biden – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Welcome To The Brave New World Of Vehicle Insurance Fraud Powered By Shallowfakes

from the I-can’t-believe-my-eyes dept

The harms of deepfakes have been evident for a while. Recent examples include a Biden deepfake designed to influence voters, and the rising use of AI “nudification” apps to produce deepfake nudes of students, often female minors. But alongside the application of sophisticated AI programs to produce deepfakes there are other, lower-tech scams, often known as “shallowfakes”. An article in the Guardian explains “shallowfakes can be created using conventional editing software on a phone and apps such as Photoshop.” This is leading to a “surge in fraud cases” according to the article, involving vehicle insurance claims:

[The insurer] Allianz, which includes the general insurance arm of LV=, said in one case an individual had a photo of his van posted on his social media page as part of his business and ended up having a claim pursued in his name for an accident that never took place.

LV= received images of his vehicle from the fraudsters that seemed to show the front bumper had been cracked in the alleged accident, along with a fake repair invoice for more than £1,000 [around $1,250].

The LV= fraud team investigated and found the photo was identical to the one on the social media page, except for the fact that the image had been doctored to show the fake damage.

The article mentions another example of how shallowfakes are being used. Fraudsters are finding vehicles regarded as total losses by insurers on sites selling them for salvage, and then placing a different license plate on the image using digital editing tools. False insurance claims are then made with the shallowfake vehicle image.

These low-tech images probably aren’t hard to spot, but moving from shallowfakes to deepfakes could make that more difficult. In any case, the rise of both kinds of manipulation underlines once more that we live increasingly in a world where images and videos can no longer be taken at face value.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky.

Filed Under: biden, cars, deepfakes, fraud, insurance, nudification, photoshop, shallowfakes
Companies: allianz

FCC Outlaws Sleazy And Misleading Cable TV Fees

from the false-advertising-by-another-name dept

Fri, Mar 22nd 2024 05:19am - Karl Bode

For decades, U.S. cable and broadband giants have advertised one price, then socked consumers with a much higher price once the bill actually arrives. This is usually accomplished via a bevy of bullshit below the line fees specifically built for the purpose.

Like “regulatory recovery fees,” which ambiguously blame government for prices hikes due to regulation that largely no longer exists. Or “broadcast TV surcharges,” which take some of the cost of programming and misleadingly bury it below the line. And then there’s stuff like Centurylink’s “Internet Cost Recovery Fee,” which the company’s website explains as such:

“This fee helps defray costs associated with building and maintaining CenturyLink’s High-Speed Internet broadband network, as well as the costs of expanding network capacity to support the continued increase in customers’ average broadband consumption.”

That is, of course, what your full bill is supposed to pay for.

For decades U.S. regulators turned the other cheek, treating this kind of stuff as little more than creative marketing. The Biden administration has taken a slightly harder stance against such “junk fees,” which are pretty much pervasive across all industries (especially banks, airlines, hotels, and telecom).

Case in point: the FCC last week released new rules for satellite and cable TV providers requiring that they advertise the “all in” cost of service, without playing obfuscation patty cake:

“These new rules require cable operators and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) providers to state the total cost of video programming service clearly and prominently, including broadcast retransmission consent, regional sports programming, and other programming-related fees, as a prominent single line item on subscribers’ bills and in promotional materials.”

It’s great to see, but the fact it took the agency thirty years to accomplish this kind of speaks for itself. Republican FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington voted against the proposal, which is par for the course given the tight alliance between shitty telecom and cable companies and the GOP.

A 2019 study by Consumer Reports found that 24 percent of your monthly cable bill is comprised of said bullshit fees, gleaning the cable sector $28 billion every year in additional revenue.

The cable industry is already pouting about the changes, threatening to sue, and complaining that the FCC is “micromanaging” a “highly competitive industry” and that it (an agency custom built to regulate telecom and cable) somehow lacks the authority to do its job. This industry is also mad about the agency’s plan for a “nutrition label for broadband” that requires transparency on pricing and service.

Granted one thing the FCC seems intent on not touching is the consolidation and monopoly problems that cause high prices in the first place. Entrenched broadband and cable providers still enjoy monopolies across vast swath of the country after working endlessly to undermine competition at every turn. The FCC can’t even admit this problem exists, much less propose meaningful policy solutions for it.

Instead of hard rhetoric against monopolization and mindless consolidation, or aggressive pro-competition policies (like overt support for community broadband projects) we tend to get performative regulatory theater: solutions that sort of nibble around the edges of the problem, often arrive decades late, and usually aren’t consistently enforced. But hey, it’s a start.

