talking points – Techdirt (original) (raw)

The Best People: White House Emailed Talking Points Meant For Surrogates To Dems, Tried To Recall Email Afterwards

from the heads-up-everyone dept

At the time of this writing, I’ll go ahead and assume that anyone reading this is now fully immersed in Ukraine-Call-Gate or whatever we’re calling this potentially impeachment-inducing scandal Donald Trump has managed to build for himself. What started as a murky story surrounding the administration flatly ignoring the law in handling a mysterious whistle-blower complaint has since been clarified in the extreme. What happened essentially is that the whistle-blower raised alarms over several occurrences, one of which was a call that occurred between Trump and the recently elected Ukrainian President in which Trump reportedly pushed his counterpart to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of his potential 2020 rival. Then, for reasons that are beyond me, Trump released an unredacted “rough” transcript of the call, which demonstrates that he did that very thing. You’re going to hear a great deal of obfuscation over the next days and weeks about what the transcript shows. Go read it for yourself. Trump asked Ukraine, while withholding aid money at the time, to investigate the Bidens.

In the wake of the outrage over the transcript, the White House obviously went into damage control. That’s to be expected. As part of any scandal, talking points are developed for surrogates to use when talking on any of the insanely stupid 24 hour news channels. That’s also to be expected. But once those talking points are in written format, it’s not customary to send them out to the opposing party’s Congressional members.

The White House on Wednesday sent out talking points on how to spin the release of a summary of President Trump’s phone call to his counterpart in Ukraine — but emailed them to House Democrats, apparently by mistake.

Here’s the goods, should you want to see them for yourself.

Now, look, I’ve made this mistake in my own professional life. That said, I’m not one of the “very best people” working for a White House embroiled in a full on scandal of its own making, so there’s that. When you’re trying to sow confusion and intrigue around what appears for all the world to be a really simple example of abuse of Presidential power, you really have to be careful about who is in that “To:” field.

And, even when I have made this mistake, I was smart enough not to frantically send out one of those useless “recall email” requests to those very same rivals I had accidentally emailed.

Source says the White House just sent a follow-up to “recall” the email to House Democrats containing talking points…

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) September 25, 2019

Now, I know some of you are thinking that this really isn’t a laughing matter. And you’re right, but you’re also wrong, because this is fucking hilarious. One is forced to imagine Stephen Miller himself furiously sending out recall requests to Nancy Pelosi having just realized what he’s done.

Will this inadvertent transparency matter? Probably not. If you’re the sort that spends any calories watching cable news, this will all probably fly right over your head. Meanwhile, partisanship has so infested Washington that one of the truest things Donald Trump has ever said is probably that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue without consequence. So at least we can have a laugh at the very best people’s use of email, instead.

Filed Under: donald trump, hunter biden, impeachment, nancy pelosi, recall, talking points, transcript, ukraine, white house

That Time Telco Lobbyists Sent Me All Their Talking Points About Trying To Shift The Blame To Internet Companies

from the oops dept

It’s not every day that big telco lobbyists email me their internal documents about how they’re going to try to shift all the negative press about themselves and try to flip it onto internet companies. But it did happen yesterday. In what was clearly a mistake a top exec at the telco’s largest lobbying organization, USTelecom, emailed a 12 page document of talking points yesterday, asking the recipients to “review the document for accuracy and other thoughts” in order to help USTelecom President Jonathan Spalter for when he goes on C-SPAN next week. I found it a bit odd that I would be on the distribution list for such an email — especially when 13 of the 15 recipients of the email were US Telecom employees. And me. The one other non-US Telecom person works at a firm that provides “subject matter experts” and “in-depth legal analysis.”

The talking points are not all that surprising, if you’re at all familiar with the telco industry, so there aren’t really any huge smoking guns here, but they do cover a huge range of issues, from net neutrality, competition, privacy, cybersecurity, and more. Amusingly, on the net neutrality front, there’s a section on “Verizon Throttling Fire Responders.” Tragically, that appears to be one of the few sections in the document that they hadn’t yet filled in yet — perhaps because the industry still doesn’t have a good response to Verizon throttling fire fighters in California as they were battling wildfires.

One thing that’s clear, however, is that the big telcos really want to play up the recent attacks on social media companies (“edge providers,” as they like to say), and throughout the document there are statements about taking advantage of the current political attacks on those companies. For example, in the “Privacy” section, the talking points for Salter appear to be for him to try to pivot to making it about Facebook and Google as quickly as possible, saying they are the bigger risks:

Privacy

MESSAGE: Here is the modern reality of consumer protection: the greatest risks are posed by companies on the internet?s edge. Privacy is a shared responsibility — and the burdens and obligations can not rest solely with ISPs and must be applied equally across the internet ecosystem.

* The increased scrutiny of Facebook and other edge provides offer a significant opportunity for Congress to implement clear and consistent rules that apply equally to all companies in the internet ecosystem. ?And when they begin the process of establishing best practices for privacy, they will need to look no further than broadband providers. * For years, our members have embraced strong consumer privacy policies, because they understand the success of any digital business depends on earning their customers? trust. * Consumers and companies alike deserve one set of protections and rules of the road. This is the best way to ensure consumer protection while also providing the necessary flexibility for a competitive and innovative marketplace.

