Podcasts about chairman pai

In 2002, under Chairman Michael Powell, the FCC passed the Cable Modem Order which classified cable modem internet service providers (ISPs) as not subject to common carrier non-discrimination requirements. The order's critics said the FCC had created a non-neutral internet where dominant firms could use their market power to harm consumers and diminish competition. After several attempts, which the D.C. Circuit rejected, the FCC under Chairman Wheeler imposed network neutrality requirements on ISPs in the Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet order in 2015. Then, the FCC under Chairman Pai largely revoked the network neutrality rules in the Restoring Internet Freedom order in 2017. Now, under Chair Rosenworcel the FCC has just reimposed network neutrality.This panel discussed the legal future on appeal of this most recent iteration in what appears to be an unending partisan regulatory saga—especially in light of the Supreme Court's changing views on administrative review. The panel also investigated whether this over two decade old policy dispute is fighting yesterday's war as many believe that there have been few competitive abuses by ISPs during the last two decades—and arguably competitive abuses by dominant firms has moved elsewhere in the web.

It's Pi Day, which meant we had to get a special guest for this special episode of Reclaiming My Time. We were joined by former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. The Chairman talked to us about what he has been up to since he stepped down from the role of chairman in January. We discussed the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which was spearheaded by Chairman Pai in 2017 and 2018, and some of the other initiatives undertaken by the FCC on Chairman Pai's watch. We also discussed other random topics, including our first visits to the Oval Office, Chairman Pai's visits around the country, and why we all despise Daylight Savings Time. We'll be back at our regular time next week.

Please join us  as we host FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.   Upon his confirmation to the Commission in 2012, Chairman Pai made his first major policy speech here in Pittsburgh before members of the Pittsburgh Technology Council at Carnegie Mellon University. Since that initial visit, Chairman Pai has visited Pittsburgh and remained connected to our academic and entrepreneurial community. We have enjoyed the open lines of communications with both Chairman Pai and his team for the past eight years.   Late last year, the Chairman announced his plans to resign from the FCC in late January, but also asked to once again, address members of the Pittsburgh Technology Council as his last major policy speech. We are looking forward to hearing how technology and innovation have impacted FCC actions since President Obama first nominated him in late 2011.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai joins the show to discuss his infamous 2017 repeal of the internet regulation 'Net Neutrality' and whether it will make a comeback under Joe Biden. We break down how the alarmist claims of "the end of the internet as we know" actually played out after net neutrality's repeal. Plus, we discuss the FCC's work promoting 5G technology and the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has earned bipartisan ire for giving Big Tech platforms liability protections. Finally, Chairman Pai tells us about his bulldog puppy Ginger and the one food garnish he absolutely HATES. Follow Pai on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AjitPaiFCC Follow Brad on Twitter: https://twitter.com/brad_polumbo Follow Brad on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradpolumbo/

Under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/ajit-pai (Ajit Pai's) leadership, the US is experiencing faster internet speeds, a healthy investment in the buildout of 5G networks, more efficient use of spectrum, and notable progress on programs to close the digital divide. Chairman Pai's FCC has also implemented common-sense reforms such as lowering interstate prison phone rate caps and creating a new suicide hotline. Pai recently announced he would leave the FCC on January 20th, but his legacy will leave a lasting imprint on the agency. Specifically, he will be remembered for his innovation-friendly, light-touch approach to regulatory policy. On this episode of “Explain to Shane,” https://www.aei.org/profile/shane-tews/ (Shane) and AEI's https://www.aei.org/profile/daniel-lyons/ (Daniel Lyons) hear from Chairman Pai himself on what lies ahead for the Biden FCC and how the agency has navigated complex issues like 5G, spectrum allocation, and https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-internet-freedom (Restoring Internet Freedom). 

0:26: The Chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, has announced his resignation.  1:20: Chairman Pai's Infrastructure Order and how it reduced restrictions on municipally owned infrastructure. 3:10: Spectrum auctions under Pai's leadership. 5:14: Chairman Pai's most controversial accomplishment: the repeal of the Title 2 Net Neutrality.  6:32: Speculations about what the new administration will do regarding Net Neutrality. 7:40: Approval of the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile, a brief history of it, and what that merger has meant for the telecom industry landscape. 11:00: DISH  enters wireless through spectrum purchases and the purchase of Boost.

The National Security Institute was excited to host the latest event in our Technology Innovation and American National Security: Preserving U.S. Leadership in a New Decade project.America’s economic prosperity and military superiority relies on our technology superiority, but the same companies and public institutions that are driving U.S. innovation are also being targeted by foreign nation-states for intellectual property theft at a massive scale. Chairman Pai will address how the US government can both protect the innovation that is the engine of American economic growth and the pillar of American national security, while also remaining economically engaged and politically competitive.On Thursday November 19 at 1 PM, NSI hosted a fireside chat featuring Ajit Pai, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and Emily Chang, Anchor and Executive Director of Bloomberg Technology, to discuss these and other issues facing the Federal Communications Commission. Their conversation was followed by an Q&A session with NSI Founder and Executive Director Jamil N. Jaffer and FCC Chief of Staff Matthew Berry. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Roshan Cariappa and Amit Paranjape speak to Chairman Ajit Pai, the first Indian American to hold highest office at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In a free-wheeling conversation, Chairman Pai speaks about his childhood, growing up in Parsons (a small town in Kansas) as a first generation immigrant, his journey from law school into the FCC, how the FCC's priorities have changed post-COVID, what the FCC is doing to increase internet penetration in the US, managing varying stakeholder interests and enabling efficient markets, the net neutrality episode of which he was at the center of and what has happened since, regulating big tech (Facebook, Amazon, Google), security considerations with 5G and Huawei, his reaction to India's banning of Tiktok and 59 Chinese apps, and his interests in Indian Culture. The podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Breaker, Stitcher, and other popular platforms. If you liked this episode, then please rate, subscribe and share! #Bharatvaarta #BVPolicy #AjitPai

In this episode, Roshan Cariappa and Amit Paranjape speak to Chairman Ajit Pai, the first Indian American to hold highest office at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In a free-wheeling conversation, Chairman Pai speaks about his childhood, growing up in Parsons (a small town in Kansas) as a first generation immigrant, his journey from law school into the FCC, how the FCC's priorities have changed post-COVID, what the FCC is doing to increase internet penetration in the US, managing varying stakeholder interests and enabling efficient markets, the net neutrality episode of which he was at the center of and what has happened since, regulating big tech (Facebook, Amazon, Google), security considerations with 5G and Huawei, his reaction to India's banning of Tiktok and 59 Chinese apps, and his interests in Indian Culture. The podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Breaker, Stitcher, and other popular platforms. If you liked this episode, then please rate, subscribe and share! #Bharatvaarta #BVPolicy #AjitPai

This week the Charlotte chapter of the Neoliberal Project hosted FCC Chairman Ajit Pai for a live Q&A session.  Jeremiah, joined by our Charlotte lead Morgan Rinehart, hosted the discussion which is now available in podcast form.  Chairman Pai discusses how the FCC's work has been impacted by COVID, 5G deployment, the potential threat from Huawei and other Chinese firms, Net Neutrality, and much more. To make sure you hear every episode, sign up at https://www.patreon.com/neoliberalproject. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus episodes, our sticker-of-the-month club, and community Slack.  Become a supporter today! Follow us at: https://twitter.com/ne0liberal https://www.facebook.com/groups/1930401007051265/   Join a local meetup group at https://neoliberalproject.org/chapters  

On this episode, we talk with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. He shares what action the FCC has and IS taking to make sure YOU stay connected during and after the pandemic….and discusses what priority projects are already in play as the nation looks to the Commission for guidance about the future of— among other things—5G technology, telehealth, school connectivity, and improved digital equity.  You can follow Chairman Pai on Twitter at @AjitPaiFCC.

