The Erickson Report for November 11 to 24, Page 4: Five things noted in passing

The Erickson Report for November 11 to 24, Page 4: Five things noted in passing

Next up, an occasional feature called Five Things Noted in Passing, five things on which I'm only going to spend a minute or two each but I wanted to make sure got mentioned.

First, I have a prediction for you.

There is some speculation circulating around that Tweetie-pie will either pardon himself before he's kicked out of office or that he will resign before the Inauguration and let then-President Mike NotWorthAFarthing do the job.

I don't know if either of those will happen but I do say that there is no need for him to do either. Because I predict that a Joe Blahden administration, a Blahden DOJ, will not prosecute Tweetie-pie for any of his crimes, for any of his corruption.

Instead, Blahden will grandly say, just as the Amazing Mr. O said, coming into office faced with clear evidence of Bush the Lesser's war crimes, some version of "We must look forward, not backward, we must unite as one nation moving into a better future." And Tweetie-pie will walk.

Either way, Tweetie-pie may still not be off the hook, because Presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes, so any state-level prosecution, such as New York's case about taxes, would be unaffected.

But prosecuted by the Blahden administration? Not a chance.

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Next, filed under the heading "All Your Data is Belonging to US," Facebook is demanding that a team of New York University researchers stop their work analyzing the micro-targeting of political ads on the platform.

The researchers have a team of 6500 volunteers across the US using a browser plug-in allowing the researchers to see what political ads are being shown to what viewers, enabling them to study how Facebook has been used for disinformation and manipulation.

But on October 16, Facebook demanded that the team disable the  plug-in and destroy all data gathered, threatening "additional enforcement action" if this is not done by November 30. The claim is that the tool violates the site's rule against automated bulk collection of data - the very thing Facebook itself does all the time in order to have the very demographic data it can use to - for its own considerable profit - enable advertisers to micro-target users.

It should be noted that the threatening demand, first reported a week after it was sent, has gotten heavy pushback from journalists, academics, and First Amendment lawyers.

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Another fallout of the COVID pandemic is that the United Nations is facing a financial crisis. As of November 2, nearly one-third of the 193 member states have not paid up their yearly assessments, leading to a shortfall of $5.1 billion, which in the context of the UN budget is enough to threaten to undermine the world-wide operations of the organization.

The UN has never actually lived up to its promise but it's still a valuable organization, particularly in its international agencies such as UNESCO, UNICEF, the Relief and Works Agency, and the World Health Organization. (You did know that the WHO is part of the UN, yes?)

By the way, over half the shortfall is due to the failure of one nation to pay what it owes. Guess who.

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Speaking of the WHO brings me to some news I have been wanting to share since I heard it, so forgive me for referring to an announcement made back on August 25. That was the day that the WHO declared that polio has been eradicated from the entire continent of Africa.

Polio, for those of you too young to remember it, is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus that attacks the central nervous system, leading to paralysis. As recently at the 1980s, polio - also known as infantile paralysis - was a dread disease, endemic in 125 nations and claiming 350,000 children a year.

Now, it is endemic in just two, Pakistan and Afghanistan, which have seen a combined total of 102 cases so far in 2020. That is a reduction of over 99.9% from the 1980s.

This the result of a campaign sparked in 1988 by Rotary International, which gained powerful partners in the form of UNICEF, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC), and the WHO, among others. The campaign was to bring polio vaccines, which had been available in the industrialized world for decades, to those still in need.

The goal of making polio join smallpox in the dustbin of history is obviously not achieved, but it is in sight.

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Finally, under the heading "this just in," it appears that the Affordable Care Act will for the third time survive a challenge at the Supreme Court.

At oral arguments on November 10 on the right wing's latest attempt to have the law struck down, two of the right-wing judges - John "The Smirk" Roberts and Brett "The Rapist" Kavanaugh - appeared ready to agree that the law's mandate to have insurance, the penalty for which was eliminated by Congress in 2017, should be thrown out but at the same time seemed prepared to have the rest of the law stand.

For his part, Roberts wondered aloud why, if Congress wanted the ACA to be dependent on the mandate, it didn't revoke the law when it eliminated the penalties while Kavahaugh said that precedent pointed in the direction of striking down the mandate but leaving the rest of the law intact.

Add the three judges considered liberal and you have a 5-4 majority.

Not a sure thing and clearly the whole issue of health care is something we'll be talking about a lot more, but for right now there is cause to be optimistic that we will at least not lose what has been gained.

A decision is expected by late spring.

The Erickson Report, Page 3: Noted in Passing

The Erickson Report, Page 3: Noted in Passing

Now we move on to Noted in Passing, where we spend a minute or two on items that are just interesting or which deserve more coverge than we have time for but which we can't let pass without mention.

First up, some good news in the form of one more little step : As of January 1, New Hampshire residents who don't identify as either male or female can have their driver's licenses indicate their sex as X instead of M or F.

At the same time, even as acceptance increases, there is still much ground to be gained, as can be seen in the fact that the United Methodist Church, the nation’s third-largest religious denomination, is expected to split, spinning off a "traditionalist" denomination as a home for the too-many church leaders and members who, even at this late date, refuse to accept same-sex marriage and refuse the ordination to LGBTQ clergy.

The plan is expected to be approved at the church's worldwide conference in May.

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Meanwhile, on January 3, the American Dialect Society held its 30th annual “Word of the Year” vote, which this year also included a vote for “Word of the Decade.”

The winning word of the decade was "they," particularly as it applies to and is referenced by, people with nonbinary gender identities but also because of its increasing use and acceptance in referring to a single person of unknown gender.

Pronouns, along with conjunctions and prepositions, are generally considered a “closed class” - a group of words whose number rarely grows and whose meanings rarely change. So having "they" have an expanded meaning and use was a real treat for linguists.

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This is kind of interesting: Tens of thousands of parking meters, thousands of cash registers, and even at least one video game are among computerized systems that have fallen foul of a computer glitch related to the notorious Y2K, or millennium, bug. Known, appropriately enough, as the Y2020 bug, it's a long-lurking side effect of attempts to avoid the Y2K bug.

Both bugs stem from the way computers store dates. To save memory, many older systems express years using two numbers - such as 98 for 1998. The Y2K bug was a fear that when the year rolled over to 2000, computers would treat it as 1900, rather than 2000.

