ISPs Push Employees To Urge Governor Brown Veto New California Net Neutrality Bill

from the down-to-the-wire dept

Last week we noted how California managed to shake off ISP lobbyists and pass meaningful net neutrality rules. The rules largely mirror the FCC's discarded 2015 rules, in that they prohibit throttling or blocking of services that compete with ISP monopolies. But the rules also go a bit further in that they prohibit all of the sneaky bullshit ISPs have creatively-shifted to as their anti-competitive impulses evolved, including restrictions on zero rating and interconnection shenanigans out toward the edge of the network (the cause of those Netflix slowdowns a few years back).

While the California Senate has passed the new law, it still hasn't been signed by California Governor Jerry Brown. Given Brown's tendency to occasionally veto efforts that have broad public support, net neutrality activists are a little worried he may shut the entire effort down. Potentially via the argument that the bill would somehow harm ISPs ability to make a living (which has never been true, since you only run afoul of the rules when you behave badly).

ISPs meanwhile have been making a zero hour push to encourage Brown to veto the bill, with activists telling me the CTIA (the wireless industry's top lobbying organization), Comcast and AT&T all met with Brown at his office last Tuesday. Other ISPs, like Frontier Communications, have taken to urging their employees to demand Brown veto the bill. And, as is usually the case, their arguments aren't exactly what you'll call fact-based:

"The email directs users to an online form letter to Brown claiming that Frontier “supports an open Internet,” but that the bill will “create significant new costs for consumers, hinder network investment and delay Frontier’s hard work to help close the Digital Divide in California.”

Except Frontier’s “support” for net neutrality has involved participating in a coalition of ISPs that repeatedly sued the FCC over its modest rules. And claims that net neutrality somehow harms network investment have been repeatedly, painstakingly debunked using public SEC filings, ISP earnings reports, and countless public statements by ISP executives themselves.

The e-mail to employees, which urges them to sign this letter to Brown, also relies on an ISP industry falsehood from way back; the idea that the bill (SB822) would somehow give Netflix and Google "free internet":

"The email, which notes that employee participation is voluntary, contains numerous other unsubstantiated allegations, including one claim that the bill would somehow create “free internet for big users like Netflix and Google."

Obviously there's nothing about that statement that's true, though ISPs have long leaned on this idea that content companies are just "free riders" on their networks, hoovering up revenues that, by imaginary divine mandate, should be going into the pockets of the ISPs. Of course every time we suggest to an ISP that they pay Netflix or Google's bandwidth bill, they go oddly quiet. That's because, like most ISP talking points on net neutrality, ISPs have to make up points out of whole cloth, since admitting "we just want the freedom to anti-competitively cash in on broken broadband markets" isn't a winning argument.

If Brown signs the bill, the entire west coast will soon be covered in state-level net neutrality protections, which is certainly not what ISPs had in mind after spending millions to kill net neutrality. If Brown doesn't sign the bill, he's going to be opposing the bipartisan majority of Americans who want some degree of meaningful protection standing between them and historically anti-competitive telecom monopolies like Comcast.

While broadband tends to be an issue politicians pay empty lip service to, the FCC's grotesque handout to Comcast and friends has changed the game. Should Brown veto the bill, he's only reiterating that monopoly welfare trumps the public interest and the health of the internet, a position that's likely to hold political consequences moving forward.

Filed Under: california, competition, isps, jerry brown, net neutrality

Important California Privacy Bill Signed Into Law: Police Need A Warrant To Look At Your Data

from the now-for-federal-reform dept

For a long time now, we've been talking about the need for ECPA reform. ECPA -- the Electronic Communications Privacy Act -- is a truly outdated piece of law that law enforcement regularly abuse to conduct warrantless searches on your digital information. There are a number of problems with it, but the most cited one is the fact that it considers emails to be "abandoned" if they've been on a server for 180 days, and thus no warrant is needed to read those emails. That may have made sense in the mid-1980s when the law passed and the few people who used email downloaded their emails from a server to a local disk, but it makes no sense at all in the cloud era. However, actually getting ECPA reform through Congress has proven difficult, in large part because some in law enforcement really like this ability to snoop on your emails.

Thankfully, here in California, Governor Jerry Brown has just signed a new bill, for CalECPA, which protects users' digital information here in California. Just like the federal ECPA should do, CalECPA requires a warrant for access to digital records, including emails and text messages -- and the same goes for geographical location information.

