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Old 11-12-19, 07:50 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 14th, ’19

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"Let's stop it with the scare stories." – Bruce Schneier






































December 14th, 2019




A Small Wisconsin Company Stored Thousands of People’s CDs, then Suddenly Vanished

Nearly a million albums might not get back to their owners
Dani Deahl

Last month, almost a million CDs stored in Wisconsin seemed to disappear. For years, thousands of people paid a Madison-based company, named Murfie, to rip, stream, and store their CDs, vinyl, and cassettes. But a few weeks ago, Murfie’s website went offline and nearly all communication from the company ceased. Now, customers fear their physical music collections may be lost forever.

Murfie’s main service was digitizing people’s audio CDs for high-fidelity cloud playback. You’d mail in your collection, Murfie would rip them to the cloud, and if you kept paying a storage fee, Murfie would hold onto your physical collection and even let you buy and sell with other users. For nine years, it had done that. But late last month, the service stopped, and customers who went to the website found it had gone offline.

“I’m SO BURNED to the tune of THOUSANDS of dollars,” tweeted a customer. “They have my 100+ cd’s and $1000+ dollars,” tweeted another.

Customers had no idea their collections were in danger since the company acted like everything was fine. As Tone Madison reported, Murfie asked people to re-up their membership as late as November 17th, just five days before it sent out an email saying it had “ceased operations.”

In the days after, customers started to realize Murfie was missing. They could no longer stream music, and emails went unanswered. Even the former CEO didn’t know who was responsible. Whatever was left of Murfie as a company had totally dissolved.

"Customers had always expected to get their discs back"

Customers had always expected to get their discs back — it was part of the company’s promise. “I went back and looked at the terms of use,” says Arik Hesseldahl, who paid Murfie to rip and store 668 CDs. “Those CDs are my property. And they even include a line that says if they fail, you still own your CDs.” The most recent version of Murfie’s terms of use said that if Murfie goes away, the company is still on the hook for “returning your CDs, vinyl, and cassettes to you,” so long as you pay its typical shipping fee.

Even Murfie’s co-founder Matt Younkle was a customer until the site shut down. “There was always something comforting and familiar about having my exact collection available, forever, in its original quality,” Younkle says. “Now that Murfie is gone, listening to my CDs is about to become a lot less convenient.”

Younkle left in 2015. Murfie’s last CEO, Rex Mangat, departed in September, and found out the company closed down the same way customers did: an email.

Now with no website and no CEO, customers can’t figure out who to complain to. “It’s like nobody wants to take ownership of this,” Hesseldahl says. In a blink, Hesseldahl’s lifelong CD collection was gone, and there was no one accountable.

"“It’s like nobody wants to take ownership of this”"

Younkle told The Verge that WISC Partners, a VC firm that invested several times in Murfie, would know the most about what happened. The firm declined to comment. A person familiar with Murfie’s funding said it was widely known it had been in financial trouble for years. They said a new CEO was put in place, the company was reorganized, and varied mergers and acquisitions were pursued. But it wasn’t enough.

At the beginning of the decade, Murfie had more of an appeal: high-res streaming wasn’t common yet, and nearly every household had boxes of CDs and vinyl. But by 2019, physical media was outmoded and high-fidelity streaming became competitive, especially with the entrance of Amazon Music HD. As a result, the new customer pool dried up along with fresh investment dollars.

It turns out, customers were given some warning about their collections disappearing — but you can’t blame them for missing it. An email was sent on November 22nd telling customers Murfie was shutting down and to await instructions on how to get their stuff. Those instructions came a week later, on Black Friday, when a second email said customers had four days to claim their collections or they’d be marked “abandoned.” Not only that, but they’d have to pay a shipping fee over 10 times higher than Murfie’s normal return cost in order to get back their discs. A third email on December 2nd extended the deadline to December 5th, and said there might be one or two in-person pickup days scheduled for those in Madison “if we can obtain the permission of the landlord.”

“Abandoned discs will be recycled by the end of December,” read an email, “when the storage facility must be vacated.”
"customers were given four days to claim their collections or they’d be “abandoned”"

One person who stored 10,000 CDs with Murfie missed the claiming period and had over $400 in his account from sales on the platform that won’t be returned. “The financial impact for me is significant,” they wrote on a forum. “I’m beside myself right now so please chime in if you have any ideas.”

Hesseldahl decided the ask was too expensive and has come to terms with the idea that his collection is gone. “It would have been over $400 to get my CDs back,” he says. “It stinks.”

While Murfie’s business model probably wasn’t going to work far into the future, it also didn’t have to end in agonizing failure. Telling customers on a holiday weekend they need to pony up inflated fees ASAP or lose their CDs and vinyl is a racket that only looks out for the creditors picking up Murfie’s pieces. Whoever’s now in charge even seems to have violated Murfie’s terms of use by not returning discs, changing return rates, and refusing to refund customer credits. They appear to be betting the average person probably doesn’t have the resources to sue, or won’t bother to sue over a few hundred dollars’ worth of CDs.