Filed Under: biden, competition, consolidation, consumer protection, fcc, fees, monopoly, tv

FCC Takes Aim At AI Deepfake Robocalls After Sloppy Fake Biden Hoax

from the fake-phony-fabulism dept

Tue, Feb 6th 2024 05:27am - Karl Bode

Last month you probably saw the story about how somebody used a (sloppy) deepfake of Joe Biden in a bid to try and trick voters into staying home during the Presidential Primary. It wasn’t particularly well done; nor was it clear it reached all that many people or had much of an actual impact.

But the threat clearly spooked folks at the FCC, who very quickly have announced new rules imposing harsher penalties on those that use AI-generated deep fake robocalls to engage in political ratfuckery. According to the FCC’s announcement, it’s proposing a new rule declaring such calls illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which it already uses to combat robocalls:

“AI-generated voice cloning and images are already sowing confusion by tricking consumers into thinking scams and frauds are legitimate. No matter what celebrity or politician you favor, or what your relationship is with your kin when they call for help, it is possible we could all be a target of these faked calls,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

“That’s why the FCC is taking steps to recognize this emerging technology as illegal under existing law, giving our partners at State Attorneys General offices across the country new tools they can use to crack down on these scams and protect consumers.”

Since the FCC already uses the TCPA to combat robocalls, it’s possible that the courts won’t have any problem with the agency’s efforts here. Then again it’s possible that the courts view this as a too big of a stretch for the agency, especially given the looming Supreme Court decisions designed to eliminate precisely this kind of independent, expertise-driven, regulatory interpretation of existing law.

That said, the FCC doesn’t have a particularly great track record of enforcement anyway, and like most U.S. regulatory agencies, consistently finds itself increasingly boxed in by court and congressional corruption.

What usually happens (you can see this play out with FCC robocall enforcement pretty clearly) is the FCC will try to pass some rules with the dwindling authority it has left after a generation of corporate legal assault. Then lobbying ensures whatever rules get passed get watered down further so they don’t apply to anybody but the dodgiest velour tracksuit wearing scammers operating out of strip malls.

The rules then aren’t consistently enforced anyway, and when enforcement does happen, the fines are usually relatively tiny and often not collected. That said, if somebody gets the bright idea to fool voters in some spectacular way, the agency will make an example of them (see: Wohl, Burkman), but this isn’t an agency that has the staff, courage, or funding to police this stuff at any scale. Decades of lobbying by the corporations it used to regulate have made absolutely sure of it.

Filed Under: ai, biden, fcc, politics, robocalls

After Years Of Stupid Games, The Senate Finally Gives The Biden FCC A Voting Majority. Now What?

from the only-took-3-years dept

Thu, Sep 7th 2023 01:39pm - Karl Bode

You might recall that Biden’s first nominee to the FCC, Gigi Sohn, found her nomination torn apart after an industry-funded smear campaign successfully derailed the nomination. Sohn is an extremely competent and popular reformer, but a homophobic lobbying campaign by media and telecom giants (Comcast, News Corp.) falsely framed Sohn as a radical extremist, eroding her support in a corrupt Senate.

Last May the Biden administration tried again with the nomination of Anna Gomez, a widely well-regarded former NTIA official and Sprint lobbyist generally viewed as a “safer,” less controversial choice–given her lack of any history of policy reform or (gasp) outspoken consumer advocacy.

Not too surprisingly, Gomez has sailed through the Senate confirmation process without a hitch, grabbing Senate approval on Thursday with a 55-43 vote. The comically overdue confirmation gives Biden an FCC voting majority for the first time in 7 years (for those playing along at home, that’s the better part of the last decade that the nation’s top media and telecom regulator has been sidelined by lobbying influence).

The question now becomes: what will the Biden FCC do with it?

Verizon, AT&T and Comcast all quickly applauded the nomination (something they generally don’t do for nominees they feel will threaten their power). Consumer activist groups like Fight For the Future were happy to see the FCC finally have a voting majority, but urged the FCC to act quickly on popular consumer rights issues like the restoration of net neutrality:

The FCC can’t afford to waste a single second. Now that the agency has a full slate of commissioners, they should move immediately to reverse Trump’s disastrous repeal of net neutrality and reinstate basic oversight of telecom monopolies. Restoring Title II net neutrality in full should be a given. But there is so much more that the FCC can and should be doing to close the digital divide and protect human rights and free expression.

