Senator Blumenthal: Dismissing All Critics Of EARN IT As 'Big Tech Lobbyists' Shows Your Unwillingness To Recognize The Massive Problems In Your Bill

from the obnoxious dept

In the past, whenever Senator Richard Blumenthal has been called out for his many terrible legislative ideas regarding regulating technology and the internet, he has a habit of dismissing all of the concerns by claiming the complaints are only coming from "big tech lobbyists." He did this a few years ago with FOSTA, which has since proven to be exactly the disaster many of us warned Senator Blumenthal about at the time. This time around, he's going straight to the same playbook again, and it's good to see that he's getting some pushback. Nathalie Maréchal, from Ranking Digital Rights has published a great piece over at Tech Policy Press: No, Senator Blumenthal, I am not a Big Tech Lobbyist.

Ranking Digital Rights is about as far from a "big tech lobbyist" as you can find. The organization has been advocating for the FTC to ban targeted advertising, which is basically the key way in which both Google and Facebook make the majority of their money. And yet, it also recognizes the dangers of EARN IT.

The article notes that over 60 human rights groups signed a detailed letter highlighting the many problems of the bill. For Blumenthal to simply dismiss all of those concerns -- put together by respected groups who are in no way "big tech lobbyists" -- shows his pure disdain for facts and unwillingness to put in the effort to understand the very real damage his bill will do should it become law.

It's shameful behavior for a US senator, even if not surprising.

Filed Under: criticism, earn it, encryption, good faith, lobbyists, richard blumenthal

Telecom Lobbyists Easily Weakened Language In 'Bipartisan' Broadband Infrastructure Bill

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

So we've already noted how the broadband component of the "bipartisan compromise" infrastructure bill was still helpful, but much weaker than many wanted it to be (pretty much the common theme across the infrastructure package). While there are some useful grant funds for underserved "middle mile" and other networks -- as well as the continuation of a helpful but flawed COVID broadband discount program -- the proposal itself doesn't really do much of anything about the core reason US broadband is so expensive: namely, regional telecom monopolization or the corruption that protects it.

Other aspects of the proposal started off well but were steadily eroded throughout the "negotiations" process. For example, many lawmakers wanted the country to boost its standard definition of "broadband" to symmetrical 100 Mbps to better represent modern realities. But the final package implemented a 100 Mbps down, 20 Mbps standard -- and only as it pertains to who can get funding for broadband expansion. The overall definition of broadband remains unchanged.

As Ernesto Falcon at the EFF notes, this weakened standard was courtesy of fixed wireless and cable industry lobbyists, who know that much of their infrastructure can't actually do much better than 10-20 Mbps on the upstream. So we basically lowered the bar to make them happy:

"By defining internet access as the ability to get 100/20 Mbps service, the draft language allows cable monopolies to argue that anyone with access to ancient, insufficient internet access does not need federal money to build new infrastructure. That means communities with nearly decade-old DOCSIS 3.0 broadband are shielded from federal dollars from being used to build fiber. Copper-DSL-only areas, and areas entirely without broadband, will likely take the lion’s share of the $40 billion made available. In addition to rural areas, pockets of urban markets where people are still lacking broadband will qualify. This will lead to an absurd result: people on inferior, too-expensive cable services will be seen as equally served as their neighbors who will get federally funded fiber."

Ernesto has routinely pointed out that fiber broadband is future proof (and feeds most cellular towers in the first place), so if you're going to throw billions of dollars in subsidies at companies, you probably should be encouraging fiber as often as possible. Of course, the government rarely adheres to his advice, frequently throwing countless subsidies at wireless companies for service they don't deliver, or hundreds of millions of dollars at Elon Musk to bring inferior broadband to a couple of traffic medians and airport parking lots.

There were other nonsensical sacrifices made to the broadband component of the infrastructure agreement made under the banner of "bipartisan compromise," including the elimination of any attempts to lend a hand to the popular community broadband efforts taking root across the country out of frustration. Again, not based on any hard data or factual reality, but because telecom lobbyists don't really like anything that could potentially erode regional monopoly revenues.

As noted previously, these kinds of downgrades are uniformly framed in beltway DC coverage as a "bipartisan compromise." In reality, it's really only the people who want decent baseline standards and the barest levels of sector oversight who are having to compromise. And more often than not the press helps politicians frame their decisions to pander directly to sector lobbyists as simply being principled spendthrifts.

Filed Under: broadband, definitions, infrastructure plan, lobbyists

Biden Administration Poised To Give Comcast Lobbyist Canadian Ambassador Spot

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

While the Biden administration still hasn't fully staffed the gridlocked FCC, it does appear to be ready to reward a top Comcast lobbyist and key Biden fundraising ally with a cushy new post.

According to the Washington Post, the Biden administration appears poised to "probably" give top Comcast lobbyist David Cohen the position of Canadian Ambassador, with a planned announcement likely coming in May:

"David Cohen, a Comcast executive who hosted Biden’s first official 2020 presidential fundraising event, probably will be nominated as U.S. ambassador to Canada."

