Former CIA Director Blame Millennials Lack Of Loyalty For All The Government Leaks

from the it's-everyone,-we-all-kinda-hate-the-government dept

If all else fails, blame the millennials.

[T]he former head of the CIA has a theory about a possible root cause of the leak: Millennials.

Michael V. Hayden, who was the CIA director until 2009, said that in order for the agency to engage in the digital espionage described by the documents, the agency must “recruit from a certain demographic” — in this case, younger hackers brought on to help with these efforts.

“I don’t mean to judge them at all, but this group of millennials and related groups simply have different understandings of the words loyalty, secrecy and transparency than certainly my generation did,” Hayden told the BBC in an interview this week. “And so we bring these folks into the agency, good Americans all, I can only assume, but again, culturally they have different instincts than the people who made the decision to hire them.”

That's Hayden's response to the CIA leak, which exposed the agency's exploits and device-targeting tactics. Hayden's saying people used to trust the government more. That's what this breaks down to, even if couched in Hayden's implicit demand youngsters remove themselves from his lawn, but leave any and all government documents behind.

"Transparency" should mean what it's always meant. But "transparency" is defined by government agencies and officials harboring zero desire to engage in it. We spent years listening to Obama pat himself on the back for increased government obfuscation and secrecy, something he referred to as the "most transparent administration." The word "transparency" is meaningless in the government's hands. That's why almost anything of significance is revealed by leakers/whistleblowers routing around the "official channels."

"Secrecy" means the same thing it always has as well. The government likes it. Citizens are not quite as enthralled with government secrecy, especially considering more and more of their lives are open books. An example: anyone shot by a police officer will have their criminal record immediately delivered to the press while EMTs are still checking for a pulse. Weeks or months will pass before law enforcement agencies release the name of the officer whose gun "discharged," much less their disciplinary record.

People of all ages are likely tiring of the government's insistence on keeping secrets, even as it engages in mass surveillance, reinterprets privacy-shielding laws on the fly, builds massive biometric databases, and declares the Constitution invalid within 100 miles of the border. It's not just millennials. It's everyone.

"Loyalty" still means the same thing, too. But the government's used to receiving it unconditionally. It has spent years abusing it and is finally seeing the consequences of its actions. Millennials may be the least willing to show loyalty to a government that has already mortgaged their future, but again, this crosses all ages. Loyalty isn't something the government can demand, not when it's done as much as it has to demonstrate why it's unworthy of it.

Undeniably, leaking is easier than ever, with multiple journalistic outlets offering multiple ways for the anonymous to dump their documents and grievances. Engaging in some sort of age discrimination at the federal level isn't going to stop the flow of leaks.

What's happening now is a severely-broken system reaching its apotheosis. With someone else in the Oval Office, we likely wouldn't be seeing nearly as many leaks. Almost as soon as the administration makes a claim (or a tweet), a leaked document or comment refutes it. Agencies are going rogue. Confidential conversations with administration officials are being discussed on social media by those involved in them.

Trump's tweets about subjects of investigations and national security-related matters show he cares just as little for secrecy or loyalty. His refusal to release information the public's been asking to see (tax returns, divestment plans, etc.) shows he cares little for transparency.

It also sets an example for others. The administration is seemingly moving from one disaster to the next without indicating it has a blueprint for the future. This helps generate even more leaks -- and not just because ill-advised moves tend to produce interesting documents and irate government employees. The leaks are continuous because no one's worried the administration will ever locate the sources. The constant flow sends a clear message: those leaking info and documents -- and there are a lot of them -- feel the President and his staff are too incompetent, or too easily-distracted, to track them down. The CIA may track down the source of the leaked documents, but it's heavily-invested in its own secrets, which has nothing to do with the hurricane of disruptive activity taking place in the White House. But those leaking info related to the current administration have little to fear.

The administration has managed to make enemies of several federal agencies. Federal agencies are amazing at stonewalling. The best. If the administration thinks it's going to get assistance rooting out leakers, it's in for yet another surprise. And the administration will continue to be unsurprisingly surprised by the resistance it faces when it shows up with guns loaded, looking for rogue messengers.

Filed Under: leaks, michael hayden, millenials, whistleblowing

Verizon Claims Its Millennial Ad Pivot Has Been Slowed By Its Breathless Dedication To Consumer Privacy

from the okey-dokey dept

So we've noted repeatedly how Verizon really wants to pivot from stodgy, old protectionist telco to Millennial-focused media and advertising juggernaut. The company desperately wants in on Facebook and Google advertising cash, and apparently believes this is possible by ceasing network fiber upgrades and gobbling up failed 90s internet brands like Yahoo and AOL.

Except Verizon's brand revolution so far hasn't been much to write home about.

