geoffrey starks – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Finally Close To Having A Voting Majority, Will The Biden FCC Actually Restore Net Neutrality?

from the here-we-go-again dept

Last month we noted how the country’s top telecom and media regulator has been under the bootheel of industry for the better part of seven years, and nobody much seems to care.

For four years under Trump the agency was a glorified rubber stamp to industry interests. Telecom and media giants then lobbied Congress into gridlock for two years under Biden to ensure Democrats couldn’t fill vacant commissioner seats, keeping the agency without a voting majority, unable to do pretty much anything deemed controversial by industry (like restoring net neutrality).

After the industry-backed derailing of the Gigi Sohn nomination set a new high water mark for sleazy Congressional corruption, the Biden administration last May decided to try again by nominating Anna Gomez, a former NTIA official and Sprint lobbyist widely viewed as a safer and less “controversial” (read: she historically hasn’t been much of a consumer advocate or reformer) candidate.

Not too surprisingly, Gomez’s confirmation is moving through Congress more quickly than Sohn’s. Despite some performative outrage by Ted Cruz pretending Gomez is the type of nominee who’ll embrace “regulatory overreach” (whatever that means for an agency that hasn’t shown political courage for the better part of a decade), Gomez’s nomination was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee and now heads to a full Senate vote:

Democrats hold a 14-13 majority on the Senate Commerce Committee. Gomez’s nomination was passed without a full roll call, but nine Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), asked to be recorded as a “no” on Gomez’s nomination.

Republicans are just being obstructionist here, as usual. There’s absolutely nothing controversial about Gomez. There wasn’t actually anything controversial about Sohn either; Republicans and the telecom industry just didn’t want the FCC under Biden to function, so they made up an entirely bogus narrative about how Sohn was a radical cop hater, then seeded it across right wing media with great success.

But if you’ll recall, Sohn’s nomination was scuttled not just by Republicans (who routinely vote in lockstep with the interests of AT&T and Comcast on nearly every issue), but thanks to three key Democratic Senators (Joe Manchin (WV), Mark Kelly (AZ), and Catherine Cortez Masto (NV)) who, worried about being vulnerable politically in swing state midterms, parroted industry’s false concerns that Sohn (a hugely popular reformer) was some sort of extremist.

Said Democrats are far more likely to sign off on Gomez, whose positions on key public interest issues are more of a black box. That said, the kind of nominees that can survive a corrupt congressional nomination process generally aren’t the kind of “rock the boat” types you actually need if you’re looking to implement reform on issues like broadband consumer protection or media consolidation.

The result, as you can pretty clearly see with existing FCC commissioners from both parties, are officials who talk a lot about their ambiguous dedication to “bridging the digital divide,” but generally are too worried about future career prospects to meaningfully challenge the giant telecom monopolies responsible for a large segment of the industry’s biggest problems.

Still, Gomez says she supports reverting the Trump era dismantling of net neutrality. And from my conversation with insiders, the Biden administration remains keen on restoring the rules. But with limited time left in Biden’s first term, and an agency staffed with the kind of folks not known for disrupting the status quo, a restoration of well-crafted net neutrality protections remains something I’ll have to see to believe.

Net neutrality rules were flawed but important guidelines aimed at keeping telecom monopolies from abusing their market power to harm competition and consumers. Despite a lot of misinformed people claiming that “the repeal must not have mattered because the internet still works!”, it mattered. It gutted the FCC’s already flimsy consumer protection authority generally, and the only reason big ISPs haven’t behaved worse in the years’ since is because numerous states passed their own net neutrality protections.

So restoring net neutrality, and specifically once again reclassifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II, remains important from a general consumer protection perspective.

But at this point I think the public and policy worlds are so burned out on the net neutrality debate after 20 years, it makes sense to focus most telecom policy energy and messaging on the real underlying cause of shitty, expensive broadband: telecom monopolization and the corruption that protects it. That messaging also needs to focus on what’s actually working, namely the various community-backed alternatives directly taking aim at concentrated monopoly power.

But I don’t get any real sense the Rosenworcel FCC, Gomez or not, actually has the political courage to meaningfully wage that particular fight. And with a corrupt Congress built to ensure that popular reformers can’t survive the regulatory nomination process, it’s doubtful it’s going to anytime soon.