There’s plenty an energetic and strategically competent Biden FCC could do. It could quickly restore net neutrality rules designed to keep regional monopolies from abusing their market power. It could restore media consolidation limits gleefully stripped away by the Trump FCC. It could challenge monopoly power by supporting community-owned broadband networks, cooperatives, and city-owned broadband utilities. It could finally pursue the long sought after wrist slap penalties against wireless companies for collecting and abusing your daily location data.

But outside of that last one, I think it’s probably wise to temper any enthusiasm.

Neither Gomez or existing FCC Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel or Geoffrey Starks will ever be mistaken for serious reformers. None of them have much (any) history when it comes to rocking the boat. They’re the kind of FCC nominees that can survive a corrupt Senate confirmation process. Namely, well regarded but disruption-averse professionals, extremely unlikely to piss of industry giants lest it compromise future career opportunities.

I suspect this FCC will forget completely about restoring media consolidation limits (they’ve yet to even mention it). I’d also suspect that while they will revisit net neutrality in some form (assuming they don’t run out of time given the looming Presidential election), I’d wager the proposal they come up with will be a bit hollow and performative, likely falling short of full Title II reclassification of ISPs as common carriers.

While it’s true she’s been limited by a lack of a voting majority, Rosenworcel’s tenure so far has been marked by well-intentioned but ultimately somewhat hollow policy initiatives. I’d expect any revisiting of net neutrality to follow suit. Something that sounds like a full restoration of the 2015 net neutrality rules, but lacking when it comes to the legal fine print.

The biggest problem with U.S. broadband is unchecked regional monopolization, limited competition, and the corruption that protects it. The Trump FCC was a mindless rubber stamp on this front. Democrats are often better on the issue, but not only has the Rosenworcel FCC shown no interest in directly attacking monopoly power, I’ve yet to even see any of them even mention the problem exists.

By and large, these kinds of telecom regulators like to issue ambiguous platitudes about their dedication to “bridging the digital divide,” but when it comes to directly confronting the regional monopolies responsible for high broadband prices, spotty coverage, slow speeds, obvious fraud and comically horrible customer service, they’re usually inclined to beat around the bush.

Federal leadership has been so lacking on broadband policy and consumer protection, most of the fights have long since shifted to the state and local level, where real reformers still actually exist. As the rightward lurching Supreme Court further erodes federal regulatory authority, I’d expect that trend to continue.

That’s not to say the Biden FCC can’t or won’t do good things. There’s a lot of work left to do fixing the FCC’s dreadful broadband maps as $42.5 billion in infrastructure bill broadband subsidies start to flow. There’s plenty of other everyday, non-controversial activities related to engineering reviews and spectrum management the FCC will continue to semi-competently conduct.

But when it comes to real broadband policy reform, tough consumer protection, or a meaningful assault on monopoly power, I really wouldn’t hold your breath. There was a reason the industry pulled out all the stops to undermine Sohn, and there’s a reason they didn’t engage in the same behavior with Gomez. That said, I’ve been wrong before (see: Tom Wheeler), and with any luck we’ll be surprised again.

Filed Under: anna gomez, biden, broadband, fcc, gigi sohn, jessica rosenworcel, location data, media consolidation, net neutrality

Biden Urges FCC To Police Bullshit Cable Fees, But It Can’t Because His Staffers Screwed Up The Gigi Sohn Nomination Process

from the regulatory-theater dept

Thu, Jun 29th 2023 01:26pm - Karl Bode

For years we’ve noted how cable companies routinely screw you over with all manner of bullshit fees. One Consumer Reports study found that roughly 25 percent of your cable bill is made up of completely nonsensical fees, designed to let companies advertise one rate, then sock you with a much higher bill. It’s estimated this false advertising nets the cable industry an extra $28 billion in additional revenue annually.

Generally speaking, as it is across the airline, hotel, and banking industries, federal and state government leaders are perfectly fine with this kind of fraud, provided companies are relatively clever about it. Ripping off U.S. consumers at scale is basically treated as little more than creative marketing.

Though last week, the Biden administration came out of nowhere with a formal press statement urging the FCC to crack down on bullshit cable fees; a welcome change of pace for a government that’s usually too afraid to directly criticize politically powerful telecom and media giants like Comcast:

Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under the leadership of Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, proposed a new rule that would require cable and satellite TV providers to give consumers the all-in price for the service they’re offering up front. Too often, these companies hide additional junk fees on customer bills disguised as “broadcast TV” or “regional sports” fees that in reality pay for no additional services. These fees really add up: according to one report, they increase customer bills by nearly 25% of the price of base service.

