Program Helps The Poor Afford Broadband, But...

from the unfinished-business dept

Last week the FCC took the wraps off a new $3.2 billion program designed to help struggling Americans afford broadband during the pandemic. The program was required by Congress as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, and will, once fully operational, dole out $50 a month for broadband service to lower-income American families that qualify. That number jumps to $75 on Tribal lands (a stark reversal from the Trump/Pai era, where the FCC was interested in pulling back on tribal broadband subsidies). The program also doles out up to $100 for a tablet or computer.

With COVID-19 showcasing broadband's essential nature in more ways than one, it's a welcome program that should deliver some immediate relief to the estimated 42 million Americans with no broadband whatsoever, and the estimated 18.5 million households that lack broadband access specifically due to the high cost of service. There's no reason children in the wealthiest country in the history of the planet should have to huddle in the dirt outside of Taco Bell, something interim FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel was quick to highlight:

"This is a program that will help those at risk of digital disconnection,” Acting FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel said of the new program. “It will help those sitting in cars in parking lots just to catch a Wi-Fi signal to go online for work. It will help those lingering outside the library with a laptop just to get a wireless signal for remote learning. It will help those who worry about choosing between paying a broadband bill and paying rent or buying groceries."

That said, there could still be a few issues here if the FCC doesn't do a good job monitoring the program. Under the new broadband benefit system, the money first goes to the ISPs, who'll then be tasked with making sure the money goes to the appropriate individuals. That hasn't always worked out that well with the FCC's existing Lifeline program, which doles out a measly $9.25 monthly benefit that low-income homes have to use on phone, broadband, or wireless service. Companies from AT&T to Sprint have been repeatedly dinged for taking money for people that, well, didn't actually exist.

The other problem is that this is a temporary fix for a permanent, and much larger issue. An issue that the United States repeatedly doesn't even acknowledge, much less do anything about. It's the primary reason why US broadband is so pricey and mediocre on nearly every metric that matters: corruption and monopolization. 83 million Americans have the choice of just one ISP (aka a monopoly). Tens of millions more only have the choice between a fairly apathetic cable giant (usually Comcast), and an even more apathetic telco that (usually) refuses to meaningfully upgrade or repair its aging DSL lines.

Republican administrations are literally incapable of acknowledging this is even a problem. Democratic administrations are more likely to acknowledge this problem, but not often, and usually not clearly. It's much more politically advantageous to discuss the problem in generalities with terms like the "digital divide," as not to offend companies like AT&T that are not only holding the purse strings, but are literally tethered to our law enforcement and intelligence gathering systems and therefore largely immune from any serious culpability for 100 years of monopolistic behavior.

Again it's great that the FCC is doing something to tackle the immediate needs of desperate Americans. And the agency in many ways is prevented from doing much more due to the fact the Biden administration still hasn't appointed a new FCC boss (breaking the current 2-2 Commissioner deadlock). But even when at full power, keep an eye on those willing to acknowledge why US broadband is so expensive and aggressively mediocre, and those (including many in the press and Congress) who enjoy pretending that this problem exists in a miraculous vacuum free of any direct causation.

Filed Under: broadband, digital divide, fcc, funding

White House Offers To Allow Renaming Confederate Bases... In Exchange For Getting Rid Of Section 230

from the who-did-the-what-now? dept

Let's state upfront that there is no way in hell this is happening, and it's all just performative nonsense. No one is actually going to do this. However, the NY Times is reporting that White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has floated the idea of "compromise" to get the annual NDAA passed, after President Trump has whined about it requiring the renaming of military bases named after Confederacy leaders. As a bit of background, I still don't understand why we have literally anything named after leaders who actually tried to leave the country and fought against the US military, in order to continue enslaving people... but that's just me. The NDAA (the National Defense Authorization Act) is the annual budget allocated by Congress for the military. It's one of those "must pass" kind of things that some in Congress try to sneak junk into, knowing that it has to pass. President Trump has threatened to veto the bill because of the base renaming bit.

Now the Times is reporting that Meadows is saying Trump would stop fighting the renaming... if Congress uses the NDAA to totally repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Really.

