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Old 11-08-21, 06:13 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 14th, ’21

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August 14th, 2021




Warner Bros., AMC Strike 45-Day Exclusive Theatrical Window Deal for 2022

"We're especially pleased Warner Bros. has decided to move away from day-and-date," AMC chief Adam Aron said. The pact was sealed several months ago.
Pamela McClintock

In a new deal with mega-cinema chain AMC Theatres, Warner Bros. has agreed to return to an exclusive, 45-day theatrical window in 2022.

AMC CEO Adam Aron unveiled the pact Monday during an earnings call. “We’re especially pleased Warner Bros. has decided to move away from day-and-date,” Aron said. “We are in active dialogue with every major studio.”

WarnerMedia enraged cinema operators when deciding to open its 2021 slate simultaneously on HBO Max and in theaters. The company has since said that the move was in response to the ongoing pandemic, and not permanent. Insiders add that the AMC arrangement was agreed to in March.

The audacious Aron said it was “no secret” that AMC was “not at all happy” when WarnerMedia made its move after launching HBO Max. “An exclusive window is an important way to build big and successful franchises.”

Before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the traditional theatrical window was as long as 90 days. Studios had tried for years to collapse that period, but faced boycotts if doing so.

Analysts who track movie ticket sales say such a simultaneous home release hurts a film’s prospects at the multiplex, as well as encouraging piracy. Over the weekend, Warner Bros. and DC’s The Suicide Squad opened to a troubled $27.6 million as consumer confidence drops because of the delta variant and a surge in COVID-19 cases.

Throughout the pandemic, Disney has likewise made some of its event pics available day-and-date on Disney+ and in cinemas, including the 2021 summer tentpole Jungle Cruise. Often, such titles cost an extra $30 for Disney+ customers to watch; HBO Max titles are free for its subscribers.

During the earnings call, Aron also revealed that the circuit will take over additional locations that were previously part of the Pacific Theaters/ArcLight chain. AMC has already signed deals to manage the leases for the cinemas at The Grove in Los Angeles and The Americana at Brand in Glendale (both were Pacific locations).

Aron didn’t provide any further detail as to the specific locations it is looking at in Los Angeles. The ArcLight chain included the famed ArcLight in Hollywood, home of the Cinerama Dome.

AMC Entertainment posted a smaller second-quarter loss and a rebound in revenue as it recovers from the COVID-19 crisis.

After the closing bell, the parent of AMC Theatres recorded a loss of 71 cents per share, which beat a consensus Wall Street estimate of 91 cents, and did far better than a year-earlier loss of $5.38 per share. The loss for the three months to March 31 hit $344 million, compared to a year-earlier loss of $561.2 million.

“In short, AMC crushed it in Q2,” Aron said during the earnings call.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mo...al-1234995035/





Why The Suicide Squad Is A Box Office Disappointment

James Gunn's The Suicide Squad had a disappointing opening weekend at the domestic box office, and there are quite a few reasons for that.
Andrew Housman

The Suicide Squad was a box office disappointment despite receiving warmly positive reviews from both critics and audiences. The rise of the Delta variant in a marketplace that has already struggled to contend with COVID-19 certainly hurt ticket sales, but there are other factors that most likely contributed to the film's lackluster performance. Namely, the availability to watch the feature on HBO Max as well as confusing marketing created a poor commercial environment.

Notably, the relationship between the box office and critic reviews of The Suicide Squad is the complete opposite of the film's predecessor. Suicide Squad, the DCEU's first attempt at bringing the team of supervillains to the big screen, was a huge financial success when it debuted in August 2016. The film brought in a record-breaking $133.7 million in its domestic opening weekend and eventually went on to rake in a whopping $746.8 million worldwide, without releasing in China. On the other hand, critics lambasted the film, pointing out its muddled plot, weak handling of its central characters, and obvious studio interference in the work of director David Ayer.

The Suicide Squad, in contrast, has enjoyed significantly better reception as a more coherent movie with well-defined characters and conflicts as well as an overall more fully realized creative vision on the part of director James Gunn. In fact, the filmmaker ironically claimed the highest August box office earnings with his Marvel entry Guardians of the Galaxy before Ayer's Suicide Squad took over that spot. Despite its impressive critical achievements, Gunn's The Suicide Squad failed to receive as much financial success as either of these films, opening to a mere $26.5 million.

The Suicide Squad's Box Office Shows COVID's Continued Impact

The most obvious and arguably significant contributing factor to the poor box office performance of The Suicide Squad is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has audiences hesitant to return to the movies. As theaters reopened across the country to coincide with an increased vaccine rollout at the beginning of the summer, box office numbers briefly saw a spike. Films like A Quiet Place: Part II and F9: The Fast Saga saw the largest openings in the span of the pandemic, and for a moment, it looked like audiences might be warming up to the idea of watching a summer blockbuster on a big screen surrounded by other moviegoers.

Then the Delta variant hit. A more contagious threat coincided with a decrease in vaccination rates and created yet another wave of COVID infections, leading to more anxiety about spending time in indoor public places like movie theaters. The Suicide Squad, positioned to release at a point at which COVID cases would have hopefully been under control, unfortunately encountered the opposite situation. Box office numbers had already been on a downward trend as summer moved on, with the tentpole Black Widow experiencing a massive drop in ticket sales after its opening weekend and every following film remaining below a $40 million opening mark. In this way, The Suicide Squad is just the latest casualty of an increasingly dire movie market.

How Did HBO Max Affect The Suicide Squad's Box Office?

However, it wasn't just COVID that contributed to The Suicide Squad's poor ticket sales. The film was part of Warner Bros.' unprecedented move to make theatrical releases available to watch on HBO Max the same day they came out in theaters. That means that those who were too nervous to go to the movies could instead watch The Suicide Squad from the safety of their own homes at no additional cost (unlike Disney+'s Premier Access, which includes a fee of $29.99 on top of the regular subscription price). That dual-release strategy, in fact, paints a larger and more complicated picture than what the lowly box office numbers suggest, as 2.8 million households gave the film the second-highest viewership numbers for the streaming service behind only Mortal Kombat.

Streaming numbers indicate that The Suicide Squad isn't entirely a failure, nor is it by any means a success. Another HBO Max release, the critically acclaimed In the Heights, suffered at both the box office and on streaming, while films like The Suicide Squad and Mortal Kombat have found an alternative avenue of at least partial success. An important factor to consider is the latter films' R-ratings, a barrier to younger audiences who now have a way to access these films without sneaking into a theater. The real mark of success in streaming, however, is the number of new subscribers these releases brought in, a piece of data that hasn't been publicly available at this point regarding Warner Bros.' most recent release.