Cohen is, if you're unfamiliar, one of the architects of Comcast's relentless monopolistic domination of US telecom, steering the company through numerous power consolidating mergers while assuring regulators that Comcast's growing power was nothing to be concerned about. Granted time showcased it was very much something to be concerned about, as Comcast's steadily growing monopoly over broadband (especially at faster speeds) is directly responsible for soaring US broadband prices, spotty coverage, and historically terrible customer service courtesy of steadily-eroding competition.

Cohen was dubbed a "wonk rock star" by the Washington Post back in 2012 for selling regulators on the 2011 Comcast NBC Universal merger. This was largely done using Internet Essentials, a program that promises discounted broadband access to low-income families. The plan was criticized heavily at first for being regulator window dressing that was intentionally difficult to qualify for while offering substandard speeds, something only fixed by Comcast after annoyed parents in Philadelphia protested in the streets (protestors who believe the program doesn't do enough to offset Comcast's overall harm were still protesting last year).

Internet Essentials was extremely helpful as a way to advertise Comcast's boundless altruism, despite the fact Comcast's monopolization and mergermania was heavily responsible for unaffordable US internet access in the first place. As the program has been launched and relaunched a thousand times over, it has provided Comcast with a bottomless well of promotional material featuring Cohen posing over the desks of beaming children. Of course the program provided something else as well: lobbying cover for access to federal, state, and local lawmakers.

Under feeble US lobbying laws, if an employee spends more than 20% of their time lobbying in DC, they have to register with the government as a lobbyist, detail their travel with lawmakers, and more fully outline their contributions to politicians and foundations. So to get around these restrictions, many companies simply call their lobbyists and policy wonks...something else. In Comcast's case, Cohen spent much of his time as the company's "Chief Diversity Officer." Around 2019 Comcast thankfully hired somebody genuinely diverse to be Chief Diversity Officer, and Cohen's role shifted to one of "counselor and adviser." Comcast has historically gotten mad at me for calling Cohen a lobbyist, despite the fact that lobbying has always clearly made up a huge percentage of his work.

Again, the news of Cohen's reward comes despite the fact the Biden team still hasn't appointed a third Democratic Commissioner (and possible permanent boss) at the FCC, leaving it mired in partisan gridlock after the rushed appointment of Trump ally Nathan Simington. Hopefully the FCC appointment comes soon, given that rewarding telecom lobbyists before you've gotten around to staffing your top telecom regulator probably won't be a great look for an administration hoping to get a vague but promising broadband agenda off the ground.

Filed Under: ambassadors, canada, david cohen, diversity, joe biden, lobbyists
Companies: comcast

Is There Any Form Of Corruption Senator Burr Didn't Engage In?

from the curious dept

Senator Richard Burr, the head of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee sure seems to be engaged in a bunch of sketchy looking activities. First, there was the revelation from a few weeks back of selling off a bunch of hotel stock after being briefed about COVID-19 (while simultaneously telling the public it was nothing to worry about -- and that the US was "in a better position than any other country to respond," which now looks laughable in retrospect). The latest, as revealed by ProPublica, is that Burr sold his DC townhouse to a lobbyist who has had issues before Barr's committees, in a "private" unlisted sale for what appears to be above market rates.

Burr sold the small townhouse, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, for what, by some estimates, was an above market price — $900,000 — to a team led by lobbyist John Green. That is tens of thousands of dollars above some estimates of the property’s value by tax assessors, a real estate website and a local real estate agent. The sale was done off-market, without the home being listed for sale publicly.

Green is a longtime donor to Burr’s political campaigns and has co-hosted at least one fundraiser for him. In 2017, the year of the sale, Green lobbied on behalf of a stream of clients with business before Burr’s committees.

As with many of these things, whether or not this is legal depends on a lot of the specifics (including if this really was sold above market rate). But even if was legal, it certainly has all the appearance of fairly blatant corruption.

“This has every appearance of being a violation of the gift ban,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the watchdog group Public Citizen. “The gift ban is one of the most basic legal frameworks for preventing corruption. Lobbyist gifts to lawmakers is akin to a bribe.”

Burr, for his part insists that the sale was for fair market value, despite what others are saying.

Tax assessors valued the Washington, D.C., home for $796,720 in 2017, more than $100,000 less than Green and his business partner paid for it. But tax assessment values in the city often come in under market prices. Burr paid $525,000 for the place in 2003.

Redfin, the real estate website, estimated the home’s value to be $813,973 in the month the house was sold, though the company’s valuations are far from exact.

Bob Williams, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent who helps buy and sell homes in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, reviewed the listing for ProPublica and said that he would estimate that in early 2017 Burr’s home would have sold on the market for around $850,000, possibly more if there were multiple competing offers.