This is a big win for EFF and the ACLU, who have been pushing for this law to make it through the California Assembly and then have Governor Brown sign it. Now, if only we could do something similar at the federal level...

Filed Under: calecpa, california, ecpa, ecpa reform, email, jerry brown, location info, privacy, text, warrant

California Governor Passes Ban On Use Of Grand Juries In Officer-Involved Killings

from the unindictable-ham-sandwiches-forced-to-brave-actual-due-process dept

Grand juries have proven capable of handing down nearly any indictment requested by prosecutors… if it's just a citizen on the receiving end. What's normally a rubber-stamping of charge recommendations tends to fall apart when a police officer is the potential defendant. With rare exceptions, actions that would have seen the average citizen charged with a crime are dismissed by grand juries -- whose only true consistency appears to be compliance. If a prosecutor doesn't want someone charged, a grand jury can just as easily be led in that direction as well.

California governor Jerry Brown is looking to even the odds. While the best strategy would be to dump the grand jury system altogether, Brown is at least opting for the next best thing.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Tuesday making California the first state in the nation to ban the use of grand juries to decide whether police officers should face criminal charges when they kill people in the line of duty.

In this move, there's a tacit admission that grand juries will buy whatever a cop-friendly prosecutor chooses to sell them. Beyond that, there's an open admission that grand jury proceedings are about as opaque as the legal process can get.

"What the governor's decision says is, he gets it -- the people don't want secrecy when it comes to officer-involved shootings," said retired judge and former San Jose independent police auditor LaDoris Cordell, the first African-American appointed as a judge in Northern California and a key supporter of the bill. "We're not trying to get more officers indicted. We're saying, 'Whatever you decide, do it in the open.'"

This should be the case in every grand jury presentment, not just those pertaining to police officers. And there's a lot of area left uncovered by the limitation of this ban to only the times when an officer manages to kill someone. But it's better than the current situation, which is generally a citizen's jailhouse railroad and an officer's slightly-delayed vehicle of absolution.

And, of course, prosecutors and police unions are against it.

[T]he California District Attorneys Association and the California Police Chiefs Association opposed the ban, saying the grand jury should be preserved as an option. Imposing a blanket prohibition would discriminate against police officers on the basis of their occupation, they argued.

As opposed to being discriminated for on the basis of their occupation? I don't think many people feel a grand jury has anything to do with due process. And that goes both ways. I'm sure cops would rather face a grand jury than a real "jury of their peers." The odds of walking away without charges is greatly increased in the former situation.

The two agencies unwilling to see their own thrown to the wolves face the harrowing nightmare that is due process have a suggestion: let's not scrap the cop-friendly grand jury system. Instead, let's put all the sunlight we can on cases where officers have been declared to have Done Nothing Wrong.

The association suggested that the Legislature could increase transparency by allowing grand jury transcripts to be released in cases for which no one was indicted.

The only thing transparent about these entities is their self-interest. The only way something like this could be framed as a "concession" is if the person delivering it is completely devoid of self-awareness and/or a conscience. While it would allow for some Monday morning quarterbacking of the grand jury's decision, it doesn't do anything to stop the underlying problem: that cops are routinely treated very differently than citizens by grand juries.

Mark Zahner of the District Attorneys Association, appears to have divested himself of his self-awareness and conscience years ago.

"It's absolutely ludicrous to espouse or believe that police officers get treated any differently than anyone else."

It's absolutely ludicrous to espouse or believe that police officers get treated any differently than anyone else.

Mark Zahner: absolutely ludicrous.

Filed Under: california, grand juries, jerry brown, killings, murder, police, preferential treatment

DailyDirt: College Tuition Is Expensive

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Paying for college has never exactly been easy, but it's been getting increasingly difficult over time. On top of that, it's getting more difficult to get into some of the more selective schools. CA Gov. Jerry Brown remarked that "normal" people can't get accepted to Berkeley anymore (hold the jokes on how normal the students at Berkeley have ever been, okay?). Proposals for free community college tuition (with fine print attached) might make higher education more accessible and certain colleges more socio-economically diverse, but what's going on with the costs of tuition?