A tipster says Murfie customers still trying to get their collections back can try emailing cdreturns2u@gmail.com, which is monitored by people connected to Murfie who are still hoping to return discs.

Although the site is offline, the Murfie help desk is still up with a page about what happens if the company were to shut down. “Every CD and vinyl record you store at Murfie HQ is your property. We take that very seriously,” the company wrote. “In the event Murfie goes out of business, you will get back every CD and vinyl record you own in your current collection.”
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/13/...lection-closed





The Pirate Bay Expands into Streaming — Introducing ‘BayStream’
Colin Cohen

The infamous pirate website The Pirate Bay is reportedly testing a new video streaming service called BayStream.

Those who have seen the service say that it has a user interface similar to YouTube. The simple platform lets users illegally stream a wide variety of films and television shows within a browser interface. These same people say that the video quality is high, depending on the size of the torrent used. At the moment, uploads to the service are limited to 20 GB.

The service is apparently in the early stages of development and testing. It still has a number of bugs and flaws, which often cause streams to break.

What isn’t clear right now is who actually owns BayStream. No one seems certain whether The Pirate Bay directly owns it or whether a third-party site related to The Pirate Bay is the owner.

Series that are streamed exclusively on a particular network, such as Game of Thrones on HBO and The Mandalorian on Disney+, are said to be particularly vulnerable to torrent pirating and will be likely candidates for streaming on BayStream. This means that the legal representatives of those who produce and own these types of shows will likely be very interested in the service.

This is not the first time The Pirate Bay has been associated with a video streaming service.

In 2016, the site experimented with a plugin called Torrents Time, which allowed in-browser streaming of video files before it was terminated. Earlier in 2011, the site offered another streaming service called BayFiles, which ceased in 2014 after Swedish police raided the Pirate Bay’s Stockholm offices. Though this service has since been relaunched with a different owner.

The Pirate Bay was created in 2003 by a Swedish think tank called Piratbyrån. In 2009, the three founders of the organization — Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm — were found guilty of assisting in copyright infringement and each served a small amount of time in prison.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/201...nds-streaming/





Feds Bust Illegal Streaming Service Bigger than Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu
Khristopher J. Brooks

Two Las Vegas men who admitted to running one of the nation's largest illegal television and movie streaming services pleaded guilty this week and now face money laundering and copyright infringement charges, federal officials said Friday.

iStreamItAll was an online, subscription-based streaming site that allowed users to download TV episodes and movies. The stream's operators – Darryl Polo, 36, and Luis Villarino, 40 – told the U.S. Justice Department that the service offered access to more than 118,000 television episodes and nearly 11,000 movies, all without consent from the content's copyrighted owners.

That's more content than Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Vudu combined, according to prosecutors.

As part of his plea deal, Polo told the Justice Department he got the episodes and movies from pirate websites, including so-called "torrent" sites that specialize in infringing on content rights.

"Specifically, Polo used sophisticated computer programming to scour global pirate sites for new illegal content [and] to download, process and store these works and then make the shows and movies available on servers in Canada to [iStreamItAll] subscribers," Justice Department officials said.

Polo also said he earned more than $1 million running content pirating services, including an indexing website called SmackDownOnYou.

He and Villarino used their computer programming knowledge to also help operate Jetflicks, a different Las Vegas-based illegal streaming service, federal officials said. At Jetflicks, Polo and others used automated software to find and download illegal content then make it available to computer servers in the U.S. and Canada.

In August, a federal grand jury indicted six other men for their connection and work on Jetflicks. Polo eventually left the service to create iStreamItAll. The Justice Department said the streaming services cost copyright owners millions of dollars.

Polo and Villarino will be sentenced in federal court in Virginia this March. Other defendants charged in the case are scheduled for trial starting Feb. 3.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/istream...ering-charges/





FCC Proposes ‘Highest Fine Ever’ on Two Boston Pirate Radio Operators

The station are accused of unlicensed and unlawful broadcasting
Shawn M. Carter

The Federal Communications Commission proposed hefty fines Thursday on two separate Boston-area pirate radio operators for allegedly broadcasting without a license.

“Both operators ignored repeated warnings and continued to broadcast and interfere with licensed radio stations for years,” Ajit Pai, chairman of the agency, said in a video statement posted on YouTube. “This should serve as a yet another warning that we will not stand by as the law is being broken.”

The first fine was levied on Gerlens Cesar, who operates Radio TeleBoston, for apparent unlicensed and unlawful broadcasting. It was $453,015, according to the FCC.

Cesar used three separate broadcasting transmitters, which resulted in three separate violations of the law, according to the memo. In response, the FCC proposed imposing the statutory maximum forfeiture amount for each violation, which was the “largest fine ever proposed by the FCC against a pirate radio operation,” according to the agency.

Radio TeleBoston simulcasts on three unauthorized transmitters on two different frequencies, the FCC said. That could cause interference on Boston FM dials and interfere with licensed communications and public safety announcements.

The Communications Act prohibits certain broadcasts without a license from the FCC.

“It is the FCC’s job to manage America’s spectrum,” Pai said. “Every radio broadcast above a certain low-power level needs an FCC license but, by definition, [pirating] is unlicensed and unlawful.