Filed Under: anna gomez, broadband, consumer protection, digital divide, fcc, geoffrey starks, gigi sohn, high speed internet, jessica rosenworcel, monopolies, net neutrality, telecom

FCC Launches New Broadband Privacy ‘Task Force’ So It Can Pretend It Hasn’t Become Useless On Consumer Protection

from the seems-a-bit-late dept

Wed, Jun 28th 2023 01:37pm - Karl Bode

We just got done noting how the FCC has spent most of the last decade under the bootheel of the telecom lobby, and in an era where all DC policy is fixated on “big tech,” (often for very good reasons) nobody much seems to care or have noticed. For four years under Trump, the FCC was little more than a rubber stamp, approving every terrible idea the industry had.

Under Biden, telecom lobbyists and the GOP then worked in unison to prevent the agency from being staffed (see the successful coordinated smear campaign against FCC nominee Gigi Sohn) or having a voting majority. Not that the agency’s Democrats — who have a weird aversion to even acknowledging the US broadband monopoly problem — would put that authority to use anyway.

Keenly aware they’re increasingly viewed as feckless on consumer protection, the FCC under Jessica Rosenworcel put on a bit of a performative show last week. One, by announcing a hollow “investigation” into broadband usage caps (as if data hadn’t made it clear for decades such caps are a technically pointless way monopolies ruthlessly exploit of limited competition). I’ll have another post on that.

And two, by launching a new “privacy task force” the FCC claims will belatedly start protecting consumer privacy and policing corporate malfeasance. The announcement is rather ambiguous and contains zero meaningful insight into what this new committee might actually do given its ongoing 2-2 voting gridlock caused by industry lobbying:

“We live in an era of always-on connectivity. Connection is no longer just convenient. It fuels every aspect of modern civic and commercial life. To address the security challenges of this reality head-on, we must protect consumers’ information, ensure data security, and require cyber vigilance from every participant in our communications networks,” said Chairwoman Rosenworcel. “This team of FCC experts will lead our efforts to protect consumer privacy.”

If you’ve been asleep on telecom privacy issues, don’t worry, so has the FCC. For decades the U.S. telecom industry has been plagued by major SIM hijacking and identity theft scandals, location data scandals, domestic surveillance scandals, major unfixed wireless vulnerabilities, and repeated, avoidable hacks (like T-Mobile being hacked eight times in just fives years).

But the problem hasn’t been a lack of meeting minutes. The problem has been a steady parade of corruption at the hands of telecom lobbyists looking to lobotomize all oversight of some of the least liked corporations in U.S. history (looking at you, AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon).

In 2017 the Wheeler FCC tried to pass basic broadband privacy laws that at least required that telecoms be transparent about what data they collect. That effort was quickly crushed by telecom lobbyists, the GOP, and a corrupt Senate wielding the CRA. In the years since, the FCC’s response to endless privacy scandals has been a rotating crop of half-assery, uncollected fines, and bureaucratic gibberish.

Occasionally, the FCC at least makes a half-assed effort to appear like it’s doing something useful on consumer protection. Like last January, when the agency finally proposed (in 2023!) requirements that telecom providers actually inform consumers on a timely basis when their data is compromised.

Of course because the Biden FCC lacks a necessary 3-2 voting majority to do anything (again thanks to the telecom industry’s political ratfucking of Gigi Sohn) few policies with actual teeth emerge. For example, the FCC can’t actually implement the timely disclosure requirements above without said voting majority. Nor can it collect on the location data abuse fines it tried to hit carriers with years ago.

As the GOP and telecom industry worked in unison to wage a homophobic smear campaign against Gigi Sohn over the last year, neither of her would-be Democratic colleagues, Jessica Rosenworcel or Geoffrey Starks, could be bothered to issue a single solitary peep of meaningful support. Either because they didn’t agree with Sohn’s reformist views, or they lacked the political backbone to wade into the fray.

Most of the current FCC’s consumer protection actions are pantomime for appearance’s sake. This isn’t an agency that’s been willing to stand up to giant telecom monopolies on any substance of note since the net neutrality fracas, and you saw how that turned out.

While the agency does perform essential technical functions on spectrum and engineering issues, its function as a meaningful consumer protection watchdog has been dead as a doornail for a decade due to corruption. At this point we’re just pretending otherwise.

In response, much of the onus to consumer protection has shifted to a shoddy patchwork of state AGs who may or may not actually have the resources for the job. That, in turn, results in some patchy state privacy laws of inconsistent quality, and a ton of corrupt states with zero meaningful consumer protection standards whatsoever. Again, all by telecom and media industry design.

An ambiguous “task force” probably isn’t going to meaningfully address the underlying rot on privacy and consumer protection accountability, which is soon to get worse courtesy of several looming Supreme Court rulings aimed at undermining federal regulatory authority even further.

