The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the UK body that hears complaints about intelligence agencies, has ruled that the communications of MPs and peers are not protected by the Wilson Doctrine, which was thought to exempt them from surveillance by GCHQ and other intelligence agencies. Back in July, the UK government had already admitted that the Wilson Doctrine “cannot work sensibly” when mass surveillance is taking place, but today’s decision goes further by explicitly rejecting the idea of any formal immunity from spying. As The Guardian explains: “The [Wilson] convention is named after former prime minister Harold Wilson, who pledged in 1966 that MPs’ and peers’ phones would not be tapped. In December 1997, the then prime minister Tony Blair said the doctrine extended to electronic communication, including emails.” In its judgment, the IPT wrote: “We are satisfied that the Wilson Doctrine is not enforceable in English law by the Claimants or other MPs or peers by way of legitimate expectation.” The IPT agreed it was “a political statement in a political context, encompassing the ambiguity that is sometimes to be found in political statements.” ……… One of the two Green party politicians who had brought the complaint to the IPT, MP Caroline Lucas, said after the ruling: “This judgement is a body blow for parliamentary democracy. My constituents have a right to know that their communications with me aren’t subject to blanket surveillance—yet this ruling suggests that they have no such protection. Parliamentarians must be a trusted source for whistleblowers and those wishing to challenge the actions of the Government.” She went on to call for new legislation providing protection to MPs, peers, Members of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly Members, and MEPs from extra-judicial spying.
I’ve been taking the Metro to work for over two months now, and it’s official: I cannot tell the difference between a crazy guy on the train who hears voices and someone having a conversation with a Bluetooth ear piece.
This is not particularly unusual, despite my number being on the FTC’s do not call list, but this one was exhorting me to call my Congressman to support the Iran nuclear weapons deal.
This upcoming election season is going to be complete hell.
Major internet providers, including AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon, are slowing data from popular websites to thousands of US businesses and residential customers in dozens of cities across the country, according to a study released on Monday. The study, conducted by internet activists BattlefortheNet, looked at the results from 300,000 internet users and found significant degradations on the networks of the five largest internet service providers (ISPs), representing 75% of all wireline households across the US.
The findings come weeks after the Federal Communications Commission introduced new rules meant to protect “net neutrality” – the principle that all data is equal online – and keep ISPs from holding traffic speeds for ransom.
Tim Karr of Free Press, one of the groups that makes up BattlefortheNet, said the finding show ISPs are not providing content to users at the speeds they’re paying for.
“For too long, internet access providers and their lobbyists have characterized net neutrality protections as a solution in search of a problem,” said Karr. “Data compiled using the Internet Health Test show us otherwise – that there is widespread and systemic abuse across the network. The irony is that this trove of evidence is becoming public just as many in Congress are trying to strip away the open internet protections that would prevent such bad behavior.”
Once again, call your congresscritter, and ask them not to support cable company f%$#ery.
New York City officials today ordered Verizon to complete fiber builds that the company was supposed to finish a year ago. If Verizon doesn’t comply, the city can seek financial damages. “In a 2008 agreement with New York City, Verizon committed to extend its FiOS network to every household across the five boroughs by June 30, 2014,” said the announcement of an audit released today by the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT). Verizon’s FiOS fiber network delivers Internet, TV, and phone service to areas traditionally served by Verizon’s copper landlines and DSL Internet. “Through a thorough and comprehensive audit, we have determined that Verizon substantially failed to meet its commitment to the people of New York City,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “As I’ve said time and again, Verizon must deliver on its obligation to the City of New York and we will hold them accountable.” The agreement, which gave Verizon a cable television franchise, says NYC may “seek and/or pursue money damages” from Verizon if it fails to deliver on its promises. Verizon also failed to meet broadband promises in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but those states let the company off the hook. Verizon is disputing New York City’s findings. Verizon met the requirement to pass all households with fiber, though not all residents can actually buy fiber service, the company says. Verizon last year blamed landlords for delays. It also blamed Hurricane Sandy from October 2012, even though Verizon was still claiming to be “ahead of schedule” in April 2013. ……… Verizon further said that “it is important to note that it’s not a mere coincidence that the report is made public today, and labor negotiations with our largest union begin on Monday. It’s well known the union has ties to the city administration, and things like this are a familiar union tactic we have seen before.” The Communications Workers of America union has blamed Verizon’s fiber shortcomings on job cuts. Verizon has also called complaints about its landline maintenance “meaningless rhetoric and hyperbole from the unions.” The city’s audit report said refusal of access by landlords cannot explain the full extent of Verizon’s failure to bring fiber to all residents. Property managers interviewed by the city said Verizon has refused to extend service to buildings unless the company was granted exclusive agreements that would shut out other providers.