The agency, in the note, said it received multiple complaints from Boston residents of an illegal station operating in the area. The FCC Enforcement Bureau was able to locate the transmitters in question and link them back to Radio TeleBoston. The agency then issued several written notices to Cesar to stop transmission, to which he did not comply, it said.

“Many pirate radio broadcasts have cropped up that can, and do, interfere with licensed radio signals and other services,” he continued. “This is why we’ve taken major enforcement against pirate radio operators, especially in and around cities,” like in Boston.

The second fine of $151,005 was given to Acerome Jean Charles, the operator of Radio Concorde, for his alleged unlicensed broadcasts.

The FCC said it received a complaint from a local licensed broadcaster, which they traced back to Radio Concorde and issued several unanswered warnings to stop transmission.

Neither station immediately replied to requests for comment from FOX Business but both will have an opportunity to respond to the allegations before any fine is enforced.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technolo...adio-operators





Disney Crushes Own Global Box Office Record With Historic $10 Billion
Rebecca Rubin

Thanks to a record number of billion-dollar blockbusters, Disney has become the first studio in history to surpass $10 billion at the worldwide box office.

Through Sunday, the studio has generated $3.28 billion in North America and $6.7 billion overseas for a global haul of $9.997 billion and is expected to officially cross the benchmark within the next day. Disney smashed its own global box office milestone — set in 2016 with $7.6 billion — back in July after the success of “Avengers: Endgame” and “The Lion King.” All the more impressive, the studio hit the new high-water mark even before “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” the final chapter in the Skywalker saga, arrives in theaters Dec. 20.

Those ticket sales don’t include Fox titles like “Ford v Ferrari” or “Dark Phoenix.” When accounting for movies it acquired after inheriting Fox’s film empire, that bounty is pushed to $11.9 billion.

In August, Disney established a new record for having five movies — “Avengers: Endgame,” “Aladdin,” “Toy Story 4,” “The Lion King” and “Captain Marvel” — cross $1 billion in a single year. “Frozen 2” has earned $920 million to date and will soon become the sixth title to join the elusive club in 2019, while “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” could make it seven.

Popular on Variety

Disney currently holds six of the 10 biggest movies of the year globally with “Avengers: Endgame,” the highest-grossing film of all time ($2.79 billion), as well as “The Lion King” ($1.6 billion), “Captain Marvel” ($1.2 billion), “Toy Story 4” ($1.07 billion), “Aladdin” ($1.05 billion) and “Frozen 2” ($920 million).

“It’s difficult to describe the momentousness [year] that Disney is enjoying,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at Comscore. “Disney has consistently put almost unfathomable numbers on the board by delivering a diverse and irresistible slate of films, while capitalizing on the goodwill and viewer loyalty that has been built up by years.”
https://variety.com/2019/film/news/d...me-1203428859/





‘We Committed Copyright Infringement and Want to Be Sued by Disney’
David Z. Morris and Aaron Pressman

Good morning readers, Fortune tech writer David Z. Morris here filling in for Adam. In the spirit of Casual Friday, I have a story about t-shirts (it's also about A.I., intellectual property theft, and the inherent vulnerabilities of open platforms).

The story begins on Dec. 3, when an artist going by @Hannahdouken on Twitter posted an image of hand-drawn text reading, “This site sells STOLEN Artwork, do NOT buy from them!” And asked followers to reply that they wanted the image on a shirt:

They were testing a theory. For years, artists posting their work online have found the art turned into t-shirts and other merch without permission or compensation. The theory was that this was being done by automated bots that combed Twitter for images with such enthusiastic replies, and then automatically created merch on sites such as Gearbubble, copthistee, and Teeshirtpublic. These sites take images from just about anywhere, apparently without much screening, and put them on commercial products.

Sure enough, automated bots picked up @Hannahdouken’s image and placed it on t-shirts . . . and the next day, they did the same with a far more subversive one.

Hans-Jürgen Eisenbeis, who goes by @Nirbion on Twitter, says @Hannahdouken's test was clever, but didn’t have any serious downside for the art thieves. So he made an image with more dramatic text. “I thought about something that would make them care and cut their profit, even for a tiny bit.”

His theory: See if he could bait the bots into copyright infringement, and just maybe, a pricey lawsuit. And who’s the scariest, most determined enforcer (and extender) of copyright on the planet? “Of course, I thought of Disney first,” says Eisenbeis.

His version of the stunt succeeded spectacularly. First, the bots came out of the woodwork, drawn by hundreds of tweets from people saying they wanted the image on a t-shirt. Then other artists repeated the trick with infringing images including Pikachu, Mario, and the Coca-Cola logo.

Eisenbeis says many sites quickly removed t-shirts based on his “Not Licensed Mickey Mouse” image—finally paying attention to artists' rights. “So, I think this is a very effective frightening measure. How long this holds, is another question.”