Did The Suicide Squad's Marketing & 2016 Connections Let It Down?

Another factor to consider in the poor performance of The Suicide Squad is just how geeky and confusing the film's background is. The decision to minimally reference the original Suicide Squad in marketing stirred up confusion about the identity of the film. On the other hand, characters like Harley Quinn, Amanda Waller, and Rick Flag were returning, further complicating the general moviegoer's perception of what, exactly, the movie was even about. Trailers and posters suggested that The Suicide Squad wasn't a sequel, but the presence of familiar faces made it clear that the film wasn't entirely a do-over, either. Those privy to the inside baseball maneuvers of the studio and the winding career of James Gunn were up-to-date on all the production details, but the average viewer was completely lost. "You don't know Squad," TV spots and YouTube ads cheekily proclaimed, underestimating how true that sentiment actually is.

Did The Suicide Squad Lack Movie Selling Points?

On that note, general audiences never latched onto anything specific about the new The Suicide Squad. Jared Leto's tattooed Joker was the subject of a barrage of Internet mockery, but he was a recognizable selling point. So was the presence of Will Smith and the promise that Suicide Squad would definitely connect to the at-that-time recently released Batman v. Superman. In contrast, Harley Quinn was the only widely identifiable trait of The Suicide Squad, and even she couldn't guarantee success considering the poor financial returns of her own Birds of Prey movie. Whether that's because audiences still associate her with a bad movie or if they simply can't mentally separate her from her abusive ex-boyfriend is still up in the air, but it certainly makes for further confusion. Big names like Idris Elba and John Cena didn't help because they were new cast members despite their star power, and even the name of the movie, which distinguished itself with the addition of a grammatical article, was confounding.

What The Suicide Squad's Box Office Means For The DCEU

The post-COVID release of films on both digital services and physical theaters complicates box office numbers in a way that the marketplace has previously never truly dealt with. In this way, the financial failure of The Suicide Squad might not be as apocalyptic as it looks. The film is still a critical hit, and it still has a chance to bring in streaming viewership through tried and true word-of-mouth. It also still opened at the top spot at the box office, meaning that it's at least not another Snake Eyes or In the Heights, both high-budget movies that didn't even reach first place on their opening weekend. Peacemaker, a spin-off television series, is still moving forward as an HBO Max exclusive, and DC Films has already confirmed that James Gunn will return for future DC movies. All of this indicates that the box office numbers are perhaps more indicative of the movie marketplace's suffering at large and implies that The Suicide Squad isn't entirely a unique bust. Most of all, it's far from a doomsday call for the DCEU.
https://screenrant.com/suicide-squad...ilure-reasons/





Instagram Apologizes for Almodóvar Film’s Poster Censorship
Jennifer O'Mahony

Instagram has apologized for removing the official poster for Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s new film from the social network because it showed a female nipple, after the poster’s designer complained of censorship.

Instagram’s parent company Facebook told The Associated Press on Wednesday that several images of the poster for “Madres Paralelas,” which shows a lactating nipple, were removed “for breaking our rules against nudity” after they were uploaded on Monday.

“We do, however, make exceptions to allow nudity in certain circumstances, which includes when there’s clear artistic context. We’ve therefore restored posts sharing the Almodóvar movie poster to Instagram, and we’re really sorry for any confusion caused,” the company said in an emailed statement.

Facebook and Instagram’s longstanding rules — and previous bans — have spurred the use of the #FreetheNipple movement and hashtag on Instagram, which is used by many artists and celebrities to portray nipples despite the rules. The ban does not extend to male nipples.

The poster’s Spanish designer Javier Jaén told AP that he had questioned whether the poster would have trouble on social networks but stayed true to his vision after receiving the personal backing of Almodóvar. “He told me that he had made films with posters his whole life, long before Instagram, and he would keep doing so after Instagram, too,” Jaén said.

“This is probably the first image I saw when I was born. A company like Instagram tells me my work is dangerous, that people shouldn’t see it, that it’s pornographic. How many people are they telling that their body is bad, that their body is dangerous?” Jaén added, noting he had received overwhelming support and thousands of people had reposted his poster on Instagram.

“They say their technology can’t differentiate the context. I don’t care. Change your technology then,” the designer said.

Jaén had written in a post that the poster had been removed from his Instagram page on Tuesday: “As expected, @instagram took down the poster that we made for the latest Almodóvar film #madresparalelas.” After reposting the image, he said, it was allowed to stay.

A request for comment from Almodóvar’s production company went unanswered.

“Madres Paralelas,” starring Penélope Cruz, will open the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 1.
https://apnews.com/article/technolog...381af8bbc61290





Exclusive: Apple Dropped Plan for Encrypting Backups after FBI Complained – Sources
Joseph Menn

Apple Inc AAPL.O dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company's iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations, six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The tech giant’s reversal, about two years ago, has not previously been reported. It shows how much Apple has been willing to help U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite taking a harder line in high-profile legal disputes with the government and casting itself as a defender of its customers’ information.

The long-running tug of war between investigators’ concerns about security and tech companies’ desire for user privacy moved back into the public spotlight last week, as U.S. Attorney General William Barr took the rare step of publicly calling on Apple to unlock two iPhones used by a Saudi Air Force officer who shot dead three Americans at a Pensacola, Florida naval base last month.

U.S. President Donald Trump piled on, accusing Apple on Twitter of refusing to unlock phones used by “killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements.” Republican and Democratic senators sounded a similar theme in a December hearing, threatening legislation against end-to-end encryption, citing unrecoverable evidence of crimes against children.

Apple did in fact did turn over the shooter’s iCloud backups in the Pensacola case, and said it rejected the characterization that it “has not provided substantive assistance.”

Behind the scenes, Apple has provided the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation with more sweeping help, not related to any specific probe.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the company’s handling of the encryption issue or any discussions it has had with the FBI. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment on any discussions with Apple.

More than two years ago, Apple told the FBI that it planned to offer users end-to-end encryption when storing their phone data on iCloud, according to one current and three former FBI officials and one current and one former Apple employee.

Under that plan, primarily designed to thwart hackers, Apple would no longer have a key to unlock the encrypted data, meaning it would not be able to turn material over to authorities in a readable form even under court order.

In private talks with Apple soon after, representatives of the FBI’s cyber crime agents and its operational technology division objected to the plan, arguing it would deny them the most effective means for gaining evidence against iPhone-using suspects, the government sources said.

When Apple spoke privately to the FBI about its work on phone security the following year, the end-to-end encryption plan had been dropped, according to the six sources. Reuters could not determine why exactly Apple dropped the plan.