Welcome!   For being locked down do to this Pandemic there is certainly a lot of technology in the news this week.  So let's get into it.  We are finding that managers are surveilling their employees, probably a little more than necessary and an uptick in VPN usage. Big Tech is strangling us and WordPress has a vulnerability plus much more   So sit back and listen in.  For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: Hey everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. Spring is in the air. I am so excited about this, you know, I love pretty much every season. I was just thinking the other day how I missed not having, you know, like crunchy snow that you can walk on. I know you might think I'm crazy, right? I know other family members of mine who absolutely think I'm crazy, but it's, maybe it's just a thing from my childhood, you know, being 40 degrees below zero and being outside and just walking in the snow and just having a crunch, crunch, crunch. [00:00:40] But you know, so wintertime makes me enjoy spring makes me enjoy summer to a bit of a lesser degree, but I love going motorcycling so that works right? In the summertime. And then I really like fall probably my favorite season and then winter is pretty good. I'm not a winter sports kind of guy. I should probably do a little bit more of that. [00:01:01] Well, if you saw me on the TV news this week, you know that I was talking a lot about this new surveillance society that we have. Yeah. I'm not just talking about general regular surveillance that we've talked about before. I'm talking about surveillance in the workplace. And now there are two sides of this. [00:01:23] Of course, there are like two sides to everything and there's the side of the employee and then there's the side of the employer. And so we're going to spend a little time right now going through some of the things on both sides. If you're an employer, why you might want to be doing surveillance. In fact, in some ways, why you should be doing surveillance, if you're an employee, what are your rights? [00:01:46] What can you do about it? We'll be talking about that. And then some of the software the businesses are using and what you can expect. So let's sort of been talking about a lot this week over on various radio stations and on television as well this week. So getting right into this, and you'll see some articles about this up on my website as well, at Craig peterson.com [00:02:10] Oh and man did I get a kick in the pants this week, you know I've been doing a little bit of work on the website because we're putting some new stuff together for people. For y'all and I, I went to CraigPeterson.com/subscribe and just tried to check it out. So guess what. It doesn't work. Slash Subscribe to me. I just hate it when that happens. [00:02:35] So if you have tried to subscribe on my website before to get my weekly newsletter or get some of my special reports because you get, I think it's four of them when you subscribe, I send those off to you and you went to CraigPeterson.com/subscribe to subscribe. It may not have worked. So I'm going to be working some more on that this week. [00:02:58] I got that problem and then I've got a problem as well with the text number, the (855) 385-5553 number. And I guess it's kind of like the cobbler's kids that have no shoes, right? Where man. There are so many things that I need to do and I've been doing for customers and lately, I've been doing even more for non-customers, is trying to help everybody out because there are so many people that are in such dire straits right now. [00:03:26] You know, all businesses have changed. Talking about the pivot and pivoting to work at home has been a very big deal. In fact, I'm going to. Probably have a little course on that coming up here in a couple of weeks. What to do if you a business and you're kind of pivoting to homeworkers maybe permanently, but certainly for the next little while. [00:03:45] What should you be doing from the security standpoint? I think it's really important for everyone to understand and to do. Many managers are turning to surveillance software and. I got this idea about a norm reminder really from the Washington Post this week now, Washington post, you know, I don't trust him at all for any of their political coverage because they haven't been honest with any of us for quite a while, but some of their technology coverage isn't bad. [00:04:14] It's kind of like the New York Times. It's such a shame because the New York times has such great. In-depth articles on so many things, and then they completely misrepresent politics all the time, like a hundred percent consistent, and it's, so, I'm just always torn. Do I pay any attention to these guys or not? [00:04:35] You know, I certainly look at their coverage too when it comes to the political stuff, cause I have to make a judgment call myself. But man, I don't mind supporting the regular things, but their editorial things are in their decisions as to which stories to run. Sometimes they're just so antithetical to everything, I believe. [00:04:55] But anyway, enough of that. So the Washington post article. Kind of got me thinking about it. So I did a bunch of research and I have one, two, three pages of a bullet point that I want to go through with you. Because I did research. I looked at a lot of things online. I looked at some of the websites of these companies making this, I don't know if you want to call it spyware, but that's kind of what it boils down to and figured out what's going on there. I had looked at some of the legal issues from the federal government side and from the state government, and here's the bottom line. When in doubt, assume you're being watched now. [00:05:36] I think that's a reasonable assumption in this day and age, right? We've all got our smart devices. We're online. We know that companies like Google and Facebook are compiling information to sell it about us, and I'm not sure that that's an absolutely horrific thing. I get more concerned when we're talking about employers surveilling us because if you have a bad boss or not so great boss, what's going to happen when that boss comes down on you for taking a break. [00:06:09] Right? Even a short break, you know? Yeah. You took a 15-minute break or whatever it was that was not, you know, necessary for them to come down on you. That's where I started getting concerned. People losing their jobs over this. Now, in some cases, if you're a transcriptionist and you're paid by the word, well, you know, why would they bother? [00:06:29] Monitoring me. I'm paid by the word, right? Who cares? You know? Obviously I have to deliver in a certain timeframe, but if it takes me all day and I have a 24-hour guarantee and I'm only typing one word a minute,  it's no skin off my employer's nose. And on the other end of the scale, if you are kind of intellectual work and you're working. [00:06:52] At a higher level, if you will, right? You're not just selling your, your keystroke, your fingers. You're actually thinking about problems. You're trying to logically analyze what's going on, what should be done, what shouldn't be done. If you're that type of person while then it's a completely different thing, right? [00:07:12] Again, how do you measure that? Because you might be reading a book, you might, you might have read a book last night and now you're in the office and you're looking at that book from last night cause you want to make some notes on it because you're one implemented into the office and now your employer's looking at you saying, well why hasn't your screen changed. [00:07:31] So that's the other side. So I get really concerned with the employers somehow thinking that this type of monitoring is a panacea for them. It's not going to motivate their employees to work. It just totally reminds me of when I was a professor on faculty out at Pepperdine University, and I taught, back then it was called MIS management information systems 422 out at Pepperdine. [00:07:57] And one of the things we had to look at was something called the Hawthorne principle. And they had done a study in Hawthorne, California of workers on a manufacturing line. And the big question was do they perform better when they're being monitored or when they're not being monitored? There were some interesting studies to this looking at music in the background. [00:08:21] Do you perform better when you have music playing in the background just at a low volume or better when it's quiet? Well, in all of these cases, it depends on what you're doing. Workers tend to perform better. With music in the background when they're doing kind of a rote task when they're working on an assembly line, and it's the same thing over and over and over again, that tends to help those people. [00:08:50] But when we're talking about an intellectual worker who is planning, who's thinking things through, who's writing marketing materials, who's doing software development, in most cases. They perform worse with music in the background and they're better off just having some basic white noise going on, which could be as simple as a fan. [00:09:13] It could be office chatter, et cetera, and I actually use some things in order to put that into the background myself, and I find them to be very, very helpful. You can find all kinds of them online. If you wanted to know exactly which ones I use, send me an email and I'll let you know, just me@craigpeterson.com but I have a plugin that goes into my browser. [00:09:37] That has a coffee shop, the ring of fire, burning, you know, outside a bird chirping, wind blowing, water lapping just, it has a few of those things. And, and I can select what I want and if I need to kind of focus on something, I find that to be very, very helpful. so when it comes to monitoring in the Hawthorne effect. [00:10:04] What they found is that yes, in some cases monitoring people. Worked out better, they produce better than not monitoring people. And that kind of reminds me of a good war movie that I absolutely loved. I don't think it was a great escape. Oh, no. I remember what it was. it was Schindler's list and there were supposed to be making hinges. [00:10:28] These are, of course, prisoners, that are being used as slave labor. And. They are supposed to be making these hinges. And so the guard comes over, lets me see, we make a hinge and he makes one in a matter of just seconds or minute or whatever it is. And then under the Hawthorne. That'd be principal here. [00:10:48] If he makes one hinge in one minute, he should be able to make 60 hinges in an hour. And yet they were only making, I don't remember what any of these numbers were. It's been a long time since I saw that movie. But, he didn't make his many, so obviously he got in trouble, as did other people who were on the assembly line. You know, if there's a gun to your head, maybe you will work better, maybe you will work faster. But in most cases, that's not true. And that was certainly true of these people who were confined to slave labor. They're in the Schindler's list movie. So we're going to talk a lot more about this when we get back because nearly half of the US labor force is now. working from home. [00:11:30] That's according to a study by MIT researchers in April, so just a couple of weeks ago, stick around. We're going to talk a lot more about this when we get back. You are listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN, and you'll hear me every Wednesday morning, give or take at 7:30 on with Matt. [00:11:52] Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here, on WGAN. I hope you're enjoying your Saturday, or if you're listening to me online, whatever day it is, you're listening, and of course, you can get that online experience through any podcast app. I'm on tune in. I'm on pretty much everywhere. You'll just be able to find me by looking for Craig Peterson. [00:00:28] The easiest way is just go to CraigPeterson.com/your favorite app when it comes to podcasts, whatever it is, and it'll just do a redirect for you, send you right to the right spot, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever it is. So we were talking before the break about what's happening here with surveillance scene, surveilling our employees out there. [00:00:55] And we're seeing some major changes. Now, some of these started actually a few years ago because businesses are rightly concerned about their intellectual property being stolen, and they need to know if an employee is. About to leave and leave with their customer list. And I have certainly seen that happen before. [00:01:17] Unfortunately, we often get these phone calls after the fact, after the data's already been stolen, the employee's gone, or whatever it is. But you know, that's kind of the way it is, right? Most businesses and people aren't willing to do anything about it until it goes over the cliff and this case. So what do we do as employers if we want to protect our information? [00:01:41] Because it's proprietary, right? That's called intellectual property for a reason, and the reason that it's proprietary is you just don't want it stolen and it gives you the advantage that you need to have. MIT researchers, as I mentioned before, are saying the nearly half of the US workforce is now working from home, which is absolutely massive. [00:02:06] We're seeing. VPN usage way up, and you know, I have a whole course on VPNs, the free one that I've been doing, and VPNs are not a panacea at all. In fact, they can make things much worse for you if you're trying to be secure. We've got these tattle wearables. Programs out there now that are doing everything from watching what you're typing and alerting the manager if you're typing in certain words that they think might mean that you are leaving their employee. [00:02:40] Right? So going to a website and employment website could cause, could cause a phone call from your manager. But we do have to check this. We do have to be careful. If you are going to be monitoring your employees, you need to make sure it's in the employee handbook. You want to be upfront with your employees and from the employee's side, remember that some of the software will do everything, like keep track of your keystrokes, watch the websites you're visiting, which is always the case. [00:03:13] A reasonable business is going to be tracking website visits. So keep that in mind. But, They're also going to potentially be screen capturing and maybe even capturing a picture from your camera. Some of them also will listen on the microphone and I get it. You know, it can be very demoralizing. [00:03:36] You've been working for a company for years, maybe decades, and now all of a sudden you've been, you're being spied on. Right? You think you've been a good worker, so talk with them. There are no federal laws against employee monitoring. In the private sector. There are a number of state laws, but many of these employers are crossing these ethical lines by continuing to track the employees after they've clocked out for the day. [00:04:05] So if you're an employee. Your best bet may be to just turn off the computer, turn off the laptop. If you have a smartphone that's been issued by the company, turned that off as well. If you have an app that is from the company, you might want to kill it. So it's no longer tracking and make sure your settings on your iPhone are set to only allow tracking while the app is active. [00:04:32] So those are a few things. You can talk to your HR department if you think something's happening that shouldn't be. And if you filed an internal complaint and nothing is really happening, you can file the same complaint with the securities and exchange commission, the equal opportunity employment commission, or the state organizations. [00:04:53] All right? By the way, you don't have to be informed that you are being spied upon. So keep that in mind. [00:05:01] So next step here, I want to talk about something from American thinker.com there's a great article there about big tech and how it is frankly strangling us right now. We have that 1984 ad. [00:05:17] Do you remember that? where. All of these people were sitting in a kind of Orwellian room, a socialist room. Everybody's dressed the same because you only have one type of clothes you can buy. Yeah. [00:05:29] By the way, Hey, thanks, guys. For this, what has it been two months exhibition of what socialism's really like? There's nothing on the shelves right now. [00:05:38] What do you remember that they're all sitting there and they're fighting this technocratic elite. When that woman runs down and throws the hammer at the screen. And obviously it was a pretty gloomy spot that ran, and I think it didn't have first run during the super bowl if I remember. Bottom line, but the tech giants now, like Apple and Google, all of these guys have really morphed into what is now, I think, near totalitarian giants. [00:06:13] No, they are controlling our speech. You got Candace Owens, brilliant woman. She's suspended from Twitter for challenging the Michigan governor. Facebook has flagged the declaration of independence as hate speech. It's incredible what's going on. We see Aaron Renn reporting that conservative and left-wing groups are being pulled down at Twitter, and that was back in 2016 2019 YouTube has been blocking some British history teachers from. [00:06:49] YouTube entirely for uploading archival material related to Adolf Hitler. Yeah. Heaven forbid that we remember what happened with him and YouTube said that these British history teachers were breaching. Guidelines banning the promotion of hate speech, even though they weren't promoting it, they were trying to let people know, Hey, this has happened before. [00:07:15] It can happen again. It's absolutely incredible. And, and where is that line drawn with the national socialists in Germany? Right? You remember? That's what they were. That's what Nazi stood for. National socialists. So the socialists there in Germany, they put out all kinds of a propaganda film about how great they were. [00:07:35] We were only telling half-truths. Sound familiar, right? and they're these British history teachers. Apparently we're putting some of these apps so people understood what it looked like to have manipulation coming from the government. So they deleted the videos, abrupt loaded to help educate future generations about the risks of socialism. [00:08:00] It's absolutely incredible. Now, Michael Cutler wrote just a couple of years ago that Twitter has, I love this language now morphed into a means of thought control. Through the control of language. Now we have, through the government, through the legislature and the federal level, we have given these companies immunity from prosecution in most cases because we say, Hey, it's like a public bulletin board. [00:08:30] People are up there saying stuff and YouTube and Twitter, et cetera. You're not liable if someone posts, posts, hate speech, et cetera, on your site. And now they're acting as though they might be liable. And so now because they're acting this way, should we remove their, their special treatment of being basically common carrier? [00:08:57] They're, they're saying, Hey, listen, we're, we're more like the telephone company than anything else than a newspaper. We don't have editorial control over the content and we don't control the content. Well, guess what? Those days are long past us. We need to make some changes here, okay? These big internet companies know more about you than you know about yourself, frankly. [00:09:20] And there's a study that came out, this was a years ago, where average consumers are checking their smartphones 150 times a day, and that number. Has grown, so we've got to make some changes. All right, everybody, stick around. We'll be right back. We're going to talk about some attacks that are going on. If you like to go online, visit websites, or particularly if you have your own business or personal website. [00:09:46] I got some news for you about attacks that are underway right now. Stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN yeah. Big tech is strangling us. We talked about that and how laws really need to change. I know that Chairman Pai over the FCC has been trying to tighten the things up a little bit, but there's been a lot of pushback from the left end from some people in their bureaucracy. [00:00:26]We also all already talked about the managers turning to surveillance software. And I understand why many of them are doing it to protect their intellectual property more than to make sure you're working at least. That's been the case historically. Now they're doing a little bit differently. They're actually trying to make sure you're working. [00:00:46] So if you are someone that has a website and it could be just a basic website, like something that you have for your local boy scout troop, or many, many of the other ones out there, your very likely to be using some open-source software called Wordpress. [00:01:07] WordPress is a great piece of software and I've been using it for many, many years. I used to hand-roll websites, which means I was sitting there writing the HTML code and putting everything in and it just wasn't very pretty. And then I moved over to an Adobe product. To do it. And then, then I went to something called WebGui, which was another piece of software to help run websites and build them. [00:01:35] And then I ended up on WordPress and I've been there for many, many years. Basically, since WordPress started. It has been quite a great little. Tool. So if you're thinking as well, by the way of putting up a website, let's say you want to start a business. Let's say you are a brick and mortar business, and frankly, you're looking to transition from brick and mortar to online first, which is what I think every business needs to be doing. [00:02:03] I want you to have a serious look at this. You can find it online. There are two WordPress sites. There's wordpress.com that you can go to online. And WordPress dot com just takes care of everything for you. They, they're a hosting company. They have themes. You can use a, they make it really quite simple. [00:02:25] It is not the most flexible but let me just give you a little bit of warning, but. All right? In this day and age, it's like 35% of the web is built on WordPress, so I'm looking at the numbers here on their website or their pricing plan. And for personal use, it is $4 a month. That is if you are paying for a year at a time so that that's hard to beat, isn't it? [00:02:59] And for premium, which I say is best for freelancers, it is $8 a month. Again, if you pay a yearly small business, they've got $25 per month and e-commerce. $45 a month. Now, the main difference between all of these different price points for WordPress. It has to do with domain name registration. Like if you're free, you probably don't have your own domain. [00:03:28] If you're a business, you're going to need your own domain name. Some of them have live support, 24/7 some of these, the basic packages only have email support. Premium themes are only available in the higher packages. You know, the business ones, which are premium business and commerce, they've gotten marketing and monetization tools that you can use at the business level. [00:03:54] Some search engine optimization, some advertising analytics, they have just a whole bunch of things that you can do. And then, then the highest end in e-commerce, they're adding on accepting payments and 60. Plus countries. Integrations with top shipping carriers, unlimited products or services, eCommerce marketing tools, premium customizable starter themes for 45 bucks a month. [00:04:22]So then this is kind of a duh, if you are looking to start a little business and have it online, if you have a business and you're looking to move it online, we're talking about WordPress right now. So wordpress.com is where you go for all of that. Now I get more complicated, than any of these provide for. [00:04:45] So I can't just use wordpress.com and I actually use WP engine as well as I self hosts some sites. In other words, I have my own servers because of my company Mainstream, we have our own data center. So why not? Right. But in some cases, like my bigger websites, I have up at WP engine and they maintain everything for me. [00:05:10] It's actually running on a Google platform, but they will automatically size it, resize it, and I can do absolutely anything I want. So if you want to be able to do anything you want, you're not going to use a wordpress.com. You're going to go to wordpress.org. Now, wordpress.org is the software that is behind wordpress.com and it's the software that I, again, 35% or so of the web uses. [00:05:43] I actually think it's probably higher than that, and most places use WordPress nowadays, and it's just so flexible. It's no longer just a blogging platform. And they have some built-in beautiful themes. I use something called Divi, which is a page builder. There's a few of them out there, Beaver, Ellementor. [00:06:03] Those are the three big ones. And if you're interested in, in thinking, Hey Craig, maybe you should do a class on this for us. Well, let me know. I'd be glad to put something together, but you got to tell me. Right? I just don't know. Otherwise, me, Me@craigpeterson.com if you'd like a class on this, and I know some people like Nancy Fields out there who she'll help people with their sites and put them together, but wordpress.org is where you go to get the software you need to put on too. [00:06:36] Some of these hosting services that you can use, and there's a million of them out there. Really. There's a lot, and then the kind of the ultimate, if you will, as the WP engine guys, but I brought this up to let you know the basics, right? This is what you want to look at. If you're thinking about going online. [00:06:54] But on the other side, I want to warn people right now because security teams and businesses have their hands full dealing with these COVID-19 related threats that are out there, and there are a lot of them, and right now the biggest problem isn't the hackers. The biggest problem is people clicking on emails and then getting ransomware. [00:07:16] We have a client that just. Yes. No, it was earlier in the week, I think it was Tuesday, one of their employees downloaded some software and he needed some software for windows to do some screen grabs cause he wanted to just grab a few things for off of the screen and save them the, save that graphic and use it in some documents. [00:07:38] So he went online, he did some searching and he found some screen. grabbing software, and lo and behold, there's this wonderful screen grab software for free that he downloads, and guess what? It's ransomware. So because we were doing all of the stuff for them and we had the really, the top anti-malware software that's out there very advanced stuff. [00:08:03] It detected it, it stopped it, it stopped it from spreading almost. Instantly, and that was just a phenomenal thing to have happened. It stopped it and it stopped the spread right away. So right now in WordPress, we're seeing a 30 fold increase in attacks on WordPress websites out there. , this is just dramatic. [00:08:27] So if you are running a word press word site or website, you're going to want to really, really have a look at it, make sure it's completely patched up because just like windows and Mac, iOS and iOS and Android, you have to apply patches. Man. It's like a grand central station here today. People in an out. [00:08:48] Anyhow, let's see. A million websites were reported, attacked, in the week from April 28th for one week. On May 3rd alone, they counted in excess of 20 million attacks against some half a million WordPress sites. It's just absolutely crazy. And by the way, they're coming in from more than 24,000. [00:09:10] Distinct IP addresses. What that means people are your machine to have been compromised and the bad guys are using them to launch attacks against websites and other people, which is not news, but it is news to most of those 24,000 people whose computers. Are being used to launch attacks. [00:09:32] You are Listening to Craig Peterson. Stick around because we're going to be right back. Talk a little bit about Zoom and how they are going to fix their chats. Stick around. We'll be right back and of course, visit me online at CraigPeterson.com. Craig Peterson: Hello everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. You can hear me here every Saturday from one till 3:00 PM and on with  Matt  Gagnon Wednesday mornings at 734 this week because the mayor was on, let's see, it was Friday at like eight Oh eight or something like that. So. Was very, a little bit, off. But I'm here from one til three. [00:00:31] Anyways. And for those listening online, of course, I am on pretty much every podcasting app out there. And in some ways, I'm one of the pioneers of this thing. I've been doing this podcasting stuff for over 20 years, so for a very, very long time. I don't know, it kind of makes you feel old. So, so far today we just talked about WordPress and how you can use that. [00:00:53] For your business where you can go online and order to find the right hosting environment for your WordPress site. We talked a little bit about how WordPress also has security vulnerabilities like anything else and what is going on right now. I also spoke about half an hour ago here about how big. [00:01:16] Technology is a drag, just strangling, just totally strangulating all of us with their censorship free speech just doesn't exist when you're talking about the big guys. And then, of course, we started out the show talking about surveillance software in what managers have been doing with the surveillance software over the years. [00:01:42] It's really bad, frankly. What's been going on. And right now we're going to talk a little bit about something. Pretty much I think everybody in the country's been on, and that is zoom. Now, if you have not been on zoom, let me just explain it really briefly, and that is zoom is a video conferencing. App, it's been around for a while now, was written by a couple of kids and they did a terrible job with the security side of things. [00:02:14] It works well, it's easy to use, and so they did a very good job on that. And frankly, if they hadn't, they wouldn't be kind of the premier video conferencing app right now. We just used it for mother's day. I set up a zoom conference for my mother and of course my stepfather, and we did another one for my, my father, and my stepmother, and we had the kids on there like 16 people called into it, and I chose zoom. [00:02:48] Knowing that it was easy to use, that a lot of people use zoom and really like it, but also knowing about the major security problems. Right? We're talking about mother's day, so I'm not worried about losing intellectual property. I'm not really worried about having people's zoom bombed me, and that is where zoom bombing has been going on like crazy. [00:03:12] But zoom bombing is where somebody. Gets onto your zoom conference and does something nasty. anything from sexual stuff through, I, I've heard of, swastikas coming up, you know, the good old socialist national socialist party of Germany and world war two I've heard about all just all kinds of terrible things that have been coming up. [00:03:37] So I wasn't worried about Zoom by me, so because I wasn't worried about privacy. Intellectual properties, zoom bombing. Okay. It's fine because I have a small business account on zoom. Now when I am doing something for my business, this business-related or I'm concerned about intellectual property or security, then I use WebEx because it is a, not just a regular WebEx, but a secured WebEx because it is a. [00:04:05] Very well known commodity out there, something that many people, have been looking at and the federal government uses, military uses, et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of what I do. So zoom has had a very, very bad rap as of late and for, I think, frankly, it's for many, many good reasons. And I'm, I'm on Google right now, and you know, I recommend you use duck, duck, go. [00:04:32] But I'm going to use Google because of the fact that that's what most people are using. And I wanted to have the same results you'd see. So I just went into Google news and I said, zoom security. And it's got a, the latest updates, the highs, the lows. Here's what you need to