Let’s just say that’s laughable. Google and Facebook may be no great shakes on privacy, but the telcos are far, far worse. First of all, they have much greater visibility into everything that you do, because it all goes through their pipes. You can avoid Google and Facebook if you want. Not so much your ISP. Second, these companies have terrible, terrible histories when it comes to privacy issues, much worse than Google and Facebook.

Telcos have historically sucked up all your clickstream data and sold it to databrokers, while pretending it was no big deal. The telcos have regularly used incredibly sneaky and intrusive spying practices (way beyond anything Google and Facebook have done) including deep packet inspection and undeletable supercookies. And who can forget when the telcos wanted to sell you back your privacy, and raise your subscriber fees $30/month if you didn’t want them to snoop on all your internet activity? And who can forget that it was just weeks ago that Verizon launched a VPN without any privacy policy at all?

And let’s not forget their super cozy relationship with the NSA. After the Snowden leaks five years ago, the internet companies all were quick to highlight what they were doing to prevent the NSA from snooping on you. They revealed long-hidden lawsuits fighting back against the NSA. They pushed for greater transparency and legal reform, they published transparency reports… all while the telcos went silent (and when they finally — years later — were pressured into releasing transparency reports, those reports left out key details on surveillance support). That’s because it was shown that they were extra cozy with the NSA, even giving them full access to their equipment. Section 702 “upstream” collection involves the NSA directly tapping into telco backbone connections and sniffing through everything. We only found about all of this because an AT&T technician literally walked into EFF’s offices one day and spilled the details (later confirmed with Snowden documents). And rather than admit to helping the government violate the 4th Amendment, the telcos ran to Congress to get guaranteed retroactive immunity for supplying warrantless wiretaps.

So, sure, the privacy failings of Google and Facebook are worth pointing out and discussing. But they’re child’s play compared to the telcos. For the telcos to pretend that they are the ones who “embraced strong consumer privacy policies” is laughable. This isn’t a talking point. It’s pure propaganda.

There’s a brief section later in the document, suggesting that they play up Trump now fighting with Google, and suggest that’s a good point to drop in the “same rules for edge” providers meaningless argument:

Trump/Google Drama

People have spent years clamoring for ISP net neutrality. We need same rules of the road for edge.

I’m sure that sounds good to whoever came up with it way back when, but as people have explained for the better part of a decade, it makes no sense at all. Access providers and edge providers provide very different types of services, and “the same rules” don’t make any sense at all. The telcos and the folks at US Telecom know this. They only bring this up because they think the viewing audience is stupid and will nod along with “same rules for everyone.” But, in reality, they know that what they are advocating for is basically handicapping internet companies.

On net neutrality there’s the usual nonsense, falsely claiming that they “strongly support net neutrality” even as they immediately cheer on the FCC order that literally wiped out net neutrality:

MESSAGE: Our nation?s broadband providers strongly support net neutrality?without 1930?s-era regulations?and with consumer protections that are consistently applied across the entire internet ecosystem.

This is blatantly untrue. The telcos fought multiple earlier attempts to enforce net neutrality that did not use “1930’s era regulations.” What happened was that Verizon’s lawsuit over earlier rules (which did not rely on those regulations) resulted in the court effectively saying “to have net neutrality, you have to use those rules.” So, we would have had net neutrality without those 1930s-era regulations if US Telecom and its members hadn’t sued over the older rules.

Not surprisingly, they also want to push the silly argument that just because they didn’t immediately make the internet turn to shit the day after the FCC repealed the rules, it proves that we didn’t need the rules (I will again remind you right here — for no particular reason — that the section on how to respond to Verizon violating those old net neutrality rules in throttling the fire department’s wireless connection… is left blank in the document).

Since the FCC?s Restoring Internet Freedom Order, the internet as we know it is still thriving, growing, open and continues to spin on its axis. The predictions that ISPs would engage in anti-competitive throttling, blocking, and prioritization, have not happened.

Again, the telcos aren’t going to rush out bad practices all at once — especially not while the repeal of the rules is still in court. But, again, it should be noted that during a previous fight over these rules, in court, Verizon’s lawyer flat out admitted that without these rules, the company had every intention of throttling traffic.

And, of course, the telcos strategy when the questioning gets tough on net neutrality is to try to do this judo move and attack the big internet companies instead:

It?s ironic?but not unexpected?that the companies which have become the internet?s most powerful gatekeepers are fighting for an open internet that exempts them from the very rules for which they are advocating.

First off, this is not ironic. Second, it’s not accurate. Google and Facebook are hardly the most powerful “gatekeepers.” Nor are they the ones pushing for open internet rules. That’s been left mainly to smaller internet companies who can’t get into bed with the telcos like Google and Facebook are able to do. Third, the whole idea that the rules are somehow different for them makes no sense. These rules are about providing access to the internet. There is no “net neutrality” for edge providers that makes any sense.

Not surprisingly, the telcos are freaked the fuck out about state regulators stepping in to reimpose net neutrality rules. And, on this, I don’t blame them. Well, no, that’s not correct, I totally blame them. I blame them for pushing the FCC to drop the federal rules opening up this vacuum into which the states are now stepping. I agree that having the states take this on is a bad idea that will lead to a mess of different rules across the country, but, hey maybe the telco lobbyists should have thought of that before asking the FCC to kill off these wildly popular rules that had a very light touch. But, still, they’ve got their new talking points and they’re sticking to ’em:

* Broadband is and will continue to be regulated at the federal level * Precedent at the FCC, and in the courts, have recognized the dangers of individual state mandates and have embraced state preemption to avoid piecemeal approaches to internet regulation. * [Pending passage] The regulations signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown put short-term political gain ahead of long-term economic development and growth of California?s internet economy.