“Legal killed it, for reasons you can imagine,” another former Apple employee said he was told, without any specific mention of why the plan was dropped or if the FBI was a factor in the decision.

That person told Reuters the company did not want to risk being attacked by public officials for protecting criminals, sued for moving previously accessible data out of reach of government agencies or used as an excuse for new legislation against encryption.

“They decided they weren’t going to poke the bear anymore,” the person said, referring to Apple’s court battle with the FBI in 2016 over access to an iPhone used by one of the suspects in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

Apple appealed a court order to break into that phone for the FBI. The government dropped the proceedings when it found a contractor that could break into the phone, a common occurrence in FBI investigations.

Two of the former FBI officials, who were not present in talks with Apple, told Reuters it appeared that the FBI’s arguments that the backups provided vital evidence in thousands of cases had prevailed.

“It’s because Apple was convinced,” said one. “Outside of that public spat over San Bernardino, Apple gets along with the federal government.”

However, a former Apple employee said it was possible the encryption project was dropped for other reasons, such as concern that more customers would find themselves locked out of their data more often.

Once the decision was made, the 10 or so experts on the Apple encryption project - variously code-named Plesio and KeyDrop - were told to stop working on the effort, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

APPLE SHIFTS FOCUS

Apple’s decision not to proceed with end-to-end encryption of iCloud backups made the FBI’s job easier.

The agency relies on hacking software that exploits security flaws to break into a phone. But that method requires direct access to the phone which would ordinarily tip off the user, who is often the subject of the investigation.

Apple’s iCloud, on the other hand, can be searched in secret. In the first half of last year, the period covered by Apple’s most recent semiannual transparency report on requests for data it receives from government agencies, U.S. authorities armed with regular court papers asked for and obtained full device backups or other iCloud content in 1,568 cases, covering about 6,000 accounts.

The company said it turned over at least some data for 90% of the requests it received. It turns over data more often in response to secret U.S. intelligence court directives, which sought content from more than 18,000 accounts in the first half of 2019, the most recently reported six-month period.

Had it proceeded with its plan, Apple would not have been able to turn over any readable data belonging to users who opted for end-to-end encryption.

Instead of protecting all of iCloud with end-to-end encryption, Apple has shifted to focus on protecting some of the most sensitive user information, such as saved passwords and health data.

But backed-up contact information and texts from iMessage, WhatsApp and other encrypted services remain available to Apple employees and authorities.

Apple is not the only tech company to have removed its own access to customers’ information.

In October 2018, Alphabet Inc's GOOGL.O Google announced a similar system to Apple’s dropped plan for secure backups. The maker of Android software, which runs on about three-quarters of the world's mobile devices, said users could back up their data to its own cloud without trusting the company with the key.

Two people familiar with the project said Google gave no advance notice to governments, and picked a time to announce it when encryption was not in the news.

The company continues to offer the service but declined to comment on how many users have taken up the option. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment on Google’s service or the agency’s approach to it.

Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Editing by Bill Rigby and Cynthia Osterman
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKBN1ZK1CT





Apple Says it Will Reject Government Demands to Use New Child Abuse Image Detection System for Surveillance
Kif Leswing

• Apple defended its new system to scan iCloud for illegal child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) on Monday.
• Apple reiterated that its tech is more private than the systems companies like Google and Microsoft have used for years to eliminate illegal child abuse images on its servers.
• Apple said in a document posted to its website on Sunday night that governments cannot force Apple to add non-CSAM images to its system, addressing one major question with the implementation.

Apple defended its new system to scan iCloud for illegal child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) on Monday during an ongoing controversy over whether the system reduces Apple user privacy and could be used by governments to surveil citizens.

Last week, Apple announced it has started testing a system that uses sophisticated cryptography to identify when users upload collections of known child pornography to its cloud storage service. It says it can do this without learning about the contents of a user's photos stored on its servers.

Apple reiterated on Monday that its system is more private than those used by companies like Google and Microsoft because its system uses both its servers and software running on iPhones.

Privacy advocates and technology commentators are worried Apple's new system, which includes software that will be installed on people's iPhones through an iOS update, could be expanded in some countries through new laws to check for other types of images, like photos with political content, instead of just child pornography.

Apple said in a document posted to its website on Sunday governments cannot force it to add non-CSAM images to a hash list, or the file of numbers that correspond to known child abuse images Apple will distribute to iPhones to enable the system.

"Apple will refuse any such demands. Apple's CSAM detection capability is built solely to detect known CSAM images stored in iCloud Photos that have been identified by experts at NCMEC and other child safety groups," Apple said in the document. "We have faced demands to build and deploy government-mandated changes that degrade the privacy of users before, and have steadfastly refused those demands. We will continue to refuse them in the future."

It continued: "Let us be clear, this technology is limited to detecting CSAM stored in iCloud and we will not accede to any government's request to expand it."

Some cryptographers are worried about what could happen if a country like China were to pass a law saying the system has to also include politically sensitive images. Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously said that the company follows laws in every country where it conducts business.

Companies in the U.S. are required to report CSAM to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and face fines up to $300,000 when they discover illegal images and don't report them.

A reputation for privacy

Apple's reputation for defending privacy has been cultivated for years through its actions and marketing. In 2016, Apple faced off against the FBI in court to protect the integrity of its on-device encryption systems in the investigation of a mass shooter.

But Apple has also faced significant pressure from law enforcement officials about the possibility of criminals "going dark," or using privacy tools and encryption to prevent messages or other information from being within the reach of law enforcement.

The controversy over Apple's new system, and whether it's surveilling users, threatens Apple's public reputation for building secure and private devices, which the company has used to break into new markets in personal finance and healthcare.

Critics are concerned the system will partially operate on an iPhone, instead of only scanning photos that have been uploaded to the company's servers. Apple's competitors typically only scan photos stored on their servers.

"It's truly disappointing that Apple got so hung up on its particular vision of privacy that it ended up betraying the fulcrum of user control: being able to trust that your device is truly yours," technology commentator Ben Thompson wrote in a newsletter on Monday.

Apple continues to defend its systems as a genuine improvement that protects children and will reduce the amount of CSAM being created while still protecting iPhone user privacy.

Apple said its system is significantly stronger and more private than previous systems by every privacy metric the company tracks and that it went out of its way to build a better system to detect these illegal images.

Unlike current systems, which run in the cloud and can't be inspected by security researchers, Apple's system can be inspected through its distribution in iOS, an Apple representative said. By moving some processing onto the user's device, the company can derive stronger privacy properties, such as the ability to find CSAM matches without running software on Apple servers that check every single photo.