Over the course of several conversations, Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, asked Mr. Meadows what might persuade Mr. Trump to sign the measure with the renaming requirement intact, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Mr. Meadows, according to the people, said that adding a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, considered the most consequential law governing speech on the internet, would help.

Just to put this out there: this is insane. On many different levels. I've already expressed my confusion over why there's any debate at all about these base names, but the idea that Congress should simply wipe out Section 230 in the NDAA just creates an entirely new layer of pure ridiculousness. I mean, in part because this would simply increase uncertainty and liability for internet services, leading to a much higher likelihood that Twitter and other social media sites would take down Trump's nonsense for fear of having to defend themselves in court over it.

It truly is striking how focused so much of Washington DC has become on Section 230 without even understanding what it currently does, how it works, and what will happen if it gets removed.

Anyway, again, this is not happening. No one is going to go ahead with this. But it's just yet another example of the ridiculous policy proposals now floating around the White House.

Filed Under: appropriations, confederate bases, congress, donald trump, free speech, funding, mark meadows, military, ndaa, section 230

Senator Wyden And Others Introduce Bill Calling The DOJ's Bluff Regarding Its Attempt To Destroy Section 230 & Encryption

from the should-be-called-the-do-your-job-bill dept

One of the key points we've been making concerning Attorney General William Barr and his DOJ's eager support for the terrible EARN-IT Act, is that much of it really seems to be to cover up the DOJ's own failings in fighting child porn and child exploitation. The premise behind the EARN IT Act is that there's a lot of child exploitation/child abuse material found on social media... and that social media companies should do more to block that content. Of course, if you step back and think about it, you'd quickly realize that this is a form of sweeping the problem under the rug. Rather than actually tracking down and arresting those exploiting and abusing children, it's demanding private companies just hide the evidence of those horrific acts.

And why might the DOJ and others be so supportive of sweeping evidence under the rug and hiding it? Perhaps because the DOJ and Congress have literally failed to live up to their mandates under existing laws to actually fight child exploitation. Barr's DOJ has been required under law to produce reports showing data about internet crimes against children, and come up with goals to fight those crimes. It has produced only two out of the six reports that were mandated over a decade ago. At the same time, Congress has only allocated a very small budget to state and local law enforcement for fighting internet child abuse. While the laws Congress passed say that Congress should give $60 million to local law enforcement, it has actually allocated only about half of that. Oh, and Homeland Security took nearly half of its "cybercrimes" budget and diverted it to immigration enforcement, rather than fighting internet crimes such as child exploitation.

So... maybe we should recognize that the problem isn't social media platforms, but the fact that Congress and law enforcement -- from local and state up to the DOJ -- have literally failed to do their job.

At least some elected officials have decided to call the DOJ's bluff on why we need the EARN IT Act. Led by Senator Ron Wyden (of course), Senators Kirsten Gillbrand, Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown and Rep. Anna Eshoo have introduced a new bill to actually fight child sex abuse online. Called the Invest in Child Safety Act, it would basically make law enforcement do its job regarding this stuff.

The Invest in Child Safety Act would direct $5 billion in mandatory funding to investigate and target the pedophiles and abusers who create and share child sexual abuse material online. And it would create a new White House office to coordinate efforts across federal agencies, after DOJ refused to comply with a 2008 law requiring coordination and reporting of those efforts. It also directs substantial new funding for community-based efforts to prevent children from becoming victims in the first place.

Basically, the bill would do a bunch of things to make sure that law enforcement is actually dealing with the very real problem of child exploitation, rather than demanding that internet companies (1) sweep evidence under the rug, and (2) break encryption:

