Tim Wu Joins NY AG's Office In Shaming 'Abysmal' Cable Broadband ISPs

from the stating-the-obvious dept

Last fall, we noted how New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office had launched an investigation into awful broadband service quality. In and of itself that was nothing particularly interesting (especially given Schneiderman's history of grandstanding), though what made the inquiry of note is the office's hiring of Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor who first coined the term "net neutrality" back in 2002. With Wu as the AG's "senior lawyer and special adviser," Schneiderman sent letters to NYC area broadband incumbents Verizon, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable -- questioning whether they actually deliver the speeds they advertise.

So far this inquiry doesn't appear to have culminated in much of anything beyond a recent letter sent to Charter CEO Tom Rutledge (pdf) warning him that he needs to dramatically improve the "abysmal" service offered by one of the company's recently acquired properties, Time Warner Cable. According to the AG's letter, tests conducted by volunteers show that Time Warner Cable connections consistently fail to achieve advertised data rates:

"The results we received from Time Warner Cable customers were abysmal. Not only did Time Warner Cable fail to achieve the speeds its customers were promised and paid for (which Time Warner Cable blamed on the testing method), it generally performed worse in this regard than other New York broadband providers. In short, what we have seen in our investigation so far suggests that Time Warner Cable has earned the miserable reputation it enjoys among consumers. Overcoming this history will require more than a name change; it will require a fundamental revolution in how Time Warner Cable does business and treats its customers.

This, of course, is not really a new revelation. Limited competition historically leaves large ISPs with no incentive to seriously upgrade infrastructure or customer support, resulting in the cable companies most of us know and love. And while the letter promises Charter's CEO the NY AG's office will "be in touch soon to propose next steps," the AG hasn't really offered a solution so far. And the letter comes just as New York State joins federal regulators in approving Charter's $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, a deal most consumer advocates warn simply creates another Comcast with the size, scope and power to ensure broadband remains marginally competitive at best.

While the AG's office appears to have used a relatively simple speed test to collect the data, a far more comprehensive study by the FCC last year (using custom-firmware embedded routers in user homes) found that roughly 10% of Time Warner Cable customers got less than 80% of their advertised speeds during prime time, 15% received 80 to 95% of their advertised speeds, while 75% got more than 95% of advertised speeds. That's not perfection, but it doesn't really rise to the level of "abysmal," either.

In fact, that same FCC study found that the majority of the ISPs measured do consistently deliver advertised speeds, and since the FCC began conducting these studies -- some ISPs have even taken to offering a little more than what's advertised to avoid public shaming of this type. The problem with the AG's inquiry is that, historically, speed hasn't really been as large of an issue as horrible customer service, sneaky misleading fees and high prices, the last two of which federal and state regulators have a long, proud history of completely ignoring. And unless the AG has some magical way to address a lack of competition in the market, harsh letters stating the obvious may not really accomplish all that much.

Filed Under: broadband, eric schneiderman, new york, shaming, speeds, tim wu
Companies: cablevision, time warner cable, verizon

The FCC Has Started Publicly Shaming Robocallers Weekly

from the playing-the-shame-game dept

While there's been no limit of hand wringing from the grumpy grandpa corners of the Internet about the mean old "over-reaching" FCC, the agency has actually been making some good decisions lately. Reclassifying ISPs under Title II and passing tough net neutrality rules (which, contrary to chicken littles has been a good thing so far), stopping ISPs from buying state protectionist broadband law, cracking down on cramming, thwarting convention centers from blocking personal Wi-Fi so you'll use their pricey services; there's a lot of pro-consumer, pro innovation, pro-competition issues the FCC has woken up to after a fifteen year slumber.

And back in May the FCC announced (pdf) that it was taking aim at the number one issue consumers complain to the FCC about: robocalling. The FCC said it was considering new rules that would not only make it easier for consumers to opt out of marketing pitches via phone or SMS, but make it clear that voice and wireless carriers can offer new robocall-blocking services without violating call-completion rules. While ISPs like Sonic applauded the FCC's plan, the agency was of course sued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who claimed the FCC "overstepped its authority by creating new restrictions on legitimate, good faith communications from businesses to their customers."

Undaunted by yet another lawsuit in its growing pile, the FCC has moved forward and announced it's also going to start listing robocaller phone numbers every week to make it easier for consumers and services to blacklist them. That monthly data is now compiled here for your perusal each week, published as a downloadable CSV file. The FCC says its goal is to help streamline the war on dinner-interrupting robocallers:

"This data will help improve do-not-disturb technologies so they can provide the best service for consumers,” said Alison Kutler, chief of the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, which manages consumer complaints. “As we encourage providers to offer these services, and as the Commission recently made clear that there are no legal barriers to doing so, we continue to look for ways to help facilitate important consumer tools."