Given that, it certainly doesn't appear to be an egregious overreach, but still one that certainly leads to significant skepticism about Burr's ethics. One thing about being a public official is that you're supposed to go out of your way to avoid situations that would make the public doubt your commitment to the public interest. Instead, Burr and some others in the article are going by the legalistic "well, the Senate Ethics Committee was notified and we followed their rules" which is a legalistic way of saying "my colleagues looked the other way for me."

Filed Under: lobbyists, richard burr, soft corruption

Emails From License Plate Reader Company Hack Show Lobbyists Writing Legislation And Handing Out Talking Points To Congressional Reps

from the hooray-for-representative-republics! dept

Lee Fang of The Intercept has dug into the cache of internal license plate reader manufacturer documents dumped on the web earlier this year. In addition to hundreds of images of drivers and their vehicles passing through border checkpoints, the files also contained emails from Perceptics (the LPR manufacturer targeted by hackers) to Congressional reps, reminding them to hit their marks at the next Congressional hearing.

In April 2018, during an appropriations committee hearing, the Tennessee Republican took a more subdued and technical approach to immigration issues when quizzing then-Customs and Border Protection chief Kevin McAleenan. [Rep. Chuck] Fleischmann, looking down to read from a paper in front of him, wanted to know if McAleenan was on schedule to implement an upgrade of license plate reader technology at the border, as mandated by a previous appropriations bill.

McAleenan thanked the committee for its support and pledged continued work to upgrade LPR technology along the border.

A few days after the exchange, a lobbyist representing Perceptics, a tech company that sold state-of-the-art LPR cameras and technology to the government, emailed her team to confirm that Fleischmann had “asked about CBP’s plan to modernize its LPRs as we asked his office to do,” along with a link to a video clip of the hearing.

There's no element of surprise here. There will be no gasps of disbelief. About the only thing we can do is shake our heads at how willingly our public representatives will follow stage direction from corporations, especially when the talking points are in the interest of subjecting more people -- many of them US citizens -- to more surveillance.

It's amusing when a social media influencer accidentally posts some paid content from a sponsor/advertiser without changing a single word of the sales pitch. It's not nearly as funny when a Congressional rep reads directly from a company's email, demanding to know whether or not the CBP would be spending more LPR money in the near future.

Ultimately, this didn't work out for Perceptics. Not because Congressional reps decided they wouldn't be unofficial spokespeople for a number of corporate interests. The only reason Perceptics was dumped by the CBP was because it couldn't keep its information secure -- information that included its pointed conversations with legislators.

Other emails show Perceptics' lobbying firm, Ferox Strategies, assuring its client that both versions of competing immigration bills contained authorization for $125 million in "LPR modernization funds." The language in both bills appears to have come directly from Perceptics. Neither of these versions survived the 2018 legislative session, but Perceptics continued to press for preferential treatment. The emails say nice things about "open, competitive bid processes" but also make the point that cameras installed by Perceptics nearly a decade ago were in desperate need of updating. Additional emails show Perceptics' lobbyist firm had Texas Rep. John Cornyn on tap for functions, so long as lobbyists were willing to drop a little money in his coffers.

Once again, nothing truly surprising here other than the fact we actually have access to the emails. Of course, this is where the Freedom of Information Act fails to produce accountability. Congressional reps are exempt from the law. But they can't prevent data exfiltration. They can only hope to contain it.

Filed Under: license plate reader, lobbyists, tennessee

2019: The Push For Bad Faith, Loophole-Filled Privacy Legislation Begins

from the head-fake dept

We've talked at length about how the telecom industry has spent the last few years pushing phony, loophole-filled net neutrality legislation.

Why would the telecom sector do that? They know their successful lobbying assault on net neutrality rules rests on shaky ground. Next month's court battle could easily reverse the FCC repeal, highlighting how the agency engaged in all manner of dubious behavior to kowtow to the telecom sector. They also know that thanks to the shifting winds in Congress and rising public anger, there could soon be growing support for a net neutrality law. Therefore, they want to pass their own, shitty, loophole-filled law to pre-empt tougher, better, state or federal protections.

The same thing is happening on the privacy front. Like the successful lobbyist attack on net neutrality, the cross-industry assault on the FCC's fairly modest broadband privacy rules back in 2017 pissed off those who were actually paying attention to it. Especially because those rules could have helped mitigate the growing roster of location data scandals by giving consumers greater control over how their location data is collected and sold.

As a result, we're starting to see a flood of cross-industry-backed legislation that pretends to fix the nation's lack of meaningful privacy guard rails, but whose real goal is to pre-empt any real state or federal efforts on that front. Case in point: the Google, Facebook, and Amazon-backed Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has been circulating a proposal it has been calling a "grand bargain." Said bargain proposes some fairly basic guidelines, but again the main goal appears to be to pre-empt some of the tougher laws already on the state and federal books, something COPPA backers like Senator Ed Markey aren't particularly impressed by:

"As Congress works to provide the American people with a comprehensive federal privacy law, we should build upon—not dismantle—existing safeguards,” Markey said, responding to ITIF’s proposal. “Getting rid of COPPA is literally like throwing the baby out with the bath water."