Apple said on Monday its system doesn't scan private photo libraries that haven't been uploaded to iCloud.

Apple also confirmed it will process photos that have already been uploaded to iCloud. The changes will roll out through an iPhone update later this year, after which users will be alerted that Apple is beginning to check photos stores on iCloud against a list of fingerprints that correspond to known CSAM, Apple said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/09/appl...eillance-.html





Apple Says Photos in iCloud will be Checked by Child Abuse Detection System
Stephen Nellis, Joseph Menn

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) on Monday said that iPhone users' entire photo libraries will be checked for known child abuse images if they are stored in the online iCloud service.

The disclosure came in a series of media briefings in which Apple is seeking to dispel alarm over its announcement last week that it will scan users' phones, tablets and computers for millions of illegal pictures.

While Google, Microsoft and other technology platforms check uploaded photos or emailed attachments against a database of identifiers provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and other clearing houses, security experts faulted Apple's plan as more invasive.

Some said they expected that governments would seek to force the iPhone maker to expand the system to peer into devices for other material.

In a posting to its website on Sunday, Apple said it would fight any such attempts, which can occur in secret courts.

"We have faced demands to build and deploy government-mandated changes that degrade the privacy of users before, and have steadfastly refused those demands," Apple wrote. "We will continue to refuse them in the future."

In the briefing on Monday, Apple officials said the company's system, which will roll out this fall with the release of its iOS 15 operating system, will check existing files on a user's device if users have those photos synched to the company's storage servers.

Julie Cordua, chief executive of Thorn, a group that has developed technology to help law enforcement officials detect sex trafficking, said about half of child sexual abuse material is formatted as video.

Apple's system does not check videos before they are uploaded to the company's cloud, but the company said it plans to expand its system in unspecified ways in the future.

Apple has come under international pressure for the low numbers of its reports of abuse material compared with other providers. Some European jurisdictions are debating legislation to hold platforms more accountable for the spread of such material.

Company executives argued on Monday that on-device checks preserve privacy more than running checks on Apple's cloud storage directly. Among other things, the architecture of the new system does not tell Apple anything about a user's content unless a threshold number of images has been surpassed, which then triggers a human review.

The executives acknowledged that a user could be implicated by malicious actors who win control of a device and remotely install known child abuse material. But they said they expected any such attacks to be very rare and that in any case a review would then look for other signs of criminal hacking.
Reporting by Joseph Menn and Stephen Nells in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler
https://www.reuters.com/technology/a...em-2021-08-09/





Exclusive: Apple's Child Protection Features Spark Concern Within its Own Ranks –Sources
Joseph Menn and Julia Love

A backlash over Apple's move to scan U.S. customer phones and computers for child sex abuse images has grown to include employees speaking out internally, a notable turn in a company famed for its secretive culture, as well as provoking intensified protests from leading technology policy groups.

Apple employees have flooded an Apple internal Slack channel with more than 800 messages on the plan announced a week ago, workers who asked not to be identified told Reuters. Many expressed worries that the feature could be exploited by repressive governments looking to find other material for censorship or arrests, according to workers who saw the days-long thread.

Past security changes at Apple have also prompted concern among employees, but the volume and duration of the new debate is surprising, the workers said. Some posters worried that Apple is damaging its leading reputation for protecting privacy.

Though coming mainly from employees outside of lead security and privacy roles, the pushback marks a shift for a company where a strict code of secrecy around new products colors other aspects of the corporate culture.

Slack rolled out a few years ago and has been more widely adopted by teams at Apple during the pandemic, two employees said. As workers used the app to maintain social ties during the work-from-home era by sharing recipes and other light-hearted content, more serious discussions have also taken root.

In the Slack thread devoted to the photo-scanning feature, some employees have pushed back against criticism, while others said Slack wasn't the proper forum for such discussions.

Core security employees did not appear to be major complainants in the posts, and some of them said that they thought Apple's solution was a reasonable response to pressure to crack down on illegal material.

Other employees said they hoped that the scanning is a step toward fully encrypting iCloud for customers who want it, which would reverse Apple's direction on the issue a second time.

PROTEST

Last week's announcement is drawing heavier criticism from past outside supporters who say Apple is rejecting a history of well-marketed privacy fights.

They say that while the U.S. government can't legally scan wide swaths of household equipment for contraband or make others do so, Apple is doing it voluntarily, with potentially dire consequences.

People familiar with the matter said a coalition of policy groups are finalizing a letter of protest to send to Apple within days demanding a suspension of the plan. Two groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) both released newly detailed objections to Apple's plan in the past 24 hours.

"What Apple is showing with their announcement last week is that there are technical weaknesses that they are willing to build in," CDT project director Emma Llanso said in an interview. "It seems so out of step from everything that they had previously been saying and doing."

Apple declined to comment for this story. It has said it will refuse requests from governments to use the system to check phones for anything other than illegal child sexual abuse material.

Outsiders and employees pointed to Apple's stand against the FBI in 2016, when it successfully fought a court order to develop a new tool to crack into a terrorism suspect's iPhone. Back then, the company said that such a tool would inevitably be used to break into other devices for other reasons.

But Apple was surprised its stance then was not more popular, and the global tide since then has been toward more monitoring of private communication.

With less publicity, Apple has made other technical decisions that help authorities, including dropping a plan to encrypt widely used iCloud backups and agreeing to store Chinese user data in that country.

A fundamental problem with Apple's new plan on scanning child abuse images, critics said, is that the company is making cautious policy decisions that it can be forced to change, now that the capability is there, in exactly the same way it warned would happen if it broke into the terrorism suspect's phone.

Apple says it will scan only in the United States and other countries to be added one by one, only when images are set to be uploaded to iCloud, and only for images that have been identified by the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children and a small number of other groups.

But any country's legislature or courts could demand that any one of those elements be expanded, and some of those nations, such as China, represent enormous and hard to refuse markets, critics said.

Police and other agencies will cite recent laws requiring "technical assistance" in investigating crimes, including in the United Kingdom and Australia, to press Apple to expand this new capability, the EFF said.

"The infrastructure needed to roll out Apple’s proposed changes makes it harder to say that additional surveillance is not technically feasible," wrote EFF General Counsel Kurt Opsahl.