Call blocking services like NomoRobo have applauded the move, noting that previously they needed to file time-consuming FOIA requests to obtain this data:

"For the past 2 years I have been advocating for all of the government organizations to report this data. And the push-back that we always get is well there’s personally identifiable information, what about the consumer, how do we protect the consumer, and what I’ve been saying is, listen we don’t need to know any consumer information. All that we need to know is what is the robocallers phone number. If we get that, that really helps us."

Of course, this is just a step in the right direction, and not a killing blow. Most robocallers make heavy use of number spoofing technology, meaning that fighting robocalling will always be a massive game of Whac-a-Mole no matter what. The FCC's going to need to remain vigilant in keeping the list up to date and accurate, since the organic response by robocallers will be to rotate faster than ever through spoofed numbers. Still, while no single solution is going to kill robocalling, the FCC's overall actions of late should lend a hand. Meanwhile, consumers with a little extra free time on their hands can help by making robocalling less profitable and more annoying by checking out robocaller time wasters like Lenny.

Filed Under: fcc, robocollers, shaming, telemarketing

NYPD Sergeants Assoc. Using Flickr To Publicly Humiliate Homeless To Play Politics With Mayor De Blasio

from the cheap-shots dept

Let's say you're a leader in an association for NYPD sergeants. Now let's say you're, like, super aware of some of the changes and backlash against the NYPD that has occurred recently, chiefly concerning policies for policing the public, charges of racist and violent practices, and the insistance that the city government find ways to keep officers accountable for their actions. You know the city is looking into NYPD officials deleting information on illegal summons quotas. You know of the concern over the fact that the NYPD has pissed off so many black men that black men kind of don't want to join their ranks. And you're especially aware of the trend of greater protections for the public filming police doing their jobs and the crackdown on the crackdown of the photographers. What do you do?

Psshh, start a Flickr account solely for the purpose of poor-shaming the homeless to try and embarrass the Mayor, right?

The Sergeants Benevolent Association is spearheading the effort, emailing a letter to members Monday urging them and their families and friends to take pictures to document the decline of the city.

“As you travel about the city of New York, please utilize your smartphones to photograph the homeless lying in our streets, aggressive panhandlers, people urinating in public or engaging in open-air drug activity, and quality-of-life offenses of every type,” says the letter from SBA President Ed Mullins, a major critic of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Yes, Mullins (and the ironically named Sergeants Benevolent Association) then takes those photographs and uploads them to its Flickr account, because apparently the best way to make a political point to a political opponent is to publicly shame the least able to defend themselves. Should you not wish to view this material, something for which I wouldn't blame you, the pictures almost uniformly show homeless and vagrant folk in their own misery, often captioned with such wonderfully sympathetic thoughts as "Quality Of Life For The Mayor" and "Peek A Boo" and "Homeless Takeover NYC." The idea of shaming the homeless, who might be homeless for any number of reasons, is deplorable. As are Mullins' excuses for doing so.

Noting that more cops are being recorded on the job, Mullins wrote, “Shouldn’t accountability go both ways? We, the ‘Good Guys,’ are sworn to protect our citizens. Shouldn’t our public officials be held to the same standard?” he said.

Except the two things aren't remotely equivalent. The public photographing the police performing their duties while serving that very same public isn't the same as snapshotting a 3rd party whose lives are already miserable to take political shots against the Mayor. Frankly, these are the kinds of things said by those with head injuries, not those leading a police association. More specifically, Mullins claims this is being done in response to pending city legislation that would require police to obtain permission to search a suspect if they don't have probable cause for an arrest. You know, that thing that's already in the goddamn Constitution? Yeah, that's why he's encouraging police to publicly shame the homeless.

Get a grip, guys...

Filed Under: bill de blasio, homeless, mayor, nyc, nypd, photographs, police, seargents benevolent association, shaming

UK Teacher Shows Student's Swimsuit Photo From Facebook To Class Assembly To Teach Her A Lesson

from the shame-the-shamers dept

I would imagine that if a teacher wanted to convince children that the internet -- which is not especially dangerous for kids -- actually is especially dangerous for kids, there must be a myriad of ways to go about it. One could, for instance, simply assign a Law & Order SVU marathon for homework. What the teacher probably shouldn't do is call a class assembly on the subject and then blast a bikini picture from one of the attending students' Facebook accounts to everyone attending.