Programmers wanting to avoid the Y2K bug had two broad options: entirely rewrite their code, or adopt a quick fix called “windowing,” which would treat all dates from 00 to 20 as being from the 2000s, rather than the 1900s. An estimated 80 per cent of computers fixed in 1999 used this quicker, cheaper option - but all it did was kick the problem down the road.

Coders chose 1920 to 2020 as the standard window because of the significance of the midpoint, 1970. Many programming languages and systems handle dates and times as measured by seconds since January 1, 1970, a method known as Unix time or "epoch time." It's seen as a standard because of the widespread use of Unix in various industries.

The idea was that these windowed systems would be outmoded and replaced by the time 2020 arrived - which was the same thing the programmers of the 1960s thought about the year 2000.

Those systems that used the quick fix have now reached the end of that window, and have rolled back to 1920 with the attending glitches.

Fixes have been issued but exactly how long these will last is unknown, as companies haven’t disclosed details about them. If the window has simply been pushed back again, the error may well crop up again.

And there's another date storage problem, one which faces us in the year 2038. The issue again stems from Unix’s epoch time: The data is stored as a 32-bit integer, which will run out of capacity at 3:14 am on January 19, 2038.

Something to look forward to.

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Now we come to a trio of things that I won't do more on at least now because frankly they hurt my heart.

Monday, January 6: A 5.8 magnitude earthquake hits Puerto Rico.
Tuesday, January 7: A 6.4 magnitude earthquake hits Puerto Rico; it's the largest one in a century.
Three hours later: An aftershock of 6.0 magnitude hits
Saturday, January 11: A 5.9 magnitude earthquake hits Puerto Rico

Hundreds of millions in damage, at least one dead, hundreds losing their homes, thousands in shelters, hundreds of thousands more without power.

And don't forget, Puerto Rico is still waiting for $18B in federal aid for relief and repair work related to the disasters of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.

Next: An outbreak of measles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which began early last year has lead - so far - to over 6,000 dead and a total of an estimated 310,000 cases. The death toll was more than double that from a concurrent outbreak of Ebola.

This past year saw a huge measles outbreak across the planet. Madagascar saw over 1,200 people die. Places like Somalia, Ukraine, Brazil, and Bangladesh reported thousands of cases.

Here in the US we also had an outbreak of measles. While the numbers were smaller - nearly 1300 cases and no deaths - it was still the worst outbreak since 2000, when measles had been declared by the WHO to have been eliminated in the US.

And yet we still have these idiot anti-vaxxers spewing their bullshit about vaccines. It really hurts my heart.

And if you're still not depressed, here's number three: The active Taal Volcano in the Philippines violently erupted on January 12, launching ash and steam several km into the atmosphere and causing ash to fall in surrounding heavily populated areas.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised the status of the Taal Volcano to Alert Level 4, indicating a strong likelihood of more violent eruptions within the next couple of days. The agency is calling for everyone within 14km - a little less than 9 miles - from the volcano to evacuate. That's about 500,000 people.

Taal is located about 70 km, about 45 miles, south of Manila.

Oh, and by the way, in case you'd forgotten: Australia is still on fire.

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Finally, to cheer myself up a bit, here's something I find interesting and in fact rather encouraging.

Benjamin Bergen is a Professor of Cognitive Science at UCal San Diego. Every fall since 2010, he has surveyed about 100 undergraduates in his introductory language class, asking them how offensive various words are.

What he has found is that among young adults today, vulgarities of various sorts are significantly less offensive than they were thought to be back in 1972, when George Carlin did his now-famous routine about the "seven dirty words you can't say on television."

At the same time, various slurs are found considerably more offensive. So various vulgarities that used to generate gasps of shock are now met with a shrug while various racial, ethnic, sexual, and other sorts of slurs that used to be part of everyday conversation are now found offensive.

I find that to be a very good thing.

28.3 - Net neutrality under serious threat

Net neutrality under serious threat

Some warnings

This is something I have talked about in the past but not very recently, but it is of particular importance now: Net neutrality.

If you were online any time on Wednesday, July 12, you may have come across warning screens like those shown here. That's because July 12 was a day of action to defend Net neutrality.

At least 234 websites representing corporations, activist groups, and plain folks spent the day trying to alert anyone who came by to the serious risk that Net neutrality may be killed off. Some of the nation's largest tech companies - such as Microsoft and Google - and some of the biggest online sites - such as Twitter, Snapchat, Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon - took part.

Net neutrality, simply, is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) treat everyone's data equally; a bit is a bit is a bit and every bit is the same as every other bit - whether that's a bit from an email from your mother, an episode of House of Cards on Netflix, a bank transfer, the day's news on your favorite newspaper's website, or whatever. It means that outfits such as Comcast, AT&T, or Verizon don’t get to say that this data is sent more quickly than that data because those sending this data paid us extra money so all those who waiting for that data will just have to wait and watch the spiral or whatever go around and around. Assuming, of course, that data isn't for a site that has been blocked entirely for failing to come up with enough cash.

Put another way, it's the principle that a handful of giant corporations, riding on the back of technology actually developed by the federal government and some universities, can't manipulate the market - the market in this case being those companies and individuals who use the Internet - can't manipulate the market to line their pockets.

And if the business about "treating all data equally" still isn't clear, think of it this way: It's how your telephone works. All telephone calls are treated the same.

And for obvious reasons, outfits like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon hate the idea of Net neutrality and have been campaigning, lobbying, and suing against it for years.

Despite some short-term legal victories, they failed. Due to a massive public outpouring of support for Net neutrality, in February 2015, the FCC voted to reclassify broadband service providers as "common carriers" under title II, meaning in effect they are regarded as public utilities, giving the FCC the ability to set rates, open up access to competitors, and more closely regulate the industry - and, most importantly here, to enshrine Net neutrality as law as part of those regulations.

So what's the problem? The problem, in two words, is Ajit Pai. He is the new chair of the FCC whose only work experience outside of government was as general counsel for Verizon and he is full-out for repealing the 2015 regulations, leaving us at the mercy of the corporate overlords for who he used to work. He introduced a rule to do exactly that which is now in the period for public comments.

It is that proposed rollback of the 2015 rules that was the target of the day of action on July 12.

Net neutrality is, to be quite blunt, the spiritual heart, the philosophical core, of the Internet. It is the operating principle on which the Net was founded when it was just a federal agency and a handful of universities and on which it has grown. In fact, it is what enabled it to grow, the fact that it was equally open, and open on an equal basis, to all participants, not just an elite handful of technocrats and technophiles. Yes, of course, it started that way, it started all technocrats and technophiles, but that principle of neutrality insured it was not going to stay that way.