It’s a hilarious stunt, but there’s a much larger point here. Digital platforms such as Instagram and Giphy attract customers or traffic by letting unsavory users—including bots, trolls, and pedophiles—do nearly anything they want. T-shirt printers just happened to get a hard lesson about the many risks of that model.
https://fortune.com/2019/12/06/we-co...ued-by-disney/





Roku Built the Dominant Streaming Box. Now It’s Under Siege

Everyone wants a piece of its ad business.
Lucas Shaw and Gerry Smith

More than 30 million people use a Roku device to navigate the constellation of streaming TV services. The company’s portfolio includes the “stick” ($49.99), which resembles a USB drive; the “puck” ($79.99), a black square with smooth edges and minimal detailing; and a $400 smart TV with Roku Inc.’s operating system. The more expensive options offer better image quality and such features as extra digital storage space.

As the era of cable and satellite TV dims, Chief Executive Officer Anthony Wood says Roku is poised to keep capitalizing on the boom in streaming video. It’s an independent player that can work well with all the entrants, he says, including new services from Disney and Apple and forthcoming ones from AT&T and Comcast. “It’s satisfying to see the world be all in on streaming,” says Wood. “That’s nothing but excellent for Roku.” Many investors on Wall Street agree: The company’s stock is up more than 300% this year, and Roku is valued at over $17 billion.

Having built the dominant box, Roku is under siege from companies that recognize the value of its business model. Google sells a competing smart TV operating system. Samsung sells more than a dozen smart TVs that don’t use Roku’s operating system. Comcast Corp. is giving its internet subscribers a free streaming box. AT&T Inc. is offering a box for its customers. Apple Inc. is investing billions in streaming shows designed in part to strengthen the appeal of its hardware. But Roku’s biggest challenger is Amazon.com Inc., which is vying for tie-in deals for its Fire TV with smart TV manufacturers and battling for supremacy in international markets. In September it announced a major expansion in Europe, where Roku is less dominant.

Escalating competition, along with uncertain future growth, has raised investor concern. In early December, Roku shares fell as much as 17% after a Morgan Stanley analyst suggested the stock was overpriced because of “exuberance over all things streaming” and warned that its revenue and profit growth may “slow meaningfully” in 2020. Other analysts challenged that assessment.

For now, Roku enjoys a sizable lead in the U.S., at least in part because it had a head start. Wood founded Roku in 2002; several years later he joined Netflix Inc. to help build its first piece of streaming hardware. In 2007 the product was ready. But at the last minute, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings decided that for his streaming service to succeed, it needed to be on every device, not just Netflix’s. That winter, Hastings spun off the streaming technology to Roku and invested $8 million in Wood’s company.

Over the next decade, Roku forged partnerships with nascent streaming services and cemented its position atop the emerging landscape of home entertainment. Last year the company generated $742.5 million in revenue, up from $513 million in 2017. In the latest quarter, Roku devices accounted for 44% of all connected-TV viewing hours, while Amazon’s Fire TV was second with 20%, according to industry analytics firm Conviva Inc.

Even so, Roku still loses money. The company makes almost no profit from selling devices. It keeps prices low to attract users, whose viewing habits it sells to advertisers. That’s where the real growth potential is: According toEMarketer Inc., ad spending on connected TVs—in-stream ads or ads on menus—will grow to almost $7 billion by the end of 2019, up about 38% over the past year, and is expected to top $10 billion by 2021.

Nearly every inch of real estate on Roku is for rent. For $1 million, a streaming service can take over the home screen to advertise a show. When Hulu got the rights to stream Seinfeld, it paid Roku to transform a portion of the screen into an image of Jerry’s apartment instead of the default purple backdrop. Hulu, Netflix, Showtime, and YouTube have paid Roku to build brand-specific buttons on its remote controls; these lead users straight to those services. At $1 per customer for each button, the cost can quickly add up to millions of dollars in monthly fees.

Roku’s large base of cord cutters gives it leverage over any media company that wants to woo subscribers. Historically, cable- and satellite-TV distributors have paid media companies to carry their networks and received, in return, a slice of their advertising inventory. Roku doesn’t pay anything to the channels it distributes, yet it still takes a share of their ad revenue.

Roku also signs short-term deals with streaming networks, enabling it to renegotiate (read: ask for more money) quickly. Just months after signing a new contract, Roku executives will threaten to cancel a channel if its owner doesn’t give Roku a larger cut of ad sales, say several people familiar with negotiations who asked to remain anonymous to avoid upsetting their relationships with the company. In 2016, Roku told executives at Vevo LLC that if it didn’t share its ad revenue, it couldn’t be on Roku, according to Variety. Eventually, Roku relented; most services don’t have Vevo’s scale. “Distribution agreements expire, and if one isn’t in place then a channel could come out of the Channel Store,” the company said in a statement. “As our scale grows, so does our ability to help channels reach an audience and monetize, so of course we want to be properly compensated.”

Wood says there’s enough advertising dollars shifting from TV to online video for everyone to share in the riches. Roku now has a slice of the ad inventory of the vast majority of streaming services and commands some of the highest rates in the media industry, bringing in about $30 per 1,000 viewers. The company can justify higher rates in part because its software is embedded in one-third of all smart TVs sold in the U.S. When a smart TV runs on its software, Roku is the first thing a consumer sees when she turns on the TV.