• Quadruple the number of prosecutors and agents in DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section from 30 FTEs to 120 FTEs;
• Add 100 new agents and investigators for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Innocent Images National Initiative, Crimes Against Children Unit, Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Teams, and Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Forces;
• Fund 65 new NCMEC analysts, engineers, and mental health counselors, as well as a major upgrade to NCMEC’s technology platform to enable the organization to more effectively evaluate and process CSAM reports from tech companies;
• Double funding for the state Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Forces;
• Double funding for the National Criminal Justice Training Center, to administer crucial Internet Crimes Against Children and Missing and Exploited Children training programs;
• Increase funding for evidence-based programs, local governments and non-federal entities to detect, prevent and support victims of child sexual abuse, including school-based mental health services and prevention programs like the Children’s Advocacy Centers and the HHS’ Street Outreach Program;
• Require tech companies to increase the time that they hold evidence of CSAM, in a secure database, to enable law enforcement agencies to prosecute older cases;
• Establish an Office to Enforce and Protect Against Child Sexual Exploitation, within the Executive Office of the President, to direct and streamline the federal government’s efforts to prevent, investigate and prosecute the scourge of child exploitation;
• Require the Office to develop an enforcement and protection strategy, in coordination with HHS and GAO; and
• Require the Office to submit annual monitoring reports, subject to mandatory Congressional testimony to ensure timely execution.

While I always have concerns about law enforcement mission creep and misguided targeting of law enforcement efforts, hopefully everyone can agree that child exploitation does remain a very real problem, and one that law enforcement should be investigating and going after those who are actually exploiting and abusing children. This bill would make that possible, rather than the alternative approach of just blaming the internet companies for law enforcement's failure to take any of this seriously.

Filed Under: csam, doj, earn it, exploitation, funding, intermediary liability, law enforcement, section 230

Barr's Motives, Encryption and Protecting Children; DOJ 230 Workshop Review, Part III

from the don't-break-the-internet dept

In Part I of this series on the Department of Justice’s February 19 workshop, “Section 230 — Nurturing Innovation or Fostering Unaccountability?” (archived video and agenda), we covered why Section 230 is important, how it works, and how panelists proposed to amend it. Part II explored Section 230’s intersection with criminal law.

Here, we ask what DOJ’s real objective with this workshop was. The answer to us seems clear: use Section 230 as a backdoor for banning encryption — a “backdoor to a backdoor” — in the name of stamping out child sexual abuse material (CSAM) while, conveniently, distracting attention from DOJ’s appalling failures to enforce existing laws against CSAM. We conclude by explaining how to get tough on CSAM to protect kids without amending Section 230 or banning encryption.

Banning Encryption

In a blistering speech, Trump’s embattled Attorney General, Bill Barr, blamed the 1996 law for a host of ills, especially the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). But he began the speech as follows:

[Our] interest in Section 230 arose in the course of our broader review of market-leading online platforms, which we announced last summer. While our efforts to ensure competitive markets through antitrust enforcement and policy are critical, we recognize that not all the concerns raised about online platforms squarely fall within antitrust. Because the concerns raised about online platforms are often complex and multi-dimensional, we are taking a holistic approach in considering how the department should act in protecting our citizens and society in this sphere.

In other words, the DOJ is under intense political pressure to “do something” about “Big Tech” — most of all from Republicans, who have increasingly fixated on the idea that “Big Tech” is the new “Liberal Media” out to get them. They’ve proposed a flurry of bills to amend Section 230 — either to roll back its protections or to hold companies hostage, forcing them to do things that really have nothing to do with Section 230, like be "politically neutral" (the Hawley bill) or ban encryption (the Graham-Blumenthal bill), because websites and Internet services simply can’t operate without Section 230’s protections.

Multiple news reports have confirmed our hypothesis going into the workshop: that its purpose was to tie Section 230 to encryption. Even more importantly, the closed-door roundtable after the workshop (to which we were, not surprisingly, not invited) reportedly concluded with a heated discussion of encryption, after the DOJ showed participants draft amendments making Section 230 immunity contingent on compromising encryption by offering a backdoor to the U.S. government. Barr’s speech said essentially what we predicted he would say right before the workshop:

Technology has changed in ways that no one, including the drafters of Section 230, could have imagined. These changes have been accompanied by an expansive interpretation of Section 230 by the courts, seemingly stretching beyond the statute’s text and original purpose. For example, defamation is Section 230’s paradigmatic application, but Section 230 immunity has been extended to a host of additional conduct — from selling illegal or faulty products to connecting terrorists to facilitating child exploitation. Online services also have invoked immunity even where they solicited or encouraged unlawful conduct, shared in illegal proceeds, or helped perpetrators hide from law enforcement. ...