Verizon began its pivot with a short-lived website that imploded after writers revealed they couldn't talk about net neutrality or mass surveillance. The company's acquisition of Yahoo has also been plagued with issues, from Yahoo's mammoth, undisclosed hacking scandal to revelations of the company's wholesale spying on user e-mail accounts for the government (not that this latter issue bothered Verizon much). And Verizon's Go90 streaming video service, the cornerstone of Verizon's effort, has been derided as "a dud" by Verizon's own media partners.

Needless to say, a generation of being a government-pampered telecom monopoly left Verizon ill-prepared for its marketing and media gambit, and the company's own incompetence and lack of innovative DNA have made for rough sledding early on. Verizon, for its part, has been stuck trying to explain to investors and the media why things aren't going particularly well. Kind of amusingly, Verizon Executive Vice President Marni Walden last week tried to claim the problems were because Verizon is breathlessly dedicated to consumer privacy:

"For the first year, we’ve worked on bringing Verizon data into AOL. Candidly, that’s been slower than I’d like it to be, and you’ll see us accelerate that this year. The reason for that is around privacy and transparency for our customers."

"We’ve got to make sure we don’t ever compromise that relationship with consumers, so we’ll do that in a very responsible way,” Walden continued. “But what we do know is that when you bring that kind of data, that rich set of data from Verizon into the platform, the result you get on targeted advertising is significantly better."

Just so we're clear: Verizon was caught last year actively modifying wireless user data packets to track consumers around the internet. It was tracking users and building entire profiles of customers for two years before security researchers even discovered it. The company refused to inform consumers this was happening, and refused to provide working opt out tools. And while Verizon was fined $1.35 million by the FCC for this behavior, these so-called "stealth cookies" remain in use -- and have since been expanded across the AOL empire.

This comes of course as Verizon has worked tirelessly to fight consumer privacy protections on every front, most recently in the form of the FCC's broadband privacy protections, which simply require companies be transparent about what they're collecting. Verizon has long proclaimed that privacy protections aren't necessary because public shame would keep the company honest (again though, the public was never told this data collection was even happening). AOL CEO Tim Armstrong also proudly declared that "the market" would keep the Verizon empire on its best behavior as it pertains to user privacy. Yeah, maybe.

Of course the real reason Verizon's marketing ambitions have been slow to blossom isn't Verizon's love of privacy, it's Verizon's inexperience in media -- and actual competition. In broadband, Verizon has been consistently allowed to ignore privacy (and any other consumer complaint) courtesy of a lack of last-mile broadband competition. Now Verizon's the pesky upstart in a new, unfamiliar market, where annoyed users actually have a choice in search, e-mail, streaming video and other services. It's frankly entirely unclear if the company has the competence required for the transition.

Filed Under: advertising, broadband, go90, millenials, privacy
Companies: verizon

Comcast/NBC Tone Deafness, Not 'Millennials' To Blame For Olympics Ratings Drop

from the we'll-adapt-when-we-damn-well-feel-like-it dept

Olympics watchers repeatedly begged Comcast for live opening ceremonies, more live events, less host prattle, and fewer ads ahead of the recent games in Rio. What did Comcast deliver instead? A smorgasbord of abysmal bloviation, tape delays, and so many advertisements that many people stopped watching in disgust. As a result, the Rio Olympics were the lowest rated Summer Olympics since 2000, with average viewership down 17% and an overall audience that was 25% smaller than 2012 in the 18-to-49 demo.

We've already noted how a big reason was Comcast/NBC's absolute refusal to actually listen to paying customers and heed lessons from the cord cutting era. But a Bloomberg headline this week proudly crowed that Millennials were somehow to blame for the slide. Amusingly, the piece cites a comment from NBC exec Steve Burke, who last June described a scenario he said would be a "nightmare":

"We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20 percent,” the chief executive officer of NBCUniversal said at a conference. “If that happens, my prediction would be that millennials had been in a Facebook bubble or a Snapchat bubble and the Olympics have come, and they didn’t know it."

That is, so we're clear, an NBC exec predicting that if NBC's Olympics ratings dropped, it would be the fault of Millennials living in a bubble -- not possibly due to anything NBC did. And with ratings dropping from 17 to 25%, Burke's nightmare scenario effectively came true. NBC is quick to point out that streaming was actually up, but that wasn't able to help an overall dive in ratings. And while Comcast/NBC is quick to insist it's adapting to consumer demand, people young and old found Olympic streaming to be an annoying and cumbersome experience littered with paywalls, delays, authentication issues, and other headaches:

"I’m sure NBC were patting themselves on the backs for how easy it would be to watch online this year, but that’s only true for cable subscribers, a slowly shrinking percentage of the US population, especially for Millennials. The reason NBC is losing Millennials to other platforms for entertainment is because all of those platforms have lowered the barriers to enjoy the programming. I can sign up for Hulu, Netflix, and HBO nearly in an instant. Oh, and did I mention they’re all ad free (with a premium on Hulu)?