At this point, the federal consumer protection movement desperately needs less hollow bureaucracy and more fierce reformers and fighters with political courage. But as the Gigi Sohn fracas demonstrates, it’s abundantly clear what happens to those kinds of candidates when they attempt to run the nomination gantlet.

Filed Under: broadband, consumer protection, fcc, geoffrey starks, gigi sohn, high speed internet, jessica rosenworcel, privacy, security, sim hijacking, ss7 flaw, telecom

Telecom Lobbyists Have Had The FCC Under Their Boot Heel For 7 Straight Years And Nobody Much Seems To Care

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

Fri, Jun 2nd 2023 05:27am - Karl Bode

For four years under the Trump administration, the FCC was little more than a mindless rubber stamp, stripping away media consolidation rules, gutting net neutrality, and approving competition-eroding telecom mergers (often without even reading the deal details).

Things were supposed to be slightly better under the Biden FCC. But an inexplicable eight month delay in staffing the agency by the White House, followed by a grotesque smear campaign against the belated nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn, has left the agency without a voting majority two and a half years into Biden’s first term, leaving it incapable of implementing meaningful reform.

Hoping to have better luck after Sohn’s derailed nomination, Biden recently selected someone arguably safer for the spot: Anna Gomez. Gomez is generally well liked and has experience in both industry (lobbying for Sprint) and government (the FCC, NTIA), but her policy positions are a black box, and she’s generally not seen as somebody eager to challenge telecom and media giants.

Congress, for its part, continues to make it very clear their interest in telecom consumer protection is muted at best. Gomez isn’t expected to even see a Congressional hearing before the fall, ensuring she’s not seated until the tail end of 2023 or early 2024:

In a note for New Street Research on Monday (registration required), analyst Blair Levin said it was “unlikely there will be a hearing before the fall,” pushing a potential Democratic majority at the FCC until late 2023.

“While we expect a Democratic majority to quickly move forward with a process to adopt an order like the 2015 Open Internet Order (classifying ISPs as Title II carriers), it will take a while and may not be done before the 2024 election,” added Levin.

While the telecom industry seems to approve of Gomez, they still might try to obstruct or delay her appointment, ensuring the Biden administration has as little time as possible to implement key and popular reforms, like the restoration of net neutrality. Telecom and media giants want to keep the FCC without a voting majority until the next presidential election for what should be obvious reasons.

But this still assumes that even with a voting majority, the Biden FCC has the political backbone to wade into policies that seriously challenge telecom and media giants. I’ve seen no indication current FCC staffers much care about the bipartisan media consolidation limits stripped away under Trump. Nor has there been much urgency to restore the FCC’s broader consumer protection authority.

And while Democratic FCC Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks talk a good game about bridging the “digital divide” and addressing the “homework gap” (a lack of affordable broadband for kids), they generally lack the courage to even identify that concentrated monopoly power is the primary reason US broadband is spotty, slow, and expensive. It’s a political risk to do so.

It doesn’t get much attention in the Big Tech era, but the telecom’s lobbying gambit here has proven to be a masterful one. They’ve effectively sidelined the nation’s top media and telecom regulator for 7 (what will ultimately be 8) years. And because telecom and media policy isn’t deemed that interesting in the big tech “censorship” era, it’s generally seen only passing press attention.

If I’m a telecom lobbyist, I’m positively thrilled that I’ve sidelined regulators for the better part of the decade. But this attack on federal regulatory power (soon to be worse thanks to Supreme Court Chevron deference decision) has a counter pendulum: it shifts the fight to the state and local level where it may be more difficult for telecom lobbyists to manage.

In broadband, for example, corrupt federal incompetence at policing monopoly power has resulted in towns and cities all over the country taking the matter into their own hands and building better, faster, cheaper, fiber networks. Networks often directly owned by locals with an eye on competitive open access. All looking to enjoy a massive infusion of federal funds thanks to COVID relief and infrastructure bills.

Lobbyists may find it easy to corrupt Congress and derail federal top down solutions to monopoly power, but fighting every pissed off town and city in the country simultaneously as they work to directly shove a stick into the eye of telecom monopolization will prove to be another fight entirely.

With a 50 year assault on the regulatory state (read: even semi-competent federal government oversight of corporations) approaching the end game thanks to the Supreme Court, all fights are now local brawls. Anybody interested in reform will have to fight block by block and work outward. For lumbering, unpopular corporate giants, I’m not sure that’s a battle that will prove to be so easily won.

Filed Under: anna gomez, broadband, geoffrey starks, high speed internet, jessica rosenworcel, monopoly, net neutrality, telecom