To be clear, COPPA (the country's only real federal privacy guidelines largely governing children) is certainly a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's been the source of some of the only punishment the telecom sector has seen for its longstanding mistreatment of consumer privacy. On the other hand, we've long noted that the law has plenty of problems including inconsistent FTC enforcement, and terrible language that often creates idiotic hurdles websites have to overcome. That said, you're not really fixing the problem if the industry's preferred legislation is just as bad.

State-level solutions to both net neutrality and privacy have similarly been a mixed bag. California's proposed net neutrality solution, for example, largely does things right, copying the FCC's discarded net neutrality rules and even adding some useful things (like rules governing the anti-competitive abuse of usage caps). California's state-level privacy law, however, has been widely mocked for being a ham-fisted, rushed solution that fails to remotely understand the problem at hand.

But while groups like the ITIF (also backed by telecom companies, some of the worst offenders on privacy violations) complain that the rise of multiple, discordant state-level privacy protections could create a confusing, fractured landscape of oversight, they brush over the fact that it was their clients that helped create that environment by lobbying to kill what really were some fairly modest FCC privacy and net neutrality rules. As such, maybe they're not the folks we should be leaning on to create new, pre-emptive federal guidelines on either front.

Enter Marco Rubio, who has also started pushing industry backed backed privacy legislation. But again, it's pretty clear that the focus is more on pre-empting tougher state and federal laws than trying to actually build some truly meaningful federal guidelines:

"But the bill would also require any new rules to preempt stronger state laws, like California’s landmark consumer privacy act that was approved last year and is anticipated to go into effect in 2020. Industry groups have been calling for a preemption clause in any federal legislation, saying that one federal law would be easier for companies to navigate rather than being faced with a “patchwork” of state and federal rules.

"It is critical that we do not create a regulatory environment that entrenches big tech corporations,” Rubio said in a statement to Axios. “Congress must act, but it is even more important that Congress act responsibly to create a transparent, digital environment that maximizes consumer welfare over corporate welfare."

While it's true that we need to be careful to avoid shitty federal privacy legislation, that last bit in particular is pretty disingenuous. These bills are being pushed by (and more than likely directly written by) the corporations Rubio is pretending to stand up to. Corporations that know full well that real oversight and informed, educated consumers with the right to opt out of mindless data collection and sales is going to cost the industry billions.

They can pretend they're cool with that all they'd like, but it's pretty clear that's a future they'd like to avoid, preferably by getting their own legislation passed first with an eye on formally legalizing many of these companies worst (and most profitable) ambitions.

Again, if we're going to finally build some meaningful legislative privacy guidelines, the foundation should be the result of a collective conversation among academics, legal experts, industry, consumer groups, and government. Given the high potential for a shitty law due to Congressional dysfunction, that's not going to be a pretty process, but if you've watched the percussive series of total privacy failures in recent years, it's fairly obvious it's a conversation we need to have.

While industry giants obviously have a large role to play in this looming conversation, the entire foundation of any proposed solution should not be built by giant companies with comically-terrible track records on this subject, whose primary motivation is making those protections as flimsy and loophole-filled as possible.

Filed Under: congress, legislation, lobbyists, marco rubio, privacy

That Time Telco Lobbyists Sent Me All Their Talking Points About Trying To Shift The Blame To Internet Companies

from the oops dept

It's not every day that big telco lobbyists email me their internal documents about how they're going to try to shift all the negative press about themselves and try to flip it onto internet companies. But it did happen yesterday. In what was clearly a mistake a top exec at the telco's largest lobbying organization, USTelecom, emailed a 12 page document of talking points yesterday, asking the recipients to "review the document for accuracy and other thoughts" in order to help USTelecom President Jonathan Spalter for when he goes on C-SPAN next week. I found it a bit odd that I would be on the distribution list for such an email -- especially when 13 of the 15 recipients of the email were US Telecom employees. And me. The one other non-US Telecom person works at a firm that provides "subject matter experts" and "in-depth legal analysis."

The talking points are not all that surprising, if you're at all familiar with the telco industry, so there aren't really any huge smoking guns here, but they do cover a huge range of issues, from net neutrality, competition, privacy, cybersecurity, and more. Amusingly, on the net neutrality front, there's a section on "Verizon Throttling Fire Responders." Tragically, that appears to be one of the few sections in the document that they hadn't yet filled in yet -- perhaps because the industry still doesn't have a good response to Verizon throttling fire fighters in California as they were battling wildfires.

One thing that's clear, however, is that the big telcos really want to play up the recent attacks on social media companies ("edge providers," as they like to say), and throughout the document there are statements about taking advantage of the current political attacks on those companies. For example, in the "Privacy" section, the talking points for Salter appear to be for him to try to pivot to making it about Facebook and Google as quickly as possible, saying they are the bigger risks:

Privacy

MESSAGE: Here is the modern reality of consumer protection: the greatest risks are posed by companies on the internet’s edge. Privacy is a shared responsibility -- and the burdens and obligations can not rest solely with ISPs and must be applied equally across the internet ecosystem.

