This is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality

Federal Communication Commission(FCC) chairman Tom Wheeler waits for a hearing at the FCC December 11, 2014 in Washington, DC. (photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP)

Tom Wheeler | Wired | Reader Supported News | February 4, 2015

fter more than a decade of debate and a record-setting proceeding that attracted nearly 4 million public comments, the time to settle the Net Neutrality question has arrived. This week, I will circulate to the members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed new rules to preserve the internet as an open platform for innovation and free expression. This proposal is rooted in long-standing regulatory principles, marketplace experience, and public input received over the last several months.

Broadband network operators have an understandable motivation to manage their network to maximize their business interests. But their actions may not always be optimal for network users. The Congress gave the FCC broad authority to update its rules to reflect changes in technology and marketplace behavior in a way that protects consumers. Over the years, the Commission has used this authority to the public’s great benefit.

The internet wouldn’t have emerged as it did, for instance, if the FCC hadn’t mandated open access for network equipment in the late 1960s. Before then, AT&T prohibited anyone from attaching non-AT&T equipment to the network. The modems that enabled the internet were usable only because the FCC required the network to be open.

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Not So Fast, Net Neutrality

Michael Winship | Moyers & Company | Truthout | January 27, 2015

Demonstrators protest in front of the White House in support of net neutrality. (Photo: Joseph Gruber / Flickr)

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Over the last few months, things have been looking good for keeping the Internet open to everyone. A little too good, as far as Congress is concerned, which is why members and the corporate lobbyists who write them hefty checks have launched a last-ditch legislative effort to scuttle Net neutrality.

Both President Obama and Federal Communications Commission Chair Tom Wheeler have stopped tiptoeing around Net neutrality and seem to finally embrace the idea of using Title II of the Telecommunications Act to reclassify Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and regulate them as common carriers, like the phone companies and other public utilities. No preferential treatment to those willing to shell out big corporate bucks for a fast lane.

In early January, Wheeler told a crowd at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, “There’s a way to do Title II right.” And in his State of the Union address, Barack Obama announced, “I intend to protect a free and open Internet, extend its reach to every classroom, and every community, and help folks build the fastest networks so that the next generation of digital innovators and entrepreneurs have the platform to keep reshaping our world.” ‘

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Obama: The Internet Is a Utility

Dashiell Bennett | The Atlantic | Reader Supported News | November 11, 2014

ALSO SEE: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Refuses to Attend Any Public Meetings on Net Neutrality

new “net neutrality” plan released by the White House on Monday morning includes an endorsement of an old idea that some activists have been pushing for years: the treatment of the Internet as a public utility.

In a letter and a video posted on the White House website, President Obama said he believes “the FCC should reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act,” allowing Internet Service Providers to be more heavily regulated. According to Obama, the change would acknowledge that “the Internet has become an essential part of everyday communication and everyday life.”

Obama’s proposal explicitly rejects proposed rules that FCC considered earlier this year to allow paid prioritization, a plan by which content providers can make deals with ISP to get faster service to their websites. (Those rules are still under consideration and have not been finalized.) The White House proposal calls for no paid prioritization, no blocking of any content that is not illegal, and no throttling of Internet services, where some customers have their Internet speeds artificially slowed down.

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Obama’s Unparalleled Spy State

Andrew Leonard | Salon | AlterNet | June 6, 2013

Now we know for sure: The Obama administration has presided over the most thorough expansion of the domestic surveillance state of any U.S. presidency. Even as the nation was still absorbing the news,  broken by Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian on Wednesday night, that the National Security Agency has been routinely collecting phone call records for millions of Americans, the Washington Post and the Guardian published articles revealing even broader  government snooping powers: Since 2007, the NSA and the FBI have had the power to watch nearly every aspect of our online life as well.

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.

The nine companies are Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple. (PalTalk, according to the Post, “hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.”)

The program is code-named PRISM, and while it was created during the administration of George W. Bush, the Post reports that it has experienced “exponential growth” under Obama.