know. Avoid the app and do this instead. [00:04:53] Here's why. It's from Forbes. Zoom five offers new security and privacy features. That's the new version of zoom, the new major version that they've released. In case you didn't get that notification, make sure you upgrade zoom. zoom settles with New York attorney general over privacy and security concerns. [00:05:13] This is just two days ago. Zooms tips for safety as recommended by video conference, express zoom issues, play security issues, plays a spotlight on other video platforms, privacy troubles. but here's the one that I think is kinda interesting. This one's from. Forbes and that is Zoom buys key base in bold, new security move. [00:05:37] How this could change everything. If you've been listening for a while, you know, I've been talking about how there are still security jobs open. You know, right now, security is kind of at the bottom of the list for most of the businesses out there because businesses are saying, Hey, we just don't know what's going to happen with our business going forward. [00:05:59] So, let's just drop security who need security, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a bit of a problem if you ask me. And so because of that. I, you know, there, there's probably been a drop, I think, in the number of security jobs that are currently open, but we were talking about two and a half million, you know, up to 3 million open cybersecurity jobs before this whole pandemic. [00:06:26] It is, frankly, we need security now more than ever as business people and at home because we're under attack more than ever. But this is Zoom's first acquisition. Now I would actually call it more of an acquire than an acquisition. And if you're not familiar with that term, it's big probably because it's a pretty new term. [00:06:52] And an Aqua hire is where you find a company that has talent in it that you need or you want. And so how do you hire those people away? You probably can't, and it is a team of people working there, so you got to figure, they probably work together. They know how to work together. They know what some of the things are they need to do to work together. [00:07:19] So you just go ahead and you buy the whole company. So they're calling it an acquisition. In reality, this seems more like an acquire and Zoom got this 90-day plan to improve their security in this whole video conferencing system. We'll see what ends up happening. The terms of this deal weren't disclosed. [00:07:41] I'm sure a part of it is usually, Hey, all of the employees have to stay, or these key people have to stay. And then as part of the acquisition, they'll pay everybody some sort of an amount. So it isn't just the stakeholders. They're stockholders that make money off of this. Everybody stays around, but this is their first acquisition zooms nine years old in case you didn't know that if you thought they just came out of nowhere. [00:08:09] It's one of these overnight successes that took nine years to get there, but they're saying that as of a couple of weeks ago, there were 300 million people. On zoom, that's dramatic. In December, it was estimated that there were 10 million people. Now for the FBI InfraGard webinars that we were running, the FBI wanted us to use Zoom. [00:08:34] I don't know why, but that's what InfraGard wanted us to use. That's what I used. So we were part of that 10 million. To up to 300 million. Can you imagine that kind of growth so you can see how they had to do something, do something fast? They could not just staff up for it, but they're planning on creating a secure private and a scalable video communication system. [00:08:58] Part of the problem they've had recently when it comes to scalability is they have been routing people's teleconferences through China and other parts of the world. And of course, those really upset people when they found out about it because of course China sits there and spies on everything that's going on now. [00:09:19] The company that they acquired is called Keybase. They spent the last six years building a secure messaging and file sharing service. And with this, users can chat and share with team members and communities knowing that the messages are end to end encrypted. So the other thing with this acquire that zoom may be getting is the ability now to have chat and file sharing, which is something that. [00:09:49]Microsoft teams have that WebEx teams have, right? That's what the team's apps have. And even Slack has built-in now some communications ability. You can have small meetings and make calls to other users. And zoom is planning on putting this encrypted end to end meeting mode in for the paid accounts. [00:10:12] So if you have a free account, you're probably not going to get it, at least not initially. And then they're going to use public-key encryption, which is something that is, say, Pattonville a little bit of a go. But it's absolutely the way to do it. So I'm glad to hear that there are some adults in the room now over at zoom and they realized, not invented here syndrome is not going to help them grow. [00:10:37] It's not going to solve their security problems. And so they, I acquired a company that has been doing this type of security for quite a while. So, okay, here we go. This is a, an article from, this is dark reading, I think. Yeah. and they're saying as part of the deal, key basis, team members will become zoom employees. [00:11:00] So there you go. Okay. they, so they are planning on publishing a draft for their cryptographic design, next Friday. So it's coming up pretty soon. So we'll keep you up to date on this. I promised I would in the past let you know what zoom is doing and how they're doing and where they're going, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. [00:11:21] So I'm really glad to hear that zoom is pulling up their socks. So we are going to go away for a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about one of these companies that has smart hubs and what they have done. And this is kind of a story about what happens at end of life. And it's something that every business needs to think about. [00:11:48] If you're using salesforce.com Microsoft, you name it. Those companies are eventually going to go out of business. What happens when they go out of business? What's going to happen to your data? Whose data is it anyway? And in many cases, these companies are saying. It's my data. We own it, and if we lose it, we don't know you. [00:12:17] Anything. Real problem. If you asked me, so stick around. We'll be back here right after the break with news, et cetera, and we'll be talking more about all of this. You're listening to Craig Peter's son, right here on WGAN, and make sure you visit me online. Go to Craig peterson.com make sure you sign up for my newsletter so you can find out about the various cool stuff we've been working on and then we'll have out for you very, very soon. [00:12:45] Take care of everybody and stick around cause we'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey everybody. Welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN and of course online as well at craigPeterson.com. We have been talking about a bunch of stuff today and you know, if you missed any of it, you can go to my website, Craig peterson.com this includes why businesses are using surveillance software. [00:00:25] To where what you can do as an employee if you think they are spying on you and what are your rights when it comes to some of this stuff, I talked also about what is happening with big tech and censorship and it really is a big problem, WordPress and how you can use that as a business. You know, if you are brick and mortar, you probably want to try and transition to more of an online model. [00:00:53] But even if you have a little bit of both, maybe WordPress is the way to go. So we talked a little bit about that when you can get WordPress as a service and also what you can do about it yourself. And by the way, attacks on WordPress are have gone up 30 fold in just the past few days. And then just before the top of the hour, we talked about zoom. [00:01:17] And how they have acquired a company in order to have end-to-end encryption on zoom. And I bet you also because of this acquisition, who they purchased the zooms going to be seen a new feature here where they're going to be doing a little bit of conferencing and. Collaboration. So I think that's going to be a good thing. [00:01:40] It's going to give a little competition to WebEx teams and also to our friends at Microsoft teams. Now, how many of you guys out there have been using some of these services. For your internet of things devices now, internet of things, devices that I'm talking about here. My kind of definition is anything that would normally be considered just a piece of hardware, you know, something that you turn on and use. [00:02:10] A good example would be some of these thermostats many of us have right. We've got these, now it's Google nest thermostats or some of the lights that we have. Well, many of these devices require what are called bridges because they using different technologies. So for instance, in my home, I've got some. [00:02:35] Now Apple home equipment, and of course we use Apple equipment almost exclusively in my business, and we have iPhones with iOS and Apple's home. The Apple home is the most secure way of controlling near your internet of things devices. The problem is that not many people make devices for Apple home, and that is because they are a little bit more expensive to make. [00:03:05] You have to have better encryption software. You have to pay the Apple tax because Apple developed it and Apple is going to charge you as a manufacturer to use their technology. So many of these companies have kind of gone off and done their own thing. We have some hue lights as well. H U E from Phillips. [00:03:25] Great lights, by the way. And those are all, again, controlled remotely, and we've got it tied in so that our iOS devices, our I-phones can turn on and off. The hue lights can turn on and off like our family room lights, et cetera, and can change the colors of lights. But because my internet of things devices are not directly compatible with Apple home, we had to get some special hubs. [00:03:58] So we have a small hub, and that hub speaks both the hue protocol. It speaks to a protocol that is used by the light dimmers in our main rooms, and it speaks Apple's protocol. Now. Were totally geeked out. So guess what? We have Linux running on a box. It does all of that stuff for us, right? So we can maintain it, we can update it, we can upgrade it. [00:04:23] We know what's going on. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're really not after me. Right. Well, there is a company out there called Wink that many people have been using for quite a while. Wink, I should say, looks pretty darn good. It was launched first about six years ago, and the idea was to be able to connect and control all of their devices through just one master wink interface. So wink exists to really kind of simplify life for somebody, right? [00:05:00] That's really into the internet of things. You've got your lights, you got your locks, your thermostat, your cameras, your appliances. And they're all coming from different brands and they need different apps to operate. [00:05:13] Nowadays. You even see refrigerators and ovens. Man, I think I saw the first internet-connected one about six years ago as well. Our washing machines, dryers, all of these things, and they're different brands, and even though they might be using the same protocol, it doesn't mean as implemented the same way. [00:05:35] So these devices just can't speak to each other. Enter wink. Now there are a number of different devices out there that can be used as a smart hub, but speak to different, you know, different protocols, different vendors, everything else. But a lot of people went to wink because you bought it once. And that's it. [00:06:00] It was free for the rest of your life. Now, wink cost more yes than some of these others, but you did not have a monthly subscription fee that you had to pay. Well, as of this week, Wink is starting to charge on a monthly basis for their devices. The quote from Wink and obviously then they're looking for cash. [00:06:24] Now, who isn't? Wink has taken many steps in an effort to keep your hubs blue light on. That's the light on the Wink Hub. However, long-term costs and recent economic events have caused additional strain on our business. Unlike companies that sell our data to offset costs associated with offering free services, we do not. [00:06:48] Little jab there at Google. Data privacy is one of Winks core values. And we believe that user data should never be sold for marketing or any purpose. So basically what they were doing is, no grandfathering. The mandate here is to pay up or we're gonna shut you off. Here's what they said. Should you choose not to sign up for a subscription, you will no longer be able to access your wink devices from the app with voice control or through the API, and your automation will be disabled on May 13th your device connection settings and automation can be reactivated if you decide to pay up,  excuse me, to subscribe at a later date. [00:07:35] So there's no warning. It's now $5 a month per device. Think about how many devices are out there and how many devices people might have. Right? I'm a little unclear as to whether it's only $5 per house because you might only have the one Wink Hub or if it's $5 per month per device. That's kind of how I read it, so it could be really, really expensive and people are very upset about it. [00:08:05] You know, on Reddit there are thousands of responses to this company's tweet that was posted there. Most people are just absolutely angry. You know, they paid a lot more to get something that had lifetime support, and here it is, no life-time support. Right? So this feels like a variation on a familiar theme because it's happened many times. [00:08:29] You know, these internet-connected light bulbs. Many of them no longer work as a company went out of business and the servers got shut down. Smart scales. Some cases they just got dumb and they show you your weight to no longer show you your history or weight loss or anything, and in some cases, they just don't work at all because the companies pulled the plug on the apps. [00:08:51] These pet feeders. We've talked about a couple of cool ones here. They've gone. Out of business, they completely stopped feeding pets. How about these vacuums that we have in our homes that are all automated? They're running around cleaning the houses. So this is nothing new. We have seen companies go out of business before, right? [00:09:12] You've seen companies go out of business, right? Tell me. You have told me I'm not crazy. And when the companies go out of business and they're providing a monthly service for you. Then what happens? This gets to be a very, very big deal, and I also want to caution businesses because it reveals a major hole in this whole cloud business. [00:09:40] You know, we look at the cloud and say, it's going to make my life simpler. It's going to keep my costs down. I don't have to worry about the side of it anymore. I'll just use this cloud service like Salesforce for instance, or, or Dropbox or whatever it might be in reality. [00:09:59] Now, remember that your core business information, your intellectual property regarding your customers, regarding your orders, regarding your sales, your inventories, all of the stuff that is now in the hands of a third party. So what's going to happen when that third party. Goes out of business, it could be really, really bad for you. And for me. [00:10:27] So one of the things that we always advise our customers is to make sure you have a third party in a place that's securing these cloud-based apps and is doing backups for you. [00:10:43] So for instance, most of them, Microsoft. Office through the, what do they call it now? Windows three 65 plans or whatever it is. Those email accounts don't have backups and there's no guarantee from Microsoft that they will not lose your data. So are you backing that up as well? That I think there's a lot of lessons for all of us in this, and be careful when you're buying something. [00:11:11] We just got a new dryer. I made sure you were not internet-connected. I don't want a dryer from a company sitting in my house on my network, even though I've got it separated out into the internet of things network. I don't want that device sitting there potentially providing a breach for the rest of my network. [00:11:34] So think about that, be careful with that. You're listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN. Stick around because we're going to talk about how Microsoft is getting rid of passwords. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. Thanks for joining me today. I always appreciate it and I love getting your emails. I've got a couple of great ones this week. Again, Gary was out there letting me know what he was having some problems with. In fact, I even ended up getting on the phone with him to help him out a little bit with this whole tracking thing. [00:00:26] He was thinking that his GPS was being used to track him, and some people were really trying to mess with him while he's trying to make some money driving around. So I explained how the app he's using as a paid driver works, how tracks him, and how he can stop it from tracking him when he's not working. [00:00:47] So if you're driving for Uber eats or grub hub. Et cetera. That's, that's the sort of thing he's doing. And he was really kind of wondering about, because some people were changing the delivery point on deliveries and he'd show up at the new address and there's nobody there, and there's nobody at the old address. [00:01:07] And so he was really having some issues. Yeah. Obviously that can be a problem. So if you have any questions, whether it's about grub hub or anything else, by all means, just email me, ME@Craig peterson.com. Let me know how I can help. I'm always glad to give a little bit of help for absolutely nothing. [00:01:28] And obviously this is what I do for a living as well. So you know, if, if it's a lot of work, then I'm going to have to charge you. But anyhow, Microsoft. Now. passwords have been kind of the bane of my existence forever. I remember the very first time I had a password, I don't remember what it was. It would have been pretty simple back then but that was the early 1970s, and it was a non-online timeshare. [00:02:00] The Computer, an HP, I think it was like a 2000 access or 2000 after that got upgraded to an a and it was so totally cool. It was my first real computer access and we had a teletype, a TTY33 yay. Seven level. Yeah. So it was an a, it was really, really cool. [00:02:24] And that was my first major introduction to computers way back then and we had passwords now, the head of the, of the math department, and that's where was at the time I was in school then it was inside the math department. He always used some variation of his name for his password. And I still remember to this day, his name was Robert Allen Lang. [00:02:53]So, hi, Mr. Lang. If you're, if you're still around, actually, if you're listening, but He would always use a password that like R A lane or R Allen lane or, you know, you could always guess what his password was, so we would guess his password. And we'd use that to get more access. So for instance, our accounts could only have so much storage and the accounts could only have so much time per week to be used. [00:03:26] We just loved using as much time as we could. Oh, man. One of these days, I'll tell you some stories. And so we would hack into his account. And once we're in doing his account, we then gave ourselves upgraded privileges and online time and kind of everything else. So yeah, you know, that's what you do when you're a kid, but anyhow, you know, teenagers right? [00:03:54] Fast forward to today and passwords are still a problem. I've been using pretty darn good passwords for a very, very long time now, and as you probably are aware, if you sign up for my email list, I'll send you a special report on passwords, but you might be well aware that I really like one password. [00:04:16] It's by far the winner. There was some other half-decent password managers out there last pass being one of them, but 1password, absolutely the winner. And we also use DUO, which is a two-factor authentication system. So between the two of them, we're pretty secure and I have it generate passwords for me, which is really nice, and it'll generate passwords. [00:04:39] It's funny, many times I'll have a like a 20 plus character password and the website I'm on just doesn't support that. Sometimes it'll ask all, you didn't put enough special characters in, which, as you know, just doesn't count anymore. So make sure you get my password special report so you can see what the current advice is. [00:05:01] And it's really changed recently, current advice for passwords and what you should do. So we've got world password day and every year we talk about passwords and what you should do. And this is the first year I think we're seeing more people starting to really use new forms of authentication. We're working from home even at work, and people are starting to understand just how insecure and ultimately how costly passwords really are. [00:05:38] Our cybercriminals don't need advanced techniques when they can just bet on human behavior. Ponemon Institute did a survey in 2019 and this is all on security behaviors. Okay. And they found that 51% of 1700 information technology and information technology security professionals reused an average of five total passwords again and again and again across both their business and their personal accounts. [00:06:17] Now that is a very bad thing to do. There's something called password stuffing where they steal your password. And remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned a, "have I been pawned" or powned website? And there's a feature that I put out as well. I don't think they're airing on WGAN, but they are on some other stations all about powned passwords. [00:06:41] Well, Once a password has been stolen and they know what it is and they know what your username is, they just start automatically going and checking banks, trying to log in with that email address and that password. So having the same password that you're using on more than one system is a very, very dangerous habit because if they get ahold of just one password, they know they can use it on other sites and they're probably going to be able to get in. [00:07:16] So this single compromised password can create just this chain reaction of theft and liability, frankly, on your part. And on average, one in every 250 corporate accounts is compromised each month. Think of that one in one in 22 really accounts is compromised every year. Wow. That is huge. I don't think I've ever seen that stat before. [00:07:48] So this expense of using passwords is really continuing to grow because we're using more business applications online, aren't we? I just talked about the cloud and some things she needed to be careful of with the cloud. Well, the cloud requires passwords and we're using those same passwords. Man. That is bad. [00:08:12]By the way, password reset is one of the highest support costs, especially in larger businesses. And that means that companies are dedicating 30 to 60% of the support desk calls to just resetting passwords. So. We all have to understand it better. We all need a multifactor authentication. The very least two-factor authentication and Microsoft now has this passwordless login. [00:08:43] You might've used it, you might've seen it where it's using the camera on your computer, and sometimes it's using other biometrics, like your fingerprints, et cetera. And there are new technologies out there that are being deployed, including in web browsers that we'll be talking about in the future as they get a little bit more well adopted. [00:09:03] But some of these keys, these USB authentication keys have a built-in, it's called Fido - FIDO so if you're interested, you can always dig that up and we'll be covering that. To a, you know, a future show, as I said, and I do do some training on that with my mentorship site. All right, everybody, stick around. [00:09:25] You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and I'm going to talk a little bit about remote work and now. The security fight that's happening in the cloud. Make sure you join me as well. Wednesday mornings at 7:34 with Mr. Matt Gagnon morning drive time as we talk about the latest in technology. [00:09:50] Stick around. I'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, good morning everybody. Craig Peterson here. We started out this whole show talking about surveillance here that managers are doing as they're surveilling their employees. I want to talk now a little bit about surveillance where we should be keeping an eye on our cloud devices. And our endpoint. [00:00:28] So let's start out with the cloud. You know, I call them devices. In some places, you might be using a server that's living up in maybe Microsoft Azure or Google's cloud, Amazon cloud, Amazon web services, et cetera. Those systems can all be compromised. And yeah, they're sitting in the data center. Yeah. You don't have to pay for the hardware or the electricity or the cooling, which is really nice. [00:00:58] Yeah. You don't have to hear all of the noise they make in the background, but many businesses have found that, wow, the cloud really isn't the panacea. I thought it was. And they're actually moving it back out of the cloud. And that's particularly true of businesses that have security concerns due to regulations because moving to the cloud does not absolve you, from these regulations. [00:01:27] Now we've got this additional problem of people working from home, so they're using either their own computers or maybe a company computer at home. They might be connecting to the office, but it's just as likely, maybe even more likely that they're connecting to a cloud service somewhere. Not, not just for collaboration or for meetings, but to do their basic work. [00:01:51] As more and more businesses are saying, Hey, why should I be paying for the software or hardware, et cetera. Let's just move it all to the cloud. And we're seeing now States and cities that are starting to lift some of these stay-at-home orders, but frankly, this increased level of employees working from home. [00:02:12] Is not going to disappear. Sure. It'll get a little smaller. Many businesses are going to be calling people back and they are going to be working from that office, but many people are in businesses that are going to continue that move over to the cloud. So what are the security challenges that come from a hybrid infrastructure? [00:02:35] Almost three-quarters of companies expect at least 5% or more of the former onsite employees to work from home on a permanent basis. That's not a lot, but 5% when you add it up over all of the small businesses, that is a lot because half of all employees in the country work for small businesses. And a quarter of businesses are planning on keeping at least 20% of their workers out of the office post-pandemic. [00:03:06] And this is according to a survey of chief financial officers by the, it's maybe you guys know Gartner right? Gartner group. They're research firm, so their numbers are usually considered gospel in the business world. With this remote work comes even more cloud usage, and that could be a problem for a lot of companies that have issues with the visibility into the security of the cloud. [00:03:33] Now. You might be as a business relying on maybe some permitter defenses or maybe some on-premise security software and appliances to help keep your systems and data safe. Now, most of the time, small businesses aren't using the right stuff. They're just using some equipment that they got from, you know, a random break-fix shop or heaven forbid at staples or where they ordered it from Amazon. [00:03:59] You can't, you just can't get the good stuff from any of those places. But that's not going to work anymore at all. When we're talking about remote workers cause people are in their homes and they're using cloud services that you just don't know the security level of, you might not know what the patch level is of windows of the software that's running on windows. [00:04:26] You might not know any of that stuff. Right. But we are going to see a major shift so. Let's talk about it a little bit here. We're just seeing, you know, massive, massive growth. I'm looking at these numbers in telecommuting. It was growing slowly before, but now many technology firms, particularly marketing companies, are relying almost exclusively on people working from home. [00:04:53] IBM had moved people to work from home and then found that experiment to be a failure and moved everybody back into the office. Now, that was back in 2017 they pulled them back in and made them work from an office in one of six cities. While IBM now has moved almost entirely to remote work and they've got 95% of its current workforce working outside of the company offices. [00:05:21] IBM, by the way, is a major player in the cloud in case you weren't aware, they were way more prepared for this problem than many companies. It com and infrastructure information security groups. Absolutely true. So coming out of this, we need to embrace the fact that we have to continually be ready for full. [00:05:43] Remote workforce. What is going to happen? And, and I'm, I'm on governors, the governor's task force here on education, on re-opening education. What are we going to do? And of course, I'm the security guy, the technology guy, actually one of the technology people on that task force. And we had a meeting this week and we were talking about it. [00:06:07] Okay, fine. So we've got the COVID-19 thing and it's eventually going to be a thing of the past. But thinking about the teachers that are 60, 65, 70 years old, what happens when there's another virus? What happens when the annual flu or curves. Are we going to be shutting down our offices again? Are we going to be shutting down our schools again? [00:06:32] Are we going to maybe try and do quarantines as we've always done in the past where we say, Hey, if you are sick. Or if you are vulnerable, you just stay home because this is happening more and more. We, we had SARS very, you know, that wasn't long ago. Right? That was another covert virus that we had. We had to MERS. [00:06:56] That was another COVID virus that we had. We've had a number of these things. I'm thinking about Ebola, which I don't think was a COVID virus. They're happening more and more. And as we have more and more people in the world, the likelihood of them occurring is going to be even greater. So if you are a business person, and then the case of where I'm on the governor's task force, looking at education, if, if we are a school, what are we going to do in the future? [00:07:30] And I really think we have to realize that we have to be able to have our businesses basically work remotely. So I want to encourage everybody to really keep that in mind as we're looking at this going forward. What can you do in order to make your business covert proof? Now, it isn't just the COVID-19 what happens if there's a fire in your building burns down. [00:08:00] What happens if there is a major lightning strike and it burns up all of your computers just zaps them. What's that all going to mean and what's going to happen with the next 12 months? Are we going to have another massive spike in the COVID virus or are you ready for that? We got to think about it. [00:08:21] The other side is the endpoint devices and we're seeing right now. Six and 10 remote workers using personal devices to do work, and almost all of these workers believe that the devices are secure. CrowdStrike had a look at this and said that people are naive. Six in 10 remote workers are using personal devices to do work and all. [00:08:48] Almost none of them. Are properly secured, and we've got attackers now focused on targeting the remote workers. They're going after VPN technology technologies, which is part of the reason I say don't use VPNs, right? It's where the people are and it's where we're getting it back. So be ca