And people know it. In fact, Net neutrality is overwhelmingly popular among Americans.

According to a recent survey from Politico and Morning Consult, 60% of Americans support the current rules and only 17% want to change them.

According to a poll done for Freedman Consulting, the figure is even higher: 77% support keeping the existing Net neutrality rules in place. In both polls, the support was bipartisan, with Democrats, Republicans, and Independents registering similar levels of support.

You want more evidence of how popular Net neutrality is? That July 12 day of action generated an astounding two million comments to the FCC backing it.

It's so popular, in fact, that Pai finds it necessary to claim that he supports "the principle" of net neutrality. He does that without being really clear about what that means and without laying out any means to enforce it except by proposing to turn enforcement over to the Federal Trade Commission - which lacks the authority to make rules and unless Congress proposes an entirely new law - something Pai knows as well as you ain't gonna happen anytime soon - could only enforce vague "principles" and then only on a case-by-case basis in response to a complaint, that is, after something has already gone wrong.

Pai has also, notably, frequently referred to the "open" Internet as if that was supposed to be synonymous with Net neutrality, but it isn't.

Ajit Pai

Back in 2015, at the time the FCC was acting, a former chair of the commission, Michael Powell, who was even more overtly pro-corporate than Pai is, also referred to "open Internet principles," which he defined as "freedom to access content, to run applications, to attach devices, and to obtain service plan information" - "freedoms," which I noted at the time, did not include the freedom to access content on an equal basis without being throttled or otherwise hindered because the site I was trying to access couldn't afford the big bucks that some other site could. In other words, did not include the freedom that was at the very heart of the issue.

Now we have another pro-corporate chair mouthing the same platitudes about an "open" Internet. Extreme caution is called for.

Especially because Pai has defended his desire to service the corporations with some pretty bizarre arguments which would cause most folks' jaws to drop were we not in the age of TheRump.

For example, he has said "we cannot stick with regulations from the Great Depression that were meant to micromanage Ma Bell." I'll just say that the notion that Bell Telephone was "micromanaged" will come as a shock to anyone old enough to remember that the Bell System was broken up in 1984 because it was an illegal monopoly actively stifling competition - or, for that matter, anyone old enough to remember Lily Tomlin.

He also claimed that strong Net neutrality rules in the US would give dictators an excuse to tighten their grip over the Internet in their countries - which I frankly think shouldn't even require a response beyond "Whut?"

And he said that the 2015 rules were established based on "hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom."

That does require a response, and it's that the fact is, we had already seen those harms. There was nothing hypothetical about them. In 2014, during negotiations over access, Comcast throttled Netflix, slowing transmission speeds by nearly 30% until Netflix agreed to come up with the cash for a so-called "paid peering" deal. That deal and others like it were scuttled by the 2015 regulations, but it doesn't change the fact that the supposedly "hypothetical" harms, paying for access and being throttled when you don't, have already happened.

We have, that is, already seen what will happen if net neutrality goes by the boards. It won't happen all at once, of course, they know better than to spark a backlash even bigger than the actual current proposal to undo Net neutrality, which has gotten over 5 million comments, the vast majority of them negative. But it is what they are after and it is what they will do if not stopped.

The period for public comment on the proposed rule - which again, is to undo the 2015 rules securing Net neutrality - runs through July 18. If there is still time, you might want to drop the FCC a line.

Oh, and if you're wondering why you haven't heard more about this? Part of the reason could be that NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC are all owned by Comcast.

24.2 - Potential Good News: Supreme Court will review a case of cell phone tracking

Potential Good News: Supreme Court will review a case of cell phone tracking

Next up, we have a case of potential Good News. It's not Good News yet, but if it works out the way some people are thinking it well might, it would indeed be Good News.

On June 5 the Supreme Court announced it will review United States v. Carpenter, a case involving long-term, retrospective tracking of a person's movements using information generated by their cell phone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on digital privacy, called this "very exciting news."

The case involves two defendants, Timothy Carpenter and Timothy Sanders, convicted of a string of armed robberies in 2011.

The issue at hand is that the prosecution won the convictions at least in part by convincing the jury that the two were at the scene of each of the robberies by using the cell site location information (or CSLI) data for their cell phones for some months around the time of the crimes: records that the FBI obtained without a warrant. The pair contended that such a warrantless search was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument, insisting that the information from the CSLI records was merely "information necessary to convey" a call and did not include the content of the call, so access to CSLI records was not a "search" under the Fourth Amendment - ignoring the fact that those same records can reveal where you were, when you were there, and for how long you were there: precisely the info used to convict both Carpenters.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said the court's ruling "shows a complete disregard for the sensitive and revealing nature of cell site location information" as well as equating analog technologies addressed in old cases with "the data-rich technologies of today." In other words, the court didn't know what it was talking about and so just fell back on "Sure, cops, whatever you say."

Which is one reason why groups like the EFF wanted SCOTUS to take up the case, especially in light of the fact that the Court has twice recently heard cases involving digital privacy and both times has ruled against the cops and in favor of privacy. There is a reasonable hope that the Supreme Court, which seems more aware of the technological implications involved than the lower courts do, will do so again.

And that would be Good News.

9.3 - Not Good News: internet consumer protection rules under attack

Not Good News: internet consumer protection rules under attack

Okay, more Not Good News, something I bet more of you will be interested in than the suffering in South Sudan. Which was very likely a very unfair thing to say but I said it anyway.

Anyway. Tom Wheeler, who surprised many with his pro-consumer leadership, is set to leave his position as chair of the FCC. Drooling at the prospect of TheRump becoming president and a shift in power at the FCC, the mega telecomms - including Comcast, Charter and Cox - are rushing to call on the agency to undo the historic win for consumer privacy achieved last fall.

Those rules are meant to keep Internet providers from abusing the data they collect on their customers as they use the Internet. Your Web browsing history, your geolocation logs, even the content of your emails are all available to your IP and when combined with your health and financial information, that is an enormous source of potential advertising revenue as well as the money to be made by selling that personal information to marketers and data brokers who will in turn sell it to others, spreading that personal information even more widely.

The FCC restricted the ability of IPs to amass, use, and share that information. And that is what the telecomms want to undo as their first strike in undoing the gains that have been made not only in privacy but in net neutrality.

Meanwhile, reports say that TheRump has asked Rupert Murdoch to make suggestions as to who should be the new chair of the FCC.