Two years ago, Roku introduced its own network, the Roku Channel, which offers old movies and TV reruns. It’s free and supported by commercials, giving Roku even more ad inventory. The company also operates a digital store that lets customers sign up for ad-free services such as Netflix; each time Roku facilitates a sale, it takes a cut.

To lure Roku’s customers, its rivals will continue to test out a variety of tactics, including lower prices (Google), aggressive retail promotion (Amazon), and a less cluttered user experience (Apple). For its part, Roku will keep building on its advantage with TV manufacturers and positioning itself as the easiest brand to use.

Meanwhile, Roku’s ad revenue is expected to top $600 million this year and could reach $1.5 billion by 2022, says RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney. Sam Bloom, the head of advertising firm Camelot, whose clients include Nordstrom Inc. and Whole Foods Market Inc., says: “When we went out to Roku, my eyes were opened. I was shocked by how large the footprint is there.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...azon-and-apple





AT&T Raises DirecTV Prices Again Despite Losing Millions of Customers

Yet another price hike of up to $10 for AT&T's dwindling TV-subscriber base.
Jon Brodkin

AT&T announced another round of DirecTV and U-verse TV price increases, saying that monthly rates will rise by up to $8 per month starting on January 19. "Because our programming costs went up, we have to raise our monthly prices for select packages," AT&T said in a notice titled "TV price changes for 2020." An additional $2 increase on the Regional Sports Network fee means that some customers will pay another $10 per month.

The $8-per-month increase will apply to the DirecTV Premier plan that currently costs $189. A $7 increase will apply to the Ultimate package that costs $135 and to the Xtra package that costs $124; a $5 increase will apply to the Choice plan that costs $110; a $4 increase will apply to the Select package that costs $81 a month and to the Entertainment package that costs $93; and increases of $1 or $3 will apply to basic plans.

Customers who have promotional pricing will "keep that discount until it expires" and pay the new, higher price afterward, AT&T said. The promotional pricing generally lasts for one year and has discounts ranging from $21 to $55 a month.

Besides raising general service-plan rates, AT&T said its Regional Sports Network fees will rise by $1.50 to $2 a month. The sports fee varies by location but is about $10 in many big cities; you can look up the fee by ZIP code at this AT&T page.

For U-verse TV, AT&T's wireline service, $3 will be added to the U-family plan that currently costs $84.99; $5 will be added to both the U-200 and U-300 plans that cost $107 and $124, respectively; and $7 will be added to the U-450 plan that currently costs $154. The Broadcast TV fee that costs $6.99 or $7.99 will rise $2 a month.

AT&T previously raised prices by similar amounts in January 2019. Previous price increases have contributed to AT&T losing nearly 5 million satellite-and-wireline TV customers since the end of 2016 and more than 1.3 million in the most recent quarter alone.

Comcast is also raising prices this month and eliminating the option to get one DVR set-top box for free, Cord Cutters News reported. Comcast's average Broadcast TV fee is going up from $10 to $14.95 starting this month. "Overall, most Comcast customers will see bills rise by about 3.3 percent—a weighted average based on subscribers with one to three products—versus 3.4 percent last year," Broadcasting & Cable reported. Cox and Charter are also raising rates.

Comcast blamed the increases on "rising programming costs—most notably for broadcast TV and sports." Comcast and AT&T are partly to blame for the industry's rising programming costs because of Comcast's ownership of NBCUniversal and AT&T's ownership of Time Warner.
https://arstechnica.com/information-...-of-customers/





AT&T Doesn’t Want You to See its Slow Internet Speed-Test Results

AT&T convinced FCC not to publish slow results, then left program entirely.
Jon Brodkin

AT&T doesn't want its home Internet speeds to be measured by the Federal Communications Commission anymore, and it already convinced the FCC to exclude its worst speed-test results from an annual government report.

"AT&T this year told the commission it will no longer cooperate with the FCC's SamKnows speed test," The Wall Street Journal wrote in an investigative report titled "Your Internet provider likely juiced its official speed scores."

AT&T already convinced the FCC to exclude certain DSL test results from last year's Measuring Broadband America report. The reports are based on the SamKnows testing equipment installed in thousands of homes across the US.

"AT&T was dismayed at its report card from a government test measuring Internet speeds" and thus "pushed the Federal Communications Commission to omit unflattering data on its DSL Internet service from the report," the Journal wrote.

"In the end, the DSL data was left out of the report released late last year, to the chagrin of some agency officials," the Journal wrote. "AT&T's remaining speed tiers notched high marks."

Pai’s FCC gives less attention to speed tests

The Obama-era FCC began the Measuring Broadband America program in 2011 to compare the actual speeds customers receive to the advertised speeds customers are promised. The FCC released reports annually through 2016, but the testing program has gotten less attention since Ajit Pai became chairman in January 2017.