With the COVID-19 economic disruptions and Chairman Pai’s Keep Americans Connected Pledge, planning for the possibility of telecom customers filing for bankruptcy takes on increased importance. In this episode, we provide an overview of the bankruptcy process and the rights and responsibilities of communications service providers when their customers enter into bankruptcy protection. Communications Partner Steve Augustino is joined by Partner Jason Adams and Associate Meaghan McLoughlin from Kelley Drye’s Bankruptcy practice group to give service providers the essential information they need to know to protect themselves before a bankruptcy petition is filed. In addition, they discuss the unique issues the Keep Americans Connected Pledge creates in a bankruptcy proceeding involving an affected customer.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai held a conference call yesterday with television and radio broadcasters and broadcaster trade associations to thank broadcasters for their efforts to educate the American people about the coronavirus pandemic and discuss additional ways that broadcasters can help Americans stay safe and informed during the coronavirus outbreak.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai held a conference call yesterday with television and radio broadcasters and broadcaster trade associations to thank broadcasters for their efforts to educate the American people about the coronavirus pandemic and discuss additional ways that broadcasters can help Americans stay safe and informed during the coronavirus outbreak.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai held a conference call yesterday with television and radio broadcasters and broadcaster trade associations to thank broadcasters for their efforts to educate the American people about the coronavirus pandemic and discuss additional ways that broadcasters can help Americans stay safe and informed during the coronavirus outbreak.