These sort of efforts have been blocked before and perhaps they will be again, but it will be an uphill battle. We could be, without hyperbole, facing the end of the Internet as we have known it.

6.3 - Good News: Tech-sector workers say they will not help create Muslim database

Good News: Tech-sector workers say they will not help create Muslim database

Okay, next up, we have something we actually can call Good News.

On December 13, more than 100 employees of technology companies including Google, Twitter, and Salesforce published an open letter in which they pledged not to help the coming Donald TheRump administration to build a data registry to track people based on their religion or assist in mass deportations.

The employees, a mix of engineers, designers, and business executives, drew on comparisons to the Holocaust and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to declare their opposition.

Quoting the letter:

We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies.

We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable.

The signers also pledge, also among other actions, to work within their organizations to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting - and in the event they discover within their organization illegal or unethical misuse of data, they will engage in "responsible whistleblowing" and resign rather than take part themselves.

By early evening on December 17, the number of signers had grown to over 2100 and was still climbing. And that just makes the Good News even better.

What's Left #6

What's Left
for the week of December 15-21, 2016

This week:
War in Yemen; US begins to back away
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/06/middleeast/yemen-conflict/index.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38220785
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-38067031
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_Civil_War
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34011187
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/25/civilian-casualties-war-crimes-saudi-arabia-yemen-war/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudiarabia-yemen-exclusive-idUSKBN1421UK
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/13/us-halts-some-saudi-arms-sales-to-over-yemen-deaths-concerns.html
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/20/middleeast/us-military-yemen-saudi-led-coalition/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-13/after-shipping-billions-weapons-saudis-obama-decides-halt-sales-following-war-crimes

Footnote: drone war in Yemen continues
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_drone_strikes_in_Yemen#2016
http://securitydata.newamerica.net/drones/yemen-analysis.html

Good News: Tech-sector workers say they will not help create Muslim database
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-surveillance-idUSKBN1422KT?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=408
http://neveragain.tech/

Not Good News: Eight of nine tech companies refuse to pledge not to help with Muslim database
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-immigration-idUSKBN13B05C
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/02/of-8-tech-companies-only-twitter-says-it-would-refuse-to-help-build-muslim-registry-for-trump/
https://blog.twitter.com/2016/developer-policies-to-protect-people-s-voices-on-twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/11/18/police-are-spending-millions-to-monitor-the-social-media-of-protesters-and-suspects/

For the Record: website dishes out sexist advice to women
http://www.lifescript.com/well-being/m-slideshows/top_10_items_youre_too_old_to_wear.aspx?utm_source=aol&utm_medium=syn&utm_campaign=wellbeing

For the Record: Castro had faults, but we have Gitmo
http://avedoncarol.blogspot.com/2016/12/meat-nor-drink-nor-money-have-i-none.html

Update: Court delays ruling on Standing Rock
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/10/1609346/-Federal-Judge-Turns-Down-Quick-Decision-on-Dakota-Access-Pipeline-Lake-Oahe-Easement
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/rick-perry-dakota-access-pipeline-donald-trump

Update: DACA students advised to be in US on January 20
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/young-dreamer-immigrants-warned-stop-travel-before-trump-swears-in/?google_editors_picks=true

Update: Ohio Gov. John NotOKsich signs 20-week abortion ban
https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/2016/12/11/dear-press-stop-calling-them-heartbeat-bills-and-call-them-fetal-pole-cardiac-activity-bills/
http://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/12/13/gov-kasich-vetoes-heartbeat-bill-signs-law-banning-abortion/21627211/
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/08/1608709/-Ohio-guv-might-veto-heartbeat-bill-and-sign-forced-birthers-real-desire-a-20-week-abortion-ban
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/12/people-are-protesting-ohios-abortion-ban-with-coat-hangers.html?utm_source=AOL&utm_medium=readMore&utm_campaign=partner

The end of the battle for Aleppo
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38308883
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-battle-for-aleppo-syrias-stalingrad-ends
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38297986
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/12/last-rebels-in-aleppo-say-assad-forces-are-burning-people-alive.html
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/12/middleeast/aleppo-syria-government-gains/index.html
http://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/12/13/aleppo-civilians-killed-complete-meltdown-humanity-un/21626984/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/14/aleppo-ceasefire-syria-civilians-evacuate
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/dec/15/aleppo-tense-as-evacuations-set-to-begin-live-updates
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/america-siding-with-terrorists-like-al-nusra-its-not-a-conspiracy-theory-10319370.html

241.1 - Good News: FCC to consider stronger privacy rules for ISPs

Good News: FCC to consider stronger privacy rules for ISPs

We'll start the week with some Good News.

FCC Chair Tom Wheeler has circulated to the other board members a proposal that would require broadband and wireless companies to give consumers more control over how their personal data is shared with third parties such as marketing companies.

The proposed rules would require Internet service providers, both broadband and wireless, to clearly disclose how personal consumer data is collected, how it's shared with third parties, and how it's used by these outside firms. They would call for strengthened security for customer data. And perhaps most importantly, they would say that consumers can't be automatically enrolled in such a data-sharing program but must actively choose to do so - that is, to opt-in rather than having to opt-out.

If approved, the proposal would establish the strongest consumer privacy rules ever for ISPs.

Wheeler expects the FCC to open the proposal for public comment at its meeting on March 31. Actual rules would not be voted on until later this year after the comment period ends.

FCC Chair Tom Wheeler

A limitation to this is that it does not apply to Internet and social media sites, such as Google or Facebook, because they fall under the purview of the FTC, which has limited ability to enact regulations to control corporate activity, such as gathering massive amounts of marketable personal data from users. Generally, the FTC can act only after there is evidence of fraud or other illegal behavior. So of course the corporations - such as AT+T and Verizon - are all whining about how unfair it is and how "all the other boys get to do whatever they want."

For one example, Bob Quinn, senior vice president of federal regulatory affairs at AT+T, thundered that "Consumers deserve consistent privacy protections, regardless of which company is collecting it." Put differently, if you have crappy privacy protection from Facebook, then by God you deserve to have crappy privacy protection from AT+T.

Ah, well. This has a long way to go but the very fact that it's being considered, that privacy is becoming more of a concern even if we're coming to it pretty late in the game, is still good news.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.cnet.com/news/regulators-propose-stricter-privacy-rules-for-internet-service-providers/

228.1 - Not Good News: Court says Google can evade non-tracking technologies in browsers

Not Good News: Court says Google can evade non-tracking technologies in browsers

We'll start, as we always like to, with some Good News, but this time it's a case of Good News being wrapped inside some Not Good News.