• The increased scrutiny of Facebook and other edge provides offer a significant opportunity for Congress to implement clear and consistent rules that apply equally to all companies in the internet ecosystem.  And when they begin the process of establishing best practices for privacy, they will need to look no further than broadband providers.
• For years, our members have embraced strong consumer privacy policies, because they understand the success of any digital business depends on earning their customers’ trust.
• Consumers and companies alike deserve one set of protections and rules of the road. This is the best way to ensure consumer protection while also providing the necessary flexibility for a competitive and innovative marketplace.

Let's just say that's laughable. Google and Facebook may be no great shakes on privacy, but the telcos are far, far worse. First of all, they have much greater visibility into everything that you do, because it all goes through their pipes. You can avoid Google and Facebook if you want. Not so much your ISP. Second, these companies have terrible, terrible histories when it comes to privacy issues, much worse than Google and Facebook.

Telcos have historically sucked up all your clickstream data and sold it to databrokers, while pretending it was no big deal. The telcos have regularly used incredibly sneaky and intrusive spying practices (way beyond anything Google and Facebook have done) including deep packet inspection and undeletable supercookies. And who can forget when the telcos wanted to sell you back your privacy, and raise your subscriber fees $30/month if you didn't want them to snoop on all your internet activity? And who can forget that it was just weeks ago that Verizon launched a VPN without any privacy policy at all?

And let's not forget their super cozy relationship with the NSA. After the Snowden leaks five years ago, the internet companies all were quick to highlight what they were doing to prevent the NSA from snooping on you. They revealed long-hidden lawsuits fighting back against the NSA. They pushed for greater transparency and legal reform, they published transparency reports... all while the telcos went silent (and when they finally -- years later -- were pressured into releasing transparency reports, those reports left out key details on surveillance support). That's because it was shown that they were extra cozy with the NSA, even giving them full access to their equipment. Section 702 "upstream" collection involves the NSA directly tapping into telco backbone connections and sniffing through everything. We only found about all of this because an AT&T technician literally walked into EFF's offices one day and spilled the details (later confirmed with Snowden documents). And rather than admit to helping the government violate the 4th Amendment, the telcos ran to Congress to get guaranteed retroactive immunity for supplying warrantless wiretaps.

So, sure, the privacy failings of Google and Facebook are worth pointing out and discussing. But they're child's play compared to the telcos. For the telcos to pretend that they are the ones who "embraced strong consumer privacy policies" is laughable. This isn't a talking point. It's pure propaganda.

There's a brief section later in the document, suggesting that they play up Trump now fighting with Google, and suggest that's a good point to drop in the "same rules for edge" providers meaningless argument:

Trump/Google Drama

People have spent years clamoring for ISP net neutrality. We need same rules of the road for edge.

I'm sure that sounds good to whoever came up with it way back when, but as people have explained for the better part of a decade, it makes no sense at all. Access providers and edge providers provide very different types of services, and "the same rules" don't make any sense at all. The telcos and the folks at US Telecom know this. They only bring this up because they think the viewing audience is stupid and will nod along with "same rules for everyone." But, in reality, they know that what they are advocating for is basically handicapping internet companies.

On net neutrality there's the usual nonsense, falsely claiming that they "strongly support net neutrality" even as they immediately cheer on the FCC order that literally wiped out net neutrality:

MESSAGE: Our nation’s broadband providers strongly support net neutrality—without 1930’s-era regulations—and with consumer protections that are consistently applied across the entire internet ecosystem.

This is blatantly untrue. The telcos fought multiple earlier attempts to enforce net neutrality that did not use "1930's era regulations." What happened was that Verizon's lawsuit over earlier rules (which did not rely on those regulations) resulted in the court effectively saying "to have net neutrality, you have to use those rules." So, we would have had net neutrality without those 1930s-era regulations if US Telecom and its members hadn't sued over the older rules.

Not surprisingly, they also want to push the silly argument that just because they didn't immediately make the internet turn to shit the day after the FCC repealed the rules, it proves that we didn't need the rules (I will again remind you right here -- for no particular reason -- that the section on how to respond to Verizon violating those old net neutrality rules in throttling the fire department's wireless connection... is left blank in the document).

Since the FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order, the internet as we know it is still thriving, growing, open and continues to spin on its axis. The predictions that ISPs would engage in anti-competitive throttling, blocking, and prioritization, have not happened.

Again, the telcos aren't going to rush out bad practices all at once -- especially not while the repeal of the rules is still in court. But, again, it should be noted that during a previous fight over these rules, in court, Verizon's lawyer flat out admitted that without these rules, the company had every intention of throttling traffic.

And, of course, the telcos strategy when the questioning gets tough on net neutrality is to try to do this judo move and attack the big internet companies instead:

It’s ironic—but not unexpected—that the companies which have become the internet’s most powerful gatekeepers are fighting for an open internet that exempts them from the very rules for which they are advocating.