Our "Tuning into Spectrum" series takes a close look at hot topics and issues in radio spectrum. Recently, in a letter to Senator Kennedy (R-LA), Chairman Pai stated that he intends to conduct a public auction of the 3.7-4.2 GHz spectrum range (commonly referred to as the C-Band) that would clear 280 megahertz for flexible use to be allocated by auction and allot 20 megahertz to a guard band. In this episode, Associate Avonne Bell and Partners Chip Yorkgitis and Josh Guyan discuss the issues that remain unresolved, including the impact on satellite operators and MVPDs, technical issues, a possible transition to fiber in some areas, and C-Band-related legislation. After this podcast was recorded, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai indicated his intention to include a C-band item on the agenda for the FCC’s next Open Meeting on February 28, 2020.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai joins the “She Thinks” podcast this week to dscuss the future of the Internet and bringing the benefits of the Internet age to all Americans. We talk about rolling back net neutrality, the introduction of 5G technology, and how the FCC is spearheading initiatives to expand broadband Internet access in rural America. He also shares his personal approach to social media usage and his best practices for handling unwanted robocalls. Ajit Pai is the 34th Chairman of the FCC-- designated Chairman by President Trump in January 2017. Previously, he served as a Commissioner at the FCC, appointed by then-President Barack Obama. At the FCC, Chairman Pai has been a champion of policies that aim to promote innovation, investment, and public safety. But his top priority is bridging the digital divide, the gulf between those who have ready access to the Internet, and those who do not.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued the following statement today on U.S. Senate passage of the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act. Combatting illegal robocalls and malicious spoofing to protect consumers from scam calls is the Chairman’s top consumer protection priority. Unwanted calls account for over 60% of the consumer complaints the agency receives each year.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued the following statement today on U.S. Senate passage of the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act. Combatting illegal robocalls and malicious spoofing to protect consumers from scam calls is the Chairman’s top consumer protection priority. Unwanted calls account for over 60% of the consumer complaints the agency receives each year.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced last week that Aaron Goldberger will serve as acting wireless and international advisor. Mr. Goldberger replaces Rachael Bender, who is transitioning to the International Bureau. “I’m grateful Aaron has agreed to return to the Chairman’s office in this role [...] I know Aaron’s experience in this area will be invaluable,” said Chairman Pai.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced last week that Aaron Goldberger will serveas acting wireless and international advisor. Mr. Goldberger replaces Rachael Bender, who istransitioning to the International Bureau. “I’m grateful Aaron has agreed to return to the Chairman’s office in this role [...] I know Aaron’s experience in this area will be invaluable,” said Chairman Pai.

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments regulating the Internet should treat all data on the Internet the same, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication. Net Neutrality is the internet’s guiding principle: It preserves our right to communicate freely online. Unfortunately there are people in this world that don’t want us to do that and they will stop at nothing to make sure that we do not have our online freedom. Chairman Pai wants to replace the agency’s strong rules with “voluntary” conditions that no ISP would ever comply with and the FCC voted along party lines to move this proposal​ forward. Whether you value net neutrality or not, this is a major topic and could determine the future of the internet. Really Likable Geeks Social Media:  RLG Twitter – https://twitter.com/LikableGeeks  RLG Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/LikableGeeks  Steve – https://twitter.com/ThatStevenBrown  Stuart – https://twitter.com/Stu_NoLastName  Matt – https://twitter.com/BelieveTheWeave  Credits:  Hosts: Steven Brown, Stuart Beatty, Matt Weaver Production: Joey Dawson  Technical Director/Graphics/Editor: Steven Brown  Microphones: CAD C195, Audio Technica AT2020  Gear: Mackie PROFX8V2  Editing: Adobe Audition Patreon Supporters:  Jessica Sacca Joyce M. Beatty-Hull Michael Beatty

In this edition of Full Spectrum’s recurring series on FCC enforcement, Partner Steve Augustino and Associate Brad Currier highlight some of the major developments in FCC enforcement in 2018 and discuss potential next steps in the year ahead. Part one of this episode focuses on the big picture in 2018 and the FCC's use of non-monetary tools to encourage adoption of industry best practices. After criticizing the prior administration for policymaking through enforcement and imposing excessive fines, Chairman Pai’s FCC promised a return to “by-the-books” enforcement based on existing rules. Pai’s Enforcement Bureau has largely delivered on that promise. However, Chairman Pai did not entirely refrain from pushing the boundaries of the FCC's authority in high-profile enforcement items to advance his policy priorities. Dropping next week is part two of the 2018 Year in Review in which Steve and Brad take a deeper dive into the enforcement actions, with a focus on recent trends in how the FCC issues fines and its actions to combat robocalls.

The Trump administration has emphasized the importance of ensuring existing regulations are not stifling innovation or foreclosing economic opportunities. Earlier this year, under Chairman Ajit Pai’s leadership, the FCC modified several of its internal processes to further promote transparency and public engagement. The FCC has also continued on a path of eliminating outdated regulations. During this event, Chairman Pai will deliver remarks about his work to-date at the Commission and his plans for the coming year. He will give his take on the current telecommunications marketplace and how federal, state, and local governments can best respond to ever-changing technologies. A panel discussion will follow Chairman Pai’s remarks with reactions. Panelists will also share their views of the current telecommunications landscape and the regulatory path to continued American industry leadership.Keynote: Hon. Ajit Pai, Chairman, U.S. Federal Communications CommissionMs. Kathleen Ham, Senior Vice President, Government Affairs, T-MobileMs. Nuala O'Connor, President and CEO, Center for Democracy and TechnologyMr. K. Dane Snowden, Chief Operating Officer, NCTA - The Internet & Television AssociationMs. Jamie Susskind, Chief of Staff and Legal Advisor, Office of Commissioner Carr, Federal Communications CommissionModerator: Hon. Jerry E. Smith, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit

The Trump administration has emphasized the importance of ensuring existing regulations are not stifling innovation or foreclosing economic opportunities. Earlier this year, under Chairman Ajit Pai’s leadership, the FCC modified several of its internal processes to further promote transparency and public engagement. The FCC has also continued on a path of eliminating outdated regulations. During this event, Chairman Pai will deliver remarks about his work to-date at the Commission and his plans for the coming year. He will give his take on the current telecommunications marketplace and how federal, state, and local governments can best respond to ever-changing technologies. A panel discussion will follow Chairman Pai’s remarks with reactions. Panelists will also share their views of the current telecommunications landscape and the regulatory path to continued American industry leadership.Keynote: Hon. Ajit Pai, Chairman, U.S. Federal Communications CommissionMs. Kathleen Ham, Senior Vice President, Government Affairs, T-MobileMs. Nuala O'Connor, President and CEO, Center for Democracy and TechnologyMr. K. Dane Snowden, Chief Operating Officer, NCTA - The Internet & Television AssociationMs. Jamie Susskind, Chief of Staff and Legal Advisor, Office of Commissioner Carr, Federal Communications CommissionModerator: Hon. Jerry E. Smith, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit

In 2013, Hank Hunt's daughter, Kari, was attacked and killed by her estranged husband in a Marshall, Texas hotel room. Kari's nine-year-old daughter was in the room and tried calling 911 on the hotel phone. She dialed 911 four times as her mother was attacked. But not one of her calls ever went through. Why? The hotel phone required guests to dial a "9" before calling outside the hotel—even for 911. Since that day, Hank has worked tirelessly—and successfully—with the FCC and Congress to change the law so that a "9" is no longer needed for 911 calls from multi-line systems like hotel phones. His efforts culminated in Kari's Law becoming the law of the land on Feb. 16, 2018. Hank joins Chairman Pai to share his story and discuss his five-year journey to enact Kari's law, including his work with the FCC. (Disclaimer)

Bio  Lydia Parnes is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she is chair of the firm's privacy and cybersecurity practice. She regularly represents companies in complex regulatory investigations and provides advice on complying with federal, state, and global privacy and data protection laws. The former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP) at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Lydia is a highly regarded privacy expert. As director of the BCP, Lydia oversaw privacy and data security enforcement efforts and the development of the FTC's approach to online advertising. She testified on numerous occasions on the benefits of a uniform nationwide data breach law and the risks of legislating in the technology area. Lydia advises companies on how to navigate global privacy and data security requirements while pursuing their business goals. She helps them develop and implement comprehensive privacy compliance programs and understand the nuances of regulation and self-regulation in the privacy arena. Lydia regularly represents clients before the FTC and other federal and state agencies. Lydia was named a top lawyer in the cybersecurity category by Washingtonian Magazine in 2017 and 2015 and is regularly recognized in Chambers USA, Chambers Global, and The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers as among the country's top privacy and data security attorneys. In 2012, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati was recognized by Law360 as a "top privacy and consumer protection" law firm.   Lydia speaks throughout the country on developments in data security and privacy. Resources  Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Eleventh Circuit LabMD Decision Significantly Restrains FTC’s Remedial Powers in Data Security and Privacy Actions by Lydia Parnes (WSGR Blog, June 18, 2018)   News Roundup California passes its own set of privacy rules The state of California has passed its own, sweeping data privacy law that’s set to go into effect in 2020. The hastily passed law signed by Governor Jerry Brown on Thursday grants Californians the right to know the what, why and how of how companies are collecting and sharing their data. The new law, while it also grants consumers the right to tell companies to delete their data, isn’t as extensive as the EU’s new Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which everyone’s still trying to figure out. DOJ approves Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox  The Department of Justice has granted Disney antitrust approval to acquire 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets for $71 billion. But Disney is going to need to divest Fox’s 22 regional sports networks within 90 days after it closes. Rival Comcast is still in the running, though. Its $65 billion bid is still on the table. Facebook says it released even more data  In a 700-page set of replies to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Facebook acknowledged that it shared user data with 52 companies after it stopped doing so in 2015 with most others. The company says it has ended 38 of the 52 partnerships. Companies with which Facebook continues to share data are Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung and Alibaba. But lawmakers are obviously concerned given the ongoing fallout from the Cambridge Analytica debacle in which the company shared the data of some 87 million Facebook users which were used to help Republican candidates. Man charged with threatening Ajit Pai’s family        The FBI arrested a Norwalk, California man for allegedly threatening to kill Ajit Pai’s children because of the FCC’s repeal of the net neutrality rules. Thirty-three year old Markara Man, 33, allegedly sent three emails to Pai listing preschools around Arlington, Virginia, where Chairman Pai lives and threatening to kill his children back in December of 2017—months before the vote.  NSA deletes 685 million call records Remember when the National Security Agency came under fire a few years back when former contractor Ed Snowden revealed that the agency was collecting the phone records of millions of Americans? Well the NSA is deleting some 685 million of those call records for “technical irregularities”.   NSA Contractor Reality Winner takes pea bargain         Reality Winner, the former NSA contractor who leaked NSA documents last summer, has taken a plea bargain. The 26-year-old was charged with violating the Espionage Act for sharing NSA documents allegedly showing what NSA knew about how Russia penetrated the 2016 presidential election. She’ll serve 5 years and 3 months, with 3 years’ supervised release. Former Equifax manager charged with insider trading  The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Sudhakar Reddy Bonthy with insider trading. The agency alleges that Bonthu made $75,000 from illegal trades based on confidential information about Equifax’s data breach last year which exposed the data of more than 100 million people.  The New York Attorney General is probing the T-Mobile/Sprint Deal  The New York Attorney General’s office is investigating the effect the proposed T-Mobile-Sprint deal would have on pre-paid mobile services. Combined, the companies have 30 million paid subscribers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Prepaid plans are disproportionately the plan of choice for low-income households, a spokeswoman for New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said. Tinder moves to encrypt photos Tinder’s parent company Match Group has moved to encrypt its users’ photos. The changes actually went into effect back in February after Senator Ron Wyden wrote a letter to Tinder asking the company to encrypt photos given the risk that hackers would have been able to capture photos and swipe data via the Tinder app. Netflix fires executive for racist comment Finally, Netflix has fired its Chief Communications officer for using the n-word during a meeting and then using it again. The company says that Jonathan Friedland used the word at least twice. In a letter, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the 7-year Netflix veteran used the word in a meeting about offensive speech in an inappropriate and offensive way. Friedland then used the word again with two black employees in the HR department who were tasked with dealing with the incident. Hastings wrote that he should have addressed the first incident head on, instead, he wrote “I realize that my privilege has made me intellectualize or otherwise minimize race issues like this. I need to set a better example by learning and listening more so I can be the leader we need.” According to Netflix’s 2Q18 workforce demographics report, Blacks comprise just 4% of Netflix’s workforce despite the fact that nonhispanic blacks comprise 12.1% of the U.S. population, according to the latest U.S. Census.