• All the Ivy League universities and a bunch of prestigious schools like MIT and Stanford offer free tuition for students from families earning less than specified income levels. However, if the goal of these kinds of programs is really to achieve higher socio-economic diversity of student populations, perhaps efforts to level the playing field should start far earlier than college. [url]
• The putative reason for the increasing college tuition is related to slashed government funding, but the conventional wisdom seems to ignore the growth of the student population, as well as the administrative expansion which has been roughly ten times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions. Some folks point to the seven-figure salaries for high-ranking university executives as a scapegoat, but the situation seems to be much more complex. Is there a more efficient way to deliver higher education and reliably recognize student achievements? [url]
• Government subsidized higher education isn't going to lower the costs of educating -- it'll just obscure the relationship between that cost and tuition. Reducing administration costs for colleges and universities seems like the place to start, but it's not clear how the cuts there would begin... or why they would be initiated by the very people who are in charge of the administration budgets. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: college, diversity, education, higher education, ivy league, jerry brown, moocs, tuition, university

California Court Rejects Attempt To Force Reporters, California Governor And Others To 'Return' Leaked Emails

from the how-does-one-return-an-email? dept

While it may not be the Snowden or Manning documents, all sorts of smaller "leaks" happen all the time. And, apparently, some people go absolutely crazy about it, such as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, which freaked out that someone had leaked 94 pages of internal emails concerning the Commission's attempt to give the University of Southern California control over the stadium. The emails suggest that the Commission broke certain laws concerning public discussions and procedures. The response, though, is what's fairly incredible. The Commission has been trying to argue that the leaked documents are "privileged communications" with lawyers, and therefore the LA Times (whose reporters received the documents) and various others, including California Governor Jerry Brown and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti should be ordered to "return" the documents.

Thankfully, the court has quickly rejected the request pointing out that there's been no evidence to support the claims of the Commission, and furthermore that the entire attempt to retrieve leaked documents is "grossly overboard."

"You're asking me to have parties, including the governor of California, return documents sent to him?"

The judge seems to recognize the absurdity of this attempt. Clearly, if that was a reasonable move it would basically do away with any possibility of whistleblowing. Of course, now that there's fighting over the documents, a minor scandal is getting that much more attention thanks, yet again, to the weakly attempted coverup.

Filed Under: eric garcetti, jerry brown, journalism, la memorial coliseum, leaked emails, return

CA Governor Lets Police Search Your Smartphones At Traffic Stops

from the shameful dept

While it had been rumored it's unfortunately now confirmed that California governor Jerry Brown has sold out your privacy to law enforcement. After a bad court ruling gave law enforcement the ability to search your mobile phone during a traffic stop, the California legislature realized the ridiculousness of the situation and passed the bill requiring a warrant pretty quickly.

But, unfortunately, despite widespread support for it, Governor Brown has vetoed the bill, meaning that your mobile phones are fair game for searches without a warrant. Not only that, but he couldn't even make a statement to stand up for what he believes in about this, apparently only arguing that he vetoed the bill because "the issue is too complicated for him to make a decision about" and that it's better for the courts to decide.

Governor Brown knows better than this and he's being intentionally misleading. The courts are supposed to interpret the will of the legislature and make sure it's in line with the Constitution. Here, the legislature is clearly saying that it thinks such searches need a warrant. Leaving it for "the courts" to resolve is punting, and failing to take a stand for basic privacy rights. It's a weak move.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, california, jerry brown, mobile phones, privacy, searches

California To Copy NY's Bad Plan Forcing ISPs To Block Sites

from the the-great-firewall-of-america dept

The next time US officials complain about other countries blocking websites and censoring the internet, just point them to the actions of various publicity-seeking US states' Attorneys General. We've already mentioned NY AG Andrew Cuomo's incredibly misguided plan to force ISPs to block certain websites and newsgroups. While officially in the name of stopping child porn (an excellent goal), the plan is open to widespread abuse. First, it targets the ISPs, rather than the actual perpetrators of child porn. Second, it involves a secret list that won't be available for review to make sure it doesn't include perfectly legitimate content. Third, ISPs are already "over-blocking" additional content to avoid getting in trouble -- meaning that plenty of legitimate content is also being blocked. Fourth, those who really want child porn will simply use other methods to find it -- and it will be harder for authorities to track those new sources down.

With all that going against the plan, wouldn't you know that California's AG is claiming that the NY agreement doesn't go far enough. While the NY agreement only covers Verizon, Time Warner and Sprint -- California Attorney General Jerry Brown is saying all ISPs should have to do the same, as well. Unfortunately, it seems like this type of "non-solution" is appealing to politicians who don't understand the actual issues. It makes them look like they're sweeping child porn off the internet, when all they're really doing is blocking legitimate content while making it more difficult to find those actually engaged in child pornography.

Filed Under: andrew cuomo, blocking, california, censorship, isps, jerry brown, new york, porn