Finally, and importantly, Section 230 immunity is relevant to our efforts to combat lawless spaces online. We are concerned that internet services, under the guise of Section 230, can not only block access to law enforcement — even when officials have secured a court-authorized warrant — but also prevent victims from civil recovery. This would leave victims of child exploitation, terrorism, human trafficking, and other predatory conduct without any legal recourse. Giving broad immunity to platforms that purposefully blind themselves – and law enforcers – to illegal conduct on their services does not create incentives to make the online world safer for children. In fact, it may do just the opposite.

Barr clearly wants to stop online services from “going dark” through Section 230 — even though Section 230 has little (if any) direct connection to encryption. His argument was clear: Section 230 protections shouldn't apply to services that use strong encryption. That’s precisely what the Graham-Blumenthal EARN IT Act would do: greatly lower the bar for enforcement of existing criminal laws governing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), allow state prosecutions, and civil lawsuits (under a lower burden of proof), but then allow Internet services to “earn” back their Section 230 protection against this increased liability by doing whatever a commission convened and controllled by the Attorney General tells them to do.

Those two Senators are expected to formally introduce their bill in the coming weeks. Undoubtedly, they’ll refer back to Barr’s speech, claiming that law enforcement needs their bill passed ASAP to “protect the children.”

Barr’s speech on encryption last July didn’t mention 230 but went much further in condemning strong encryption. If you read it carefully, you can see where Graham and Blumenthal got their idea of lowering the standard of existing federal law on CSAM from “actual knowledge” to “recklessness, which would allow the DOJ to sue websites that offer stronger encryption than the DOJ thinks is really necessary. Specifically, Barr said:

The Department has made clear what we are seeking. We believe that when technology providers deploy encryption in their products, services, and platforms they need to maintain an appropriate mechanism for lawful access. This means a way for government entities, when they have appropriate legal authority, to access data securely, promptly, and in an intelligible format, whether it is stored on a device or in transmission. We do not seek to prescribe any particular solution. ...

We are confident that there are technical solutions that will allow lawful access to encrypted data and communications by law enforcement without materially weakening the security provided by encryption. Such encryption regimes already exist. For example, providers design their products to allow access for software updates using centrally managed security keys. We know of no instance where encryption has been defeated by compromise of those provider-maintained keys. Providers have been able to protect them. ...

Some object that requiring providers to design their products to allow for lawful access is incompatible with some companies’ “business models.” But what is the business objective of the company? Is it “A” — to sell encryption that provides the best protection against unauthorized intrusion by bad actors? Or is it “B” — to sell encryption that assures that law enforcement will not be able to gain lawful access? I hope we can all agree that if the aim is explicitly “B” — that is, if the purpose is to block lawful access by law enforcement, whether or not this is necessary to achieve the best protection against bad actors — then such a business model, from society’s standpoint, is illegitimate, and so is any demand for that product. The product jeopardizes the public’s safety, with no countervailing utility. ...

The real question is whether the residual risk of vulnerability resulting from incorporating a lawful access mechanism is materially greater than those already in the unmodified product. The Department does not believe this can be demonstrated.

In other words, companies choosing to offer encryption should have to justify their decision to do so, given the risks created by denying law enforcement access to user communications. That’s pretty close to a “recklessness” standard.

Again, for more on this, read Berin’s previous Techdirt piece. According to the most recently leaked version of the Graham-Blumenthal bill, the Attorney General would no longer be able to rewrite the “best practices” recommended by the Commission. But he would gain greater ability to steer the commission by continually vetoing its recommendations until it does what he wants. If the commission doesn’t make a recommendation, the safe harbor offered by complying with the “best practices” doesn’t go into effect — but the rest of the law still would. Specifically, website and Internet service operators would still face vague new criminal and civil liability for “reckless” product design. The commission and its recommendations are a red herring; the truly coercive aspects of the bill will happen regardless of what the commission does. If the DOJ signals that failing to offer a backdoor (or retain user data) will lead to legal liability, companies will do it — even absent any formalized “best practices.”

The Real Scandal: DOJ’s Inattention to Child Sexual Abuse

As if trying to compromise the security of all Internet services and the privacy of all users weren’t bad enough, we suspect Barr had an even more devious motive: covering his own ass, politically.