The problem: the FCC can’t actually do that, in part thanks to strategic bumbling by Biden staffers and advisors.

If you recall, the Biden administration was an historic nine months late in nominating popular reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC, giving the telecom industry and GOP ample runway to launch a multi-year long homophobic smear campaign that ultimately derailed her nomination. Biden’s team (and her would be future colleagues at the FCC) provided zero meaningful messaging support as the industry spread lies about Sohn’s track record and policy positions in the press.

From what I understand Biden personally supported Sohn, but his team showed none of the strategic urgency they showed in the rush appointment and subsequent promotion of FTC boss Lina Khan. Democratic staffers also failed to schedule Sohn confirmation votes with any urgency, and buckled repeatedly to bad faith Republican demands for additional, unnecessary show hearings.

As a result, we’re now several years into the Biden administration and the FCC still lacks the voting majority to do anything deemed even controversial by industry, including policing bullshit cable fees.

Biden’s safer replacement FCC nominee, Anna Gomez, may not be seated until late this year or early next, giving the agency very little time to implement any actual policy reform ahead of the next presidential election, at which point control of the agency could revert to Republican leadership that routinely coddles telecom monopolies and lobotomizes the key regulator tasked with overseeing them.

Even when the existing, relatively feckless FCC does act on issues like predatory fees (decades after the fact), the solution is always “transparency.” As in, they’ll push for rules requiring that cable and broadband companies be more transparent about how they’re ripping you off, but they won’t actually stop them from ripping you off, and often won’t implement policies bringing more competition to bear.

Actually stopping cable and broadband monopolies from ripping you off would teeter to closely into the realm of rate regulation, which has generally been ranked somewhere right below devil worship by US policymakers. But the problem is agencies like the FCC rarely embraces pro-competitive policies to drive market-based solutions either, so what you wind up getting is dumb regulatory theater.

It’s great the Biden administration is taking aim at fee-based industry fraud in public messaging, but the administration’s strategic incompetence related to the Sohn appointment still speaks volumes.

Filed Under: biden, broadband, broadcast tv fee, cable bill, cable fees, cable tv, fcc, fees, gigi sohn, regional sports fee

Biden Administration Makes It Clear Broadband Consumer Protection Has Never Been Much Of A Priority

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Fri, Mar 24th 2023 05:32am - Karl Bode

Earlier this month we noted how a successful, often homophobic smear campaign scuttled the nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC. The GOP and telecom sector, as usual, worked in close collaboration to spread all manner of lies about Sohn, including claims she was an unhinged radical that hated Hispanics, cops, puppies, and freedom.

But there was no shortage of blame to be had on the Democratic side as well.

Unlike the shock and awe Khan nomination and promotion, the Biden administration waited nine months to even nominate Sohn, giving industry ample runway to create its ultimately successful campaign. Maria Cantwell buckled to repeated GOP requests for unnecessary show hearings, used to push false claims about Sohn that the industry had seeded in the press via various nonprofits. Chuck Schumer failed to whip up votes. Senators Masto, Kelly, and Manchin all buckled to industry fear campaigns, preventing a swift 51 vote Senate confirmation.

And nobody in the Biden administration thought it was particularly important to provide any meaningful public messaging support as Sohn faced down a relentless, industry smear campaign, alone. The entire process from beginning to end was a hot, incompetent mess.

And from every indication, there’s also no real evidence that the Biden administration had a plan B in the wake of Sohn’s nomination falling apart. Weeks after the fact and the White House still hasn’t pulled Sohn’s name from consideration or proposed a replacement candidate:

In a note to financial types, former top FCC official Blair Levin, now a media analyst, said a growing list of people apparently interested in the open seat suggests it would be a fair assumption that the White House did not have a plan B. “It may be sometime before it selects a new nominee, further delaying the moment when the Democrats obtain an FCC majority,” Levin said.

Given this was the industry’s entire goal, I’m sure they’re pleased.

AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and News Corporation want to keep the nation’s top telecom and media regulator gridlocked at 2-2 commissioners, so it can’t take action on any issues deemed too controversial to industry, whether that’s restoring net neutrality, forcing broadband providers to be more transparent about pricing, or restoring media consolidation limits stripped away during the Trump era.

Whoever is chosen to replace Sohn will surely be more friendly to industry in a bid to avoid a repeat. Assuming that person is even seated, it won’t be until much later this year, at which point they’ll have very little time to implement any real reform before the next presidential election. The policies that will be prioritized probably won’t be the controversial or popular ones, like net neutrality.