After 4 years 2 months and 12 days of pain and suffering, Hank Hunt (Kari's Dad) can finally pause to celebrate the life of his daughter and the namesake legislation destined to become federal law in the next few days when the President puts pen to paper. The main proponents of the law sit down and talk about what it took to finally get to this point.

In this episode of the podcast, we'll discuss a leaked video that showed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai joking about being a shill for Verizon. We'll also talk about a Vice interview with Chairman Pai wherein he actually admits there's a “risk” when it comes to repealing net neutrality. In addition, we'll talk about how Pai may be guilty of obstructing justice, and what the literal inventors of the internet had to say about the FCC's mission to ruin the internet. But the fight to save the internet isn't over just yet, because one congressman proposed legislation that would restore net neutrality. Additionally, we'll cover the outcome of the DNC Unity Reform Commission, and a troubling new detail we learned about the #GOPTaxScam. These subjects and more will be covered in this episode. Enjoy the show!

As the vote on Net Neutrality approaches this Thursday, December 14th, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr joins the show to explain why he plans to vote for Chairman Pai’s controversial proposal, “Restoring Internet Freedom.” To learn more read Carr’s op-ed in The Washington Post. The Commissioner also shares some of his 2018 plans with us, including taking the lead on the wireless agenda.

The Internet plays an essential role in our modern society and yet the way the Internet will be governed is still unclear. In anticipation of an impending Federal Communications Commission vote to reverse the so called “net neutrality” regulation implemented during the Obama administration, we look at the law which the FCC is trying to enforce. We also examine our current lawmaker’s plans for Internet governance by listening to highlights of three hearings featuring testimony from lawyers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Please Support Congressional Dish Click here to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Bills H.R. 3989: Amend Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 S. 652 (104th): Telecommunications Acto of 1996 Additional Reading Article: House foreign surveillance turf war heats up as law sunset nears by Daniel R. Stoller, Bloomberg, December 1, 2017. Article: Colorado warns families to be prepared in case congress doesn't come through on CHIP funding by Kimberly Leonard, Washington Examiner, November 27, 2017 Article: Congress confronts jam-packed December with shutdown deadline looming by Mike Debonis and Ed O'Keefe, The Washington Post, November 26, 2017 Article: States prepare to shut down children's health programs if congress doesn't act by Colby Itkowitz and Sandhya Somashekhar, The Washington Post, November 23, 2017. Article: Here's how the end of net neutrality will change the internet by Klint Finley, Wired, November 22, 2017. Article: What is net neutrality? by Aaron Byrd and Natalia V. Osipova, NY Times, November 21, 2017. Article: Will the Telecommunications Act get a much-needed update as it turns 21? by Richard Adler, Recode, February 8, 2017. Article: Cable tv price increases have beaten inflation every single year for 20 years by Nathan McAlone, Business Insider, October 31, 2016 Article: 20 years after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, rekindling Congress's political will by Stuart N. Brotman, The Hill, February 8, 2016. Article: The city that was saved by the internet by Jason Koebler, Motherboard, October 27, 2016. Article: This was 1995: A pop culture snapshot by Patricia Garcia, Vogue, September 1, 2015. Article: Why your internet prices are bound to go up by Brian Fung, Washington Post, July 23, 2015. Report: In a nutshell: Net neutrality, CBS News, March 1, 2015. Report: AT&T buys DirectTV for $48.5 billion by Roger Yu, USA Today, May 18,2014. Article: Federal appeals court strikes down net neutrality rules by Brian Fung, Washington Post, January 14, 2014. Article: Legal gymnastics ensue in oral arguments for Verizon vs. FCC by Jennifer Yeh, Freepress, September 10, 2013. Report: Comcast completes NBC Universal merger, Reuters, January 29, 2011. References Bill Resources: H.R.1555 Communications Act of 1995 Bill Roll Call: H.R. 3989 Vote Roll Call FCC Resources: Telecommunications Act of 1996 Mission Statement: AIPAC - America's Pro-Israel Lobby Network Map: Community Networks Publication: Public Law 104 Telecommunications Act of 1996 Publication: The USA Liberty Act Report: Akamai's State of the Internet 2017 Report: FCC Fact Sheet Support Page: AT&T HBO Channels Visual References Cable Prices vs. Inflation, 1995-2015 Sound Clip Sources Senate Select Intelligence Committee: Facebook, Google and Twitter Executives on Russian Election Interference; November 1, 2017 (Senate Social Media) Witnesses: Colin Stretch - Facebook Vice President & General Counsel Sean Edgett - Twitter Acting General Counsel 1:49:24 Sen. Roy Blunt (MO): Mr. Stretch, how much money did the Russians spend on ads that we now look back as either disruptive or politically intended? It was at $100,000. Is that— Colin Stretch: It was approximately $100,000. Blunt: I meant from your company. Stretch: Yes, approximately $100,000. Blunt: How much of that did they pay before the election? Stretch: The— Blunt: I’ve seen the— Stretch: Yeah. Blunt: —number 44,000. Blunt: Is that right? Stretch: So— Blunt: 56 after, 44 before. Stretch: The ad impressions ran 46% before the election, the remainder after the election. Blunt: 46%. Well, if I had a consultant that was trying to impact an election and spent only 46% of the money before Election Day, I’d be pretty upset about that, I think. So, they spent $46,000. How much did the Clinton and Trump campaigns spend on Facebook? I assume before the election. Stretch: Yeah. Before the elec— Blunt: They were better organized than the other group. Stretch: Approximate—combined approximately $81 million. Blunt: 81 million, and before the election. Stretch: Yes. Blunt: So, 81 million. I’m not a great mathematician, but 46,000, 81 million, would that be, like, five one-thousandths of one percent? It’s something like that. Stretch: It’s a small number by comparison, sir. 2:19:55 Sen. Tom Cotton (AR): Do you see an equivalency between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Russian Intelligence Services? Sean Edgett: We’re not offering our service for surveillance to any government. Cotton: So you will apply the same policy to our Intelligence Community that you apply to an adversary’s intelligence services. Edgett: As a global company, we have to apply our policies consistently. Cotton: This reminds me of the old line from the Cold War, of one who did not see a distinction between the CIA and the KGB on the other hand, because the KGB officer pushed an old lady in front of an oncoming bus, and the CIA officer pushed the old lady out from the path of the oncoming bus, because they both go around pushing old ladies. I hope that Twitter will reconsider its policies when it’s dealing with friendly intelligence services in countries like the United States and the U.K. as opposed to adversarial countries like Russia and China. House Select Intelligence Committee: Facebook, Google and Twitter Executives on Russian Election Interference; November 1, 2017 (House Social Media) Witnesses: Kent Walker - Google Senior Vice President & General Counsel Colin Stretch - Facebook Vice President & General Counsel Sean Edgett - Twitter Acting General Counsel 39:05 Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ): Social-media platforms have the responsibility of striking a balance between removing false information and preserving freedom of speech. Can you give us some brief detail of how each of your companies plan to target perceived false news while protecting the robust political discourse? Kent Walker: Let me take that because that was the sort of next stage to my answer to Mr. Shift’s question. We are taking a number of different steps beyond advertising to focus on fake news. We are working to improve our algorithms, to provide additional guidance and training to the Raiders who provide quality feedback for us, and to look at a wider variety of signals to improve the ranking of authentic and genuine news on our sites and to demote sites that we feel are deceptive or misleading. We are also making broader use of fact-check labels, working with third parties, for both Google Search and Google News. And when it comes to advertising, we’ve taken steps to disallow advertising on sites that misrepresent their nature or purpose, and to add to our policies around or against hate speech, incitement of violence, and the like. Colin Stretch: I would group our efforts with respect to false news into three buckets. First, we find that most false news is financially motivated, and we’re making efforts to disrupt the financial incentives. That, we think, will make a big dent in it. Second, we’re looking to stop the spread of it. So when we have information that’s been disputed by independent fact-checkers, we limit the distribution and we alert users who are attempting to share it that it has been disputed. And third, we’re engaged in a number of user-education efforts to help, particularly around the world, users approach some of the content they see with a more discerning eye. Sean Edgett: We’re tackling this challenge in a few ways, and I think the way this was characterized is correct: it’s a balance between free speech and what’s real and what’s false. And we often see there’s a lot of activity on the platform to correct false narratives, and one of those things, for example, is the text-to-vote tweets that we turned over to you, which we took off our platform as illegal voter suppression. The number of tweets that were counteracting that as false and telling people not to believe that was, like, between eight and 10 times what we saw on the actual tweets. But we’re working on the behavior. That’s where we’re focused right now. We’ve had great strides in focusing on that for things like terrorism and child sexual exploitation. We’re trying to figure out how we can use those learnings to stop the amplification of false news or misinformation, and think we’re making great strides there, but it’s a definite balance. We also have work we’ve done, just like my peers, around ads transparency that, I think, is going to help educate the consumer about who’s paying for an ad, what else they’re running, what they’re targeting, what they’re after—especially around electioneering ads, who’s paying for it, how much they’re spending. We are also working with third parties. We have a Trust and Safety council of experts, academics, around the world who are helping us think through the things that we’re trying to employ to tackle these issues and how they will impact the debate and free speech on our platform. So we’re working hard on this, but it’s a challenge. 59:39 Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL): I submit to you that your efforts have to be more than just about finding malicious and deceptive activity, that you have a responsibility—all of you have a responsibility—to make sure that we are not adding to the problem by not being as rigorous and as aggressive as we can in terms of vetting the content and in terms of making sure that we are being really dynamic in doing that. And I also want to just say that I think it’s ridiculous that a foreign entity can buy a political ad with rubles but can’t give a political contribution to me—a Russian person can’t give me a political contribution. There seems to be some legislation that needs to be had here, is all I’m saying. 1:16:05 Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL): Let’s look at unpaid content for a second. Sometimes these fake accounts are pulled down, but the fake story takes the false claims of widespread voter fraud, for example, generated by these accounts have spread thousands of thousands of times, often picked up by legitimate news accounts. What do you do to flag that? What do you sense is your responsibility? And before any of you answer, let me just notice this, that if we’re asking is, are we still in this situation? As of just a short time ago—and I’m talking about when this meeting started—on Twitter, if you clicked on the hashtag “NYCTerroristAttack,” which is “trending,” marked with a red button saying “live,” the top tweet links to an Infowars story with the headline, “Imam: I Warned De Blasio About New York City Terror; He was Too Busy Bashing Trump.” This is a real-time example of when we talk about this information being weaponized. How quickly can you act, and what’s your responsibility to set the record straight so that the people who saw this know that it’s fake news and at least at some point in time it can’t keep spreading like some sort of virus through legitimate world? Sean Edgett: That’s something we’re thinking about all the time because it’s a bad user experience, and we don’t want to be known as a platform for that. In your example, in for instance, the system self-corrected. That’s not—that shouldn’t be the first tweet you see anymore. It should be a USA article, the last time I checked. Quigley: But you saw this. Edgett: USA Today. At lunch I did, yeah, and I also saw the system correct it. Quigley: Can you give me a really good guess on how long it was top? Edgett: We can follow up with you and your staff on that, and I don’t have the stat in front of me. Quigley: Yeah. Edgett: So I don’t know. But we are, like we said earlier, trying to balance free speech with making the information you see on the system—especially around trends that we direct you to, so if you’re clicking on a hashtag, we want to make sure you’re seeing verified accounts and accurate information and reporting. Sometimes it doesn’t work as we intended. We learn from those mistakes and tweak and modulate going forward. Quigley: Beyond the correction, do you have a responsibility to flag something as “this was fake news”? Edgett: We see our users do that a lot. We’re an open, public platform with respect to journalists and other organizations who point these things out. You may have seen that on this instance, for example. Quigley: Yeah, if someone’s breaking the law, you’ve got to feel like you have a responsibility to do something about that. It’s not—as you said, this is a—with this extraordinary gift, this platform of free expression, comes the responsibility you all talked about. So, if you know something’s illegal, you know you have the responsibility to do something. At what point does this become something where you can’t just correct it; you’ve got to say to the public, this isn’t true. Edgett: Right. And we take swift action on illegal content, illegal activity, on the platform. A good example of this is the text to vote, voter suppression tweets that we’ve turned over to this committee. We saw swift action of the Twitter community on disputing those claims; and Twitter actively tweeted, once it discovered these things were on the platform, to notify our users that this was fake information, that you could not, in fact, vote by tweet, and pointing people to a tool that would allow them to find their nearest polling place. That tweet— Quigley: Is this [unclear] because that was illegal activity, or is this—if something’s just fake, do you think you have an equal responsibility? Edgett: We took that down because it was illegal voter suppression. We are actively working on, how do we balance what is real and fake, and what do we do in the aftermath of something being tweeted and re-tweeted, like you said, and had people even seen it and how do we make sure that they’re seeing other view points and other facts and other news stories. Quigley: Do you have a policy right now where if you know something’s out there that’s not true, of saying so? Edgett: We do not. We have a policy that fosters the debate on the platform. We have a policy that takes down a lot of that content because it comes from automated malicious accounts or spammers. That stuff we’re removing and acting on as quickly as we can. Quigley: And I understand how you’re trying to distinguish that, but the fact is if something’s fake, it doesn’t matter if it’s from a fake account or some bot or something. If it’s just not true and it’s wildly obvious, before it goes viral and gets picked up legitimate, you must feel like you have some responsibility. Edgett: We are—we are deeply concerned about that and figuring out ways we can do it with the right balance. 1:57:39 Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA): RT, Russia Today, on your platform, has 2.2 million subscribers. Fox News, on your platform, has 740,000 subscribers. CNN has 2.3 million subscribers. The Intelligence Community assessment that was made public in January spoke about RT, and it said, “RT conducts strategic messaging for Russian government. It seeks to influence politics and fuel discontent in the United States.” So my question to you is, why have you not shut down RT on YouTube? Kent Walker: Thank you, Congresswoman. We’ve heard the concerns, and we spoke briefly about this previously. We recognize that there’re many concerned about RT’s slanted perspective. At the same time, this is an issue that goes beyond the Internet to cable, satellite television and beyond. We have carefully reviewed RT’s compliance with our policies. We’ve not found violations of our policies against hate speech and incitement to violence and the like. Speier: It’s a propaganda machine, Mr. Walker. The Intelligence Community—all 17 agencies—says it’s an arm of one of our adversaries. Walker: And we agree that— Speier: I would like for you to take that back to your executives and rethink continuing to have it on your platform. Walker: Yes. We agree that transparency’s important for all of these different sources of information. We are working on additional ways to provide that for all government-funded sources of information, including Al Jazeera and a range of government organizations. 2:05:27 Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC): Is it constitutionally protected to utter an intentionally false statement? Colin Stretch: So, it depends on the context, but there is recent Supreme Court precedent on that. On Facebook— Gowdy: On which side: that it is or is not? Stretch: That it is, in most cases, protected. However, on Facebook, our job is not to decide whether content is true or false. We do recognize that false news is a real challenge. The way in which we’re addressing it is by trying to disrupt the financial incentives of those who are profiting from it, which is where most of it comes from. Most of this, most of the fake-news problem is coming from low-quality websites that are trying to drive traffic on every side of every issue, and by disrupting the financial incentives, we’re able to limit the distribution. We’re also trying to make sure that users do know when a story has been disputed by a neutral third party and alerting users to that fact— I’ll stop. I’ll stop there. Gowdy: Well, I’m smiling only because on the last break a couple of my colleagues and I were wondering who those neutral fact-checkers are, and I really do appreciate your desire to want to have a neutral fact-checker. If you could let me know who those folks are, I’d be really grateful, because people in my line of work might take exception with the neutrality of some of the fact-checkers. So, if I understand you correctly, the authenticity of the speaker is very important; the accuracy of the content, less so. Stretch: That’s how we approach it. That’s exactly right. Gowdy: All right. For the life of me, I do not understand how a republic is served by demonstrably, provably, intentionally false information. And I get it, that you don’t want to be the arbiter of opinion—I don’t want you to be, either—but today’s not Thursday, so if I say it is, I swear I don’t understand how my fellow citizens benefit from me telling them something that is demonstrably false, and I am saying it with the intent to deceive. I just—for the life of me, I don’t get it, but I’m out of time. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism: Facebook, Google and Twitter Executives on Russian Disinformation; October 31, 2017 (Social Media) Witnesses: Colin Stretch - Facebook Vice President and General Counsel Sean Edgett - Twitter Acting General Counsel Richard Salgado - Google Law Enforcement & Information Security Director Clint Watts - Foreign Policy Research Institute, National Security Program Senior Fellow Michael Smith -New America, International Security Fellow 38:25 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI): And I gather that all of your companies have moved beyond any notion that your job is only to provide a platform and whatever goes across it is not your affair. Colin Stretch: Senator, our commitment to addressing this problem is unwavering. We take this very seriously and are committed to investing as necessary to prevent this from happening again. Absolutely. Whitehouse: Mr. Edgett? Sean Edgett: Absolutely agree with Mr. Stretch, and this type of activity just creates not only a bad user experience but distrust for the platform, so we are committed to working every single day to get better at solving this problem. Whitehouse: Mr. Salgado? Richard Salgado: That’s the same for Google. We take this very seriously. We’ve made changes, and we will continue to get better. Whitehouse: And ultimately, you are American companies, and threats to American election security and threats to American peace and order are things that concern you greatly, correct? Stretch: That is certainly correct. Edgett: Agree. Salgado: That’s right. 52:15 Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA): Mr. Salgado, why did Google get preferred status to Russia Today, a Russian propaganda arm, on YouTube? Richard Salgado: There was a period of time where Russia Today qualified really because of algorithms to participate in an advertising program that opened up some inventory for them, subjective standards around popularity and some other criteria to be able to participate in that program. Platforms or publishers like RT drop in and out of the program as things change, and that is the case with RT. They dropped out of the program. Feinstein: Well, why didn’t you revert RT’s preferred status after the ICA came out in January 2017? It took you to September of 2017 to do it. Salgado: The removal of RT from the program was actually a result of, as I understand it, is a result of some of the drop in viewership, not as a result of any action otherwise. So, there was nothing about RT or its content that meant that it stayed in or stayed out. 2:03:15 Sen. Mazie Hirono (HI): So, Mr. Stretch, you said that there are 150 people at Facebook just focused on the content of what’s on your platform. How many people do you have, Mr. Edgett, at Twitter to concentrate on the content and ferretting out the kind of content that would be deemed unacceptable, divisive? I realize there are a lot of First Amendment— Sean Edgett: Right. Hirono: —complicated issues, but how many people do you have? Edgett: Well, we harness the power of both technology, algorithms, machine learning to help us, and also a large team of people, that we call our Trust and Safety team and our User Services team, it’s hundreds of people. We’re at a different scale than Facebook and Google, obviously, but we’re dedicating a lot of resource to make sure that we’re looking at user reports about activity on the platform that they think is violent or activity on the platform they think is illegal, and prioritizing that accordingly. Hirono: So, you have fewer people than Facebook. Facebook has 150; you said you have hundreds. Edgett: Yeah, we have hundreds— Hirono: Hundreds. Edgett: —across User Services and Trust and Safety, looking at the issues of content on the platform. Hirono: What about you, Mr. Salgado? Richard Salgado: Google has thousands of people. There’s many different products, and different teams work on them, but internally we’ll have thousands of people working on them. We also get a good deal of leads on content that we need to review for whether it’s appropriate or not that come from outside the company as well. Hirono: You have thousands of people just focused on the content— Salgado: On various types of content. Hirono: —as Mr. Stretch indicated to us that he has at Facebook? You have thousands of people dedicated? Salgado: We have thousands of people dedicated to make sure the content across our—and remember, Google has many different properties within it—but, yes, the answer is we have thousands that look at content that has been reported to us as inappropriate. Hirono: So, in view of that, Mr. Stretch, do you think 150 people is enough people? Stretch: Senator, to be clear, the 150 people I mentioned earlier is people whose full-time job is focused on addressing terrorism content on Facebook. In terms of addressing content on the site generally, we have thousands. And indeed, we have a Community Operations team that we announced earlier this year that we were going to be adding additional thousands to the several thousands that are already working on this problem every day. Hirono: I think it’s pretty clear that this is a whole new sort of use, or misuse, of your platform, and you may have various ways to address terrorist content, but this is a whole other thing. 2:32:10 Clint Watts: Account anonymity in public provides some benefits to society, but social-media companies must work to immediately confirm real humans operate accounts. The negative effects of social bots far outweigh any benefits that come from the anonymous replication of accounts that broadcast high volumes of misinformation. Reasonable limits on the number of posts any account can make during an hour, day, or week should be developed and human-verification systems should be employed by all social-media companies to reduce automated broadcasting. 2:33:07 Clint Watts: Lastly, I admire those social-media companies that have begun working to fact-check news articles in the wake of last year’s elections. These efforts should continue but will be completely inadequate. Stopping false information—the artillery barrage landing on social-media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced. Silence the guns, and the barrage will end. I propose the equivalent of nutrition labels for information outlets, a rating icon for news-producing outlets displayed next to their news links and social-media feeds and search engines. The icon provides users an assessment of the news outlet’s ratio of fact versus fiction and opinion versus reporting. The rating system would be opt-in. It would not infringe on freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Should not be part of the U.S. government, should sit separate from the social-media companies but be utilized by them. Users wanting to consume information from outlets with a poor rating wouldn’t be prohibited. If they are misled about the truth, they have only themselves to blame. 2:44:20 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI): Mr. Watts, you’ve been a U.S. Army infantry officer, you’ve been an FBI special agent on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, you’ve been executive officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and you’ve been a consultant to the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division and National Security Branch, so you clearly take American national security very seriously. It is, and has been, your life’s work. So, when you say, ”The Kremlin disinformation playbook,” which we’re talking about here, “will also be adopted by authoritarians, dark political campaigns, and unregulated global corporations who will use this type of social-media manipulation to influence weaker countries; harm less-educated, vulnerable populations; and mire business challengers,” you’re not just talking about the Russian election-manipulation operation getting worse and having to be contained. You’re talking about it as if it’s a technology that other bad actors can adopt and have it metastasized entirely into new fields of dissimulation, propaganda, and so forth. Clint Watts: Yes. Whitehouse: Correct? Watts: Everybody will duplicate this if they don’t believe in the rule of law, if they want to destroy democracies from the inside out. Anyone with enough resources and time and effort, if they put it against us, they can duplicate this. I could duplicate it if I chose to. Whitehouse: So, if we don’t stop it now, it’s going to get exponentially worse. Watts: Yes. And I think the one thing that we should recognize is even in the U.S. political context, if we don’t put some sort of regulation around it, if bodies like this don’t decide how we want American politics to work, everybody will be incentivized to use this same system against their political opponents, and if you don’t, you will lose. 2:51:35 Sen. John Kennedy (LA): The First Amendment implications of all of this concern me as well. I mean, what’s fake news? What do you think fake news is? Clint Watts: Fake news, over the years since I’ve been involved and talking about this, is any news the other side doesn’t like, doesn’t matter what side it is. Kennedy: That’s right. Michael Smith: Senator, if I may. I’m teaching undergrads a course at Georgia State University this semester titled Media, Culture, and Society; and we’re about to start classes focused on fake news later this week. I would submit that fake news might best be defined as deliberate mis- or disinformation, which is tailored or engineered to achieve a particular outcome in the way of behaviors, to persuade perceptions in a manner that lead to behaviors such as perhaps a vote for or against somebody. Kennedy: Well, that’s a good definition, but I’ll end on this: in whose opinion? Watts: But I think there are parameters that we could come around. I mean, reporting versus opinion is a key point of it. I think also in terms of fact versus fiction, I’ve actually set up rating systems on foreign media outlets before the U.S. Government’s paid me to do that, you know, in the Iraq/Afghanistan campaigns. House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee: FCC Oversight; October 25, 2017 Witnesses: Ajit Pai: FCC Chairman 14:00 Rep. Greg Walden: Ultimately, Congress is the appropriate forum to settle the net neutrality debate. I think you hear a little of that passion here on both sides. And I’ve been continuing my efforts to negotiate a compromise. Although my staff continues to engage in the various affected parties in productive discussions toward that end, my colleagues in the minority have, unfortunately, seemed largely uninterested at this point. Love to see that change, by the way. Door remains open. We’re willing and able to codify net neutrality protections and establish a federal framework in statute for providing certainty to all participants in the Internet ecosystem. I don’t think we need Title II to do that. 1:31:45 Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH): Voice-activated virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are becoming an increasingly popular consumer gateway to the Internet. Some day soon they might even become consumer-preferred interface with the Internet, leaving the age of the desktop Google Search behind. You get Yelp results in Siri, OpenTable in Google, TuneIn radio from Alexa. These interactions are occurring through private partnerships among these companies to have their apps interact. However, it creates a situation where, by definition, the consumers’ access to other Internet content is limited or completely blocked. It’s the question of, who answers Siri’s question when you ask Siri something? Chairman Pai, can the FCC do anything about this? Ajit Pai: Congressman, under our current Internet regulations, we cannot. Those do not apply to edge providers. 1:36:12 Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA): Will you commit to us that you’ll apply or consider applying broadcast-transparency requirements to state-sponsored media outlets like RT? And if not, why not? Ajit Pai: Congresswoman, thank you for the question. As I under— Eshoo: Uh-huh, you’re welcome. Pai: As I understand the law— Eshoo: Uh-huh, mm-hmm. Pai: —there is no jurisdictional hook at this point, no transfer of a license, for example, that allows the FCC to a certain jurisdiction. Eshoo: But what about those that have a license and carry them? Do you have—doesn’t the FCC have any say so in that, or is this, as the Intelligence Community said, that they are a principle international propaganda outlet? So are they just going to operate in the United States no matter what? Pai: Congresswoman, again, under the Communications Act and the Constitution, the First Amendment, we do not have currently a jurisdictional hook for taking and doing an investigation of that kind. If you’re privy to, obviously, classified or unclassified information that suggests that there might be another agency that has, obviously, a direct interest in the issue—and we’re, obviously, happy to work with them—but at the current time, as I’ve been advised, neither under the First Amendment nor under the Communications Act do we have the ability to— Eshoo: Well, First Amendment applies to free speech in our country. It doesn’t mean that the Kremlin can distribute propaganda in our country through our airwaves. I just—I don’t know if you’re looking hard enough. 1:40:05 Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY): In 2013, and I was one of the households affected by this, there was a carriage dispute between CBS and Time Warner Cable. And CBS blocked Time Warner Cable Internet customers from viewing its shows online through a CBS.com website. So I couldn’t get any of CBS or SHOWTIME or any of that on TV. If you went to the website, because Time Warner Cable was our cable provider and Internet service provider, you couldn’t go to CBS.com—it was blocked. Or SHOWTIME to watch any of the shows that was coming out. And that was when some new ones were coming out that August, so we were trying to find that. But some members of Congress said, bring this up, and I think Chairwoman Clyburn was acting chairwoman at the time and said that she didn’t believe the agency had the jurisdiction to intervene in this situation. And Chairman Pai, do you think if it happened now, do you think the FCC would have the opportunity to intervene in a similar case? Ajit Pai: Congressman, I think the legal authorities have not changed to the extent that the FCC gets a complaint that a party is acting in bad faith in the context of retransmission dispute, then we would be able to adjudicate it. But absence to such a complaint or additional authority from Congress, we couldn’t take further action. Guthrie: But currently the Title II, open Internet, is still in effect. Is that—how would that affect it? Pai: Oh, currently, yes. Just to be clear, I should have added was well then, our Internet regulations would not apply to that kind of content to the extent you’re talking about, the blocking of online distribution of [unclear]. Guthrie: Because it only applies to the service provider, not to the content provider? Pai: That is correct, sir. Federal Communications Commission: Open Internet Rules; February 26, 2015 (Open Internet Rules) Witnesses: Agit Pai: FCC Commissioner 38:05 Ajit Pai: For 20 years, there has been a bipartisan consensus in favor of a free and open Internet. A Democratic president and Republican Congress enshrined in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 the principle that the Internet should be a vibrant and competitive free market “unfettered by federal and state regulation.” And dating back to the Clinton administration, every FCC chairman—Republican and Democrat—has let the Internet grow free from utility-style regulation. The results speak for themselves. But today the FCC abandons those policies. It reclassifies broadband Internet access service as a Title II telecommunications service. It seizes unilateral authority to regulate Internet conduct to direct where Internet service providers, or ISPs, make their investments and to determine what service plans will be available to the American public. This is not only a radical departure from the bipartisan market-oriented policies that have serviced so well over the past two decades, it is also an about-face from the proposals the FCC itself made just last May. So why is the FCC turning its back on Internet freedom? Is it because we now have evidence that the Internet is broken? No. We are flip-flopping for one reason and one reason only: President Obama told us to do so. Barack Obama: I’m asking the FCC to reclassify Internet service under Title II of a law known as the Telecommunications Act. Pai: On November 10, President Obama asked the FCC to implement his plan for regulating the Internet, one that favors government regulation over marketplace competition. As has been widely reported in the press, the FCC has been scrambling ever since to figure out a way to do just that. The courts will ultimately decide this order’s fate. Litigants are already lawyering up to seek a judicial review of these new rules. And given this order’s many glaring legal flaws, they’ll have plenty of fodder. 40:46 Ajit Pai: This order imposes intrusive government regulations that won’t work, to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, using legal authority the FCC doesn’t have. Accordingly, I dissent. 1:03:15 Ajit Pai: And I’m optimistic that we will look back on today’s vote as an aberration, a temporary deviation from the bipartisan consensus that has served us so well. I don’t know whether this plan will be vacated by a court, reversed by Congress, or overturned by a future commission, but I do believe its days are numbered. Telecommunications Bill Signing: February 8, 1996 (Bill Signing) 4:59 Vice President Al Gore: I firmly believe that the proper role of government in the development of the information superhighway is to promote and achieve at every stage of growth, at every level of operation, at every scale, the public interest values of democracy, education, and economic and social well-being for all of our citizens. If we do not see to it that every project, every network, every system addresses the public interest at the beginning, then when will it be addressed? How can we expect the final organism to express these values if they are not included in its DNA, so to speak, at the beginning? For that reason, in 1993, on behalf of the president, I presented five principles that the Clinton administration would seek in any telecommunication reform legislation: private investment, competition, universal service, open access, and flexible regulations. Telecommunications Act Conference: December 12, 1995 (Conference) 22:15 Rep. Rick Boucher: In the very near future, most homes are going to have two broadband wires that will offer the combination of telephone service and cable TV service. One of those will have started as a telephone wire; the other will have started as a cable television wire. The programming that is affiliated with the owners of those wires obviously is going to be available to consumers in the homes, but other programmers may very well be denied access. And if access to other programming is denied, consumers will be deprived of video offerings to which they should be entitled. Telecommunications Act Conference: December 6, 1995 (Conference) 27:14 Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL): No one has a right to give pornography to children. While we have not previously criminalized this area on the federal level, it’s necessary to do so now. This is because of the advent of the Internet, which enables someone in one location to instantly send or make available pornography to children in every city in America. Children don’t have the right to buy pornography in any store in America, yet some would argue there’s a right to give it to them free, delivered to their home by computer. Telecommunications Act Conference: Telecommunications Reform Act of 1995; October 25, 1995 8:58 Sen. John McCain: I believe the Senate bill in its present form is far too regulatory. Any bill that gives 80 new tasks to the Federal Communications Commission, in my view, does not meet the standard that we have set for ourselves of trying to allow everyone to compete in a deregulated—in an environment that is changing so quickly that none of us predicted five years ago that it would look like it is today. And today we have no idea what the industry will look like in five years. 32:00 Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN): One thing that does please me is when I think about one of the last renaissance of electricity, electricity goes to the big cities and leaves out the rural areas, and then we have to come up with the REMCs. When we move America to the World Wide Web, though, we’re not allowing cherry-picking and to move to the great resources in the big cities, but the rural areas will be included in the World Wide Web. And so I congratulate both of you to making sure that that happens, that some of the strength of this country lies in the heart of America, and I think that’s pretty exciting. House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance: Telecommunications Act Part 1; May 11, 1995 1:25:36 Rep. Dan Schaefer (R-CO): Unlike the case for telephone service, every American household has access to at least one, and soon many more, competitive video providers today. The case simply has not yet been made that the federal government has a duty to do anything other than provide for access to alternative in the case of a purely entertainment service like the upper tier of cable. We have provided that access. We will expand that access in this bill. It is time we focus on the real issues addressed by 1555, the building of advanced broadband networks and the benefits that it will bring to all Americans. House Energy & Commerce Committee: Cable Television Deregulation; February 2, 1994 Witnesses: Bill Reddersen - Bell South Corporation Senior Vice President Jeffery Chester - Center for Media Education Executive Director Edward Reilly - President of McGraw-HIll Broadcasting 7:27 Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA): As telephone companies are able to offer cable TV service inside their telephone-service areas, they’ll have the financial incentive to deploy the broadband technology that will facilitate the simultaneous transport of voice and cable TV service and data messages, building out the infrastructure, creating the last mile of the information highway, that distance from the telephone company’s central office into the premises of the user homes and businesses throughout the nation. 24:36 Bill Reddersen: It is our goal to have you pass legislation this year that enables us to deploy a second broadband network that will compete effectively with cable and bring consumers new and innovative educational healthcare information and entertainment services. 25:12 Bill Reddersen: However, unless you eliminate the competitive advantages this bill confers upon cable companies, our industry will not be able to compete effectively against companies that already have a dominant, if not monopoly, position in programming markets, nor will the bill encourage telephone companies to make or continue the substantial investments required for widespread development of broadband networks. Cable companies are formidable competitors and do not need protection. Cable is a 21-billion-dollar-a-year-gross business, passing over 90% of U.S. homes. According to a recent survey, only 53 out of over 10,000 cable systems compete against a second cable operator. Cable has vertically integrated and diversified into multi-billion-dollar programming and communications businesses. Cable companies and the emerging cable telco alliances clearly do not need protection from telephone companies that currently have no video programming market share, virtually no broadband facilities to the home, and little or no operational experience in the video marketplace. 37:55 Jeffrey Chester: While we share the goal of this committee that every community be served by at least two wires, there are no guarantees that this will be achieved in the near future, even with the proposed legislation. We are also troubled by the unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions taking place in the media industries. Serious concerns are raised by the emergence of new media giants controlling regional Bell operating companies, cable systems, TV and film studios, newspapers, broadcasting properties, and information service providers. Without federal intervention, control of the nation’s media system will be in the hands of fewer and less-accountable companies, possessing even more concentrated power. 40:45 Bill Reddersen: Just as we have established private librar—public libraries—and public highways, we need to create public arenas in the electronic commons in the media landscape. A vibrant telecommunication civic sector will be an essential counterbalance to the commercial forces that will dominate the information superhighway. 2:24:38 Bill Reddersen: The common carrier requirements of this legislation are essentially, if executed the way they have in the telephone industry, the second model that you articulated, and that is that if additional capacity was required and someone shows up, we build. Okay? That is the fundamental premise underlying common carrier regulation. 2:30:04 Rep. Michael Oxley (R-OH): Does it really matter if BellSouth builds the wire, the limitless wire, or the cable industry builds the limitless wire if indeed it is essentially a limitless technology that is open to everyone who wants to sell his or her product, including Mr. Reilly, on that particular technology? If you have the common carrier status and you have the ability to deliver your programming, is it really relevant whether BellSouth owns the wire or Mr. Angstrom owns the wire, and if it is indeed relevant, why is it relevant, Mr. Reilly? Edward Reilly: Well, it’s relevant in any instance where the company that owns the wire is also engaged in the programming business at all. If someone is prepared to build a wire and agree that they would never want to be in the programming business, and that we were given very strong safeguards— Oxley: Why is that a problem? Reilly: Well, because we end up inevitably competing with our programming— Oxley: Of course you do. Reilly: —against someone who owns both the wire and the programming content that goes on that wire. Reilly: Why is it relevant, though, if BellSouth owns the wire and you’ve got limitless access and limitless capacity, why does it make any difference that the people who supposedly own the wire are competing against you? They’re competing head to head. You are simply paying the same shelf space for your product as the owner of the product that’s providing that kind of service. Oxley: Well, we have—we believe that there is ample opportunity in that type of environment for a number of anti-competitive activities that would certainly damage our ability to try and be an equal player. Where we get positioned on the wire, what comes up when the menu first comes up, how the billing is organized—there’s a whole host of issues that go along with owning the wire and setting up the infrastructure that can create a significant competitive advantage to someone who chooses to use that for their own program service. 2:38:47 Rep. Billy Tauzin (D-LA): I think the key for us here is to guarantee that there are comparable providers of services and how they get it to us, as long as it’s comparable and we have choice and all people have access to it. If we guarantee that kind of policy for America, we don’t much have to worry about the risk. Consumers take over from there as long as we guarantee, if we do have common carriage on a line, that the owner of the line can’t discriminate; can’t play games with the competitors who own that line; that you can’t play bottleneck games, as publishers are complaining about in the other bill we’re going to debate pretty soon on MMJ; that, in fact, there’s fairness on the playing field. Here’s a question for you in regard to that fairness: If the telephone companies or the utility companies can in fact do what you can’t do—produce their own programs and send them over those lines, even if we restrict them in the number of channels they can use, which I really have a problem with, as Mr. Boucher does—are we going to make sure that the same provisions of program access apply to those producers of programs that we’ve applied to the cable producers? You raised the issue in your testimony. You talked about the problems we had in cable where they own both the software and the hardware—in essence, the content and the conduit—and the problems consumers had as a result of that. Are we going to require the cable companies make 75% of their channels available to competitors? Are we going to require that the utility companies, when they build lines, fiber optic lines, are going to be similarly required to make access available to their competitors? If we’re talking about a real competitive world here, are we going to build a world where some have obligations others don’t have? Some must carry and some don’t? Some must give access to their programs to competitors, as cable is now required to do because of the bill we successfully passed over the president’s veto last year, and over cable’s objection? Are we going to make that same requirement now available—enforced upon other competitors who build wires, or who build some other systems, who decide to deliver it under some particle-beam technology we haven’t dreamed of yet, or the satellite delivery systems that are coming into play? Are we going to create some real equality in this competition, that’s going to give consumers comparable choices? That’s the key word to me—comparable choices. Are we going to do that? Or are we going to dictate the technology, confine you to so many channels, not require you to carry what others have to carry, put requirements on one competitor—the cable company can get on the telephone company’s lines, but the telephone company can’t get on the cable system’s line? Come on. It seems to me if we’re going to build policy that gets consumers real, comparable choices out there, we have to answer all those questions. Video: What the world looks like without net neutrality Video: Net Neutrality II: Last Week Tongight with John Oliver Special Thanks! To Adam Hettler for performing The Most Dangerous time of the Year! See more of Adam here! Background music for The Most Dangerous Time of the Year. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)  