Blaming tech companies generally and encryption in particular for the continued spread of CSAM kills two birds with one stone. Not only does it offer them a new way to ban encryption, it also deflects attention from the real scandal that should appall us all: the collective failure of Congress, the Trump Administration, and the Department of Justice to prioritize the fight against the sexual exploitation of children.

The Daily, The New York Times podcast, ran part one of a two-part series on this topic on Wednesday. Reporters Michael Keller and Gabriel Dance summarized a lengthy investigative report they published back in September, but which hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Here’s the key part:

The law Congress passed in 2008 foresaw many of today’s problems, but The Times found that the federal government had not fulfilled major aspects of the legislation.

The Justice Department has produced just two of six required reports that are meant to compile data about internet crimes against children and set goals to eliminate them, and there has been a constant churn of short-term appointees leading the department’s efforts. The first person to hold the position, Francey Hakes, said it was clear from the outset that no one “felt like the position was as important as it was written by Congress to be.”

The federal government has also not lived up to the law’s funding goals, severely crippling efforts to stamp out the activity.

Congress has regularly allocated about half of the $60 million in yearly funding for state and local law enforcement efforts. Separately, the Department of Homeland Security this year diverted nearly $6 million from its cybercrimes units to immigration enforcement — depleting 40 percent of the units’ discretionary budget until the final month of the fiscal year.

So, to summarize:

1. Congress has spent has half as much as it promised to;
2. DOJ hasn’t bothered issuing reports required by law — the best way to get lawmakers to cough up promised funding; and
3. The Trump Administration has chosen to spend money on the political theatre of immigration enforcement rather than stopping CSAM trafficking.

Let that sink in. In a better, saner world, Congress would be holding hearings to demand explanations from Barr. But they haven’t, and the workshop will allow Barr to claim he’s getting tough on CSAM without actually doing anything about it — while also laying the groundwork for legislation that would essentially allow him to ban encryption.

Even for Bill Barr, that’s pretty low.

Filed Under: cda 230, congress, csam, doj, encryption, funding, section 230, william barr

Since The National Archives Can't Keep Up With Incoming Records, Agencies Have Been Given Permission To Rewrite Their Own Histories

from the build-your-own-Greatest-Hits-collection-on-the-public-dime dept

The federal government's recent past is disappearing alarmingly quickly. And the only thing that can stop this from happening is a collection of legislators who've collectively shown for years they just don't care. The National Archives has been given the monumental task of housing billions of records. It has no more room to store paper documents and has demanded federal agencies only send it digital records going forward.

This has only created more problems. Federal agencies aren't being given extra funds or staff to convert existing paper documents and the National Archives has seen its budget cut by Congress for three straight years. The amount of incoming material has tripled since 1985 but the National Archives has fewer employees than it did more than three decades ago and its budget has not even kept up with inflation.

So, what's the end result? Evidence of government wrongdoing is being purged, as Matthew Connelly reports for the New York Times.

In 2017, a normally routine document released by the archives, a records retention schedule, revealed that archivists had agreed that officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement could delete or destroy documents detailing the sexual abuse and death of undocumented immigrants. Tens of thousands of people posted critical comments, and dozens of senators and representatives objected. The National Archives made some changes to the plan, but last month it announced that ICE could go ahead and start destroying records from Mr. Trump’s first year, including detainees’ complaints about civil rights violations and shoddy medical care.

Thanks to an unwillingness to treat archiving as essential, Congress is encouraging future abuses by federal agencies. If agencies know there's no room in the archives, records of their actions will simply vanish once they hit the federally-approved expiration date. Given the stonewalling that tends to greet records requests for evidence of government wrongdoing, some of the government's sins may never be exposed. All agencies have to do is make it to the destruction date without being hit with a preservation order. Very few public records requesters have the means to take the government to court and without any significant modification to destruction protocols, the government has the Archives' blessing to whitewash its past.

ICE is only one agency directly benefiting from an underfunded and overworked agency. Other agencies engaged in questionable behavior are being allowed to rewrite their own history by excising the worst parts.

The Department of the Interior and the National Archives have decided to delete files on endangered species, offshore drilling inspections and the safety of drinking water. The department even claimed that papers from a case where it mismanaged Native American land and assets — resulting in a multibillion-dollar legal settlement — would be of no interest to future historians (or anyone else).