Well, no. Broadband has long been regulated at the state and local level thanks to public utility commissions, local franchise laws and more. And, hey, you had broadband regulated at the federal level under the 2015 open internet order, which included state pre-emption but you gave that up when Ajit Pai repealed it and gave up the state pre-emption bit when he took the FCC out of the broadband regulation game.

Ooops. Maybe you jokers should have thought of that before.

As for the California bill — what?!? Long term economic development in California especially depends on a free and open internet — the kind where Verizion, AT&T and your other members are unable to kill new startups with excessive tolls and fees, not to mention limited services.

There are then some talking points about just how painfully expensive it is for the telcos to serve rural residents — which no one denies. But, it’s pretty funny to watch these massive telcos, with billions in profits and a long history of squandering government subsidies use these talking points to talk about why they just need more cash from the government:

* Delivering broadband to sparsely populated rural areas is a costly and challenging endeavor that requires significant upfront investment. * That is why federal support is essential for network providers to meet deployment challenges in high cost areas.

Oh, but not only do they want cash from the government, they most certainly DO NOT want that cash to go to programs that would create competition in the marketplace. Oh no.

* Federal investment must be used to fill the gaps in truly unserved areas, not create false market competition by allowing electric utilities with established monopolies to extend their market power over this already fragile market. Together, we should be laser-focused on serving the unserved and maximizing the federal support to do it, while avoiding duplication and overbuilding, and ensuring efficiencies wherever possible.

Sounds like somebody is still quite a bit ticked off about massive success stories like Chattanooga, where the local electric utility built an amazing competitive network that not only provided better, cheaper service in that city to under-served residents, but also forced the incumbents to up their own game as well.

It’s doubly hilarious that a key talking point in this document is literally “we don’t want competition” when much of the other document keeps trying to push the lie that there’s robust broadband competition.

They also talk up having states give them money, such as this:

* In New York, officials just completed a $500 million broadband auction to deploy high-speed service to 99 percent of its residential structures.

One would hope that the C-SPAN interviewer would follow up this point with a question about why NY would trust any of these companies when US Telecom member Verizon promised to bring fiber to 100% of New York City in 2008 and then didn’t. Seems like we should be fairly skeptical of the 99% claim now.

It also is unlikely to surprise anyone that US Telecom is really, really, really against the requirements for very limited local loop unbundling, which has helped enable a smidgen of competition in certain areas (I only have the broadband I have today thanks to local loop unbundling). These are the rules that made the big telcos have to allow third party service providers to use their networks at wholesale rates to offer competing services. It’s a great way to create competition at the service level, rather than doing it more wastefully at the infrastructure level. The telcos have done a good job making it more and more impossible for competitive carriers to make use of it, but they really want the rules gone entirely. And they say they’re no longer needed due to a completely fictional “tremendous competition in the communications market.” Don’t laugh. They think they’re serious:

* Today, more than 20 years later, there is tremendous competition in the communications market, but these rules are still on the books. * We have asked the FCC to review whether these rules are still necessary. If the FCC agrees they are, we hope the commission will forbear from these outdated rules like they have with many other no longer relevant regulations. * Ending these rules will allow broadband providers to invest in the future of their networks father than being tied to the past.

So, let’s be clear. There is barely any real competition in the broadband market, let alone “tremendous” competition. Ending those rules won’t magically allow providers to invest in future networks. They will limit competition, meaning there’s less reason to invest.

There’s some nonsense about how the FTC will be a great protector of consumers from the telcos now that the FCC has taken itself out of the game. Of course, as we’ve discussed over and over again, the FTC’s mandate is much more limited and does not cover most of the aspects of net neutrality that are important. Furthermore, the FTC has neither the resources nor the expertise to really play in the telco market.

There’s some more stuff in there, but those are the highlights. Congrats, US Telecom, you get your draft in-progress talking points out there. If you want critiques of your future talking points, feel free to cc: me again.

Filed Under: competition, cybersecurity, fcc, internet, lobbyists, net neutrality, privacy, regulation, talking points, telcos
Companies: at&t, ustelecom, verizon

Congress Busted Using Cable Lobbyist Talking Points In Attacks On Net Neutrality

from the professional-parrots dept

Fri, May 26th 2017 06:35am - Karl Bode

By now, most Techdirt readers realize that far too many members of Congress don’t so much have thoughts about technology policy, as they do bulleted mental lists of talking points provided by a lobbyist happy to do their thinking for them. That has been particularly true when it comes to telecom policy over the last few months, especially the GOP’s ham-fisted attack on popular consumer broadband privacy protections and the telecom sector’s self-serving frontal assault on net neutrality.

Over the last few weeks, as the FCC was preparing to begin dismantling net neutrality rules, House lawmakers received an email from GOP leadership educating them on how to best defend the agency’s extremely unpopular decision. Included in that e-mail was an attached list of talking points (pdf) making all manner of disengenous claims about the net neutrality debate:

“Want more information on the net neutrality discussion?? wrote Washington state Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican Conference. “Here is a nifty toolkit with news resources, myth vs reality information, what others are saying, and free market comments.”