The Not Good News involves a long-running class action lawsuit against Google and two media firms, who were accused of circumventing cookie-blocking technologies in web browsers, thus enabling the sites to track users' web histories.

In a significant loss for online privacy, on November 9 the Third Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the suit, saying that, contrary to the plaintiffs' claims that Google and the others had violated the Wiretap Act, they in fact hadn't because they were a "party" to the communications rather than a third-party eavesdropper.

Which I find a bizarre decision, since it's the internet equivalent of saying that because I visit a store to shop for something, that store can properly secretly follow me everywhere else I go to shop even if I've made it clear I want them to stop doing that. This, I have to say, is Not Good News.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/court-says-tracking-web-histories-can-violate-wiretap-act/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/289282594/Google-Cookie-Blocking-Circumvention-Appellate-Ruling

Left Side of the Aisle #228

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of November 19-25, 2015

This week:

Not Good News: Court says Google can evade non-tracking technologies in browsers
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/court-says-tracking-web-histories-can-violate-wiretap-act/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/289282594/Google-Cookie-Blocking-Circumvention-Appellate-Ruling

Good News: Court says feds collecting URLs as metadata may be violating federal law
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/court-says-tracking-web-histories-can-violate-wiretap-act/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/289282594/Google-Cookie-Blocking-Circumvention-Appellate-Ruling
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/judge-blocks-nsa-spying-and-sets-an-important-precedent/
http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/NSA_klayman_20151109.pdf
http://news.yahoo.com/oregon-attorney-general-appalled-probe-black-lives-matter-015350436.html

Considering the attacks in Paris
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article45267471.html#emlnl=Evening_Newsletter 
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/13/europe/bataclan-paris-shooting-witness/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/17/politics/paris-terror-attacks-isis-syria/
http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-interviewing-isis-prisoners/
http://fair.org/home/context-free-coverage-of-terror-helps-perpetuate-its-causes/
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/twain/warpray.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/16/middleeast/beirut-explosions/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
http://fair.org/home/its-true-media-did-cover-beirut-bombings-about-140th-as-much-as-they-covered-paris-attacks/
http://fair.org/home/media-turn-civilian-isis-victims-in-beirut-into-hezbollah-human-shields/
http://newserprdweb.cloudapp.net/article/c751d3d05fc74fb2bb4a87835aee2cf9/what-about-beirut-as-world-grieves-after-paris-attacks-mideast-victims-of-is-feel-ignored.html

Outrage of the Week: using the Paris attacks to close the door to Syrian refugees
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/16/world/paris-attacks-syrian-refugees-backlash/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republican-governors-syrian-refugees_564a0ef9e4b06037734a0209
http://patch.com/massachusetts/arlington/massachusetts-wont-welcome-syrian-refugees-0
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3321632/Police-arrest-migrant-carrying-passport-Paris-suicide-bomber-sneaked-Europe-posing-migrant.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/15/why-syrian-refugee-passport-found-at-paris-attack-scene-must-be-treated-with-caution
https://twitter.com/charliewinter/status/665807972161863680
https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/665398164363608064
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/europe/paris-terror-attack.html?_r=1
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article45269139.html#emlnl=Evening_Newsletter

Footnote: Vigilers in French city of Lille drive away right-wing xenophobes
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-attack-far-right-protesters-who-stormed-silent-vigil-chased-away-by-attendees-shouting-go-away-a6734686.html

223.1 - Good News: Company introduces (almost) zero pollution electric bike

Good News: Company introduces (almost) zero pollution electric bike

A French company named Pragma Industries has designed a new electric bike. It runs on hydrogen batteries which are built into the frame, takes only five minutes to recharge, and can go for 100km, about 62 miles, on a single charge.

And here's the thing: Because it runs on the hydrogen batteries, the only waste product, the only emission, is plain water. The carbon footprint is almost zero. What's more, the company says the bikes are, quoting the CEO, "made of up ever more recyclable products" and even the recharging stations are solar- or wind-powered to limit carbon emissions even more.

The disadvantage, of course, is that you can never be more than 100km from a charging station. That problem of having to be within reach of a recharging station is one shared by every all-electric vehicle, but here it's a bigger one: Most such vehicles using more let's call them traditional batteries can be plugged into any outlet to be recharged. These bikes have to be recharged with hydrogen, requiring a special charging station.

Even so, they are a real neat new and environmentally-friendly thing. They're rather expensive - the new ones will run about €2300, which is about $2600 - but supposedly that is no more than existing top-bracket electric bikes. And the French Post Office has reportedly expressed an interest in ordering a fleet of the bikes which not only could bring the price down but could involve a network of hydrogen-refueling stations, making them both more affordable and more useful for most people.

Nearly zero pollution electric bikes. Yup, that's a good thing.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11904005/French-unveil-world-first-hydrogen-powered-electric-bike-emitting-only-pure-water.html

208.2 - Footnote: GOPpers trying to prevent FCC from enforcing Net neutrality

Footnote: GOPpers trying to prevent FCC from enforcing Net neutrality

Or rather, it will be good news if we get that far because there is a Footnote to this, because what the corporate lackeys in law firms could not accomplish, the corporate lackeys in Congress are trying to:

On June 10, the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Committee passed out its appropriations bill for fiscal 2016. One item cut the budget of the FCC by nearly 20%, down to $315 million, and includes a provision saying that none of those funds can be used to "implement, administer, or enforce" the rules on Net neutrality until three corporate-driven legal challenges are fully resolved - which of course could take years.

Simply put, this is a cheap, backdoor way to try to do the bidding of the telecomms and block Net neutrality and doing it this sneaky way, buried deep in a $20 billion appropriations bill, because they know that the public, including an overwhelming number of self-described conservatives, support Net neutrality.

They really are quite shameless.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/10/1392153/-House-Republicans-sneak-net-neutrality-attack-into-appropriations-bill
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/11/1344160/-New-poll-Conservatives-overwhelmingly-support-net-neutrality

208.1 - Good News: Net neutrality upheld in first court case

Good News: Net neutrality upheld in first court case

Let's start the week, as I usually manage to do, with some Good News.