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Administration Says Mining of Data Is Crucial to Fight Terror

ERIC SCHMITT, DAVID E. SANGER and CHARLIE SAVAGE | New York Times | June 7, 2013

WASHINGTON — In early September 2009, an e-mail passed through an Internet address in Peshawar, Pakistan, that was being monitored by the vast computers controlled by American intelligence analysts. It set off alarms. The address, linked to senior Qaeda operatives, had been dormant for months.

Investigators worked their way backward and traced the e-mail to an address in Aurora, Colo., outside Denver. It took them to Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old former coffee cart operator, who was asking a Qaeda facilitator about how to mix ingredients for a flour-based explosive, according to law enforcement officials. A later e-mail read: “The marriage is ready” — code that a major attack was planned.

What followed in the next few days was a cross-country pursuit in which the police stopped Mr. Zazi on the George Washington Bridge, let him go, and after several false starts, arrested him in New York. He eventually pleaded guilty to plotting to carry out backpack bombings in the city’s subway system.

It is that kind of success that President Obama seemed to be referring to on Friday in California when he defended the National Security Agency’s stockpiling of telephone call logs of Americans and gaining access to foreigners’ e-mail and other data from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and other companies.

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NSA Mines User Data of Facebook, Google and Others

Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill | Guardian UK | Reader Supported News | June 7, 2013

• Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Facebook and Apple

• Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007

he National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims “collection directly from the servers” of major US service providers.

Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.

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How to Win the War on Terror: Repeal the Patriot Act

Carl Gibson | Reader Supported News | June 7, 2013

By the Fall of 2014, we all need to agree on two simple demands: First, that all members of the House and Senate who voted for the Patriot Act, and all of its subsequent renewals, be voted out of office. Second, that anyone running for Congress must promise to repeal the Patriot Act before doing anything else.

The only thing more alarming than the news about the NSA’s all-encompassing citizen spying program PRISM, are members of Congress defending this blatant violation of 4th Amendment rights protecting all citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. PRISM mined data from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Youtube, and other sites. They monitored calls from Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint networks. And they even mined data from credit card companies. Since the Patriot Act was signed into law shortly after 9/11, warrantless wiretapping and constant monitoring of our phone and email conversation has been business as usual. This is the fault of both the Bush and Obama administrations, as each corporate party is captive to the same military-industrial complex making big bucks from the intrusive police and surveillance state in the US.

This government is waging war on civil liberties and anyone who speaks out against its overreach. After the Obama administration’s DOJ seized phone records of AP reporters, they defended their decision, saying it was important to catch and punish government whistleblowers. The ongoing Bradley Manning court-martial is just one of many metaphors for the government clamp-down on anyone trying to shine light on its unconstitutional and criminal actions. There are ominous posters in the DC Metro implying that government whistleblowers will be killed. This is even happening at the state level – the Wisconsin legislature convened under the cover of night to pass a bill banning the Center for Investigative Journalism from the University of Wisconsin campus, directly intruding on a free press’s right to public documents.

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NSA Whistleblowers: “All US Citizens” Targeted by Surveillance Program, Not Just Verizon Customers

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez | Democracy Now! | Truthout | June 7, 2013

A leaked court order has revealed the Obama administration is conducting a massive domestic surveillance program by collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon customers. The Guardian newspaper published a classified order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing Verizon’s Business Network Services to give the National Security Agency electronic data, including all calling records on an “ongoing, daily basis.” The order covers each phone number dialed by all customers, along with location and routing data, and with the duration and frequency of the calls, but not the contents of the communications.

We discuss the news with three guests: Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and two former National Security Agency employees turned whistleblowers: Thomas Drake and William Binney. In 2010, the Obama administration charged Drake with violating the Espionage Act after he was accused of leaking classified information to the press about waste and mismanagement at the agency. The charges were later dropped. “Where has the mainstream media been? These are routine orders, nothing new,” Drake says. “What’s new is we’re seeing an actual order. And people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time. It was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records from any company.”