Lawmakers will build on it as well, said Neil Brown, a U.K. tech lawyer at decoded.legal: "If Apple demonstrates that, even in just one market, it can carry out on-device content filtering, I would expect regulators/lawmakers to consider it appropriate to demand its use in their own markets, and potentially for an expanded scope of things."
Reporting by Joseph Menn, Julia Love and Stephen Nellis in San Franciso; editing by Kenneth Li and Grant McCool
https://www.reuters.com/technology/e...ks-2021-08-12/





If You Build It, They Will Come: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship Around the World
Kurt Opsahl

Apple’s new program for scanning images sent on iMessage steps back from the company’s prior support for the privacy and security of encrypted messages. The program, initially limited to the United States, narrows the understanding of end-to-end encryption to allow for client-side scanning. While Apple aims at the scourge of child exploitation and abuse, the company has created an infrastructure that is all too easy to redirect to greater surveillance and censorship. The program will undermine Apple’s defense that it can’t comply with the broader demands.

For years, countries around the world have asked for access to and control over encrypted messages, asking technology companies to “nerd harder” when faced with the pushback that access to messages in the clear was incompatible with strong encryption. The Apple child safety message scanning program is currently being rolled out only in the United States.

The United States has not been shy about seeking access to encrypted communications, pressuring the companies to make it easier to obtain data with warrants and to voluntarily turn over data. However, the U.S. faces serious constitutional issues if it wanted to pass a law that required warrantless screening and reporting of content. Even if conducted by a private party, a search ordered by the government is subject to the Fourth Amendment’s protections. Any “warrant” issued for suspicionless mass surveillance would be an unconstitutional general warrant. As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has explained, "Search warrants . . . are fundamentally offensive to the underlying principles of the Fourth Amendment when they are so bountiful and expansive in their language that they constitute a virtual, all-encompassing dragnet[.]" With this new program, Apple has failed to hold a strong policy line against U.S. laws undermining encryption, but there remains a constitutional backstop to some of the worst excesses. But U.S constitutional protection may not necessarily be replicated in every country.

Apple is a global company, with phones and computers in use all over the world, and many governments pressure that comes along with that. Apple has promised it will refuse government “demands to build and deploy government-mandated changes that degrade the privacy of users.” It is good that Apple says it will not, but this is not nearly as strong a protection as saying it cannot, which could not honestly be said about any system of this type. Moreover, if it implements this change, Apple will need to not just fight for privacy, but win in legislatures and courts around the world. To keep its promise, Apple will have to resist the pressure to expand the iMessage scanning program to new countries, to scan for new types of content and to report outside parent-child relationships.

It is no surprise that authoritarian countries demand companies provide access and control to encrypted messages, often the last best hope for dissidents to organize and communicate. For example, Citizen Lab’s research shows that—right now—China’s unencrypted WeChat service already surveils images and files shared by users, and uses them to train censorship algorithms. “When a message is sent from one WeChat user to another, it passes through a server managed by Tencent (WeChat’s parent company) that detects if the message includes blacklisted keywords before a message is sent to the recipient.” As the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Riana Pfefferkorn explains, this type of technology is a roadmap showing “how a client-side scanning system originally built only for CSAM [Child Sexual Abuse Material] could and would be suborned for censorship and political persecution.” As Apple has found, China, with the world’s biggest market, can be hard to refuse. Other countries are not shy about applying extreme pressure on companies, including arresting local employees of the tech companies.

But many times potent pressure to access encrypted data also comes from democratic countries that strive to uphold the rule of law, at least at first. If companies fail to hold the line in such countries, the changes made to undermine encryption can easily be replicated by countries with weaker democratic institutions and poor human rights records—often using similar legal language, but with different ideas about public order and state security, as well as what constitutes impermissible content, from obscenity to indecency to political speech. This is very dangerous. These countries, with poor human rights records, will nevertheless contend that they are no different. They are sovereign nations, and will see their public-order needs as equally urgent. They will contend that if Apple is providing access to any nation-state under that state’s local laws, Apple must also provide access to other countries, at least, under the same terms.

'Five Eyes' Countries Will Seek to Scan Messages

For example, the Five Eyes—an alliance of the intelligence services of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—warned in 2018 that they will “pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other measures to achieve lawful access solutions” if the companies didn’t voluntarily provide access to encrypted messages. More recently, the Five Eyes have pivoted from terrorism to the prevention of CSAM as the justification, but the demand for unencrypted access remains the same, and the Five Eyes are unlikely to be satisfied without changes to assist terrorism and criminal investigations too.

The United Kingdom’s Investigatory Powers Act, following through on the Five Eyes’ threat, allows their Secretary of State to issue “technical capacity notices,” which oblige telecommunications operators to make the technical ability of “providing assistance in giving effect to an interception warrant, equipment interference warrant, or a warrant or authorisation for obtaining communications data.” As the UK Parliament considered the IPA, we warned that a “company could be compelled to distribute an update in order to facilitate the execution of an equipment interference warrant, and ordered to refrain from notifying their customers.”

Under the IPA, the Secretary of State must consider “the technical feasibility of complying with the notice.” But the infrastructure needed to roll out Apple’s proposed changes makes it harder to say that additional surveillance is not technically feasible. With Apple’s new program, we worry that the UK might try to compel an update that would expand the current functionality of the iMessage scanning program, with different algorithmic targets and wider reporting. As the iMessage “communication safety” feature is entirely Apple’s own invention, Apple can all too easily change its own criteria for what will be flagged for reporting. Apple may receive an order to adopt its hash matching program for iPhoto into the message pre-screening. Likewise, the criteria for which accounts will apply this scanning, and where positive hits get reported, are wholly within Apple’s control.

Australia followed suit with its Assistance and Access Act, which likewise allows for requirements to provide technical assistance and capabilities, with the disturbing potential to undermine encryption. While the Act contains some safeguards, a coalition of civil society organizations, tech companies, and trade associations, including EFF and—wait for it—Apple, explained that they were insufficient.

Indeed, in Apple’s own submission to the Australian government, Apple warned “the government may seek to compel providers to install or test software or equipment, facilitate access to customer equipment, turn over source code, remove forms of electronic protection, modify characteristics of a service, or substitute a service, among other things.” If only Apple would remember that these very techniques could also be used in an attempt to mandate or change the scope of Apple’s scanning program.

While Canada has yet to adopt an explicit requirement for plain text access, the Canadian government is actively pursuing filtering obligations for various online platforms, which raise the spectre of a more aggressive set of obligations targeting private messaging applications.

Censorship Regimes Are In Place And Ready to Go

For the Five Eyes, the ask is mostly for surveillance capabilities, but India and Indonesia are already down the slippery slope to content censorship. The Indian government’s new Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code (“2021 Rules”), in effect earlier this year, directly imposes dangerous requirements for platforms to pre-screen content. Rule 4(4) compels content filtering, requiring that providers “endeavor to deploy technology-based measures,” including automated tools or other mechanisms, to “proactively identify information” that has been forbidden under the Rules.