Usually, Congress members cover their tracks well enough to obfuscate the fact they let lobbyists and campaign contributions do the thinking for them. But the Intercept noticed that metadata attached to the talking points clearly indicate they originated with the cable industry’s biggest lobbying organization, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA):

“The metadata of the document shows it was created by Kerry Landon, the assistant director of industry grassroots at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a trade group that lobbies on behalf of Comcast, Cox Communications, Charter, and other cable industry companies. The document was shared with House Republican leaders via ?Broadband for America,? a nonprofit largely funded by the NCTA.”

As such, you’ll surely be shocked to learn that many of the talking points included in the packet weren’t remotely true, including one claiming net neutrality is somehow “anti-consumer,” another regurgitating the repeatedly-debunked claim that net neutrality killed network investment, and several repeating the industry’s favorite claim that net neutrality protections aren’t necessary, because the broadband industry never does anything wrong:

“These ?Title II? regulations, rammed through the FCC by the Obama White House, were based on a hypothetical fear of broadband providers blocking certain websites or putting competitors in slow lanes. But despite ten years of the left stoking those hypothetical fears, they never materialized. Why? Because it is not in the interest of broadband providers to degrade the experience of their customers, especially when watching video or streaming services. The broadband providers would lose customers to their competitors if they ever attempted to block content.”

Here on planet Earth, we’ve watched as large ISPs used usage caps to hurt streaming competitors, block users from using certain services unless they pay for more expensive data plans, intentionally congest their networks to drive up interconnection costs, throttle entire classifications of traffic then lie about it, and even group up to block competing mobile apps and services they didn’t want to compete with. Anybody that thinks it’s hyperbole to state that ISPs will use their size, leverage and the lack of broadband competition to engage in a rotating crop of anti-competitive behaviors simply has not been paying attention.

And again, while it’s still unsurprising to see lawmakers mindlessly parrot whatever giant telecom conglomerates tell them to, that doesn’t make it any less grotesque. Combine that with the bot that’s spamming the FCC with bogus support for the FCC’s unpopular policies and the coordinated effort to make net neutrality supporters appear racist and unhinged, and you may begin to notice that the companies pushing this latest anti-consumer agenda aren’t particularly concerned about integrity or playing fair.

Filed Under: broadband, congress, lobbyists, net neutrality, talking points
Companies: ncta

Why Did The FBI Say It Couldn't Release Documents To 'FOIA Terrorist' Jason Leopold That It Released To Me Months Earlier?

from the hmmm dept

What’s up, FBI? Back in early 2015, when the FBI and (specifically) Director James Comey ramped up their silly “going dark” moral panic about how strong encryption was making us less safe, I sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FBI for all of the FBI’s internal talking points about “going dark” or other views on encryption. My main reason for this was really to see if I might uncover some of the reasoning for why the FBI had quietly deleted a page on its website that encouraged people to encrypt their phones. It took until May of last year, but the FBI finally delivered me a stack of talking points, mostly focused on talking point lists and speeches given by Comey. I never wrote about it because the talking points alone weren’t even that interesting.

In fact, I’d almost totally forgotten about that entire request. But then, a few weeks ago, right here on this site, Tim Cushing wrote about the latest escapades of Jason Leopold, the reporter whose use of FOIA requests is so prolific that he’s been dubbed a “FOIA terrorist” by the DOJ. It turns out that Leopold had made a similar request to the FBI… and was told that while they had found 487 responsive records, they were giving him a grand total of 0 of them, because they were all subject to restrictions on release. In that article, Cushing, rightly explains why this is ridiculous. The whole point of “talking points” is to share them with the public. There is simply no FOIA exemption that allows for blocking them.

But this was even more bizarre to me for the simple fact that the FBI had already sent me many of those documents. I didn’t add up all the pages sent to me, but I can tell it’s probably closer to about 100 pages than 487, so clearly the FBI is likely lying to me as well in terms of how many “responsive” documents there really were, but I’m confused as to why the FBI couldn’t release these kinds of documents to Leopold.


I mean, just imagine the chaos that would have occurred if the FBI had obeyed the law and given Leopold such talking points as:

Thank goodness that didn’t happen. Either way, I’m embedding all the files the FBI released to me below, just in case Leopold finds them more useful than I did — such as using them as potentially useful evidence in the lawsuit he should file against the FBI for not releasing these same documents to him.

Filed Under: encryption, fbi, foia, going dark, james comey, jason leopold, talking points

FBI Says It Has 487 Pages Of James Comey Talking Points, Refuses To Release Any Of Them

from the 'but-here's-a-CD-full-of-nothing-for-you' dept

Well, we can already see what government agency will be the next recipient of a Jason Leopold FOIA lawsuit.

Leopold had requested FBI Director James Comey’s talking points for a variety of subjects, including “going dark,” the terrorist attacks in Paris, the “Ferguson Effect,” and encryption. The FBI responded with two things, both of which add up to nothing.

The letter Leopold received noted that the FBI had found 487 pages responsive to his request. Of those, the agency will be releasing a grand total of zero pages. All 487 have been withheld under FOIA exemptions b(5) through b(7)(E).

Despite not releasing a single page, the FBI still utilized some taxpayer pocket change to mail Leopold a CD containing nothing more than its rejection. Leopold notes he’ll be using it as a coaster.

The exemptions cited are bogus. “Talking points” aren’t deliberative documents, interagency memos, or documents containing sensitive personal information [b(5), b(6)]. Neither are they documents that might expose law enforcement sources or investigative techniques [b7(D) and 7(E)].