I've spoken several times about Net neutrality, the principle that all traffic across the internet is treated equally, with no privileged treatment, no "fast lanes," for those with the means to cough up extra bucks. A couple of months ago, the public interest scored big when the FCC reclassified broadband as a public utility subject to regulation just like regular landline telephone service, empowering the FCC to set rules for Net neutrality, which it did on February 26. The rules were formally announced in April, scheduled to go into effect on June 12.

And of course as soon as they came out, also came the corporate-funded suits to toss out the rules.

As part of that, they wanted the courts to issue a stay enjoining the FCC from enforcing the rules while the case proceeded.

The good news is that on June 11, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia flatly refused to do so, finding that the corporations and their trade associations had failed to meet the requirements for such a stay, which included proving irreparable harm from the rules' implementation. Put another way, the corporations could not show how they would be harmed by having the rules go into effect. So the rules went into effect, on schedule, on June 12.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, his past life as a lobbyist for the telecommunications industry (perhaps) safely behind him, called the ruling a huge victory for Internet consumers. Which it is: Net neutrality is now the law. And, as often happens on those rare occasions when we rein in the corporations, time will surely reveal that all the predictions of disaster that are always the cry of the corporations will prove to be vapor. And that is good news.

Sources cited in links:
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/search?q=net+neutrality&max-results=20&by-date=true
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2889656/fcc-passes-net-neutrality-rules-reclassifies-broadband-as-utility.html
http://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-wins-early-battle-in-net-neutrality-legal-war/
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/appeals-court-declines-block-net-neutrality-rules-n374001

206.2 - Good News: new wheelchair could be breakthrough

Good News: new wheelchair could be breakthrough

Some more Good News with a bit of And Another Thing, our occasional feature on cool science stuff, thrown in.

A group of 10 students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, set out to construct a robot that could climb stairs. But after meeting with a professor, the team redirected the idea from a robot that could climb stairs to a wheelchair that could.

Stairs, as I'm sure you realize, are a real barrier for folks in wheelchairs, which is why we have ramps and other wheelchair-friendly designs in our buildings and streets. But such accommodations are far from universal - there places like some train stations and even some courthouses, not to mention a great many private dwellings, which are not handicapped-accessible - and so the problem remains.

Well, these students gave themselves 10 months to design a wheelchair that could overcome that barrier - and, as you can no doubt guess from the fact this is filed here under good news, they succeeded.

The chair is modeled after a Segway system. It balances on two wheels and climbs using two toothed rubber tracks that are mounted to the bottom of the chair. From the video of its operation, it seems it would take some practice to get the hang of the stair-climbing process, and you do have to go up the stairs facing backwards - but it very clearly works.

This is not the first stair-climbing wheelchair. There was one that came out in 2003 using a wheel-over-wheel gyroscoping system to climb stairs - but production was discontinued in 2009. It was expensive (about $22,000) and required users to have use of at least one arm, some upper body control, and a strong grip on a sturdy handrail, meaning a significant number of wheelchair-bound folks could not use it and even those who could would by stymied by the lack of a good handrail.

Those physical requirements do not apply to this new machine, so if it actually comes to market, it could be a genuine breakthrough for many wheelchair-users.

And wouldn't that be good news.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/01/wheelchair-climbs-stairs_n_7486624.html
https://www.msu.edu/~luckie/segway/iBOT/iBOT.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBOT

196.4 - Another good move by the FCC

Another good move by the FCC

I have talked several times about the issue of net neutrality, the idea that all data on the internet should be treated equally, including my pleasure at the FCC vote last month supporting a strong version of the concept.

But amid all the discussion about that, there was something else the FCC did that got missed, something that has a lot of potential to do a lot of good.

On the same day it voted in favor of net neutrality, the FCC also voted to overturn laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that restricted the ability of local government to provide Internet service to their own residents.

Chattanooga, Tenn., and Wilson, N.C. currently provid Internet service, but state government had prevented them from expanding to reach more residents. They filed petitions asking the FCC to overturn those laws limiting local broadband, which the FCC granted.

The telecomms of course hate public broadband because it interferes with their monopoly powers and their profits, and they have been lobbying state legislatures around the country for laws to block municipalities from offering public internet access, arguing simultaneously that it is unfair for them to have to compete against government-owned Internet providers and that such public projects are often expensive failures. Why it would be hard for them to compete against expensive failures is hard to understand - except that considering that cable companies consistently rank at the bottom in customer satisfaction, maybe it's not so hard to understand after all.

Because the vote was on the petitions presented, the FCC's action only affects those two states and such restrictions in any other states with similar laws are still in force. However, it does give strong indication that the agency would look with similar favor on other such petitions from other cities and towns.

This should not be considered in isolation but rather as the result of the huge movement of ordinary people to push for net neutrality - with the result that we or at least some of us may get meaningful internet competition or even, if we lobby our local governments hard enough, free local wireless services.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/the-future-of-broadband/feds-nullifies-state-laws-on-city-internet-20150226
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/26/1367039/-FCC-Nullifies-State-Laws-Preempting-Local-Internet-Service

194.1 - Good News: FCC acts on net neutrality

Good News: FCC acts on net neutrality

Starting with some Good News, as I try always to do, the FCC has voted to make net neutrality a legal as well as a philosophical reality. On Thurs, Feb 26, the agency voted to reclassify broadband as a public utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act.

So, no fast lanes and slow lanes on the Internet. No favoritism for websites that forked over extra bucks to the telecomms. No throttling - that is, no deliberately slowing transmission - of data. All information, all data, is to be treated equally. In other words, net neutrality. The same open, you could call it small-d democratic, nature under which the Internet has grown and flourished to the point of being a routine part of many of our lives.

And of course the telecomms such as Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast, which had been drooling over the prospect of the profits to be had from squeezing websites for fees for increased speeds over competing websites, hated the idea and still do.

In a truly lame attempt at mockery, Verizon issued its response to the FCC's move in Morse code then offered a "translation" that looked like it had been done on a 1980s IBM manual typewriter using worn carbon paper. The statement itself was just another rehash of corporate PR bs, with the same moldy claims that the regulation will stifle innovation, harm consumers, and generally bring utter ruin and devastation to the technological world as we know it - without actually being able to specify a reason why.

Which is perhaps not surprising when you consider that Sprint and Cablevision have publicly acknowledged that the reclassification will not harm their investment in their networks, and when pressed, other top telecomm executives have denied they will stop investing in their networks even as their PR departments and their lobbyists screech that such investment will come to a crashing halt.