India’s defense of the 2021 rules, written in response to the criticism from three UN Special Rapporteurs, was to highlight the very real dangers to children, and skips over the much broader mandate of the scanning and censorship rules. The 2021 Rules impose proactive and automatic enforcement of its content takedown provisions, requiring the proactive blocking of material previously held to be forbidden under Indian law. These laws broadly include those protecting “the sovereignty and integrity of India; security of the State; friendly relations with foreign States; public order; decency or morality.” This is no hypothetical slippery slope—it’s not hard to see how this language could be dangerous to freedom of expression and political dissent. Indeed, India’s track record on its Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which has reportedly been used to arrest academics, writers and poets for leading rallies and posting political messages on social media, highlight this danger.

It would be no surprise if India claimed that Apple’s scanning program was a great start towards compliance, with a few more tweaks needed to address the 2021 Rules’ wider mandate. Apple has promised to protest any expansion, and could argue in court, as WhatsApp and others have, that the 2021 Rules should be struck down, or that Apple does not fit the definition of a social media intermediary regulated under these 2021 Rules. But the Indian rules illustrate both the governmental desire and the legal backing for pre-screening encrypted content, and Apple’s changes makes it all the easier to slip into this dystopia.

This is, unfortunately, an ever-growing trend. Indonesia, too, has adopted Ministerial Regulation MR5 to require service providers (including “instant messaging” providers) to “ensure” that their system “does not contain any prohibited [information]; and [...] does not facilitate the dissemination of prohibited [information]”. MR5 defines prohibited information as anything that violates any provision of Indonesia’s laws and regulations, or creates “community anxiety” or “disturbance in public order.” MR5 also imposes disproportionate sanctions, including a general blocking of systems for those who fail to ensure there is no prohibited content and information in their systems. Indonesia may also see the iMessage scanning functionality as a tool for compliance with Regulation MR5, and pressure Apple to adopt a broader and more invasive version in their country.

Pressure Will Grow

The pressure to expand Apple’s program to more countries and more types of content will only continue. In fall of 2020, in the European Union, a series of leaked documents from the European Commission foreshadowed an anti-encryption law to the European Parliament, perhaps this year. Fortunately, there is a backstop in the EU. Under the e-commerce directive, EU Member States are not allowed to impose a general obligation to monitor the information that users transmit or store, as stated in the Article 15 of the e-Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC). Indeed, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has stated explicitly that intermediaries may not be obliged to monitor their services in a general manner in order to detect and prevent illegal activity of their users. Such an obligation will be incompatible with fairness and proportionality. Despite this, in a leaked internal document published by Politico, the European Commission committed itself to an action plan for mandatory detection of CSAM by relevant online service providers (expected in December 2021) that pointed to client-side scanning as the solution, which can potentially apply to secure private messaging apps, and seizing upon the notion that it preserves the protection of end-to-end encryption.

For governmental policymakers who have been urging companies to nerd harder, wordsmithing harder is just as good. The end result of access to unencrypted communication is the goal, and if that can be achieved in a way that arguably leaves a more narrowly defined end-to-end encryption in place, all the better for them.

All it would take to widen the narrow backdoor that Apple is building is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content, the adoption of the iPhoto hash matching to iMessage, or a tweak of the configuration flags to scan, not just children’s, but anyone’s accounts. Apple has a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the necessary changes. China and doubtless other countries already have hashes and content classifiers to identify messages impermissible under their laws, even if they are protected by international human rights law. The abuse cases are easy to imagine: governments that outlaw homosexuality might require a classifier to be trained to restrict apparent LGBTQ+ content, or an authoritarian regime might demand a classifier able to spot popular satirical images or protest flyers.

Now that Apple has built it, they will come. With good intentions, Apple has paved the road to mandated security weakness around the world, enabling and reinforcing the arguments that, should the intentions be good enough, scanning through your personal life and private communications is acceptable. We urge Apple to reconsider and return to the mantra Apple so memorably emblazoned on a billboard at 2019’s CES conference in Las Vegas: What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/0...d-surveillance





Australia is Becoming a Surveillance State

Government continues to give more powers to law enforcement.
Casey Tonkin

The government’s approach to technological surveillance is leading us down a dark path, experts warn, as it prepares to give law enforcement agencies new hacking powers.

Currently before parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020 is the government’s latest attempt to gain a watchful eye over cyber space.

Once the bill passes, it will dish out extra power to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), giving the agencies access to new warrants that will let them modify and delete data, collect intelligence from online communities, and even take over the online accounts of supposed criminals.

Speaking at a webinar hosted by Electronic Frontiers Australia last week, senior lecturer in criminology at Deakin University, Dr Monique Mann, said the laws are just the latest in what she called a “hyper-legislative” approach to electronic surveillance.

“[These laws] represent, in my view, significant expansions of the existing powers of law enforcement agencies away from a traditional focus on investigation and the collection of admissible evidence of specific offenses to disruption, to attack, to take-over, to take-down,” Dr Mann said.

“These typically are powers that are reserved for the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).

“Here the distinction between intelligence and evidence, and the activities of law enforcement and signals agencies is being eroded.

“This comes with democratic costs – impacts on liberties such as freedom of expression and freedom of the press.”

Expanding powers

Since 2015, when the government passed its controversial metadata retention laws, law enforcement agencies have gained greater oversight into the digital domain of everyday Australians by rushing through the Encryption Bill late in the last parliamentary sitting day of 2018.

Both sets of legislation have continued to cause controversy with the tech industry warning that the encryption laws “significantly degraded the global reputation of the Australian tech sector” while reviews have found law enforcement misusing their metadata powers.

Lawyer and chair of the EFA’s policy team, Angus Murray, said the current “mess” of surveillance legislation – which is being added to with the Identify and Disrupt Bill – is broad, vague, and not fit for purpose.

“Legislation has to adhere to a parliamentary intention,” he said.

“An intention to introduce legislation that deals with child exploitation material or to combat terrorism that has a scope that is extremely widely defined – and, by the assistance and access legislation, amends the definition of ‘computer’ to effectively mean ‘the internet’ – puts us in a situation where firstly the scope and the full power of law is not actually understood.

“Secondly, the courts are left to guide the community in terms of how the law is ultimately applied.

“And thirdly, it’s unlikely this legislation will be repealed once it’s passed.”

The Richardson Review

The complexity of Australia’s existing surveillance legislation was firmly pointed out in the Comprehensive Review of the Legal Framework of the National Intelligence Community which was published in a de-classified format late last year after going through a year’s-long redaction process.