I’m not sure who has been giving Biden broadband policy advice of late, but it’s pretty clear that for all of the administration’s talk about “antitrust reform” (which has included some great work on “right to repair”), a functioning FCC with a voting majority and competent broadband consumer protection has never actually been much of a priority.

Yes, the Biden administration has done good work on pushing for an infrastructure bill that will soon throw $45 billion at industry to address the digital divide. But most of that money will be going, as usual, to entrenched local monopolies that helped create the divide in the first place through relentless efforts to crush competition and stifle nearly all competent oversight.

And without a voting majority, the agency will have a steeper uphill climb when it comes to basic things like shoring up broadband mapping, or holding big ISPs accountable should they provide false broadband coverage data to the FCC. The current FCC says all the right things about that pesky “digital divide,” but its leaders are generally terrified to even mention that telecom monopolies exist, much less propose any meaningful strategy to undermine their power.

It seems clear that Biden’s advisors don’t really think the FCC’s role as consumer watchdog is important (they’ve shoveled a lot of the heavy lifting to the NTIA), or didn’t think fighting over the FCC’s consumer protection authority was worthwhile. And given the current DC myopic policy focus on Big Tech, having a functioning media and telecom regulator willing and able to hold the nation’s hugely unpopular telecom monopolies accountable has easily just… fallen to the cutting room floor.

There’s a reason that Americans pay some of the most expensive prices for mediocre broadband in the developed world. There’s a reason that 83 million Americans live under a broadband monopoly. And it’s in no small part thanks to a feckless, captured FCC, and politicians who don’t have the backbone to stand up to major campaign contributors bone-grafted to our intelligence gathering apparatus.

Filed Under: 5g, antitrust reform, biden, broadband, digital divide, fcc, fiber, gigabit, gigi sohn, high speed internet, jessica rosenworcel, monopoly, regulatory capture, telecom

Our Growing TikTok Moral Panic Still Isn’t Addressing The Actual Problem

from the moral-panics-are-just-so-hot-right-now dept

Wed, Mar 1st 2023 05:24am - Karl Bode

The Biden administration has given all federal agencies 30 days to ensure staffers do not have TikTok on any federal devices. All agency vendors are to adhere to the same rules within 90 days. It’s the latest evolution in a growing planetary moral panic that’s gotten well out ahead of its skis, resulting in often-performative solutions that don’t fix the actual problem.

The Biden administration memo comes at the same time as EU announced it would be banning all diplomats from having TikTok on their professional devices, with the UK being pressured to follow suit. Those responses come in the wake of numerous performative announcements that the app has been banned by numerous states and state-funded colleges.

Banning a Chinese-owned app from government employee devices isn’t a bad idea. The problem remains, as we’ve noted countless times, that this isn’t actually fixing the underlying issue. Namely, our repeated failures on consumer protection, our failure to meaningful regulate the unaccountable data broker market, and our corruption-fueled failure to pass even basic privacy legislation for the internet era.

To hear the TikTok hyperbolics tell it, they’re taking meaningful steps to protect consumer privacy and national security:

“The Biden-Harris Administration has invested heavily in defending our nation’s digital infrastructure and curbing foreign adversaries’ access to Americans’ data,” Chris DeRusha, federal chief information security officer, said. “This guidance is part of the Administration’s ongoing commitment to securing our digital infrastructure and protecting the American people’s security and privacy.”

This may surprise some folks, but you’re not actually protecting the American people’s security and privacy by hyperventilating about a single app.

Yes, TikTok plays fast and loose with consumer data. So does nearly every other foreign and domestic app and service on your phone, from apps that track and monetize your every waking movement in granular detail, to apps and services that casually traffic in your mental health specifics. And that’s before you get to the telecom industry, which has pioneered irresponsible collection and monetization of user info.

All of this data is fed into a massive and intentionally confusing data broker market that regulators have been generally disinterested in seriously policing, lest U.S. companies (gasp) lose money. We don’t want to pass a modern internet privacy law, or be tough on data brokers, app makers, OEMs, or telecoms, because rampant surveillance and data monetization is simply too lucrative.

There’s a lot of sound and fury being generated to distract everyone from that fact.

There are two general problems cited when it comes to TikTok. The first being that the data TikTok collects can be abused by the Chinese government. But here’s the thing: it’s trivially easy for Chinese, Iranian, Russian, or any other government intelligence to buy this same (and more!) data for very little money from the data broker industry we’ve routinely failed to meaningfully regulate.