By the way and as a quick aside, these claims about some impact on investment become downright offensive in light of the fact that we in the US don't have much to celebrate on that front.

Each of the last three years, the Open Technology Institute has issued a report called "The Cost of Connectivity" and in each of those years has found that

the majority of US cities surveyed lag behind their international peers, paying more money for slower Internet access.

But for the moment, just be glad that if you want to read an online magazine or listen to some music or download that vacation picture Aunt Gracie sent you that your speed will not drop to dial-up levels because some other magazine or music site or email account ponied up extra bucks that your choices wouldn't or couldn't pay.

Be aware, though, that the fight is not over. Outfits like Verizon and the rest have really, really deep pockets. And they are already cranking up the deception machine with its loudspeakers aimed directly at the public as they try to pressure Congress to overturn the rule.

For one example, Michael Powell just wrote a piece for the online tech magazine c|net. Who is Michael Powell? He is the former chair of the FCC who was known to be almost embarrassingly pro-business and who, when he left the agency, became president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the telecomms' trade association. In other words, he's a shill for the industry he used to supposedly but actually didn't regulate.

In this bit of baloney, Powell repeated all the claims of all the dire consequences of not letting the telecomms do pretty much what they want with, again, no real reasons given, just claims.

But here's the thing I wanted to bring out: In this ad-accountant-approved advertorial, Powell starts by saying "I support Net neutrality" and then says "there is little disagreement over the substance of open Internet principles." He then adds this, quoting:

The cable industry has lived by the Four Freedoms that I laid out as FCC chairman roughly a decade ago - freedom to access content, to run applications, to attach devices and to obtain service plan information.

Leave aside the utter absurdity of the list - oh wow, you have the "freedom" to know how much your cable company will charge you - to consider something else. Listen to his list of "open Internet principles" again: freedom to access content, freedom to run applications, freedom to attach devices, freedom to obtain service plan information.

Do you notice anything missing?

How about the freedom to access sites on an equal basis? How about the freedom to have your data treated equally with all other data? How about the "freedom" that is the central focus of the entire issue of net neutrality? That freedom does not exist in Powell's carefully-crafted pro-corporate list.

When the telecomms and their paid-off stooges in an out of Congress tell you they support net neutrality, they are lying to you. Don't you ever forget it.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2889656/fcc-passes-net-neutrality-rules-reclassifies-broadband-as-utility.html
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2890097/the-fccs-net-neutrality-ruling-5-things-you-need-to-know.html
http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/fccs-throwback-thursday-move-imposes-1930s-rules-on-the-internet
http://www.cnet.com/news/why-the-fcc-is-right-to-act-on-net-neutrality/
http://www.newamerica.org/oti/
http://www.newamerica.org/oti/the-cost-of-connectivity-2014/
http://www.cnet.com/news/i-support-net-neutrality-that-is-not-what-the-fcc-just-did/

192.3 - Update on Net neutrality

Update on Net neutrality

Next up, the topic of Net neutrality, which for those of you who missed last week's show I'll explain very briefly it means that all information traversing the Internet is treated equally, with no one's information getting special access or special accelerated transmission speed over anyone else's.

The FCC is scheduled to vote on February 26 on a proposal to regulate the Internet in a way that would preserve the open nature of the Net in which it has grown and flourished.

The update here is that the opponents of net neutrality, consisting mostly of greedy telecommunication giants like Comcast and Verizon and their bought-off stooges in Congress, are intensifying their campaign of lies, misdirection, and subtle intimidation to get the FCC to gut the proposal.

GOPpers are "investigating" the rule-making process, claiming Obama improperly influenced the FCC, apparently by having an opinion on the matter. They are ranting about "big government" and how the FCC is using "legal contortions and lawyer tricks" to "take over the Internet." Meanwhile, industry groups and fronts are putting out ads claiming the proposal will lead to higher taxes and more government surveillance and their lobbyist minions are parading through the offices of FCC staff with the same old cliches about Net neutrality will "stifle innovation," even though innovation doesn't seem to have been stifled in the years that Net neutrality has been the practice.

The vote, again, is on February 26. We'll let you know how things go.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/12/net-neutrality-advocates-_0_n_6670850.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/02/10/republicans-are-about-to-benghazi-all-over-again-on-net-neutrality/

191.8 - FCC Net neutrality vote scheduled for February 26

FCC Net neutrality vote scheduled for February 26

I'll be brief on this, but it's important and I want to be sure I get it in. It's about Net neutrality.

People tend to make it seem complicated, but it's not. It simply means that all data traveling across the Internet is treated equally. No traffic can get special treatment over other traffic. It's how the Internet has grown and flourished: this very if your will democratic notion that all information gets treated equally.

The telecomms hate this because they want to be able to charge websites extra fees in return for promises of higher speed as compared to those who can't come up with the bucks, creating a two-tier Internet, with higher speeds and better access for the big corporations who can afford the extra cost, slower speeds for the rest of us, and fatter bank accounts for the likes of Verizon and Comcast.

After a lot of effort and pressure, the FCC has agreed to vote on regulating the Internet under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, meaning it would be treated as a common carrier, similar to your phone service. And just like no phone call can be given automatic priority over another, there would be no fast and slow lanes for Internet traffic. (Citing the section of the law may seem overly wonkish, but it's necessary because the telecomms will claim that they, too, believe in regulation but they will cite a different section of the law which would not protect genuine Net neutrality. In other words, they are lying but hey, what do you expect.)

The vote is scheduled for February 26. You might want to give you Congressional reps a call to urge them to publicly support a free and open internet by supporting net neutrality.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/04/fcc-net-neutrality_n_6613494.html

And Another Thing: Oldest photo of a human

And Another Thing: Oldest photo of a human

And Another Thing is where we take a break from serious political stuff to stuff that is just - or at least I think is just - cool. Usually it's science stuff, but this time it's more about history.

Below is what is believed to be the oldest existing photograph in which a human can be seen. It was taken in Paris in 1838 by Louis Daguerre, best known today as the inventor of the Daguerreotype. If you look carefully, you can make out in the lower-left corner a figure of a man appearing to be having his boots cleaned. (Which means there really are two figures, but that of the person doing the cleaning is harder to make out.)

It's not the oldest known photograph, that being one of rooftops outside a window done by Joseph Nicéphorein Niépce (pronounced Neep-sea) in 1826 or 1827. That one was done with a photographic plate coated with a solution of bitumen as the light-reactive material and the exposure took so long - about eight hours - that the sun moved far enough in the sky so that the shadows point in opposite directions.