Binney, who worked at nearly 40 years at the NSA and resigned shortly after the 9/11 attacks, says: “NSA has been doing all this stuff all along, and it’s been all the companies, not just one. And I basically looked at that and said: If Verizon got one, so did everybody else. Which means that they’re just continuing the collection of this kind of information of all U.S. citizens.”

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“A Massive Surveillance State”: Glenn Greenwald Exposes Covert NSA Program Collecting Calls, Emails

Democracy NOW | June 7, 2013

The National Security Agency has obtained access to the central servers of nine major Internet companies — including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook. The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed the top-secret program, codenamed PRISM, after they obtained several slides from a 41-page training presentation for senior intelligence analysts. It explains how PRISM allows them to access emails, documents, audio and video chats, photographs, documents and connection logs. “Hundreds of millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions – in fact, billions of people around the world – essentially rely on the Internet exclusively to communicate with one another,” Greenwald says. “Very few people use landline phones for much of anything. So when you talk about things like online chat and social media messages and emails, what you’re really talking about is the full extent of human communication.” This comes after Greenwald revealed Wednesday in another story that the NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers. “They want to make sure that every single time human beings interact with one another … that they can watch it, and they can store it, and they can access it at any time.”

Transcript

          This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin with news that the National Security Agency has obtained access to the central servers of nine major Internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook. The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed the top secret program on Thursday, codenamed PRISM, after they obtained several slides from a 41-page training presentation for senior intelligence analysts. It explains how PRISM allows them to access emails, documents, audio and video chats, photographs, documents and connection logs that allow them to track a person or trace their connections to others. One slide lists the companies by name and the date when each provider began participating over the past six years. But an Apple spokesperson said it had “never heard” of PRISM and added, quote, “We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers and any agency requesting customer data must get a court order,” they said. Other companies had similar responses.

Well, for more, we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, columnist, attorney, and blogger for The Guardian, where he broke his story in—that was headlined “NSA Taps in to Internet Giants’ Systems to Mine User Data, Secret Files Reveal.” This comes after he revealed Wednesday in another exclusive story that the “NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers.” According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, the scope of the NSA phone monitoring includes customers of all three major phone networks—Verizon, AT&T and Sprint—as well as records from Internet service providers and purchase information from credit card providers. Glenn Greenwald is also author of With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. He’s joining us now via Democracy—video stream.

Glenn, welcome back to Democracy Now! Lay out this latest exclusive that you have just reported in The Guardian.

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Meet Stingrays, The Surveillance Tech The Government Doesn’t Want To Talk About

Andrea Peterson | Think Progress | May 17, 2013

For nearly two decades U.S. law enforcement agencies have used counter-terrorism devices known as “stingrays” after the brand name of one variant or ISMI (international mobile subscriber identity)-catchers to track locations in domestic investigations, but information about the devices has been kept carefully under wraps from the public and sometimes even from judges authorizing its deployment. Last week an Arizona judge ruled that a tracking warrant used to deploy the device against Daniel David Rigmaiden, who is accused of collecting millions of dollars in rebates by submitting fraudulent tax returns, was valid despite the fact that the FBI failed to disclose they would be using a stingray or explain how the devices functioned in that warrant.

Much of what is known about their current use in the U.S. comes from a treasure trove of heavily redacted documents being dripped out month by month thanks to an Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and a handful of public cases like Rigmaiden that have been released publicly. Speaking at a Yale Information Society Project (ISP) on biometrics and location tracking earlier this year, EPIC Appellate Advocacy Counsel Alan Butler noted:

“The biggest problem I see with stingrays is the secrecy aspect — The fact that we don’t know how they are used, how exactly they work, what different techniques are available […] The accountability measures that would be in place for other warranted, more standard surveillance methods are really nonexistent here.”

One thing we do know, according to statement at the same conference from the American Civil Liberty Union’s (ACLU) Chris Soghoian, is that stingrays work by essentially exploiting a security vulnerability in cell service technology: Phones are constantly searching for the nearest signal so they know what tower to connect to when a call comes in, and phones will automatically connect to any tower identifying itself as having the strongest signal strength from your carrier.

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