The other claimed problem is that the Chinese government will use TikTok to fill U.S. kids heads with gibberish and propaganda. But not only is there no evidence that’s actually happening at scale, it’s a rich concern coming from a country so inundated in authoritarian propaganda (across AM Radio, Fox, Sinclair and the Internet) that residents increasingly engage in widespread domestic terrorism.

The U.S. made a very specific, very clear policy choice decades ago to prioritize wealth accumulation over consumer privacy, national security, and market health. The same policymakers freaking out about TikTok created the very regulatory environment TikTok exploits. And they don’t want to actually fix it because they don’t want to lose money (or have to do things like obtain pesky warrants).

So what we get instead is a big, dumb, performance.

But the problem isn’t exclusively TikTok. The problem is greed, corruption, and our multi-decade failures on consumer protection, privacy legislation, and corporate accountability. All protected by an increasingly lopsided court system specifically being cultivated to erode this sagging accountability even further.

Banning TikTok is like running into a burning house, dumping a cupful of water on a burning couch, then standing idly in the swirling smoke with a dumb look on your face insisting you’ve fixed the problem and that all worried house residents can go back to sleep.

Filed Under: ban tiktok, biden, china, chinese, national security, privacy, social media, surveillance, tiktok bans
Companies: tiktok

Biden Broadband Event Showcases Why U.S. Telecom Policy, Press Coverage Is So Broken

from the band-aid-on-a-mortal-wound dept

Fri, May 13th 2022 05:52am - Karl Bode

Earlier this week, the Biden administration announced a “new” broadband plan that wasn’t actually new. The rose garden event featured executives from twenty ISPs who all got a pat on the back in front of the cameras for voluntarily and temporarily participating in a Biden plan to provide a $30 discount off of the broadband bills of low-income Americans.

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is a temporary plan that provides 30offlow−incomebroadbandbillsusingalimitedpooloftaxpayermoney.Theplanisvoluntary,andparticipatingISPscanquitatanytime.It’sarevampofaprevious“EmergencyBroadbandBenefit”COVIDrecoveryplanthatwasextended(butreducedfrom30 off low-income broadband bills using a limited pool of taxpayer money. The plan is voluntary, and participating ISPs can quit at any time. It’s a revamp of a previous “Emergency Broadband Benefit” COVID recovery plan that was extended (but reduced from 30offlow−incomebroadbandbillsusingalimitedpooloftaxpayermoney.Theplanisvoluntary,andparticipatingISPscanquitatanytime.It’sarevampofaprevious“EmergencyBroadbandBenefit”COVIDrecoveryplanthatwasextended(butreducedfrom50 to $30) as part of the Biden broadband infrastructure bill.

To be clear it’s a good thing that low-income Americans get some temporary relief from high prices. But again, the Biden team seems completely unwilling to explain or address why U.S. broadband bills are so high in the first place. 20-40 million Americans lack access to broadband. 83 million live under a monopoly, resulting in high prices, spotty access, and historically terrible customer service.

The reality is that U.S. lawmakers and regulators, under both parties, have turned a blind eye as an essential utility was monopolized over 30 years. And when they do act, they routinely don’t target the thing causing the problem in the first place (Comcast, AT&T regional monopolies), they apply strange and convoluted band-aids, such as net neutrality or this temporary low-income broadband discount.

This was all nuance that was widely missed by the vast majority of news coverage on the Biden announcement. If you dug through the news coverage of the event, you literally could not find a single one that noted why U.S. broadband prices are so high in the first place. Broadband monopolies are often not and, instead, are replaced by a nebulous “digital divide” with no known cause.

This new Biden program doesn’t fix the U.S. broadband problem. It takes a wad of taxpayer cash, and gives it to ISPs (with a long history of misspending subsidies and who created the problem in the first place), who then pass the discount on to low-income Americans (hopefully, after they jump through numerous convoluted hoops). And again, ISPs can quit any time.

It’s also worth noting that several participating ISPs abused the plan when it was first announced to upsell struggling Americans to more expensive tiers. It’s also worth noting that several of the ISPs Biden held a press event with are busy trying to scuttle Biden’s belated nominee to the FCC, Gigi Sohn, an actual monopoly reformer Biden has yet to publicly protect from an ongoing telecom smear campaign.

Which is to say there’s some mixed messaging here. We care about low-income Americans, but not enough to publicly support an FCC nominee and reformer that could actually help them. We care about U.S. broadband, but not enough to accurately single out what’s really causing the problem. We care about the “digital divide,” but we don’t want to make the companies responsible for it mad.