If the contract allows for pulling the franchise, I would like to see that.
If it doesn’t, use eminent domain to purchase the fiber infrastructure, and get the money for it from Verizon’s fines.
In a perfect world, of course, Verizon executives would be invited (compelled) to participate on that classic game show, Ow! My Balls!, but I will take what I can get.
What the free market mousketeers refuse to understand about this crap is that companies make more money from maintaining a monopoly and shutting out other competitors, so the free market will not lead to competition and lower prices.
*Full disclosure, I am a relatively satisfied (monopoly rents make them too expensive) Verizon FIOS® customer.
Whoever came up with the site Ship Your Enemies Glitter is clearly of a deeply diabolical bent, and having a silly revenge web site is better than having a lair in a volcano with nuclear weapons.
As such, I heartily endorse this product, and state for the record that I have received no considerations from this enterprise for my review:
We hate glitter. People call it the herpes of the craft world. What we hate more though are the soulless people who get their jollies off by sending glitter in envelopes. We’ve had enough so here’s the deal: there’s someone in your life right now who you can’t stand. Whether it be your sh%$ty neighbour, a family member or that bitch Amy down the road who thinks it’s cool to invite you to High Tea but not provide any weed. So pay us money, provide an address anywhere in the world & we’ll send them so much glitter in an envelope that they’ll be finding that sh%$ everywhere for weeks. We’ll also include a note telling the person exactly why they’re receiving this terrible gift. Hint: the glitter will be mixed in with the note thus increasing maximum spillage.
Like I said. It’s this, or going full Bond Villain.
And of course, the more Labour comes to be occupied by influential but unrepresentative middle-class professionals, the more contemptuous it becomes of the Other Britain, the lesser Britain, the stupid Britain that won’t obediently vote Labour even though Labour only wants to care for it and nudge it towards health and decency.
—Brendan O’Neill in Spiked, an online current affairs publication in the UK
In what is an amazing amount of hubris, even by the standards of a Presidential campaign, she will be running on her record as CEO of Hewlett Packard:
Carly Fiorina became the second woman and the first former chief executive to enter the 2016 presidential campaign when she announced on Monday that her private-sector background and conservative credentials made her best positioned to capture the Republican nomination and take on Hillary Rodham Clinton. Ms. Fiorina’s long-shot campaign — polls show only a sliver of Republicans would support her at this stage — has nevertheless attracted the attention of conservatives in early nominating states, largely because of her increasingly pointed attacks on Mrs. Clinton and her impassioned anti-abortion position. (“Liberals believe that flies are worth protecting but that the life of an unborn child is not,” she said in January.) “I think I’m the best person for the job because I understand how the economy actually works,” Ms. Fiorina told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News on Monday. “I understand executive decision-making, which is making a tough call in a tough time with high stakes.”
Her record is that she nearly destroyed HP.
Employees began spontaneously singing, “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” at multiple HP sites when the news of her firing broke.