They are exactly what the name says they are: points to be used when discussing these issues in Congressional hearings or during press conferences. They are indicative of the public stances the FBI takes on certain issues. There’s nothing secret about them, or at least there shouldn’t be.

But the FBI is treating Comey’s talking points like they’re confidential documents that could result in the exposure of its sources and techniques. If Comey’s talking points do actually include this information, that’s pretty irresponsible. These are used to make public statements and they certainly shouldn’t include sensitive information not meant for the public domain.

And there’s 487 pages of them, which means Comey has had plenty to talk about. The eventual release of these documents post-lawsuit should be entertaining and informative. Considering Comey has taken public stances privately opposed by other FBI officials and has made of habit of bypassing agency norms when delivering statements, it would be interesting to see if his past statements have periodically veered away from the agency’s prepared talking points.

This response is a typical one for the FBI, which frequently returns an upraised middle finger to the requester in lieu of the documents requested. It’s just how it opens FOIA negotiations. From there, requesters are expected to begin the appeals process or, in the case of FOIA enthusiast Jason Leopold, file yet another FOIA lawsuit that’s 90% boilerplate and 10% “this is SPECIFICALLY how [US Government Agency X] has dicked me around this time.”

Filed Under: fbi, foia, going dark, james comey, jason leopold, talking points

NY Politician's Letter Supporting Comcast/Time Warner Cable Either Written By Comcast Or Plagiarized From Comcast

from the or,-i'm-sure-it-could-just-be-a-big-coincidence...-right? dept

It’s no secret that politicians will often… er… “repurpose” legislation and talking points handed to them by companies. In some cases, they’re even willing to admit who really wrote things. But, more generally, they at least try to hide it. However, sometimes they don’t try very hard. NY State Assembly Leader Joe Morelle recently decided to send a letter expressing his support for the merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Fair enough. But the folks over at Stop The Cap noted that much of the letter appeared to be word for word identical to Comcast’s David Cohen’s Congressional testimony and Comcast press releases. This leaves a few possible explanations:

  1. Comcast wrote the letter.
  2. Joseph Morelle (or some poor intern he has) is a really bad plagiarist, who happens to only use Comcast’s own material as source material.
  3. It’s all a big coincidence. Only so many words out there, right?

I guess there could be a few other options as well, but they’re mostly escaping me at this point… Either way, the similarities noted by Stop the Cap:

N.Y. State Assembly Leader Joe Morelle: ?The combination of Comcast and Time Warner Cable will create a world-class communications, media and technology company to help meet the increasing consumer demand for advanced digital services on multiple devices in homes, workplaces and on-the-go.?

David Cohen, executive vice-president, Comcast: ?The combination of Comcast and TWC will create a world-class communications, media, and technology company to help meet the insatiable consumer demand for advanced digital services on multiple devices in homes, workplaces, and on-the-go.?

---

Joe Morelle: ?Comcast has a proven record of investing in new technologies, facilities and customer support to provide the best in broadband Internet access, video and digital voice services.?

David Cohen: ?Comcast has a proven record of investing in new technologies, facilities, and customer support to provide the best in broadband Internet access, video, and digital voice services.?

---

Joe Morelle: ?Similarly, TWC has made significant strides in offering a diverse array of video, broadband, and voice services to its customers.?

David Cohen: ?Similarly, TWC has made significant strides in offering a diverse array of video, broadband, and voice services to its customers.?

---

Joe Morelle: ?Combining the two companies? complementary strengths will accelerate the deployment of next-generation broadband Internet, video and voice services across the new company?s footprint.?

David Cohen: ?Combining the two companies? complementary strengths will accelerate the deployment of next-generation broadband Internet, video, and voice services across the new company?s footprint.?

---

Joe Morelle: ?Residential customers will benefit from technological innovations including a superior video experience, higher broadband speeds and the fastest in-home Wi-Fi, while also generating significant cost savings and other efficiencies.?

Comcast Press Release: ?Through this merger, more American consumers will benefit from technological innovations, including a superior video experience, higher broadband speeds, and the fastest in-home Wi-Fi. The transaction also will generate significant cost savings and other efficiencies.?

---

Joe Morelle: ?In just two-and-a-half years, over 350,000 families, representing approximately 1.4 million low-income consumers, have been connected to the Internet thanks to this program. This proposed merger would extend this vital program to many more low-income households in New York by providing access to it in certain areas of the state currently only served by Time Warner.

David Cohen: ?In just two and a half years, over 300,000 families, representing some 1.2 million low-income consumers, have been connected to the transformative power of the Internet thanks to this program. The transaction will extend this vital program to millions more Americans in the areas currently served by TWC.?

Yeah, I’m sure it’s all just a completely random coincidence…

Filed Under: david cohen, joe morelle, lobbying, merger, new york, plagiarism, talking points
Companies: comcast, time warner cable

NSA Gave Employees Ridiculous 'Talking Points' To Spread Among Friends And Family Over The Holidays

from the we're-good-enough,-we're-smart-enough,-and-doggone-it... dept

It seems that the NSA’s “talking points” keep on leaking. The latest is a two pager it sent home with employees prior to Thanksgiving, so they’d have substance-free pablum to say in response to any family and friends who might actually have been paying attention to the news lately, and have some concerns to raise about the NSA violating our privacy and the Constitution. The document is broadly split into five sections, with sub talking points within each section. Here are the key points (underlines in the original):

Almost all of the talking points are misleading, with some clearly being outright lies. Kevin Gosztola at Firedoglake, who first obtained and published these talking points, does an incredibly thorough demolishing of the talking points, so I highly recommend reading that. Here’s a short snippet:

“NSA programs protect Americans and our Allies,” the document reads. “As an example, they have helped to understand and disrupt 54 terrorist events since 9/11: 25 in Europe, 11 in Asia and 5 in Africa. Thirteen of those had a homeland nexus.”