First off, this is not ironic. Second, it's not accurate. Google and Facebook are hardly the most powerful "gatekeepers." Nor are they the ones pushing for open internet rules. That's been left mainly to smaller internet companies who can't get into bed with the telcos like Google and Facebook are able to do. Third, the whole idea that the rules are somehow different for them makes no sense. These rules are about providing access to the internet. There is no "net neutrality" for edge providers that makes any sense.

Not surprisingly, the telcos are freaked the fuck out about state regulators stepping in to reimpose net neutrality rules. And, on this, I don't blame them. Well, no, that's not correct, I totally blame them. I blame them for pushing the FCC to drop the federal rules opening up this vacuum into which the states are now stepping. I agree that having the states take this on is a bad idea that will lead to a mess of different rules across the country, but, hey maybe the telco lobbyists should have thought of that before asking the FCC to kill off these wildly popular rules that had a very light touch. But, still, they've got their new talking points and they're sticking to 'em:

• Broadband is and will continue to be regulated at the federal level
• Precedent at the FCC, and in the courts, have recognized the dangers of individual state mandates and have embraced state preemption to avoid piecemeal approaches to internet regulation.
• [Pending passage] The regulations signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown put short-term political gain ahead of long-term economic development and growth of California’s internet economy.

Well, no. Broadband has long been regulated at the state and local level thanks to public utility commissions, local franchise laws and more. And, hey, you had broadband regulated at the federal level under the 2015 open internet order, which included state pre-emption but you gave that up when Ajit Pai repealed it and gave up the state pre-emption bit when he took the FCC out of the broadband regulation game.

Ooops. Maybe you jokers should have thought of that before.

As for the California bill -- what?!? Long term economic development in California especially depends on a free and open internet -- the kind where Verizion, AT&T and your other members are unable to kill new startups with excessive tolls and fees, not to mention limited services.

There are then some talking points about just how painfully expensive it is for the telcos to serve rural residents -- which no one denies. But, it's pretty funny to watch these massive telcos, with billions in profits and a long history of squandering government subsidies use these talking points to talk about why they just need more cash from the government:

Delivering broadband to sparsely populated rural areas is a costly and challenging endeavor that requires significant upfront investment.

That is why federal support is essential for network providers to meet deployment challenges in high cost areas.

Oh, but not only do they want cash from the government, they most certainly DO NOT want that cash to go to programs that would create competition in the marketplace. Oh no.

Federal investment must be used to fill the gaps in truly unserved areas, not create false market competition by allowing electric utilities with established monopolies to extend their market power over this already fragile market. Together, we should be laser-focused on serving the unserved and maximizing the federal support to do it, while avoiding duplication and overbuilding, and ensuring efficiencies wherever possible.

Sounds like somebody is still quite a bit ticked off about massive success stories like Chattanooga, where the local electric utility built an amazing competitive network that not only provided better, cheaper service in that city to under-served residents, but also forced the incumbents to up their own game as well.

It's doubly hilarious that a key talking point in this document is literally "we don't want competition" when much of the other document keeps trying to push the lie that there's robust broadband competition.

They also talk up having states give them money, such as this:

In New York, officials just completed a $500 million broadband auction to deploy high-speed service to 99 percent of its residential structures.

One would hope that the C-SPAN interviewer would follow up this point with a question about why NY would trust any of these companies when US Telecom member Verizon promised to bring fiber to 100% of New York City in 2008 and then didn't. Seems like we should be fairly skeptical of the 99% claim now.

It also is unlikely to surprise anyone that US Telecom is really, really, really against the requirements for very limited local loop unbundling, which has helped enable a smidgen of competition in certain areas (I only have the broadband I have today thanks to local loop unbundling). These are the rules that made the big telcos have to allow third party service providers to use their networks at wholesale rates to offer competing services. It's a great way to create competition at the service level, rather than doing it more wastefully at the infrastructure level. The telcos have done a good job making it more and more impossible for competitive carriers to make use of it, but they really want the rules gone entirely. And they say they're no longer needed due to a completely fictional "tremendous competition in the communications market." Don't laugh. They think they're serious:

Today, more than 20 years later, there is tremendous competition in the communications market, but these rules are still on the books.

We have asked the FCC to review whether these rules are still necessary. If the FCC agrees they are, we hope the commission will forbear from these outdated rules like they have with many other no longer relevant regulations.

Ending these rules will allow broadband providers to invest in the future of their networks father than being tied to the past.

So, let's be clear. There is barely any real competition in the broadband market, let alone "tremendous" competition. Ending those rules won't magically allow providers to invest in future networks. They will limit competition, meaning there's less reason to invest.

There's some nonsense about how the FTC will be a great protector of consumers from the telcos now that the FCC has taken itself out of the game. Of course, as we've discussed over and over again, the FTC's mandate is much more limited and does not cover most of the aspects of net neutrality that are important. Furthermore, the FTC has neither the resources nor the expertise to really play in the telco market.