She also approved Lucent’s infamous “Brown Ring of Ambivalence” Logo
Dig under the surface, however, and the story grows more complicated and less flattering. The Lucent that Fiorina walked away from, taking with her $65 million in performance-linked pay, was not at all what it appeared. Nor were several of her division’s biggest sales, including the giant PathNet deal. The Lucent-Fiorina story starts in 1995, when AT&T began to consider selling one of its crown jewels, its equipment-making division. The group had $21 billion in annual revenue and housed the famed Bell Labs, birthplace of the transistor and corporate America’s preeminent research outfit. Spinning off the equipment group into a separate company had instant appeal. As a separate company, Lucent could sell gear to AT&T’s competitors on an even footing with Nortel, Cisco and others. The timing was also perfect. In the late 1990s companies like Worldcom, Qwest and Global Crossing were laying fiber optic cables around the country and the world. Start-ups like Winstar were spending billions on new-fangled wireless networks. Dozens of small companies including PathNet came up with designs for other types of telecom networks. ……… In the giant PathNet deal that Fiorina oversaw, Lucent agreed to fund more than 100% of the company’s equipment purchases, meaning the small company would get both Lucent gear at no money down and extra cash to boot. Yet how could such a loan to PathNet make sense for Lucent, even based on the world as it appeared in the heady days of 1999? The smaller company had barely $100 million in equity (and that’s based on generous accounting assumptions) on top of which it had already balanced $350 million in junk bonds paying 12.25% interest. Adding $440 million in loans from Lucent to this already debt-heavy capital structure would jack the company’s leverage up to 8 to 1, and potentially even higher as they drew more of the loan. Fiorina says in her autobiography that she pushed back against the pressure for short-term growth at any cost, and two former Lucent collegues with whom she remains friendly back her up. On the other hand, this 2001 Fortune story, which described Lucent’s irresponsible growth habits, cites sources saying Fiorina made it known that Wall Street would generously reward companies that emphasized and delivered robust revenue growth. And an executive who sat across the table from Fiorina in a big vendor financing negotiation, when asked this week about what he remembers of the bargaining, described Fiorina as being dead set on chalking up a huge sale. He adds: “The press release was always very important to her.”
(emphasis mine)
And she thinks that she can run for President, or more likely, she thinks that the Presidential run will set the table for another future Senate bid.
It appears that she has learned nothing from her shellacking by Barbara Boxer. (10% in 2010, which was a Republican wave election)
Staff attorneys at the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division are nearing a recommendation to block Comcast Corp.’s bid to buy Time Warner Cable Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
Attorneys who are investigating Comcast’s $45.2 billion proposal to create a nationwide cable giant are leaning against the merger out of concern that consumers would be harmed and could submit their review as soon as next week, said the people. The division’s senior officials will then decide whether to file a federal lawsuit seeking to block the tie-up.
……… A rejection would be a blow to Comcast, which would have to give up on valuable cable and broadband assets in major U.S. cities including New York and Los Angeles. The $45.2 billion merger proposal is also a way for Philadelphia-based Comcast to fend off competition from phone companies, satellite providers and Web services like Netflix Inc. that have taken hundreds of thousands of its TV subscribers in recent years. Another company has a lot at stake: Charter Communications Inc., the No. 4 in the industry. Charter, which counts billionaire John Malone as its largest investor, has agreed to take control of 3.9 million Comcast cable-TV customers to ease approval for the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. If that fails, Charter won’t get those customers. Another Charter deal, the recent agreement to purchase of Bright House Networks, would also be in jeopardy.
The most amazing thing about this is that the push-back seems to come primarily from consumers, driven largely by both Comcast and TW Cable, and the belief that if they are allowed to merge, the suckitude will get only worse.
Remarkably, this is the second time that adverse regulation against cable companies has resulted in a consumer backlash.
Once alerted, cable users bombarded Congress with calls and letters supporting the bill, because they figured that if their cable company was against the 1992 Cable Act, they were for it.
The two most common types of broadband providers in the United States, telcos and cable companies, have predicated their business models on monopoly power and the extraction of rents.
Net neutrality closes off a potential sources of rent, hence the lawsuit:
While the Federal Communications Commission passed its net neutrality rules on February 26, they weren’t published in the Federal Register until today.
The publication means a couple of things: the rules go into effect 60 days from today, and parties that oppose the rules have 10 days to file lawsuits against the FCC. Almost immediately after publication, a trade group representing ISPs called USTelecom filed suit in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
USTelecom’s petition said the FCC’s ruling is “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion” and “violates federal law, including, but not limited to, the Constitution, the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, and FCC regulations promulgated thereunder.”