Had NBC offered the entire Olympic Platform for a small fee (less than $10), they probably would have seen their Millennial numbers skyrocket. Hell, they could have charged $5 more for an “Ad Free” presentation and padded their pockets even more. But instead, they relied on the old dying models of traditional broadcast network and revenue models of years past, and it bit them in the ass.

Why is streaming so clunky and difficult? Because most cable industry streaming efforts are designed to give the illusion of innovation, flexibility and adaptation, without actually providing any of these. Why? Because offering a truly easy, inexpensive online streaming service (Olympics or otherwise) would cannibalize the traditional cable TV cash cow. As such, easy, flexible and inexpensive streaming remains an intentional afterthought, and will until cord cutting finally reaches critical mass. In short, like so many legacy industries, pay TV won't truly adapt until the house is fully engulfed in flames.

Filed Under: coverage, millenials, olympics, ratings, time delay
Companies: nbc universal

Study: Cable Cutting To Continue, Especially As Millennials Age

from the streaming-away dept

In all of the discussions about cord-cutting, it seems like many times we get lost in the weeds of specific details on certain angles or certain perceptions. Occasionally lost in all of this is the simple fact that the public ditching their cable TV subscriptions is happening and the pace at which it's happening is rising. The general curve has almost universally been up and, while the entertainment industry may want to talk about the peripherals, eventually they're going to have to get on board the reality train.

A recent study drives the point home yet again, finding that the pace of cord-cutting, particularly among younger demographics, is ramping up even higher.

The findings of a Media Consumption Survey were presented on Thursday at the Goldman Sachs 23rd Annual Communacopia Conference in New York by Mike Vorhaus at Frank N. Magid Associates. The survey was taken in early June. Among the wider population of those surveyed, those saying they intend to cut the cord was 2.9 percent, which might not sound like a lot, but would represent millions of customers and is more than the 2.2 percent in 2012 who said they would soon cancel pay TV.

A half-a-point jump over two years may not seem like a huge deal, but it really should be a clarion call for pay-TV providers. This is particularly the case when so many of these cord-cutters have cited dissatisfaction with the customer service at cable companies as one of the reasons for the move. In addition, younger consumers are reporting that the options available to them from streaming services like Netflix and YouTube satisfy their needs. Add to that how the television is moving into the background as the primary source of media consumption, and the industry better be getting a move on in terms of offering better streaming services.

The amount of people who say they can't live without their TV remains steady at 57 percent, but among 18-to-34-year-olds, TV as the primary medium for entertainment is down 40 percent to 21 percent. Those who say they can't live without their smartphones is up sharply in the last three years — from 22 percent to 50 percent. The survey also says that 59 percent of U.S. households pay for a subscription video-on-demand service, with Netflix representing 43 percent of them.

None of this may be surprising, but there's an Achilles' heel in all this that far too few people are discussing. I've said this before, but I'd be willing to bet that the moment that major professional American sports leaps heavily into any kind of reliable, consistent streaming option, that's going to be the end of cable subscribers at the levels of the modern era. Sports aside, or rather included, the sooner cable providers and content creators get on board with the internet as the primary distribution mechanism, the longer they survive.

Filed Under: cable cutting, cord cutting, internet, millenials, pay tv, tv

Debunking The Myth That The Internet Generation Doesn't Buy Or Read Books

from the whoda-thunk-it? dept

If you just listened to the popular press pushing stereotypes, you might think that kids these days can't think in complete sentences, let alone read anything longer than 140 characters (oops, this post is too long!). And, of course, there are a few luddites out there who keep insisting that the internet means that the kids today don't read long form works any more. Of course, we've been pointing out for years that this is a complete fabrication. Back in 2007, we wrote about how kids were reading more books than ever before. Two years later, we noted that there was a notable increase in reading long-form fiction books. Certainly, we've seen a massive increase in the number of books being published (even discounting "non-traditional" or self-published books, in the last decade there's been an increase in books published per year of almost 50% from about 200,000 to 300,000).

And, now there's even more evidence that the supposed death of reading by kids is a complete myth. Aaron DeOliveira alerts us to this story that shows that so-called "millennials" spend more money on books than any other demographic group. In fact, that group -- those born between 1979 and 1989 -- now buy 30% of all books sold. As the report notes, this even beats out baby boomers, despite the fact that the boomers have a lot more disposable income.

Either way, can we dispense with the twin myths that (a) the internet generation doesn't pay for content and (b) that they don't read long form books?

Filed Under: baby boomers, book, internet generation, longform reading, millenials, reading, teens, young people