As we wrote in November 2018, the FCC hadn't yet released any new Measuring Broadband America reports since Pai became chair. Pai's FCC in December 2018 finally released both the 2017 and 2018 reports, tucking them into the final appendices of a larger "Communications Marketplace Report." You can see all the Measuring Broadband America results from over the years at this page.

The 2017 report includes two categories for AT&T, one for its oldest DSL technology and another for its DSL-based IP broadband with speeds of up to 45Mbps. While AT&T's oldest DSL service only provided 82 percent of advertised download speeds, AT&T IP broadband was over 100 percent. The 2018 report only includes AT&T's IP broadband category, leaving out the company's worst results.

Satellite Internet provider ViaSat also "left the FCC's program" last year, the Journal wrote. ViaSat results were included in the 2018 report, which covers tests from September 2017.

We asked the FCC yesterday if it will include any AT&T and ViaSat test results in future reports, since SamKnows testing equipment could still be in AT&T and ViaSat customer homes, and we asked when the next Measuring Broadband America report will come out. We'll update this article if we get any answers.

AT&T says its own speed test is better

AT&T defended its decision to drop out of FCC testing when contacted by Ars. "AT&T developed a best-in-class tool to measure its consumer broadband services," the company said in a statement provided to Ars. "This tool measures performance on all AT&T IP broadband technologies and is more accurate, versatile, and transparent. For these and other reasons, our tool provides better and more useful information to our customers."

But consumers have less reason to trust a speed-test tool created by AT&T than one created by the FCC. Even with the FCC's speed tests, AT&T was able to exclude unflattering results. It would be even easier to dump slow speed-test results when AT&T is the one determining which numbers to show the public.

AT&T and the mobile industry's top lobby group have also argued that carriers shouldn't have to submit detailed 5G maps to the FCC. Separately, the FCC said this month that Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular exaggerated their 4G coverage in official government filings.

Back in 2011, AT&T touted the FCC's in-home speed tests as being far more accurate than previous testing methodologies. But the company's opinion then seems to have been influenced by early test results that AT&T said showed "consumers are getting high-quality broadband services from their ISPs."

AT&T defends exclusion of “obsolete” DSL

AT&T today also defended its successful attempt to exclude certain DSL data from the 2018 FCC report.

"First-generation DSL is an obsolete technology that AT&T does not market and, based on the FCC's practices with other ISPs, should have been excluded from its reporting," AT&T told Ars. "The FCC provided guidance to ISPs that a speed tier would no longer be included in the MBA [Measuring Broadband America] program if it wasn't actively marketed and is less than 5 percent of the subscriber base. Also, the FCC omits speed tiers that are below its threshold of a minimum number of statistical targets. DSL speed tiers were always below statistical targets."

But not everyone at the FCC agreed with the decision to omit AT&T's slowest results from the report. The Journal wrote:

AT&T was repeatedly at loggerheads with the FCC over its results and worked closely with the agency to have favorable items included in the report, a former AT&T employee familiar with the testing program said.

FCC officials decided reluctantly not to publish AT&T's DSL data in last year's report, according to Walter Johnston, a former FCC official who oversaw the program until he retired last year.

"Personally, I was not happy about that," he said. Overall, Mr. Johnston defended the FCC test, saying the agency never meant it to be a "consumer guarantee."


The Journal report also included details about other providers trying to artificially boost their FCC speed-test scores.

"Sometimes providers boost speeds for households during the actual FCC speed-testing period," the Journal wrote. "Comcast a few years ago upgraded speeds in some regions without notifying the FCC, making test results look stellar, people close to the FCC program said. The FCC discovered the changes after spotting anomalous data and adjusted the numbers."

A 2017 lawsuit filed by the New York state government accused Time Warner Cable (now owned by Charter) of manipulating speed-test results and of deceiving the FCC in order to get bad speed-test results excluded from an annual report. Charter eventually agreed to pay $62.5 million in refunds to 700,000 customers in New York.

ISPs upgrade homes in testing pool

For each yearly test, the FCC "inform[s] the Internet providers the dates of the testing period and send[s] them lists of individual testers' names so they can confirm which speed packages the customers have signed up for," the Journal wrote.

"That makes it possible for companies to keep tabs on many testers from year to year, engineers said," the Journal report continued. "Providers can use that information, as well as real-time data from the dashboard SamKnows sells them, which anonymizes the users but shows their states and regions, to make targeted upgrades that improve service for those households, engineers said."

Cox was able to get some poor results excluded from the 2018 report because it blamed a weak score on "a congested link to an Internet middleman [that] had lowered scores for some of its Arizona customers," the Journal wrote. "Some FCC officials were uncomfortable with the omission" because "network experts say broadband providers share responsibility with Internet middlemen to keep their connections upgraded."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...e-bad-results/





Republicans Just Blocked a Net Neutrality Vote in the Senate

Throttled again.
Claire Goforth

Senate Democrats unsuccessfully demanded a full vote on net neutrality legislation today.

Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) urged the Senate to take up the Save the Internet Act (SIA) that Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has refused to bring to the floor since it passed the House this spring. Markey was joined by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) by calling for a vote of unanimous consent to force the Senate to consider the legislation.