Jordan Valerie was joined on the podcast by Erin Shields, National Field Organizer for Internet Rights from the Center for Media Justice and Black Youth Project 100 Organizer, to discuss the history of net neutrality and what we can do to protect it against Chairman Pai and the corporate forces attempting to de-democratize the web.

This week on the occasionally-weekly tech podcast from The Final Straw, Error451, Bursts and guest William Budington, a tech security expert, talk about Net Neutrality.  The context is that it's back in the news as FCC Chairman Ajit Pai appears to be pushing for the revocation of the 2015 FCC decision to declare the Internet a Title II public utility in U.S. law.  The upside of this is that access to un-inhindered Internet is then supposedly enshrined in the law as a public good.  The current make up of the court includes 3 Republicans (including Pai) and 2 Democrats, so if a vote happens in mid-December along party lines, the Title II status may be revoked, possibly allowing for tiered access, which would possibly allow internet service providers and comms giants who are the gatekeepers to the web to throttle access to lower-paying services or outright deny access to certain sites and services. We chat about how Tiered Access looks in countries like Portugal, the very curious padding of at least 1.1 million online submissions to the FCC's Open Comment period misrepresenting U.S. voters perspectives on Net Neutrality and the FCC's apparent disinterest in investigating the stunt. William suggests that one action listeners can take immediately, which sadly is far from a direct action is to lobby congresspeople to block the move by Chairman Pai and protect the Internet as it is. He suggests visiting BattleForTheNet.Com and petitioning the powers that be via their suggestions.  As far as a wider lense of what we might do to increase autonomy and integrity in our information technologies, William suggests listeners check out and start playing with Mesh Networking technologies.  Mentioned in the episode are People's Open in Oakland, CA, USA & Friefunk in Germany. track heard: Connected by Stereo MCs from their album, Connected

Host Brian Wesolowski steps away from the microphone for this episode – instead we get to hear from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson. Chairman Pai and DeRay were speakers at CDT's recent “The Future of Speech Online” event, and were both tasked with thinking about the challenges and opportunities that that the internet creates for speakers. They reflected on what they hope to see in the future. More on the FOSO event: http://bit.ly/futurespeechon More on Chairman Pai: https://twitter.com/ajitpaifcc More on DeRay: https://twitter.com/deray More video from the event: http://bit.ly/FOSOpl More on our host, Brian: bit.ly/cdtbrian Attribution: sounds used from Psykophobia, Taira Komori, BenKoning, Zabuhailo, bloomypetal, guitarguy1985, bmusic92, and offthesky of freesound.org.

Lobbying and Advocacy for Entrepreneurs: The Business Case Lobbying and advocacy is not necessarily something that most entrepreneurs think about when they venture out on their own. Despite the fact that my business focuses on tech policy, when I launched WashingTECH.com,  lobbying and advocacy couldn't have been further from my mind. I was more concerned with the minutiae: configuring and registering domains, setting up my workflow, designing my own site, etc. While I intended to include lobbyists on the podcast, I was more concerned with lobbying and advocacy issues as content. I did not remotely consider that a small business like mine would have any pull amidst the many "white shoe" lobbying firms up and down K St.: The big guns were for huge corporations, not businesses like mine. But as I have progressed and interviewed 100 guests, I have learned that these issues indeed affect me. For example, I conduct most of my interviews via Skype. Buffering issues that I encounter during my guest interviews affect the quality of my work product, and thus my bottom line. That is a net neutrality issue. This is not "ivory tower" net neutrality. This is net neutrality from the perspective of how it affects my business. How Regulations Can Affect Your Business There are literally hundreds of laws and regulations, in addition to net neutrality, that could potentially affect your business. Changes to intellectual property frameworks like trademarks, copyright and patents are federal policy issues. If you operate an online business, you are subject to all federal regulations regarding how you collect and utilize customer data, register email subscribers, and many other consumer regulations. Differences and conflicts between U.S. regulations and those abroad could affect your business to the extent that you engage with international customers. The number of regulations, new and old, that you could be affected by are essentially limitless. Congress and the federal agencies are continuously introducing and revising policies that could directly impact your profits. Joining Forces: The Power of Strength in Numbers The sheer number of entrepreneurs complicates our ability to organize and respond collectively to policy issues affecting out interests. However, just as the end of World War II brought with it the need for labor organizations to advocate on behalf of the workforce, the need for effective lobbying and advocacy on behalf of entrepreneurs will also grow. These advocates must be at least as effective at representing entrepreneurs' interests as those post-war labor advocates who preceded them. Consider the growing number of Americans who are pursuing entrepreneurship as either a supplement to or substitute for full-time income. According to the U.S. Census's 2015 Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs released in July of this year: the number of minority-owned employer firms grew by 4.9% (from 949, 318 in 2014 to 996, 248 in 2015). firms owned by women increased by 3.0% since 2014 to approximately 1.1.million. veteran-owned firms totaled approximately 398, 453. most firms in the U.S. (78.2%) have fewer than 10 employees. Start-up entrepreneurs also need a place to belong. Networking and developing the right relationships is a breeze for powerful corporations. Small businesses are powerful in scale, but not as powerful in scope in terms of the expansiveness of their networks. Melissa Blaustein is working to change all that by leading lobbying and advocacy efforts for startup firms around the world. I hope you'll consider joining her in her efforts. BIO Melissa Blaustein (@MentionMelissa) is the Founder of Allied for Startups, a global network of startup policy associations whose goal is to make the voice of startups heard in government. Allied for Startups counts more than 19 countries on four continents as members, including 13 in the EU alone. Her background in digital policy and advocacy spans the local, national, and international levels, having held roles at The White House, UN Women, the UNEP, the G20 Research Group, with Fmr. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and on the team of many San Francisco politicians. Melissa's entrepreneurial spirit has led her to take on challenges in the startup and technology space, including advising the French government on a taxation structure for the digital economy, serving as an ambassador at an accelerator in Paris and working at the Vice President of International Outreach at France Digitale, an association dedicated to lobbying the government on behalf of startups in France. Blaustein holds a Masters Degree Cum Laude from Sciences Po in Paris and an undergraduate degree with honors from UC Berkeley. She speaks four languages and has lived in four countries. RESOURCES Allied for Startups--The Voice for Startups in Politics and Government King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild    NEWS ROUNDUP House Panel Green-lights Self Driving Car Legislation The  54-member House Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously to advance legislation to speed the commercialization of self-driving cars. The legislation would clear the way for the sale of up to 100,000 self-driving cars. It would also pre-empt state laws dealing with performance standards. States would continue to regulate things like licensing, liability, safety and insurance. David Shepardson has the story in Reuters. Lyft announced last week that it too has created a self-driving car division. Read more from Heather Somerville in Reuters. Congress seeks more government data on Kaspersky Labs Members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology,  have asked some 22 cabinet-level government agencies for any information they have on Kaspersky Labs. Kaspersky is the Moscow-based cybersecurity firm. Several U.S. officials and members of Congress don't trust Kaspersky. They allege that Kaspersky could be a front that Russian officials use to spy on the U.S. It's an assertion that Kaspersky has vehemently denied. Dustin Voltz reports in Reuters. Russian Citizen Indicted for Bitcoin Laundering The Department of Justice has indicted a Russian citizen for money laundering. The DOJ alleges that Alexander Vinnick laundered $4 billion through the digital currency Bitcoin to fund drug trafficking, identity theft and hacking. Ali Breland at the Hill reports that Vinnick was arrested in Greece for allegedly using BTC-e--one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges--to carry out the crimes. Is FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's FCC 'Full of Sh*t'??? Remember when the FCC's site went down after John Oliver urged his viewers to submit comments regarding net neutrality? Ajit Pai claimed it went down because of a DDos attack. Gizmodo said, "Yeah right" and filed a FOIA request asking the FCC to provide documentation showing it was indeed caused by a DDos attack. Well, thus far, the FCC has apparently failed to corroborate the Chairman's story. So Oregon Senator Ron Wyden took the FCC to task last week, accusing the FCC of playing "word games". Wyden also suggested the FCC may be violating the Freedom of Information Act by failing to provide the information Gizmodo seeks. If there was indeed a 3,000 percent increase in network traffic at the FCC as FCC Chair Ajit Pai claimed, why wasn't anyone at the FCC freaking out??? Surely there would have been emails. But Gizmodo hasn't found emails, or anything else for that matter, to suggest that Chairman Pai was telling the truth. The FCC's net neutrality docket has thus far received over 10 million public comments. Jon Brodkin has the story in Ars Technica. Tech Earnings Reports Off-Target Major tech stocks showed lower than expected results in the second quarter. Amazon took a 77% hit to profits even though its sales were up. Google's parent Alphabet's profit fell 28%. The Wall Street Journal attributes the shortfall to the $2.74 billion fine the EU levied against Google last month for allegedly pumping its own search results. And while the number of clicks per ad were up at Google, revenues per click were down. Further, Twitter's stock dropped 12%. The company also reported flat user growth, which is stuck at 328 million, and a $116 million loss. Foxconn to build a U.S. plant in Wisconsin President Donald Trump indicated that Foxconn -- the  iPhone component maker-- would be spending $10 billion to build a Wisconsin plant. The president claims the plant would create 3,000 jobs.  Foxconn CEO Terry Gou did join Trump, Vice President Pence, House Speaker  Paul Ryan, and Wisconsin Senators Walker and Johnson at the White House. But it's not clear exactly what was discussed. Walker claims that the average job created by the plant will pay $53,000 per year. Google to Spend $50 million to help displaced workers Google announced last Wednesday that it would be spending $50 million to help workers displaced by technology to find new jobs. The company's head of philanthropy, Jacqueline Fuller, made the announcement in a blog post last week. Ali Breland has more details in the Hill. In other Google news, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has joined the board of Google's parent company Alphabet. The move comes as Alphabet seeks to accelerate many of the other initiatives it has been working on, such as Fiber X and self-driving cars. Dieter Bohn has the story in the Verge.   Will Amazon's Whole Foods Alleviate or Promote Food Deserts? New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and 11 members of Congress are asking the DOJ and FTC to investigate the Amazon-Whole Foods merger. The lawmakers are concerned about how the merger would affect underserved-communities' ability to access quality groceries. Many consumers live in so-called "food deserts"leaving them isolated from quality supermarkets. Airbnb and NAACP Team Up Airbnb and The NAACP have teamed up to open up the Airbnb platform to underserved communities. The company has come under fire for helping to facilitate an environment in which hosts routinely refuse to rent to people of color. Some cases are more explicit than others. In California in recent weeks, a host was fined $5,000 for explicitly refusing to rent to an Asian woman for no other reason other than the fact that she's Asian. The host will also have to take a college-level racial sensitivity course. The NAACP will work with Airbnb to identify underserved areas in which residents can learn more about how Airbnb can generate extra needed income. NAACP will be compensated 20% of all revenues that come from this initiative. No word yet on how much of that extra revenue will go to fund local schools and other need services. Nick Statt has the story in The Verge.