A 15-year-old says she was humiliated by a teacher who showed an enlarged picture of her in a bikini to more than 100 other students during a school assembly. Children at Eggbuckland Community College in Plymouth, Devon, were shown the photograph taken from her Facebook profile to illustrate the pitfalls of posting private images online. Unknown to the schoolgirl, who has not been named, staff had taken her swimwear photo off the internet. It was blown up and added to a portfolio of other pictures then shown during a packed school assembly.

What's crazy is that this isn't the first time this exact sort of thing has occurred. We had an almost identical story in the States roughly a year ago. There is simply so much lunacy in this to unpack, it's difficult to know where to begin. Let's begin with the entire premise that a fifteen-year-old girl wearing a bikini is an appropriate target for slut-shaming. I wasn't aware that a fifteen-year-old girl was supposed to be so ashamed of her own body that she should not be pictured wearing what all kinds of fifteen-year-olds wear at public beaches all over the place. What the hell?

Add to that the trauma she must have experienced having this photo sprung on her in an assembly of her peers and used in a way to suggest she should be ashamed. It seems like the chief lesson about online safety being taught is to be exceptionally careful of the teachers at their school. A useful conversation could have been had with the students about how to use Facebook's privacy features to keep certain images from being publicly viewed and so forth, but instead the entire focus is on one girl wearing a swimsuit. Anyone actually think that the discussion the kids were having coming out of that assembly was actually focused on their own safety?

And the response on behalf of the school, while apologetic to the mother of the young girl, is hysterical.

A Plymouth City Council spokesperson said on behalf of the school, whose motto is 'Learning, caring, achieving': 'We cannot comment on the incident itself. 'The advice given to children and parents is that it is very difficult to ensure any picture is completely private and it is important to positively manage their online identity and profile and think carefully before sharing personal content.'

It sure didn't seem like a whole lot of thought went into sharing the young girl's personal content, so maybe it's time to review your own lessons?

Filed Under: shaming, social media

Victory: Marlyand Police Department Planning To Tweet Arrests Of A Vice Sting Arrests Nobody

from the mission-accomplished dept

We had just discussed one Maryland police department's stupid plan to tweet out the arrests made during prostitution stings the other day. I had several problems with the plan, including that the police offering up pictures of the accused, not convicted, "johns" seemed like an overreach. Add to that a somewhat confusing use of pictures in their blog announcement making it unclear as to whether the accused prostitutes would be put on public display, not to mention the horrified rebuke of some social workers, and this whole thing looked like a poor plan that should be squashed. But it wasn't squashed. The department went forward with the sting-to-be-tweeted. So how did it work out?

It was a complete and total success, by which I mean that they arrested absolutely nobody. I'm going to tell you how the department spun this less-is-more outcome, but you've probably already guessed.

"I've participated in hundreds of stings, and I've never seen what happened today. By advertising this days ago, we wanted to put johns on notice to not come to Prince George's County," Dave Coleman, head of the county's Vice Intelligence Unit, said in a statement. "That message was heard loud and clear. We just put a dent in the human trafficking business without making one arrest."

Yup, they're going with the idea that this widely-mocked threat to tweet out pictures is what kept away everyone who might be seeking a prostitute on the day of the sting. It's an interesting theory, which relies on the idea that somehow getting your picture tweeted by a handle followed by a grand total of twelve-thousand people in the whole wide world was somehow more of a deterrent than getting arrested in the first place. There is such a thing as social shaming, but there's also such a thing as having to go to jail, and I'll leave it to you to figure out which would be worse for most people.

On top of that faulty logic, this idea that declaring victory over human trafficking because nobody showed up to your advertised whores-as-bait party is the stupidest thing since, oh, I don't know...

Yeah, that sounds about right. Some experts agree.

Darby Hickey, an activist who promotes sex workers' rights and spoke to me for our piece last week told me that the department is delusional.

"If 'putting a dent in the human trafficking business' was as easy as threatening to live tweet, imagine what a better world we'd live in," Hickey wrote in an email to me. "I'm glad no one was arrested and I think it was a good moment for conversations about the need to change the approach to sex work, as well as recognize that even if it's still criminalized, furthering stigmatizing is not helpful but dangerous."

Or, I suppose the department could continue with this insane little experiment and plan a tweet-sting every single day for the rest of existence. Assuming they believe their own hype, they kind of have to, don't they? If this is all it takes to end prostitution and human trafficking, it'd be a crime not to, and then we'd have to put their pictures up on Twitter or something.