There's some more stuff in there, but those are the highlights. Congrats, US Telecom, you get your draft in-progress talking points out there. If you want critiques of your future talking points, feel free to cc: me again.

Filed Under: competition, cybersecurity, fcc, internet, lobbyists, net neutrality, privacy, regulation, talking points, telcos
Companies: at&t, ustelecom, verizon

Lobbyists Descend On California To Shape A Rushed New Privacy Law

from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed dept

Last year, the GOP and Trump administration used the Congressional Review Act to dismantle FCC consumer broadband privacy protections before they could take effect last March. While AT&T and Comcast whined incessantly about the rules, the FCC's guidelines were relatively modest; they required that ISPs and mobile carriers be transparent about what data is being collected and sold, and get express consumer opt-in consent before ISPs can share more private financial or location data. Such rules could have gone a long way in protecting consumers in the wake of the recent Securus and Locationsmart location data scandals.

Following the ISP-funded attack on FCC authority and consumer protections, states have begun exploring their own privacy protections (mirroring what we're also seeing on the net neutrality front). For example, California last year considered passing a state-level copy of the FCC's gutted privacy rules. But those efforts hit a political brick wall thanks to the collective lobbying muscle of Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Google and Facebook, which killed that effort by lying repeatedly about what the proposal actually did, including claims the proposal would "aid extremism."

Verizon and Facebook both pretended to back away from those attacks once their efforts gained press exposure, but those promises don't appear to be worth much.

In the wake of the successful attack on FCC privacy rules, California privacy advocates have been pushing a new ballot initiative, this time dubbed the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. The initiative would require that companies be fully transparent about what data is being collected and sold (and to whom), as well as mandating mandatory opt-out tools. The proposal goes further than the FCC's discarded rules, in that it would ban ISPs from trying to charge consumers more for privacy, something that has already been previously implemented by AT&T and considered by Comcast.

The new initiative is scheduled to appear on this November's ballot, and Google, Facebook, and large ISPs are once again working in concert to ensure that doesn't happen ahead of a looming Thursday afternoon deadline. They're collectively now pushing for quickly-hacked together "compromise legislation," AB 375, they're hoping will be significantly weaker than the looming November ballot initiative.

"In addition to Facebook, Google, AT&T, Microsoft, Amazon, Verizon, and the California New Car Dealers Association have each contributed six figure donations to the Chamber account set up to defeat CCPA. Uber, the Data & Marketing Association, Cox Communications, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have each contributed $50,000 to the account, according to disclosures."

Recall, Facebook recently made a big show earlier this year about how it wouldn't be working to undermine such privacy proposals in the wake of the Cambridge scandal:

"The inclusion of a Facebook representative is notable, given the company’s well-publicized announcement earlier this year that it would end its opposition to the initiative. In February, the company provided $200,000 to an account set up by the California Chamber of Commerce designed to defeat the CCPA initiative. But in April, following revelations about the extent to which British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica provided the Donald Trump campaign with illicit access to Facebook user data, Facebook announced that it would withdraw its opposition to CCPA and not provide additional funding to the Chamber account."

As the GDPR clearly illustrates, there's some real peril in pushing through solutions before ironing out all of the potential pitfalls. Both the scotch-taped together AB 375 and the California Consumer Privacy Act (a pet side project of San Francisco real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart) have some notable problems that would have been aided by a longer, more transparent and inclusive discussion. Though the problems with AB 375 (which, again, if passed would eliminate the latter from contention) are notably worse, in large part because the bill was quickly cobbled together in just under a week behind closed doors:

"By tomorrow, the California legislature likely will pass a sweeping, lengthy, overly-complicated, and poorly-constructed privacy law that will have ripple effects throughout the world. While not quite as comprehensive as the GDPR, it copies some aspects of the GDPR and will squarely impact every Internet service in California (some of whom may be not currently be complying GDPR due to their US-only operations). The GDPR took 4 years to develop; in contrast, the California legislature will spend a grand total of 7 days working on this major bill."

Not only was AB 375 a rush job, the bill has been steadily eroded since introduction by this super group of telecom and Silicon Valley lobbying giants. AB 375 just passed out of the out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, meaning it's most likely going to be the California privacy proposal of choice. And the fact that it's a rush job is not apparently of much concern to the bill's backer:

"Assemblyman Ed Chau, an Arcadia Democrat and the chief bill author, said he doesn't like the rushed process forced by the ballot measure deadline, but he stressed that his bill gives Californians important privacy protections."

With that mindset, it's easy to wind up with a privacy law that sounds good ("look ma, I "fixed" privacy!") but doesn't actually do anything. And when you've got lobbyists from AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Facebook, Google, Amazon and Microsoft disproportionally dictating the overall trajectory of the law, the chances that you're going to end up with weak-kneed "privacy rules" in name only is pretty monumental. Adding speed for speed's sake -- combined with an overall lack of transparency -- only adds to the potential that the rules you end up with are toothless or packed with unintended consequences.