The Save the Internet Act would restore Obama-era regulations that prohibited companies from prioritizing or blocking traffic online, or allowing paid prioritization of websites. President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission appointees repealed those regulations in 2017.

Markey and his colleagues argued that the Trump administration has given in to “Broadband Barons” who want to increase profits at the expense of consumers, small businesses and others. They believe that it’s only a matter of time before cable companies start slowing traffic to certain websites and speeding it up to others.

Researchers have already found that companies throttled traffic to Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video. Firefighters from Santa Clara, California are among a group of government agencies suing Verizon for slowing web traffic during deadly wildfires there last year.

Based on these and other concerns, Markey said that passing SIA will put the Senate “on the right side of history.” They cast the legislation as necessary to promote innovation and entrepreneurialism and protect people’s ability to be heard.

“[Net neutrality] is just another way of saying non-discrimination … that large companies can’t discrimination against smaller companies and consumers, can’t stifle speech,” Markey said.

Sen. Wyden echoed this sentiment during his remarks, saying, “We’re talking about fracturing the internet into small bundles that cost big money. That’s the vision that the cable companies have.”

In spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans support net neutrality, Senate Republicans have “buried this bill in their legislation graveyard,” along with the Violence Against Women Act, gun control, and other bills that have already passed the House, Markey said.

“Net neutrality is part of that chorus of no’s which the Republicans aim at legislation which the American people want and need to have passed in the United States Senate,” he said.

As the name implies, requests for unanimous consent require only one objection to fail.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) was ready and willing to be just that objector.

During his objection, Wicker, a notorious opponent of the legislation, claimed that the 2015 regulations effectively smothered investment in broadband internet. Since Trump’s FCC repealed it, he continued, there has been historic expansion of internet access.

“If they want to save us from innovation and growth then perhaps the Save the Internet Act would get that done,” Wicker said. He said that Senate Democrats—of whom all but one, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), have co-sponsored SIA—are welcome to join the bipartisan working group tasked with creating a proposal to preserve some semblance of net neutrality.

Wicker, Sinema and others believe the best way to preserve a free internet is under Title I, rather than Title II, as advocates for net neutrality argue.

“I hope they’ll join in the bipartisan effort that Senator Sinema and I are working on … we can make the statute better,” he said.

Advocates criticize the working group as an attempt to delay, weaken and obfuscate the push for net neutrality.

Wicker also expressed skepticism about companies beginning to prioritize internet traffic, though later he conceded that it was possible.

“Where are the fast and slow lanes? They may happen sometime,” he said. Nevertheless, he cast the vote as a choice between allowing the internet to grow by doing nothing or stifling it by passing SIA.

Democrats disagreed with this framing.

“What we just heard from the majority is in fact a false narrative that contends that we have to choose between broadband deployment and net neutrality … if we don’t put net neutrality back on the books, there will be internet fast and slow lanes. That’s what’s about to happen if we don’t act,” Markey said.

Markey seemed more disgusted than surprised that the proposal failed to receive unanimous consent.

“What just happened is a disservice to consumers and innovators…. Ultimately today history was not served well.”
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/demo...-internet-act/





FCC’s “Illogical” Claim that Broadband Isn’t Telecommunications Faces Appeal

Mozilla, others ask court to reverse ruling that let FCC kill net neutrality.
Jon Brodkin

Mozilla and other organizations today appealed the court ruling that upheld the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules, arguing that the FCC's claim that broadband isn't telecommunications should not have been accepted by judges.

The FCC repeal was upheld in October by a three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The court had some good news for net neutrality supporters because it vacated the FCC's attempt to preempt all current and future state net neutrality laws. But Mozilla and others aren't giving up hope on reinstating the FCC rules nationwide.

The Mozilla petition filed today asks for an en banc rehearing of the case involving all of the DC Circuit judges. Mozilla is probably facing an uphill battle because the three-judge panel unanimously agreed that the FCC can repeal its own net neutrality rules.

Joining Mozilla in the appeal were online companies Etsy and Vimeo, industry lobby group Incompas, and the Ad Hoc Telecom Users Committee, which represents business users of communications services. The case is known as Mozilla v. FCC.

Another appeal was filed today by several advocacy groups, namely New America's Open Technology Institute, Free Press, Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, and the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. Another appeal was filed by the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and another by Santa Clara County, San Francisco, the California Public Utilities Commission, and the National Association of Regulatory Utilities Commissioners.

Mozilla wrote in a blog post today:

Mozilla's petition focuses on the FCC's reclassification of broadband as an information service and on the FCC's failure to properly address competition and market harm. We explain why we believe the court can in fact overturn the FCC's new treatment of broadband service despite some of the deciding judges' belief that Supreme court precedent prevents rejection of what they consider a nonsensical outcome. In addition, we point out that the court should have done more than simply criticize the FCC's assertion that existing antitrust and consumer protection laws are sufficient to address concerns about market harm without engaging in further analysis. We also note inconsistencies in how the FCC handled evidence of market harm, and the court's upholding of the FCC's approach nonetheless.