Deputy Director John Inglis admitted in August during a Senate hearing, when pressed by Sen. Patrick Leahy, that US bulk records phone spying had been “critical” in stopping just one terrorist plot. He clarified that the spying on phone records had only “made a contribution” to discovering the 13 plots.

Sens. Ron Wyden, Mark Udall & Martin Heinrich, who filed a brief in support of an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit challenging the collection of phone records of all Americans, explained the Executive Branch has defended the program by conflating it with “other foreign intelligence authorities.” The senators highlighted the fact that the collection under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act had played “little or no role in most of these disruptions.”

“Indeed of the original fifty-four that the government pointed to, officials have only been able to describe two that involved materially useful information obtained through the bulk call-records program,” the senators added. “Even the two supposed success stories involved information that [the senators] believe—after repeated requests to the government for evidence to the contrary—could readily have been obtained without a database of all Americans’ call records.”

At this point, any intelligence agency leader, member of Congress or government official who highlights 54 “thwarted” plots is advancing propaganda to save the NSA from being forced into giving up this power to collect the phone records of all Americans.

There’s much, much more at the original. Go read it. Most of these talking points are pretty much what you’d expect, and the standard doublespeak we’ve been hearing from the NSA and its defenders ever since the Snowden revelations began. At best they’re setting up strawmen to knock down. No one has argued that NSA employees aren’t American citizens. We just question what they’re doing. Furthermore, the whole “lawful, compliant” thing is kind of laughable, given the numerous examples of abuses, and the regular discussions from the courts about how the NSA has abused its mandate. Even more to the point, many of these programs simply have not been challenged in court in an actual trial, so claiming that they’re legal is a huge stretch.

Maybe it’s time that someone put together a list of “talking points” for friends and family of NSA employees to read back to them the next time they spew these kinds of bogus claims.

Bonus: The folks at Gawker worked the talking points into a script. Here’s a snippet:

DAD: So, Ted, how’s work lately?

UNCLE TED: NSA’s mission is of great value to the Nation.

DAD: Oh, for sure. I was just thinking since it’s been in the news a lot…

UNCLE TED: NSA performs timely, actionable intelligence to political and military customers who use that information in a range of activities from decisionmaking to military operations.

DAD: …

MOM: Honey, maybe Ted doesn’t want to talk abou—

UNCLE TED: NSA performs its mission the right way—lawful, compliant, and in a way that protects civil liberties and privacy.

KEITH ALEXANDER: Pass the salt?

Filed Under: nsa, surveillance, talking points

TPP Defenders Take To The Internet To Deliver Official Talking Points; Inadvertently Confirm Opponents' Worst Fears

from the TPP-doesn't-do-anything-opponents-claim-it-does,-except-for-all-this dept

The leaked TPP draft, pried loose from the “open and transparent” grip of the USTR, is generating plenty of commentary all over the web. After getting a good look inside, it’s little wonder the USTR felt more comfortable trying to push this through under the cover of darkness.

As the criticism of the push for IP maximalism mounts, the treaty’s defenders have leapt into the fray, hoping to assure everyone who wasn’t previously aware of the treaty’s contents (which is pretty much everyone) that there’s nothing to see here and please move along.

Mike recently broke down the ridiculous claims and posturing of the USTR’s “talking points.” Amanda Wilson Denton, counsel to the IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance) has showed up right on cue to “set the record straight” on the leaked TPP draft. Let’s see how well she followed the talking points. (Talking points in bold.)

The Draft Is Already Outdated

The only thing that can certainly be said about this draft is that it does not reflect the current state of the negotiations…

If it is what it purports to be, the draft reveals a snapshot in time of the ongoing work of the participating countries to hammer out an agreement in Intellectual Property Rights…

Sure, it’s only a “snapshot.” But unless everything’s changed since then, it’s a very representative snapshot of the involved countries’ stances on IP issues. Just because the work is “ongoing” doesn’t mean its improving.

What It Would Not Require: Changes to U.S. IP Law

While it is impossible to say right now what a TPP IP chapter would do, experience provides an answer for what it would not do — since the U.S. began negotiating FTAs again in 2000, no FTA has required a change to U.S. intellectual property law.

The U.S. proposals mirror the current duration of copyright in U.S. law. They track the provisions already agreed in previous FTAs regarding the technologies that rights holders use to control access to their works and limitations on liability to benefit ISPs, including the FTA agreed between the United States and Korea that entered into force in 2012…

In sum, the putative U.S. positions revealed in the leaked text would be consistent with U.S. law and prior free trade agreements approved by Congress, and most importantly would help to achieve better copyright protection among our trading partners…

While we understand that there are parties that don’t like present U.S. law and policy, this leaked text demonstrates a fealty to existing U.S. law, and not an abandonment thereof.

So, if you love current US IP law (and wish it would be expanded), you’ll love the TPP. If you don’t, well… get used to it. The US is running your IP show now, foreigners.