You may recall that this same group sued the FCC over the net neutrality rules last month. That was done just in case the 10-day deadline could be applied after the rules were posted to the FCC’s website, which happened before publication to the Federal Register. In either case, the initial challenge is mostly a procedural matter; detailed briefs laying out a legal argument against the FCC’s rules will probably come this summer.
Thankfully, the DC Court of Appeals, (technically the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit), the most likely venue for a suit, has become significantly less right wing with recent judicial appointments.
I expect this to end up at the Supreme Court though.
The rules go to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for a review under the paperwork reduction act, but this likely just a formality, taking 1-2 weeks.
The rule should be published in the Federal Register in the next 2-6 weeks.
It will technically go into effect 60 days after publication.
Law suits will almost certainly be filed after publication in the Federal Register and before it takes effect, and it is also likely that litigants against the FCC would request an injunction.
The court hearing this will likely be the DC Circuit.
My guess is that would end up at the Supreme Court, though SCOTUS might simply refuse to hear the case, and let the district or appellate court decision stand.
………Because right now, we have one goal in life: don’t be the Seahawks. We are running down the clock here, and this is not the time to try for a fancy play. We want to run the damn ball over the goal line and score our touchdown. That means we all huddle together and drive for that last few inches in the final seconds.(emphasis original)
—Harold Feld on how to deal with the FCC’s upcoming vote on net neutrality
It’s a good point, and a rather topical way of using that old aphorism, “The perfect is the enemy of good enough.”
A Federal Communications Commission proposal to preempt state laws that harm municipal broadband projects are being made official this week, with Chairman Tom Wheeler circulating a draft decision to his fellow commissioners, The Washington Post reported today. The commissioners are expected to vote on the matter on February 26, the same day they are likely to vote for new net neutrality rules. Municipal broadband operators in Tennessee and North Carolina petitioned the FCC to preempt state laws that prevent them from expanding to nearby communities that want Internet service. Wheeler plans to invoke the FCC’s authority to remove barriers that prevent broadband investment and competition.
and
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission this week is widely expected to propose regulating Internet service like a public utility, a move certain to unleash another round of intense debate and lobbying about how to ensure so-called net neutrality, or an open Internet. It is expected that the proposal will reclassify high-speed Internet service as a telecommunications service, instead of an information service, under Title II of the Communications Act, according to industry analysts, lobbyists and former F.C.C. staff members. The change, the analysts and others say, which has been pushed by President Obama, would give the commission strong legal authority to ensure that no content is blocked and no so-called pay-to-play fast lanes exist — prohibitions that are hallmarks of the net neutrality concept.
I had figured that Wheeler was another Obama revolving door sellout.
While this is not a done deal, and the devil is, as always, in the details, I am pleasantly surprised.
Also, thanks to the FOUR MILLION people who made their voices heard against “Cable Company F%$#ery”.
AT&T now says it isn’t really going to halt a huge fiber investment because of net neutrality despite its CEO recently claiming the company would do just that.
Don’t celebrate yet—AT&T is making no promises to build anywhere.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told investors on November 12 that “We can’t go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed.” Stephenson was referring to an April announcement in which AT&T said it would “expand its ultra-fast fiber network to up to 100 candidate cities and municipalities nationwide, including 21 new major metropolitan areas.”
Because of uncertainty about net neutrality rules, Stephenson said at the investor event this month that it would be better to “pause” instead of proceeding with the 100-city investment. Construction in all 100 cities was never guaranteed to begin with, as it was contingent on municipal cooperation with AT&T.
I’m not surprised that they’ve blinked.
Even the FCC wasn’t buying this as a credible threat.
The FCC is increasingly aware of massive public opposition to the broadband monopolists attempts to rape the consumers and internet businesses, what John Oliver rightly called “Cable company F%$#ery”, and so the former cable company lobbyist who is currently running the FCC is making noises about making it a touch more difficult for the last mile providers.
In response to this, AT&T tries blackmail, suggesting that any pro-consumer and pro-competition regulation will result in their curtailing their plans for a significant expansion of their fiber build-out.