The GOP adores telecom monopolies to a point where the two entities are indistinguishable.

The DNC often is notably better on the subject, but it also often likes to pretend that telecom monopolization doesn’t exist, or isn’t a problem. They talk endlessly about the “digital divide,” but they lack the political courage to acknowledge why it exists or genuinely do much about it (for example, try to find a single time either of the two existing Democratic FCC Commissioners clearly criticized monopolization specifically).

Biden did mention a lack of competition late in the event, but didn’t call out what causes that lack of competition (regional monopolization and the state/federal corruption that protects it). And the $42 billion we’re spending to expand broadband will help address some broadband coverage gaps, though there’s some big issues there as well (see this story on our crappy broadband maps, and this one on how states are trying to make sure this money goes largely to monopolies and not competitors).

So again, is a temporary $30 discount for poor people on broadband good? Yeah. But again it’s just a band-aid for a deeper problem we refuse to address. And we refuse to address it in large part because many of the monopolies causing the problem (Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Charter) are bone-grafted to both our intelligence gathering apparatus and our first responder networks. They’re part of the government.

As such, calling them out for predatory, monopolistic behavior would come with political and campaign contribution costs many lawmakers and policymakers aren’t willing to incur. As a result, in very American fashion, we often focus on treating the symptoms, but not the disease.

Filed Under: biden, broadband, digital divide, dnc, fcc, gop, high speed internet, internet access, monopolies, telecom

Fraternal Order Of Police Helps Boost Telecom Smear Campaign Against FCC Nominee Gigi Sohn

from the grotesque-puppetry dept

Fri, May 6th 2022 06:32am - Karl Bode

We’d already noted how telecom and media giants are engaged in a last ditch attempt over the next few weeks to derail Biden’s nomination to the FCC, Gigi Sohn. Sohn is widely admired by folks on both sides of the aisle, and is eminently qualified on stuff like expanding access to affordable broadband, media consolidation, consumer protection, privacy, and media diversity.

The broad consensus is that Sohn is hugely qualified and fair. But she’s also a real reformer, an anti-monopolist, and a staunch opponent of mindless media consolidation. That’s something AT&T, Verizon, Charter, and Comcast, which were coddled throughout the Trump era, would very much like to avoid.

Since they can’t attack her actual record, telecom and media giants have been engaged in an absolutely grotesque smear campaign involving getting various groups to falsely accuse Sohn of disliking minorities, hating rural America, or trying to censor conservatives. With the entire GOP in loyal lockstep (as is usually the case), telecom’s now focused on flipping the votes of Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona, Catherine Cortez Mastro of Nevada, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia to kill Sohn’s nomination dead.

Joining that campaign is the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). For the last six months, FOP has been spewing all manner of gibberish complaints about Sohn, including the idea that her nomination should be opposed because she (gasp) supports encryption. I’d wager much of this being coordinated by AT&T, which has a long history with precisely this kind of greasy shit and has an existing partnership with FOP.

Now the FOP has come out with a push poll, whose function is to accuse Sohn of hating the police. Basically, the FOP’s not-at-all-scientific poll found that if you tell people who had no idea who Sohn is that she is “anti-police,” they’ll be less likely to support Sohn:

Of course Sohn isn’t “anti-police” and doesn’t actually support “defunding the police.” Like many, she has supported police reform (itself not at all a radical or unpopular position), such as offloading some more sensitive social and mental health outreach to social workers. The FOP’s “research” into what tweets Sohn liked on this front is about as flimsy and performative as it comes.

Granted it didn’t take long for the bunk claim that Sohn is “anti-police” to be circulated by right wing gibberish merchants like Phil Kerpen (he played a role in those fake comments supporting the telecom industry attack on net neutrality), who thought the FOP’s completely unscientific findings were “interesting”:

Again, telecom and media giants don’t oppose Sohn because she likes tweets advocating for police reform (which itself isn’t disqualifying anyway). They oppose Sohn because she actively wants to tackle the vast harms created by things like telecom monopolization, limited broadband competition, privacy abuses, mindless media consolidation, and other issues in the telecom space.

Sohn’s genuinely popular across both sides of the aisle and her record is stellar. Since they can’t attack her on the merits, telecom is using proxy organizations to spread harmful gibberish in a bid to either flip or provide flimsy justification for the votes of Senators Kelly, Cortez Mastro, or Manchin.