When Ajit Pai was a Commissioner, he was a frequent critic of the FCC’s enforcement practice. Now that Chairman Pai has led the FCC for six months, his approach to enforcement is coming into better focus. In this podcast, KDW enforcement attorneys Steve Augustino and Brad Currier discuss what we know and what we’re yet to learn about Pai, the Enforcer.

America's History of Recalcitrance De jure discrimination Racism online is evolving in a way that is consistent with the way racism has always evolved--from explicit to subtle. Plaintiff-side civil rights lawyers have found it easiest to win -- if civil rights cases can ever said to be "easy"--  in cases in which they can convincingly demonstrate defendants' explicit discriminatory policies. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the United States Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and their subsequent cases and amendments comprise the bulk of American civil rights law.  The Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Brown held segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. In interpreting a statute, judges will consider Congressional intent, which includes the circumstances under which Congress enacted the law. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act  in an era of widespread de jure segregation in the South. Every 6th grader knows that, prior to Brown, state and local authorities in the South required "colored" and "white" students to attend segregated schools. Black students usually attended inferior schools with old books and in dilapidated buildings.  Southern authorities also required colored and white citizens to use separate facilities such as water fountains, restrooms, waiting rooms, and buses. They also enabled most private establishments, such as restaurants and hotels, to segregate as they pleased. Following  Brown, Southern racists remained undeterred. For example, on June 11, 1963, fully 9 years after Brown, Alabama Governor George Wallace famously "stood in the schoolhouse door" to prevent Vivian Malone and James Hood from entering and registering for classes at the University of Alabama. President Kennedy deployed the National Guard to remove Wallace, which they did. Virginia's response to Brown is also illustrative of the Southern response to it. Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. and his brother-in-law, Virginia General Assembly leader James M. Thomson, together pursued a  "Massive Resistance" strategy to oppose desegregation. Under Massive Resistance, the Virginia Assembly passed laws to prevent and punish local school districts for integrating in accordance with Brown. Further, Virginia authorities continued to enforce Massive Resistance initiatives well into the 1960s, even after federal and state courts ordered them to end their recalcitrance. The Civil Rights Act finally codified the nation's civil rights policy. Given the context in which the Civil Rights Act was enacted, courts are most likely to strike down laws and policies that contain explicit "suspect" classifications; namely, those that refer to race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Indeed, courts subject such de jure discrimination statutes and policies to the Constitutional "strict scrutiny" standard--the highest standard of judicial review. Paradoxically, laws designed to help traditionally marginalized groups, and which mention those groups explicitly, are also subject to strict scrutiny and thus likely to be struck down. (The intricacies of the strict scrutiny standard go well beyond the scope of this post. However, if you are interested in learning more about strict scrutiny and the other levels of scrutiny courts are likely to apply in interpreting the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, click here.) De facto discrimination After many years of resisting civil rights laws, racists in the North and South had an a-ha moment. If they could figure out a way to maintain their supremacy using things that looked like something else, but achieved the same ends, they were golden! And so de facto discrimination--laws and policies that are not discriminatory on their face, i.e. they are facially neutral, but have discriminatory effects, have been the order of the day ever since. Stop-and-frisk? Check. Insanely long prison sentences for minor offenses? Check. School segregation based on merit? Check. Proposed cuts to Medicaid? Check.  Voter re-districting? You get the point. Welcome to the age of stealth racism. "I thought this post was about racism online." It is. The same racist ideologies that prevailed in 1964 prevail today. Since 1964, opponents of the Civil Rights Movement, many of whom are still alive today, and their descendants and allies, have persisted in their efforts to preserve their supremacy. They have taken racism online. This is the story of some of the measures the tech sector has taken, such as Google's Conversation AI, to curtail racism online and how defiant hate speakers have evaded those measures by creating their own code language. Hate speech is indeed protected speech and that's the problem. Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology peeled back the top layer of the internet and found hate speech teeming underneath. My guest today is Rijul Magu (@RijulMagu). Rijul co-authored, along with Shitij Joshi and Jiebo Luo at the Rochester Institute of Technology, a report entitled "Detecting the Hate Code on Social Media". He's the lead author. Rijul is currently a Masters Student at RIT and he earned his undergraduate degree at Jaypee Institute of Information Technology in Noida, India.   Resources University of Rochester School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Department of Computer Science (homepage of Graduate Studies Faculty Advisor Jiebo Luo) Detecting the Hate Code on Social Media by Rijul Magu, Kshitij Joshi, and Jiebo Luo Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel News Roundup The New York State Commission on Forensic Science has adopted a new controversial policy regarding the use of suspects' DNA evidence.  The Commission voted 9-2 to allow police to collect not just suspects' own DNA evidence, but also the DNA evidence of close relatives. While the measure has the support of prosecutors, opponents of the bill pointed out procedural flaws with some describing the new policy as a kind of genetic stop and frisk. Nathan Dempsey has the story at Gothamist. A Department of Homeland Security official --Jeanette Manfra, acting deputy undersecretary of cybersecurity and communications for the agency's National Protection and Programs Directorate --  told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that Russia targeted election systems in 21 states during last year's presidential election. Ranking Member Mark Warner wrote Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to make public the names of the states that were targeted. However, Secretary Kelly has thus far not released that information claiming that to do so would harm national security. Edward Graham covers this in Morning Consult. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has resigned following the fallout from former Attorney General Eric Holder's report on the company's frat boy culture. However, several employees have attempted to have Kalanick reinstated. Rebecca Savransky has the story in the Hill. The Congressional Black Caucus wrote a letter Monday to Uber leadership urging them to improve racial and ethnic diversity in hiring and promotions at the company. A new Politico and Morning Consult report shows 60% of Americans either strongly or somewhat support the FCC's current net neutrality rules the new Trump-era FCC under Ajit Pai appears to be in the process of overturning. Two-thousand and fifty one registered voters were surveyed. The FCC has recommended a $122 million fine on a suspected robocaller--the highest-ever FCC fine. Officials suspect the alleged robocaller, Adrian Abromovich, a Florida man, made some 100 million robocalls over three months. Harper Neidig has the story in The Hill. The FCC also unanimously passed a rule change last week that will allow law enforcement to bypass blocker called IDs belonging to callers making imminent threats. Harper Neidig has this one in The Hill as well. We may soon be able to access Internet via an internet connection made from space. Doing so would significantly speed up upload and download speeds. The FCC approved a plan of Greg Wyler who plans to link up 720 satellites to deliver high speed broadband from space as soon as 2019. Brian Fung has the full story in the Washington Post. President Trump met with tech executives, including drone developers last week. The president said he'd work to give tech companies the "competitive advantage they need" and "create lots of jobs". David Shepardson covers the story in Reuters. In a unanimous 8-0 decision, the Supreme Court ruled last week that a North Carolina law that prevents registered sex offenders from going on Facebook is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Lydia Wheeler covers this in the Hill. FCC Chaiman Ajit Pai testified at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last week about the agency's budget. Pai recommended a budget cut of over 5.2% since last year, or $322 million, which Chairman Pai conceded would come from the elimination of over 100 Commission jobs.

Matt Cagle is a Policy Attorney for Technology and Civil Liberties at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Matt attended law school at Stanford and has a BA in Latin American Studies and Political Science from the University of Arizona. Before joining the ACLU as a Policy Attorney, Matt worked as an associate with BlurryEdge Strategies, a San Francisco-based law practice advising startups on privacy issues. In this episode, we discussed: how the police use social media to track American citizens.  Resources: ACLU of Northern California The Philipp K. Dick Collection by Phillip K. Dick   NEWS ROUNDUP A massive hack infected hundreds of thousands Microsoft Windows-based computers, disabling several large hospitals in the UK, requiring them to turn away some patients, as well as Fedex, Telefonica, and several other institutions. The ransomware, which is a program called "WannaCry", encrypts files so users can't access them and then demands payment, in the form of the digital currency known as Bitcoin, from victims to decrypt their files. WannaCry spread around the world beginning on Friday, although it did so to a lesser degree in other countries than it was felt in the UK. An engineer that goes by the screen name "Malware Tech" found a kill switch in the ransomware. The ransomware relies on infected computers not being able to access a particular domain name. Since the domain name wasn't registered, no computers could access it. Therefore Malware simply registered the domain, stopping it from spreading to additional computers. The U.S. was barely affected by the cyberattack, but researchers are on the lookout for copycats. Microsoft issued a statement saying the cyberattack should be a wake up call for governments as the hack was executed using stolen government data. U.S. Cyber Command head Admiral Mike Rodgers told the Senate Armed Services Committee just last Tuesday that Congress needed to provide clearer guidance as to how his agency should fight cyberattacks. Rogers also told the Senate panel that his agency witnessed Russian intrusions into French systems in the midst of the French election last week.  On Thursday, President Trump had signed an executive order authorizing a sweeping review of all federal agencies to identify the holes that hackers have been exploiting. The ransomware hack happened on Friday.   The Hill reports the ransomware attack has made the perpetrators over $57,000 worth of bitcoins thus far. A federal judge on Monday of this week ordered Uber to turn over some 14,000 documents to Waymo--the self-driving company owned by Google--which Waymo says were stolen by a former Google engineer by the name of Anthony Levandowski. The Waymo lawsuit alleges that Levandowski left Google to start a self-driving truck company called Otto, taking the documents with him. Then Uber subsequently acquired Otto, taking the documents with it.  Waymo also announced a new collaboration with Lyft on Monday of this week. Ali Breland has the story in The Hill. Finally, A number of policymakers are concerned about the ways in which Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) might begin to surveil immigrants or develop a database to track immigrants for deportation. But in an exclusive report for NPR, George Joseph outlined specific ways in which ICE is already using databases maintained by local law enforcement to accomplish the same ends.  Remember last week's John Oliver bit criticizing FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to scale back the net neutrality rules? The one where Oliver urged viewers to go to a site the show created called gofccyourself.com, which redirected to the FCC's comments section, and then the comments section crashed? Well the incident left FCC Chairman Pai scrambling to contain his agency's embarrassment, and there was some confusion as to whether the site crashed because of the influx of comments provoked by the show, or by some kind of contemporaneous hack designed to prevent comments from being submitted. Well, the FCC maintains that it was indeed a hack and that the crash wasn't caused by John Oliver's segment. Democrats are saying, "yeah right"-- Senators Ron Wyden and Brian Schatz wrote Chairman Pai saying cyberattacks are a very serious matter and urging the agency to turn over any evidence of a cyberattack happening a few minutes after Oliver's segment. No word yet. But Oliver again this past Sunday rallied his viewers to submit comments.  Harper Neidig has more in The Hill.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is serving up a big cup of you-know-what for net neutrality, declaring his intent to decimate the 2 year-old Open Internet Order and the Title II protections it bestows on the internet. Prof. Christopher Terry from the University of Minnesota joins to help us understand what Chairman Pai intends to do, […] The post Podcast #90 – FCC Chair Declares War on the Open Internet appeared first on Radio Survivor.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is serving up a big cup of you-know-what for net neutrality, declaring his intent to decimate the 2 year-old Open Internet Order and the Title II protections it bestows on the internet. Prof. Christopher Terry from the University of Minnesota joins to help us understand what Chairman Pai intends to do, […] The post Podcast #90 – FCC Chair Declares War on the Open Internet appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On the latest podcast we're honored to be joined by the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, to discuss his plans to undo burdensome regulations on the internet. Chairman Pai lays out his vision to promote a truly free and open intrnet, and how this process will be one that welcomes involvement from all stakeholders involved in the debate. 

In light of the swirling energy around net neutrality, Brian brings in CDT's Policy Counsel for our Open Internet Project Ferras Vinh to break down what Chairman Pai's efforts mean, whether your an ISP, an internet company or service, or a regular user. Then Brian chats with Anne LaFond of the John Show, Inc. to discuss the ever important, often overlooked impact of technology and the internet on global health. What Unraveling Net Neutrality Rules Means for Users: http://bit.ly/2qAQapQ CDT press release re: FCC efforts against net neutrality: http://bit.ly/2pZBC72 JSI's work on information systems development: http://bit.ly/2qGkRtT JSI's overview of information and communications tech: http://bit.ly/2pyq2yn JSI case study on the use of human centered design: http://bit.ly/2oYVk2P ...and the results: http://bit.ly/2pyucXf More info on Ferras: http://bit.ly/2qt3aS2 More info on Anne: http://bit.ly/2qA8AYU More info on our host, Brian: bit.ly/cdtbrian Attribution: sounds used from Psykophobia, Taira Komori, BenKoning, Zabuhailo, bloomypetal, guitarguy1985, bmusic92, and offthesky of freesound.org.

Yesterday, at the Newseum in Washington, DC, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai outlined his vision for the future of Internet regulation, including a plan to undo "Title II." In 2015, Pai's predecessor, Tom Wheeler, reclassified broadband Internet as a "common carrier" service under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act. Net neutrality activists say that public utility regulations are necessary to have a free and open Internet. Critics of Title II, including Pai, argue that the rules are outdated and depress investment and innovation. Does the answer lie somewhere in between? What role might Congress and the Supreme Court play? Evan and Berin discuss all that and more with Chairman Pai.

This episode is the second in our series devoted to covering noteworthy developments relating to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). This series covers decisions from the FCC and federal courts, as well as any TCPA-related activity on Capitol Hill. In this episode, partner Steve Augustino and associate Jennifer Wainwright start off by discussing the 2015 TCPA Declaratory Ruling and Order and providing predictions on how the D.C. Circuit might rule in the pending appeal of the order. Second, they talk about recent activity related to the TCPA exemption for calls made on behalf of the Federal government, including for debt collection purposes. Third, they examine the FCC’s recent focus on “robocalls” and assess Chairman Pai’s likely approach on this and other TCPA issues. Fourth, they discuss the potential outcomes in the appeal of the FCC’s 2014 order which granted a retroactive waiver of the disclosure rules for "solicited" faxes.* Finally, they look at two recent noteworthy TCPA petitions filed by consumer class action plaintiffs. *Note that this podcast was recorded prior to the release of the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Bais Yaakov of Spring Valley et al. v. FCC. A separate podcast on the implications of this decision for fax advertisers will be available soon.

In February, Chairman Ajit Pai presided over his first major open meeting since becoming chairman, at which the Commission adopted items furthering the FCC’s reverse auctions for Universal Service funding and narrowing the applicability of the Open Internet Order’s transparency requirements. In this podcast, Steve Augustino, Avonne Bell, and Brad Currier break down the key details in the FCC’s Mobility Fund Phase II order, Connect America Fund Phase II auction order, and Open Internet small business exemption order. They also discuss some of Chairman Pai’s recent process reforms in the context of the February and March open meetings. This is the first in a semi-regular series examining noteworthy actions taken at FCC open meetings.

In our 152nd episode of the Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast, Stewart Baker, Stephanie Roy, Maury Shenk, Jennifer-Quinn Barabanova, and Paul Rosenzweig discuss: Chairman Pai courts controversy to kill FCC security provisions; conclusion of EU legislative process for the Terrorism Directive, which includes an article authorizing blocking of Internet content related to promotion of terrorism; Time Magazine sued for disclosing reading habits of customers under Michigan privacy law-case survives standing challenge; Financial companies slap Arby's over data breach; Germanys' surveillance concern over Cayla the talking doll; Amazon's unpersuasive rational for withholding Alexa recordings; Fingerprint (non) disclosure decision out of the ND IL; the GSA IG report on 18F; the draft cyber Executive Order; the NASS's resolution to the DHS; and Chinese social media handle disclosure. The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.

Tuesdays with Roger Episode 95: Tackling Broadband Privacy and Other Regs Under Chairman Pai

In this podcast, Shane Tews and Richard discuss key issues likely to grab the FCC's attention this year, the impact of Chairman Pai, and whether the FCC needs to be reorganized. Beyond the issues themselves, Chairman Pai is likely to invest a lot of effort in changing the tone at the agency. Rather than forcing questionable issues through the agenda, expect him to work for consensus solutions that will outlast his tenure. The post Chairman Pai’s FCC Challenge appeared first on High Tech Forum.

In this podcast, Shane Tews and Richard discuss key issues likely to grab the FCC's attention this year, the impact of Chairman Pai, and whether the FCC needs to be reorganized. Beyond the issues themselves, Chairman Pai is likely to invest a lot of effort in changing the tone at the agency. Rather than forcing questionable issues through the agenda, expect him to work for consensus solutions that will outlast his tenure. The post Chairman Pai's FCC Challenge appeared first on High Tech Forum.