Two days after AT&T claimed it has to “pause” a 100-city fiber build because of uncertainty over network neutrality rules, the Federal Communications Commission today asked the company to finally detail its vague plans for fiber construction. Despite making all sorts of bold promises about bringing fiber to customers and claiming its fiber construction is contingent on the government giving it what it wants, AT&T has never detailed its exact fiber plans. For one thing, AT&T never promised to build in all of the 100 cities and towns it named as potential fiber spots. The company would only build in cities and towns where local leaders gave AT&T whatever it wanted. In all likelihood, only a small portion of the 100 municipalities were likely to get fiber, and nobody knows which ones.
………
Today, the FCC challenged AT&T to finally reveal some facts about its fiber plans in a letter to AT&T Senior VP Robert Quinn. Jamillia Ferris, a former Justice Department antitrust lawyer who joined the FCC to review the AT&T/DirecTV merger, began the letter by describing Stephenson’s statement that “the Company would limit its fiber deployment to the ‘2 million additional homes’ that are ‘commitments to the DirecTV announcement’ and that any other fiber deployment would depend on the outcome of the Commission’s Open Internet Proceeding.” Ferris then asked Quinn for:
(a) Data regarding the Company’s current plans for fiber deployment, specifically: (1) the current number of households to which fiber is deployed and the breakdown by technology (i.e., FTTP [fiber-to-the-premises] or FTTN [fiber-to-the-node]) and geographic area of deployment; (2) the total number of households to which the Company planned to deploy fiber prior to the Company’s decision to limit deployment to the 2 million households and the breakdown by technology and geographic area of deployment; and (3) the total number of households to which the Company currently plans to deploy fiber, including the 2 million households, and the breakdown by technology and geographic area of deployment;
(b) A description of (1) whether the AT&T FTTP Investment Model demonstrates that fiber deployment is now unprofitable; and (2) whether the fiber to the 2 million homes following acquisition of DirecTV would be unprofitable; and
(c) All documents relating to the Company’s decision to limit AT&T’s deployment of fiber to 2 million homes following the acquisition of DirecTV.
Of course, AT&T never intended to put all that fiber in the ground, but it is nice that the FCC is saying that the emperor has not clothes.
This is all very simple, really:
Businesses are in the business of making money.
When a business has a strangle hold on a market, like the Telcos and Cable companies do, the most profitable actions that they can take are those taken to reinforce their monopoly statusand those taken to extract monopoly enforced rents.
Thus businesses have no incentive to improve services.
Cable company f%$#ery. QED.
These companies are the most loathed companies in America for a reason.
To quote Lily Tomlin, “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company.”
Recently, Verizon was caught tampering with its customer’s web requests to inject a tracking super-cookie. Another network-tampering threat to user safety has come to light from other providers: email encryption downgrade attacks. In recent months, researchers have reported ISPs in the US and Thailand intercepting their customers’ data to strip a security flag—called STARTTLS—from email traffic. The STARTTLS flag is an essential security and privacy protection used by an email server to request encryption when talking to another server or client.1
By stripping out this flag, these ISPs prevent the email servers from successfully encrypting their conversation, and by default the servers will proceed to send email unencrypted. Some firewalls, including Cisco’s PIX/ASA firewall do this in order to monitor for spam originating from within their network and prevent it from being sent. Unfortunately, this causes collateral damage: the sending server will proceed to transmit plaintext email over the public Internet, where it is subject to eavesdropping and interception.
This type of STARTTLS stripping attack has mostly gone unnoticed because it tends to be applied to residential networks, where it is uncommon to run an email server2. STARTTLS was also relatively uncommon until late 2013, when EFF started rating companies on whether they used it. Since then, many of the biggestemailprovidersimplemented STARTTLS to protect their customers. We continue to strongly encourage all providers to implement STARTTLS for both outbound and inbound email. Google’s Safer email transparency report and starttls.info are good resources for checking whether a particular provider does.
STARTTLS is not a particularly strong, but it does filter out metadata like addresses and subjects.
What was (when discovered, the ISP in question, AIO Wireless, stopped doing this) is all about is an attempt to resell user data, or serve ads to the users.