If any agency has particularly troublesome documents on hand, it can seek "temporary" designation for them, removing its obligation to archive them. As it has become evident over the years, Congress (for multiple sessions under multiple presidents) doesn't really care what happens to these public records. Consequently, federal agencies have been destroying more and archiving less.

Connelly's report says the CIA has released fewer than 10% of its estimated 160 million paper records to the National Archives and the percentage released each year has been decreasing steadily. The report also notes the State Department is attempting to do more with less -- turning over the whole process to machine learning which will perform a nuanced task of designating files with "historic" interest mechanically. This may eliminate any employee's personal interest in vanishing documents, but just as easily could make it worse by introducing new biases that result in increased purging.

The Archives can't reverse this trend on its own. It needs the backing of Congress and the President. But it's unlikely a regime change will change anything. This downward trend is nearly four decades old at this point and the appointment of new department heads only seems to result in additional "temporary" designations, piling new exemptions on top of those that already exist. History may be written by the winners, but at the National Archives, history just simply isn't being written by anyone.

Filed Under: archives, congress, destruction of records, funding, ice, lost history, national archives, records, rewriting history

Should The Big Tech Companies Voluntarily Fund The Journalism Business?

from the probably-not dept

There have been plenty of stories that have made the rounds over the years arguing that Google/Facebook have "killed" the journalism business by sucking up all the advertising revenue. In the past, I've pointed out how silly and tiresome this argument can be, and certainly looking through the data, it simply does not support the narrative. Instead, it appears that the success of Google and Facebook is much more a scapegoat for the legacy news business' own failure to adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace -- one in which their previous competitive advantage (limited competition within a geographical region) was completely eroded.

That said, even understanding that properly doesn't answer the question of how one can actually save the journalism business, which has faced a huge variety of challenges over the last couple of decades. Lydia Polgreen, writing for the Guardian, has an interesting proposal that argues that the big internet platforms can both save journalism and deal with their big misinformation problems in one single move, by throwing a huge sum of money at journalism organizations. Among other things, she compares the rise of misinformation and the collapse of journalism to the impacts of industrial pollution, and suggests that internet companies could create a parallel to how businesses have now begun focusing on sustainability programs regarding environmental impact. Except, instead of dealing with things like carbon emissions, they could help deal with the pollution of misinformation via funding journalism efforts:

Just as companies decarbonize their businesses, they should think carefully about how they contribute to the destruction of our information ecosystem and choose to reach consumers on platforms that slow rather than increase the pace of information ecosystem collapse.

I am not suggesting anyone must immediately abandon Facebook or Google advertising platforms. But I do propose an experiment. What if the chief marketing officer of every major corporation set aside a substantial chunk of their marketing budget and devoted it to high-quality news? Of the $130bn devoted to digital advertising, set $50bn aside for news.

She argues that both the platforms and their advertisers might benefit from this sort of program:

Advertisers love these platforms for the same reason industrialists love carbon-based energy: it provides powerful, measurable fuel for their businesses. But increasingly they are becoming wary of these platforms because they are full of disinformation, fraud and abuse. Just as companies are weaning themselves from substances that pollute our air, water and lands, companies should wean themselves from platforms that are destroying our information ecosystem. It’s just good business.

I'm not convinced that equation adds up as neatly as Polgreen thinks, though -- and I'm certainly not convinced that there's a direct correlation between funding more journalism and ending disinformation. They may be loosely related, but the willingness of many to simply buy into mis- and disinformation suggests something more fundamental at stake.

As someone who runs a company that has a foot squarely planted in the journalism space, the business side of my job responsibilities certainly would love to see a massive, many-billion dollar pot appear out of thin air to fund more journalism. However, I still would worry about the downstream consequences of such a fund. For all the (often misleading or misunderstood) talk about how some of these tech giants "fund" various projects, and how that biases them, wouldn't this just set off that concern at a much, much higher level? Would people be confident that there would be valuable investigative journalism about the tech giants if those companies held the keys to a $50 billion pot of gold? I think there would be reasonable concerns about the incentive structure. Along those lines, there would be similar concerns just in determining who gets access to those funds. Who chooses? And if you think the fights about "bias" are bad now, just wait until "pick ideological news source of your choice" doesn't get any of the funding, or gets a smaller amount than a rival news source with a different ideological basis.