It’s a grotesque campaign, but it’s how DC works. And when the press can be bothered to stop talking about Elon Musk long enough to cover the story, they cover it with headlines like this one, that amplify the false claims, and at no point make it clear this is all manufactured controversy:

I’ve been watching these kinds of bad faith “astroturf” campaigns from telecom (which of course are common in most other industries) for decades, and the press, public, and policymakers never seem to get any more savvy at identifying or combating them.

The Biden team isn’t faultless here either. It took the Biden administration nine months to even nominate Sohn, giving the telecom industry (frightened by the rush promotion of Lina Khan at the FTC) ample time to galvanize opposition. Team Biden also hasn’t done anything to defend Sohn publicly, or apply any meaningful pressure on the Senate confirmation voting process. Nor have Sohn’s future FCC colleagues voiced any public support, despite the shamelessness of the attacks.

Which, in turn, is fairly reflective of how the federal government doesn’t really take stuff like telecom monopolization and telecom consolidation seriously, especially in an era where “big tech” has sucked all the oxygen out of the DC policy room. And again, this is all occurring in an era when DC pretends to be interested in “bipartisan antitrust reform,” revealing the hollowness of the gambit.

Filed Under: astroturf, biden, broadband, consumer protection, defund the police, fraternal order of police, gigi sohn, media consolidation, monopolies, police reform, telecom

On Its 12th Anniversary, It’s Clear The 2010 U.S. ‘Broadband Plan’ Was A Colossal Dud

from the doomed-to-repeat-it dept

Today is the 12th anniversary of the release FCC’s National Broadband Plan (NBP).

In March of 2010, the FCC responded to Congress’s direction to develop a plan for broadband with the intent to ensure every American has “access to broadband capability.” This proposal was assembled with input across 36 public workshops, 31 public notices, 9 public hearings, and approximately 23,000 comments from more than 700 parties.

The NBP was ambitious, and first among its six stated objectives was the metric that, “at least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second.”

As I have written about previously, both on day 3500 and again on day 3900 of the plan, the agency’s objectives for broadband deployment remain unfilled to this day. In fact, it is arguable that the FCC has been unable to achieve any of the stated objectives during the 4383 days since the plan was launched.

The Biden administration recently suggested some may not be achieved until 2030. You don’t take my word for it, in a process scheduled to run until September, the FCC celebrated the anniversary of the NBP last year by getting “A Running Start on New Broadband Maps.” 12 years later and the agency still lacks accurate data on broadband availability. Yes, really.

There are a range of theories about why the National Broadband Plan has been such a colossal policy disaster. Some of these theories involve the back and forth in ideology of the commission across three presidential administrations. Others have suggested the plan was far too ambitious to be successful. There’s also the traditional criticism of the FCC using the “capture thesis” that the FCC is too cozy with the cable companies and ISP’s it is charged with regulating.

I offer an alternative theory. The FCC’s loss of the initial net neutrality case, Comcast v. FCC derailed the implementation of the National Broadband Plan just 21 days after it was released. In the immediate aftermath of the Comcast decision, the FCC spent months trying to find a new “third way” to way to assert regulatory authority to the internet. But again, you don’t have to take my word for it, this “hostage video” from then Chairman Julius Genachowski speaks even louder than the opinion of the FCC’s General Counsel at the time.

As the FCC struggled to recover from the loss in Comcast, its “third way” approach would lead to another jurisdictional loss in Verizon v. FCC in 2014. By the time the FCC made the choice to apply Title II regulation in 2015, the mandates of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan were lost to the five years of the fight over the agency’s authority. The lengthy dispute derailed any significant effort by the FCC to implement the plan in way to make its goals achievable, a reality that continues today.

With the nomination of Gigi Sohn stalled in the Senate, and lacking accurate data on the local availability of broadband, the FCC is now trying to accelerate the process for developing a new map ahead of spending the $46 billion allocated for broadband in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.

Notably, having accurate information on where to spend these funds becomes critically important, as the FCC’s use of grants to supplement commercial broadband infrastructure remains an expensive proposition, with cost per connections running as high as $3631 each. With the data collection scheduled to be completed in September, even if this map is better than its predecessors, we’re still many months out from meaningful action to reach metrics on objectives, including universal access, that were intended to be achieved by March of 2020.

So, for now, Happy Anniversary. I will see you again next year.

Christopher Terry is an assistant professor of media law in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota and a research fellow for the Center for Quantum Networks.

Filed Under: biden, broadband, competition, corruption, data, fcc, internet, julius genachowski