The Daguerreotype, using a mercury-vapor development process, shortened exposure times to minutes (the picture below had an exposure time of about seven minutes), making photographic portraiture possible, if still rather impractical. If you don't see why, try staying quite still for five minutes or so. This is one reason why Daguerreotypes essentially never show people smiling: That's just too hard a pose to maintain for the exposure times involved. In fact, the people in Daguerreotypes are often posed with a supporting bar hidden behind their heads to help them keep their heads still so their faces will be unblurred in the finished product. That's also why,  incidentally, the street seems to deserted: It wasn't. It's just that the other people, carriages, and the like didn't stay still long enough for the emulsion to register their presence.

Daguerreotypes help spawn professional (and, ultimately, amateur) photography but fell out of favor relatively quickly. Despite their still-unsurpassed detail, the facts that they were done on metal (making them heavy and thereby limiting their size), were rather delicate and prone to scratching, and, most importantly, were each one-of-a-kind originals with no way to create multiple copies, were drawbacks that could not be overcome in the face of the two-step negative-positive process developed by William Henry Fox Talbot in the late 1830s.

To the left is the original photograph; to the right is an enlargement of the area with the people.

Enlargement of lower-left area

Original Daguerreotype

Sources cited in links:
http://mashable.com/2014/11/05/first-photograph-of-a-human
http://www.daguerre.org/resource/history/history.html
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/firstphotograph
http://akvis.com/en/articles/photo-history/niepce.php
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tlbt/hd_tlbt.htm
http://www.dptips-central.com/william-fox-talbot.html

182.3 - Clown Award: FCC Chair Tom Wheeler

Clown Award: FCC Chair Tom Wheeler

Now it's time for one of out regular features, the Clown Award, given as always for meritorious stupidity.

The winner of the Big Red Nose this week is one of the most important people of who you have probably never heard who is not a right-wing billionaire: Tom Wheeler.

Our story starts sometime back, but the current chapter began on November 10, when Barack Obama, the Amazing Mr. O, put an end to months and months of vacillating and tip-toeing - in other words, months and months of being Barack Obama - and came out in favor of the "strongest possible rules to protect Net neutrality," the principle that internet service providers, or ISPs, can't favor some Internet traffic over others, that all Web traffic must be treated equally. It has been a bedrock philosophical principle of the Internet all along and has been a major driving force behind its development and expansion, because everybody had equal access so everybody had an equal chance to get their message out, whether that message was commercial or philosophical or political or, as seems to be true with most every human endeavor, porn.
That principle has been under attack for some time by the major ISPs such as Comcast and Time-Warner, who want to cut deals with high-traffic websites to promise them faster transmission speeds in return for special fees. Years ago, when the idea was just getting going, Al Gore used to refer to what became the Internet as "the information superhighway." You can think of what the telecoms want as putting toll booths on every entrance ramp to that highway so if you can afford the tolls, you get to be on the multi-lane highway, but if you can't, you're stuck on the single-lane, rutted back roads complete with traffic jams and red lights. Many of the big websites also like the idea because it tends to cement their dominance against the risk of some new upstart website competing for their traffic, since the giants could easily afford the fees that would be imposed and start-ups quite possibly couldn't.

The FCC has been muddling about, trying to find a way to satisfy the corporate giants while at least looking like it's protecting Net neutrality.

Now, Obama has come out in favor of the simplest, most straightforward way of dealing with this: reclassify ISPs as "common carriers" under the Telecommunications Act, which would allow their regulation as public utilities and, just as is the case with your telephone, make it illegal, quoting the law, "to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services." Just as every phone call is equal, all Web traffic would be equal.

Tom Wheeler

Enter Tom Wheeler.

Why is he important? Because Tom Wheeler is the chair of the FCC.

Just hours after Obama's statement, and even as his own office released a statement claiming that Wheeler opposes what are called Internet "fast lanes," Wheeler was telling a group of business executives from major Web companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Etsy that he wants a more "nuanced" position, what he calls a "hybrid" approach, one which essentially would allow precisely the sort of fee-for-speed arrangements that the principle of Net neutrality rejects while claiming to protect Net neutrality by saying that paid prioritization deals would have to prove that they are just and reasonable. In other words, such deals would be subject to review on a case-by-case basis and look at how well that procedure has worked to control corporate mergers.

Anyway. Skip the legal technicalities involved here. In fact, skip the technical technicalities. Here's a handy quick guide to four things to keep in mind in thinking about this.

One: If someone loudly insists that they are absolutely opposed to "site-blocking," which means ISPs using their control of traffic to block users from access to legal websites of which the corporation disapproves, they are trying to con you. Everyone from every point of view on this has been against site-blocking all along. The real fight here is not over site-blocking, it is over paid prioritization and its opposite, throttling, which is deliberately slowing down access speed to a site. Anyone ballyhooing their opposition to site-blocking is trying to hide their approval of prioritization and throttling.

Two: Verizon, a telecom with a major stake in the outcome of all this, is starting a new on-line tech and lifestyle magazine called SugarString.com. Applicants for jobs there have been told in so many words that they will not be allowed to write anything about Net neutrality. (Or domestic spying, by the way, another area where Verizon has let's call it a vested interest.)

Three: Ted Cruz is against Net neutrality; he called it "Obamacare for the Internet," which is obviously supposed to be something self-evidently bad although I'm not sure exactly what.

Four: Tom Wheeler is a former lobbyist for the telecommunications industry who recently declared about his position on the FCC "I am an independent agency." Not "I am with an independent agency" or even "I head an independent agency," but "I am an independent agency."

L'état, c'est moi.

Which means there's a fifth thing you should keep in mind: Tom Wheeler is a clown.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/10/obama-net-neutrality_n_6132814.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/10/tom-wheeler-net-neutrality_n_6133330.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/11/11/the-fcc-weighs-breaking-with-obama-over-the-future-of-the-internet/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/01/technology/fcc-considering-hybrid-regulatory-approach-to-net-neutrality.html
http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/10/7186243/obama-just-did-the-right-thing-for-the-internet-and-made-life-hell
http://www.tytnetwork.com/2014/10/31/dont-read-this-tech-news-site-if-you-want-net-neutrality-news/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/10/ted-cruz-net-neutrality_n_6133584.html
http://www.theverge.com/tldr/2014/11/12/7200935/the-head-of-the-fcc-would-feel-right-at-home-in-17th-century-france