Filed Under: maryland, prince george county, prostitution, shaming, social media, sting

A Tour Through The Bizarre Mind Of An NSA Defender: Discrediting Activists By Using Their Porn Surfing Is Just Like Journalism!

from the i-don't-even... dept

Oh, Stewart Baker. It's getting to the point where I feel like we may even need a "Oh, Stewart Baker" topic here on Techdirt, given how often we seem to feel the need to utter that phrase. Baker, if you haven't been playing along with the home version, is the former NSA and DHS official who really likes to support the ability of the government to spy on everyone and really seems to dislike civil liberties. Oh, and he has this incredible way of making statements so blatantly ridiculous that, personally, I find it scary that the government apparently trusted him in multiple really important positions. Let's go through some of the examples before getting to the latest wacky claim.

• Right after the Boston Marathon bombing, Baker claimed that it proved civil liberties defenders like the EFF and ACLU were wrong about surveillance cameras in saying that they're not very useful at stopping crime. And, of course, they didn't stop crime. Also, their main complaint is with government surveillance cameras, and those weren't the ones used to identify the Boston bombers.
• Next, he argued that reporters like Glenn Greenwald and Bart Gellman, two of the three journalists who got original stashes of documents from Ed Snowden, weren't real journalists because they were "advocates." But, that's what a journalist should be: an advocate for truth and an informed public.
• From there it started to get odder and odder. He blamed civil libertarians for 9/11, saying their whining about privacy resulted in the NSA not being able to spot the plot, despite the 9/11 Commission's report completely debunking such a claim. The failure to stop 9/11 wasn't because of limits on the government, but the failure to do things the government was allowed to do.
• Next he attacked Senator Ron Wyden for trying to alert the public to the many things that the NSA was doing that were beyond what the public believed the law allowed. Baker called this "trolling for leaks," while everyone else recognized it as "telling us the government has secret laws it won't tell us about, which it uses to violate the Constitution."
• Then there's the time he claimed that we should blame privacy rights advocates for having the TSA grope you at an airport. Without those pesky privacy folks, he argues, the TSA could just snoop through all your data first and not have to grab your crotch. Apparently, the complete set of possible options for airport security in the mind of Baker is: "violate your private info or get molested." That there might be other options -- even more effective ones -- doesn't even seem to be on the table.
• Next up: the time he claimed that without the NSA spying on everyone, 9/11 happened, and that's all the proof he needs that spying on everyone is necessary to prevent the next 9/11. Got that? Apparently anything that wasn't in place at the time of 9/11 is fair game, because 9/11. For example: before 9/11, we didn't force everyone to walk around in public naked, and 9/11 happened. Clearly the "proof is compelling" that everyone should have to walk around naked. #StewartBakerLogic.
• More recently, he tried to argue that the NSA's "minimization" procedures, which require them to stop watching "US persons" in certain limited situations caused 9/11, despite the fact that the example he cited wasn't actually subject to minimization, and was the result of a failure of government spooks to take action, not because they didn't have the information, but because they had too much of it to know what to focus on.
• And, then, with the latest leak of the fact that the NSA plans to discredit non-terrorist activists by revealing their porn surfing habits, Baker staunchly defended the program as being better than being killed by drones. Because, clearly, those are the only two options. Either the NSA kills non-terrorist activists they don't like or they sift through their web surfing to reveal their porn habits.

You may notice a bizarre pattern in many of these, in which Baker leaps to an either/or claim when a whole multitude of other options exist. Either way, he's since tried to defend his statements concerning the porn exposure by noting that the reporter, Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post, left out the key point he tried to make repeatedly: that what the NSA is talking about doing with these advocates is no different than what Glenn Greenwald has done in shaming politicians by showing how their actions do not match up with their words.

Think about that for a second. He's arguing an equivalence between government spooks snooping through all of your data and using it to embarrass people they don't like with a journalist reporting on information gleaned through journalistic activity. If journalists could magically tap into the NSA's database, he might have a (weak) point. If journalists were able to hack into the internet backbone and scoop up all data on anyone, he might have a point. If journalists had the ability to arrest/detain/kill you, he might have a point. But, you know, the one time we know of where journalists were caught hacking into computer systems to get private info, it created a massive scandal that brought down a well-established news operation.

That Baker can't see the difference between having access to that corpus of data through questionable means and journalism is, well, stunning. It gives you a picture into the mind of an NSA defender, however. It's a picture where he will cling to and distort pretty much any argument to try to defend the indefensible.

Filed Under: nsa, nsa surveillance, porn, shaming, stewart baker