Neither the old or the new proposed Internet rules being debated by the FCC would stop wireless providers from blocking encryption technologies. That is very frustrating and one of the key points in our FCC filing. The FCC is a government organization and tasked with protecting national security when it comes to electronic communications. They are part of the same government that surveils its citizens. It’s not unreasonable to think they are getting pressure to curtail encryption. Furthermore, ISPs have incentive to block privacy technologies like VPNs. They want to profit as much as possible from the way you use the Internet. Privacy services that are independent of their offerings don’t allow them to do that. If they aren’t selling the service to you, they aren’t making money and that frustrates them. However, when they are blocking privacy services, they are dangerously putting businesses’ confidential communications and individual customers’ privacy at risk. We strongly believe that the same Open Access rules that should apply to wired Internet providers should also apply to mobile Internet providers, especially considering this specific encryption-related incident that affects online privacy.
Unfettered free market capitalism ……… Gotta love it.
The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reportedly close to proposing a “hybrid approach” to network neutrality in which Internet service providers would be partially reclassified as common carriers, letting the commission take a harder stance against Internet fast lane deals.
However, the proposal would not completely outlaw deals in which Web services pay for faster access to consumers.
As reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, the broadband service that ISPs offer to consumers would be maintained as a lightly regulated information service. But the FCC would reclassify the service that ISPs offer at the other end of the network to content providers who deliver data over Internet providers’ pipes. This would be a common carrier service subject to utility-style regulation under Title II of the Communications Act.
“People close to the chairman” say that Chairman Tom Wheeler is “close to settling on a hybrid approach,” the Journal wrote, continuing:
The plan now under consideration would separate broadband into two distinct services: a retail one, in which consumers would pay broadband providers for Internet access; and a back-end one, in which broadband providers serve as the conduit for websites to distribute content. The FCC would then classify the back-end service as a common carrier, giving the agency the ability to police any deals between content companies and broadband providers. The emerging plan reflects proposals submitted by the Mozilla Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, though it departs from both in parts. The main advantage of the hybrid proposal, as opposed to full reclassification, is that it wouldn’t require the FCC to reverse earlier decisions to deregulate broadband providers, which were made in the hopes of encouraging the adoption and deployment of high-speed broadband. The authors of the new proposal believe that not having to justify reversing itself would put the FCC on firmer legal ground.
Let’s be clear about this: The FCC did not want to do this.
They were dragged into this kicking and screaming by the avalanche of public input, and unless I miss my guess, there will be some huge loopholes in this “hybrid” approach.
Remember, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler got his start as a cable lobbyist, so I am expecting a poison pill in all of this.
Police departments around the country have been collecting phone metadata from telecoms and using a sophisticated spy tool to track people through their mobile phones—often without obtaining a warrant. But a new ruling out of Florida has curbed the activity in that state, on constitutional grounds. It raises hope among civil liberties advocates that other jurisdictions around the country may follow suit.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday that obtaining cell phone location data to track a person’s location or movement in real time constitutes a Fourth Amendment search and therefore requires a court-ordered warrant.
The case specifically involves cell tower data for a convicted drug dealer that police obtained from a telecom without a warrant. But the way the ruling is written (.pdf), it would also cover the use of so-called “stingrays”—sophisticated technology law enforcement agencies use to locate and track people in the field without assistance from telecoms. Agencies around the country, including in Florida, have been using the technology to track suspects—sometimes without obtaining a court order, other times deliberately deceiving judges and defendants about their use of the devices to track suspects, telling judges the information came from “confidential” sources rather than disclose their use of stingrays. The new ruling would require them to obtain a warrant or stop using the devices.
………
The Justice Department has long asserted that law enforcement agencies don’t need a probable-cause warrant to use stingrays because they don’t collect the content of phone calls and text messages. Instead, authorities say, they operate like pen-register and trap-and-trace systems, collecting the equivalent of header information. A pen register system records the phone numbers that a person dials, while a trap-and-trace system records the phone numbers of incoming calls to that phone.
This is going to be appealed to the Federal Courts, and it will end up at the Supreme Court, where, unless Antonin Scalia chokes on his own bile in the interim, I expect a 5-4 decision saying that no warrant is needed.