Commonly known as the Richardson Review, the lengthy four-volume, 1,300-page document outlines a much-needed overhaul of existing legislation and the creation of a new, modernised, Electronic Surveillance Act.

Dr Mann said to enact the full recommendations of the Richardson Review would in effect require the repeal and re-writing of “about 1,000 pages of existing telecommunications surveillance law”.

“The whole point leading to this review is because the Telecommunications Interception and Access Act, developed in 1979, has not kept up with the scale and pace of technological change, it needs to be updated, it’s no longer fit-for-purpose.

“I think moving forward, this landscape, in the Australian context, is going to be changing. It’s going to take time – a long time – to do a lot of that repealing and re-writing.”

Murray doesn’t share Dr Mann’s optimism, however, that the government will work to enact a consolidated Electronic Surveillance Act.

“In my view and experience, it isn’t ordinary for government to attempt to make things easier,” he said.

“The reason why it’s scattered out at the moment I think is to give power across a variety of bases.

“And law that’s confusing is law that can be applied without people appreciating its consequences.”
https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2021/a...nce-state.html





AT&T Delays 500,000 Fiber-to-the-Home Builds Due to Severe Fiber Shortage

AT&T planned to wire up 3 million homes this year, will hit 2.5 million instead.
Jon Brodkin

AT&T says that supply-chain shortages will delay fiber construction to about 500,000 homes that it originally planned to wire up this year and warned that shortages are likely to impact other companies that purchase fiber even more.

"Up through the second quarter, we hadn't really experienced any impact from the supply-chain disruptions that are happening across the industry. But since the start of the third quarter, we are seeing dislocation across the board including in fiber supply," AT&T Senior Executive VP and CFO Pascal Desroches said yesterday at a virtual conference hosted by Oppenheimer.

AT&T previously told investors to expect "3 million homes passed [with fiber] this year," Desroches said. "We're probably going to come in a little bit light, probably around 2.5 [million]."

The planned deployment of 3 million locations includes all the fiber construction AT&T has completed in the first seven months of 2021. As we've written previously, AT&T is expanding its fiber builds in about 90 metro areas, with new locations primarily consisting of homes and businesses close to AT&T's existing fiber installations.

Global shortages roil industries

Global semiconductor shortages have been disrupting plans for much of the tech industry and automakers. The broadband industry is being hampered by the shortages in chips, other components, and fiber itself.

AT&T typically has no problem getting fiber at a low cost, Desroches said. "We're the largest fiber purchaser in the country and we have prices that are the best and most competitive in the industry," he said. "We feel really good about the ability to secure fiber inventory at attractive price points and the ability to execute the buildout at scale, something that many others don't have."

AT&T expects to catch up to its original fiber-construction estimates in the years after 2021, largely because of what Desroches called its "preferred place in the supply chain" and "committed pricing." As AT&T said in a news release yesterday, AT&T is "working closely with the broader fiber ecosystem to address this near-term dislocation" and "is confident it will achieve the company's target of 30 million customer locations passed by the end of 2025."

AT&T had deployed fiber to about 15 million locations by early 2021, so the plan is to double that by 2025. There are about 53 million households in AT&T's 21-state home-Internet service area, leaving over 20 million where AT&T has no plans to upgrade from old copper lines to fiber.

Internet providers without a preferred place in the supply chain will have more trouble getting fiber than AT&T, Desroches pointed out. "We don't think it's going to impact us long-term, but I think it's really important context. If we're feeling the pain in this, I can only imagine what others in the industry are experiencing," he said.

While Desroches "did not name AT&T's fiber vendor, he noted it was a US company which has both domestic and international locations. Both CommScope and Corning would fit that description," FierceTelecom wrote. "The latter recently highlighted an uptick in orders in its optical segment, but CFO Tony Tripeny warned on Corning's Q2 earnings call it was already facing supply chain disruptions and expected 'glass supply to remain short to tight in the upcoming quarters.'"

Small ISPs feel pain of shortage

A trade group that represents rural ISPs described the shortages its members face in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission last month.

"NTCA members report widespread delays in obtaining communications equipment of all kinds, which extends not only to electronics (such as routers, optical network terminals, and customer premises equipment 'CPE') but also fiber. The delay appears to have begun soon after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and has escalated since then," according to the filing by NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association.

NTCA did an informal survey of its members and found that the "minimum delay reported by members was generally three to four weeks, with some members reporting a delay of greater than 12 weeks and, in some instances, not being able to obtain the equipment for the 2021 construction season."

AT&T loves fiber but doesn’t want everyone to get it

Desroches argued that fiber's symmetrical speeds are becoming a necessity and said, "There is no better technology for connectivity."

"As a result of what you've seen in the last year in the pandemic, the need to do what we're doing now—two-way communication [via video conference]—can only happen with symmetrical speeds," he said. "I think everyone has had an ah-ha moment, 'we need to deploy fiber.' We've long believed that and this is just really leaning into that opportunity."

AT&T has repeatedly touted the superiority of fiber when talking to investors despite fighting against nationwide fiber construction. In March, AT&T told the US that it shouldn't demand high upload speeds when giving funding to ISPs, claiming that rural people don't need fiber and should be satisfied with Internet service that provides only 10Mbps upload speeds.

AT&T doesn't want to face competition from fiber in places that it has deemed not profitable enough for upgrades. AT&T's March statement said that funding faster networks in areas not served by fiber "would needlessly devalue private investment and waste broadband-directed dollars."

Fiber a big moneymaker for AT&T

Desroches said that AT&T's goal is to get at least 40 percent of homes subscribed to fiber in areas where AT&T deploys it. "We think in certain markets we'll have an opportunity to do better than that," he said.

Fiber helps AT&T boost revenue both from home-Internet subscribers and large enterprises. "It's so critical to roll this out because the ability to grow both your enterprise and consumer business is attractive, and we think these investments will provide us with mid-teen returns over time," he said.

Desroches also spoke briefly about AT&T's wireless home-Internet service, saying, "There is a place for fixed wireless in certain rural communities where it's hard to make the economics work through a fiber buildout and it may make sense to use a fixed wireless solution."
https://arstechnica.com/information-...iber-shortage/





UK Launches £4m Fund to Run Fibre Optic Cables Through Water Pipes

Project that could bring fibre broadband to remote areas while monitoring pipes for water leaks
Sarah Butler

The government has launched a £4m fund to back projects trialling running fibre optic broadband cables through water pipes to help connect hard-to-reach homes without digging up roads.