Denton does admit there is one change to existing US law, something only a maximalist would be happy to see — a provision that would allow rights holders to pursue criminal charges against those who “aid and abet” copyright infringement. Great news! That means you no longer have to actually infringe to be held criminally accountable. All you have to do is be adjacent to it.

The Only Real “News” – Many Bogus Claims Are Now Verifiably False.

The only real “news” in the leaked text is that various claims (e.g., TPP endangers Internet freedom, TPP is SOPA) are now provably false.

[T]he issue that generated controversy surrounding SOPA—website blocking through DNS blocking—is entirely absent from the text as recently noted by Ambassador Froman. Froman specifically raised the issue of “blocking rogue Internet sites from accessing the Internet from the United States” in a recent interview published in the November 18, 2013 issue of Washington Trade Daily. He stated unequivocally: “There is nothing in the Trans Pacific Partnership, zero, that has anything to do with that…”

Any comparison to SOPA/PIPA is completely inappropriate and inaccurate.

Comparisons to SOPA are valid because the leaks show the US is pushing a maximalist hard line, one that goes much further than most other countries are willing to go (Australia being the notable exception).

SOPA was a maximalist’s dream. Since a majority of Americans are not maximalists, the bill was tough to sell. The USTR knows this, which is why every aspect of these negotiations has been as secretive as possible. Simply stating the TPP is not SOPA because it isn’t exactly the same is a weak dodge. It has the same intent. The TPP will harm internet freedom the same way SOPA would have. Secondary liability will now be a criminal act, as Denton points out in her defense of the agreement.

And as for Ambassador Froman’s claim that the TPP doesn’t provide for the blocking of “rogue sites,” former USTR employee and current analyst for the ITIF (SOPA’s “intellectual backer”) Michelle Wein actually points out that it does in her op-ed defending the proposal.

In addition, the text does not require ISPs to block access, but instead asks that they take reasonable steps: “Court-ordered relief to compel or restrain certain actions shall be limited to terminating specified accounts, or to taking reasonable steps to block access to a specific, non-domestic online location. [emphasis added]” Essentially, this means that courts cannot make ISPs financially liable for copyright infringement by their users, but can ask them to take steps to block access.

When the government starts “asking” ISPs to “take reasonable steps” (what does that even mean?) to block sites, it’s not a request. It’s a very forceful suggestion with potential legal implications, as most court ORDERS are. ISPs may not be liable for customers’ infringement, but they can certainly be held liable for not “taking reasonable steps” to block access. “Reasonable” is in the eye of the beholder, and what that means for ISPs is that courts will be making this call after they’ve already issued an order “asking” them to block sites.

What’s being witnessed here is the US attempting to make the world beholden to its rights holders. The TPP makes a mockery the last word in its title. There’s no “partnership” here. Just a country misusing its stature and economic power to rewrite international IP laws in servitude of a few select industries.

Filed Under: copyright, defenders, patents, talking points, tpp
Companies: iipa

from the just-keep-repeating... dept

It would appear that a set of talking points that copyright maximalists have been sending around to each other concerning how to respond to the leak of the TPP draft have, themselves, been leaked (to me, at least). As we predicted, the focus is on “this won’t change US law,” but let’s go through all of them to show why the talking points are misleading or ridiculous.

The Draft Is Already Outdated. The draft is dated August 30, 2013. Since that date, there have been intensive TPP negotiations, including specifically about the IP chapter, as countries have redoubled efforts to conclude the negotiations by the end of the year. The only thing that can certainly be said about this draft is that it does not reflect the current state of the negotiations.

This is true. But meaningless. After all, we’ve seen nothing on this chapter since early 2011 (other than the USTR briefly mentioning plans to push for a “three step test”). So, while changes have been made, what we do see are the negotiating positions of many of the participants — and especially the US’s extreme positions. There’s a lot that can reasonably be said about those positions beyond that “it does not reflect the current state of negotiations.” If it later comes out that the US did a complete 180 in September and October, walked away from pushing insane maximalist propaganda, then we’ll be happy to report on that. But it seems unlikely.

Almost Everything Is in Brackets. No one can say what the TPP IP chapter would do because almost nothing in the draft text is agreed – it is almost all in brackets, meaning not agreed. Given how inter-related the chapter is (e.g., obligations can be limited by exceptions in a separate article; specific provisions in one article may be affected by general provisions in another), it is effectively impossible to make any accurate claims about what TPP would require. So, any source making a claim about what the TPP IP chapter would do is making it up. At best, these claims are hypotheses about which of various brackets would stay and which of various brackets would go. At worst, they are calculated misinformation.

Uh, no. Yes, everything is in brackets — meaning not yet agreed to — but to argue this means that no one can reasonably say what the IP chapter would do if those brackets were made official is simply ridiculous. People can read and can understand what those brackets say. And they can see that the US’s position is unquestionably towards pushing maximalism.

What It Would Not Require: Changes to U.S. IP Law. While it is impossible to say right now what a TPP IP chapter would do, experience provides an answer for what it would not do — since the U.S. began negotiating FTAs again in 2000, no FTA has required a change to U.S. intellectual property law. Unlike the claims likely to be made by the anti-TPP voices, this one is objectively provable – please see the implementing legislation for all of the modern FTAs: P.L. Nos. 108-77, 108-78, 108-286, 108-302, 109-53, 109-283, 109-169, 110-138, 112-41, 112-42, 112-43. In recent years, it has been commonly known that USTR would not accept changes to U.S. IP law through an FTA.