That said, doing nothing isn't an option. This isn't a problem that magically fixes itself.

Modern consumer privacy oversight in the internet-era currently consists of little more than pinky swears and winks, a point driven home repeatedly by the Cambridge, LocationSmart and Securus scandals. We need to have a lengthy, transparent, adult conversation about what a potential solution might look like. The problem is that the larger companies dictating the conversation have an absolutely abysmal track record on these issues, so while they may have valuable insight on the complicated scope of a particular proposal's impact, they've managed, repeatedly, to shoot their credibility squarely in the foot on this subject.

And while ISPs and Silicon Valley giants like to go on at length about how they're "open to having a conversation" about more meaningful privacy guidelines, the reality is that most of these larger companies simply aren't. Any rules worth their salt will cost them money, since an informed, empowered consumer is more likely to opt-out of data monetization schemes, whatever they look like. As a result, you'll be hard-pressed to find many large ISPs or Silicon Valley giants willing to back truly tough consumer protections, especially rules than mandate express, opt-in consumer consent for things like location or financial data.

Eventually, after we've suffered through a few more hacks, breaches and major scandals, some of these companies may shift their thinking toward the idea that compliance with quality, even-handed rules is more profitable than chaos. But as the ham fisted repeal of the FCC privacy rules makes clear, we're nowhere near that point yet. Meanwhile, on the federal level, the Trump administration is rumored to be considering a broad new privacy plan. And if the administration's equally heavy-handed net neutrality repeal is any indication, objectivity, hard data and transparency aren't likely to have much of a seat at the table there, either.

Filed Under: california, gdpr, laws, lobbyists, privacy, rush, transparency
Companies: at&t, comcast, facebook, google

Canada Appoints Lobbyist To Top Telecom Regulator, Follows US Down The Regulatory Capture Rabbit Hole

from the whiplash-from-the-revolving-door dept

The last few years have seen a boon in consumer and small-business-friendly policies coming out of Canada's telecom regulator the CRTC. Under outgoing agency head Jean-Pierre Blais, the agency bumped the definition of broadband to 50 Mbps, required that phones must now be sold unlocked in Canada, shored up the country's net neutrality rules, and took aim at the anti-competitive use of usage caps and overage fees. Not everything Blais did was a success (like their attempt to force cable TV providers to offer cheaper plans, then failing to follow through) but by and large the CRTC has been an improvement over years past.

But Canadian consumers are worried that's coming to an end with Justin Trudeau's decision to appoint telecom executive and lobbyist Ian Scott to head the agency. Scott has spent years working at and lobbying for several Canadian telecom incumbents, his velocity through the regulatory revolving door at several times leading to complaints over conflicts of interest.

Scott's appointment have many Canadian consumer advocates worried that after several years of aiding consumers, Canada is eager to follow their neighbors to the south down the regulatory capture rabbit hole:

"This is a concerning choice by the government,” said OpenMedia communications manager Meghan Sali, who also noted that, under Blais, the regulator declared broadband Internet a basic service in Canada.

“Canadians were hoping for somebody with a strong consumer rights background, and will undoubtedly be disheartened to see the Trudeau government place someone from industry into the top decision-making position."

Much like former US FCC boss Tom Wheeler, Blais' attempts to actually stand up for consumers raised hackles at Canadian incumbents. At one point, Canadian incumbent Bell actually refused to let Blais appear on their television channels in retribution for his efforts to make Canadian cable television more affordable. Similarly, much like here in the States, incumbent ISPs often tried to characterize Blais' slightly-more consumer-friendly policies as radical and fatal to industry investment and innovation. Needless to say, they're arguably thrilled by this new appointment of a direct ally.

Of course the fact that Scott has spent the better part of the last few decades employed by incumbent Canadian ISPs doesn't automatically mean he'll be a sycophant to industry. Many are quick to highlight how nobody thought much of former U.S. FCC boss Tom Wheeler initially, his history of lobbying for the cable and wireless industries having raised plenty of eyebrows after his initial appointment. And because Wheeler went from dingo to what most see as the most-consumer friendly FCC boss potentially in agency history, he's now consistently used to downplay the historical threat posed by revolving door regulators.

Except Wheeler was a lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries during their nascent years, when both were pesky upstarts actually interested in competition and disruption. Wheeler also historically showed an uncommon ability to actually change his positions based on facts, an attribute in increasingly rare supply. So while it's certainly possible Canada's new CRTC boss could "pull a Wheeler" and somehow magically become a consumer ally, history generally suggests that Tom Wheeler was the exception, not the rule. Still, maybe Canadians will get lucky and Canada won't revert to a more industry-cozy approach to telecom and media policy.

Filed Under: canada, crtc, ian scott, jean-pierre blais, justin trudeau, lobbyists, net neutrality, regulatory capture, telecom