Now, it's entirely possible that some of this could be sorted out. You can sketch out plans for some sort of "independent foundation" that would make the decisions, with some sort of guarantees that keep it free from interference over a long period of time.

But, my biggest concern about such a plan is that it is fundamentally a band-aid to cover up a wound, rather than looking for a true, sustainable solution to funding journalism as a whole. Indeed, this entire plan seems premised on the idea that the big tech companies of today are locked in place, and will continue being the big tech companies of the future. What's the mechanism for the next big tech companies to be pressured into joining this effort? And what happens when -- inevitably -- some of the companies start to falter. What's the mechanism for them to remove themselves from coughing up a huge chunk of their revenue to journalism?

While this is a different and ambitious plan, it seems to create many more questions than it answers and, most importantly, does little to deal with the fundamental and structural issues that have knocked the foundation out from under traditional journalism funding.

Filed Under: funding, journalism, misinformation, sustainability
Companies: facebook, google

Why Is The US Government Letting Big Pharma Charge Insane Prices On Patents The US Owns?

from the big-questions dept

As we've discussed plenty of times in the past, when the federal government creates something that could be covered by copyright law, US copyright law requires it to be put into the public domain for the benefit of the public. I've never quite understood why the same is not true for patents. Instead, the US government does big business licensing off patents. While some may argue that this is a good revenue generation scheme for the US government (which theoretically should lower taxes elsewhere), it has significant downstream effects. And that's especially true in the healthcare market.

As we've discussed before, you'll often hear big pharma insisting it needs patents because it takes some ungodly sum to research and bring a patent to market. That number goes up every year. By a lot. In the early 2000s, the numbers was clocked at $800 million. Last year, drug companies were now claiming $2.7 billion. But much of that is a total myth. Indeed, research shows that big pharma is often adding up the costs that the federal government itself spends on encouraging new drug development and adds it to the total cost as if that cost is borne by the pharmaceutical industry, rather than the taxpayer.

And yet, even though the US taxpayer tends to pay for a significant share of the research and development in new drugs, big pharma companies which take over the project down the road get to keep 100% of the profits -- and, thanks to a totally broken patent system that gives them a literal monopoly, they jack up the prices to insane levels (and this works because of our idiotic healthcare setup in which no one ever knows the cost of what we're buying, and insurance companies act as weird middlemen).

I'm reminded of all this in reading a new piece by Dr. Eugene Gu, talking about the absolute insanity of Truvada, an important drug for HIV patients, which is controlled by pharma company Gilead Sciences. Gu outlines a story that reflects exactly what we discussed above. Gilead charges impossibly high fees for Truvada even though most of the development was paid for by US taxpayers:

While the generic version of Truvada is available in many countries outside the United States for around $840 annually per patient, Gilead uses its patent on the drug to charge Americans close to around $24,000 annually per patient. That’s for the exact fixed dose combination of tenofovir and emtricitabine that costs around $60 annually per patient to produce.

[....]

What's infuriating is that American taxpayers funded much of the research and development for Truvada. So much, in fact, that according to the Yale Global Health Justice Partnership it's the CDC that actually owns the patent for the drug. So Gilead has basically been making $3bn a year selling a drug that actually belongs to Americans themselves.

And, as Gu notes, the situation gets even more ridiculous and more corrupt:

And that’s not all. Gilead recently partnered with Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and President Donald Trump to roll out a public relations scheme to fool the public. During this, Gilead declared that it would be donating enough Truvada to treat 200,000 patients each year until 2030. While it sounds great on the surface, that basically means it will donate around $12m a year while making billions in profits and getting a tax break.

There are all sorts of reasons why our healthcare system is truly messed up, but the fact that taxpayers pay for the development of critical life saving drugs, but then the government allows big pharma companies to effectively control the patent, extract massive monopoly rents, and then give them tax breaks for donating a tiny percentage... seems particularly fucked up.

Filed Under: drug development, extortion, funding, healthcare, monopolies, monopolies rents, patents, pharmaceuticals, truvada, us government
Companies: gilead sciences