Kind of funny to see this point immediately after the one that says that “any source making a claim about what the TPP IP chapter would do is making it up.” Apparently that only applies to TPP changes that the copyright maximalists don’t want you talking about. Either way, this was our main prediction and it’s exactly what the USTR has been saying (in fact, his statements, almost to a word, seem to repeat these talking points… which I’m sure is just a coincidence, right?). It’s not true. The things that the US is pushing for within the TPP quite clearly do not match up with existing law, though they’re sneakily written in a way to pretend they do. That is, they use some of the same language and ideas, but leave out important limitations and exceptions, which make the current law work.

But, as we stated, the much more important thing is the fact that the TPP locks in bad law just at a time when Congress is looking to update the law. Even if it doesn’t lead to a change in US law, blocking important changes to US law is just as bad, if not worse. Especially when it’s done by an undemocratic, secret process driven by industry insiders rather than the public.

A Really Simple “BS Meter”: Does that Happen Under U.S. Law? Given that in FTAs this century, USTR has not signed off on an IP chapter that required changes to U.S. IP law, and those FTA IP chapters have in fact been consistent with existing U.S. IP law, there is a very simple “BS Meter” one can use to evaluate claims about TPP: “Does this happen under U.S. law now?” If the answer is “No,” then the claim is “BS.” If recent rhetoric is any indication of what is in store for TPP, get your shovels ready.

Again, the real issue isn’t about how it requires changes to US law, but how it prevents necessary (and requested by the head of the Copyright Office and the President of the US) changes to US copyright law. Besides, as always, using free trade agreements to prime the ratchet has always been a part of the long game. You set it up so that you don’t need to immediately change your laws, but it does force nearly everyone else to put in place worse laws — and then the maximalists go running around talking about how we need to “harmonize” our laws with the rest of the world.

But, again, there is proposed text in the agreement that, would, in fact require changes to US law. As a single example, Mexico has proposed extending the length of copyright yet again, this time to life plus 100 years. While that’s just one proposal from one country, there are many other tidbits like that as well.

The Only Real “News” – Many Bogus Claims Are Now Verifiably False. Despite the fear-mongering over “secret” TPP negotiations, the U.S. position on intellectual property in TPP has never really been a secret – the IP chapters of the previous FTAs this century have been remarkably similar. Now that a draft of the text has been released it confirms that the U.S. is seeking IP provisions remarkably similar to those in the KORUS FTA, which received widespread support including from the tech community. The only real “news” in the leaked text is that various claims (e.g., TPP endangers Internet freedom, TPP is SOPA) are now provably false.

This one is funny. And totally bogus. The leak of the TPP text absolutely confirmed the fears of the secret negotiations. What we’ve seen is that the US is pushing maximalist positions strongly, leaving out the important flexibilities and counterbalances found in laws elsewhere, effectively trying to ratchet up bad intellectual property laws around the globe, while making it effectively impossible to fix the problems with our broken system. Furthermore, the lack of public involvement and public comment has made it so what the US is pushing is filled with little tricks and Easter eggs designed to benefit a few legacy players at the expense of the public and innovators.

While they mock claims like “the TPP endangers internet freedom,” — that’s fairly directly provable from the leaked text. It would lock countries in to passing bad copyright laws, which would absolutely endanger internet freedom by decimating secondary liability laws, encouraging criminal prosecutions for very limited infringement, and making things like temporary copies illegal (something that is not currently the law in the US).

And that’s just on the copyright side, not even touching on the patent stuff, or the corporate sovereignty “investor state dispute resolution” mechanisms that would allow companies to sue countries who don’t give them the copyrights or patents they want.

Either way these talking points all clearly try to steer away from the real issue with this whole thing: a backroom deal where only corporate lobbyists had access — which even the former USTR flat out admitted couldn’t be passed if the public knew what was in it — is clearly not an agreement designed to benefit the public. To the contrary, this agreement is entirely designed to favor a small group of special interests: companies who have long past their innovative stage, and are now looking for anti-innovative, protectionist measures. It’s an economic and innovation suicide pact, designed to help big campaign contributors.

Filed Under: copyright, talking points, tpp

NSA's Talking Points On Snowden Leaks Say To Emphasize 9/11

from the these-sound-very-familiar dept

If you’ve been following all the NSA stuff, you’re used the regular claims from the NSA’s defenders. The folks over at Al Jazeera were able to get the talking points that the NSA has been using in response to the Snowden leaks, and they’re exactly everything we’ve been hearing — with extra emphasis on playing up 9/11. My favorite talking point, described as a “sound bite that resonates” is:

I much prefer to be here today explaining these programs, than explaining another 9/11 event that we were not able to prevent.

You’ll also note an awful lot of “we need to connect the dots,” though they leave out the part about how having more data actually makes it harder to connect the dots. They also play up the “over 50 cases” of dealing with “terrorist events” — a number that has since been totally debunked.

The documents are the basic talking points that Keith Alexander, James Clapper and others have been using in their various Congressional hearings. If you watched the hearing yesterday, for example, you’d notice that Clapper especially was almost always reading off the talking points even when asked questions (Alexander appears to feel more comfortable “winging it”). Given that, there’s not much that’s totally surprising — we’ve heard all of this. But it’s still fascinating to see it in black and white.

Filed Under: ed snowden, james clapper, keith alexander, nsa, nsa surveillance, talking points