The money will also be used to test out monitors in pipes that can help water companies identify and repair leaks more quickly. About a fifth of water put into public supply every day is lost via leaks and it is hoped that sensors could help deliver water companies’ commitment to reduce water loss by half.

Infrastruture works, in particular installing new ducts and poles, can make up as much as four-fifths of the costs to industry of building new gigabit-capable broadband networks, the government said.

The project is designed to help cut those costs, and is part of a plan to improve broadband and mobile signals in rural areas.

The digital infrastructure minister, Matt Warman, said: “The cost of digging up roads and land is the biggest obstacle telecoms companies face when connecting hard-to-reach areas to better broadband, but beneath our feet there is a vast network of pipes reaching virtually every building in the country.

“So we are calling on Britain’s brilliant innovators to help us use this infrastructure to serve a dual purpose of serving up not just fresh and clean water but also lightning-fast digital connectivity.”

The fund has been launched after the government in June kicked off a call for evidence on how more than a million kilometres of underground utility ducts could be used to boost the rollout of next-generation broadband.

A consortium, which could be made up of telecoms companies, utility providers and engineering companies, will be selected to deliver the project. Applications are due by 4 October and any proposal will require approval by the Drinking Water Inspectorate.

Electricity and gas companies, water and sewer networks and telecoms groups have until 4 September to respond to the consultation on changing regulations to make infrastructure sharing easier. Broadband cables have already been deployed in water pipes in other countries including Spain.

Although more than 96% of UK premises already have access to superfast broadband, providing download speeds of at least 24 Mbps, according to the government, just 12% of the UK has access to faster speeds via full-fibre broadband.

A report out last year suggested the government’s ambition to provide next-generation fibre broadband to every home by 2025 is likely to be missed, unless issues including pricing and concrete plans on reaching remote towns and villages are addressed. That ambition was a key promise of Boris Johnson’s election manifesto.
https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...gh-water-pipes





EXPLAINER: What the $65B Broadband Service Plan Will Do
Tali Arbel

The Senate’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan includes a $65 billion investment in broadband that the White House says will “deliver reliable, affordable, high-speed internet to every household.”

It may not actually achieve that, but it’s a major step in that direction. The broadband funding is a “great down payment” on the Biden administration’s far-reaching goals of connecting all Americans and making internet more affordable, said Matt Wood, a broadband policy expert at the consumer advocacy group Free Press. Critically important is $14 billion aimed at helping low-income Americans pay for service.

The “digital divide” — the persistent U.S. gap between the broadband haves and have-nots — became glaringly obvious during the pandemic as school, work and health care shifted online. Tens of millions either don’t have internet access or, if they do have access to a local phone or cable company, can’t afford to pay for it.

More radical industry changes laid out in the Biden administration’s original $100 billion plan, like promoting alternatives to the dominant phone and cable industries and hinting at price regulation, didn’t survive bipartisan negotiations over a bill that had to attract Republican support. Among the bill’s big winners, in fact, are those same internet service providers.

The Senate passed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill Tuesday, 69-30, with support from both Democrats and Republicans. The House is expected to consider it in September.

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

The Federal Communications Commission says about 14 million Americans don’t have access to broadband at the speeds necessary to work and study online — 25 megabits per second downloads and 3 mbps uploads — but acknowledges that its maps are faulty. Outside groups have made higher estimates.

Phone and cable companies don’t have incentives to build internet infrastructure in rural areas, where customers are sparser and they may not make their money back. That’s traditionally where government subsidies to the industry have come into play: About $47 billion to rural internet from 2009 through 2017, and an additional $20 billion for rural broadband over the next decade and another $9 billion for high-speed wireless internet called 5G in sparsely populated regions.

But there are also tens of millions of people today who have access to the internet and just don’t sign up, most often because they can’t afford it, in both cities and remote areas. The National Urban League estimates that number at 30 million households.
FOCUSING ON AFFORDABILITY

The Senate bill would provide about $14 billion toward a $30 monthly benefit that helps low-income people pay for internet, extending a pandemic-era emergency program.

“What makes this historic is the focus on affordability,” said Jenna Leventoff of Public Knowledge, which advocates for more funding for broadband. The bill, should it become law, is “going to help a lot of people that were otherwise unable to connect.”

An existing program, known as Lifeline, aimed to help solve this affordability issue before. But it only provides $9.25 a month, which doesn’t go far for internet plans. It has also been a target of Republicans, who say it has fraud and abuse problems.

Industry groups have also advocated for a permanent broadband benefit. Broadband companies, if they choose to participate, will gain additional customers. The program is “a plus for all ISPs,” said Evercore ISI analyst Vijay Jayant.

The legislation directs the FCC to create rules intended to protect consumers from companies that could push them to sign up for more expensive services in connection with the benefit and against other “unjust and unreasonable” practices.

MONEY FOR NETWORKS

The bill provides about $42 billion in grants to states, who in turn will funnel it to ISPs to expand networks where people don’t have good internet service. Companies that take this money will have to offer a low-cost service option. Government regulators will approve the price of that service.

The bill requires that internet projects come with minimum speeds of 100 mbps down/20 up, a big step up from current requirements. But some advocates are concerned that it’s still too slow, and argue that the federal government may have to spend big again down the line to rebuild networks that aren’t up to par for future needs.

Cable companies are also happy that the funding is primarily dedicated to areas that don’t currently have broadband service. Some advocates had hoped the government would step in and fund competition to cable so that people had more choices. Others saw that as wasteful.

The Biden administration’s initial plan promised to promote local government networks, cooperatives and nonprofits as alternatives to for-profit phone and cable companies. Under the Senate’s plan now, such groups aren’t prioritized, but they can still get money from states for networks. The telecom industry has lobbied against municipal networks; about 20 states restrict them.

Senate negotiators also left loopholes in language around an attempt to end what’s known as “digital redlining” — when telecom companies provide upgraded internet service in wealthier parts of town but leave others without good service. The bill says the FCC must create rules to stop this practice, “insofar as technically and economically feasible.” But the whole reason telecoms leave some areas with subpar service is because those neighborhoods are not as profitable, said Leventoff.

How strong these requirements are will depend on what the FCC does. The agency, however, is hamstrung. The White House has not nominated a permanent chair and the FCC is missing a third Democratic commissioner that would allow it to take on controversial items.

Still, industry groups and proponents of expanding internet access both say the legislation should help get more people online.

“This bill will not increase choice and lower prices for everyone. But that’s not the right measure,” Wood said. “It will make real, high-speed internet far more affordable for millions of people who today cannot afford it, and it will make faster networks available to millions more. That’s a big deal.”
https://apnews.com/article/technolog...ee72f352998fa4

















Until next week,

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