Judge blasted FCC but upheld repeal

Circuit Judge Patricia Millett, one of the three judges who decided the case, wrote that the FCC's justification for classifying broadband as an information service instead of a telecommunications service "is unhinged from the realities of modern broadband service." But the FCC has broad authority to classify offerings as either information services or telecommunications, as long as it provides a reasonable justification for its decision, and judges said they had to leave the net neutrality repeal in place based on US law and Supreme Court precedent.

Obviously, consumer advocacy groups are arguing that judges didn't have to give the FCC so much deference.

"Although the court came to the right conclusion on some key issues, such as the FCC's lack of authority to preempt state net neutrality rules, in other ways it gave the FCC the benefit of the doubt too many times," Public Knowledge Legal Director John Bergmayer wrote today. "While agencies should be given deference where appropriate, they do not have the authority to rewrite the law or come to illogical, results-driven conclusions."

The FCC argued that broadband isn't telecommunications because Internet providers also offer DNS (Domain Name System) services and caching as part of the broadband package. Millett wrote that this interpretation "confuse[s] the leash for the dog," but ruled in the FCC's favor because of the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in the Brand X case, which let the FCC classify cable broadband as an information service. Brand X "compels us to affirm as a reasonable option the agency's reclassification of broadband as an information service based on its provision of Domain Name System ('DNS') and caching," Millett wrote.

Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins agreed with Millett's assessment. Senior Circuit Judge Stephen Williams didn't join Millett and Wilkins in this line of criticism, but he joined them in upholding the repeal. Williams wanted to uphold the other big portion of the FCC order, too, as he dissented from a 2-1 decision to vacate the FCC's preemption of state laws.

The advocacy groups' petition argued that judges "misconstrued Brand X as precluding any judicial review of the reasonableness of classifying a service that overwhelmingly offers telecommunications as an information service simply because it includes DNS and caching."

If the court decides not to grant the request for a re-hearing of the case, petitioners could appeal to the Supreme Court.

The FCC could also appeal, since judges ruled against the commission on its attempt to preempt state laws. Today is the deadline for filing appeals at the DC Circuit court, and we'll update this story if the FCC submits one.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-faces-appeal/





Fake ‘Likes’ Remain Just a Few Dollars Away, Researchers Say

Despite Big Tech’s attempts to combat manipulation, companies that sell clicks, likes and followers on social media are easy to find.
Davey Alba

“A very #MerryChristmas⁠ ⁠to all,” Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s top antitrust enforcer, wrote on Facebook last December. Her post attracted 144 “likes.”

A few months later, as an experiment, researchers paid a company a few dollars to attract attention to her well wishes. In 30 minutes, the post had 100 more likes. The researchers had similar results on a holiday post on Ms. Vestager’s Instagram account and on a Christmas tweet from Vera Jourova, the European Union’s justice commissioner.

Companies like Facebook and Twitter are poorly policing automated bots and other methods for manipulating social media platforms, according to a report released on Friday by researchers from the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence. With a small amount of money, the researchers found, virtually anyone can hire a company to get more likes, comments and clicks.

The group, an independent organization that advises the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, tested the tech companies’ ability to stop paid influence campaigns by turning to 11 Russian and five European companies that sell fake social media engagement. For 300 euros, or about $330, the researchers bought over 3,500 comments, 25,000 likes, 20,000 views and 5,000 followers, including on posts from prominent politicians like Ms. Vestager and Ms. Jourova.

After four weeks, about 80 percent of the fake clicks remained, the researchers said. And virtually all of the accounts that had been used to generate the clicks remained active three weeks after researchers reported them to the companies.

The report spotlights the continuing challenges for Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as they try to combat online disinformation and other forms of online manipulation. After Russia interfered in the United States’ 2016 presidential election, the companies made numerous changes to reduce the spread of online disinformation and foreign interference. In recent months, the platforms have announced takedowns of accounts in China, Saudi Arabia and, most recently, Africa, where Russia was testing new tactics.

But the report also brings renewed attention to an often overlooked vulnerability for internet platforms: companies that sell clicks, likes and comments on social media networks. Many of the companies are in Russia, according to the researchers. Because the social networks’ software ranks posts in part by the amount of engagement they generate, the paid activity can lead to more prominent positions.

“We spend so much time thinking about how to regulate the social media companies — but not so much about how to regulate the social media manipulation industry,” said Sebastian Bay, one of the researchers who worked on the report. “We need to consider if this is something which should be allowed but, perhaps more, to be very aware that this is so widely available.”

From May to August, the researchers tested the ability of the social networks to handle the for-hire manipulation industry. The researchers said they had found hundreds of providers of social media manipulation with significant revenue. They signed up with 16.

“The openness of this industry is striking,” the report says. “In fact, manipulation service providers advertise openly on major platforms.”

The researchers bought engagements on about a hundred posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. They saw “little to no resistance,” Mr. Bay said.

After their purchase, the researchers identified nearly 20,000 accounts that were used to manipulate the social media platforms, and reported a sample of them to the internet companies. Three weeks later, more than 95 percent of the reported accounts were still active online.

The researchers directed most of the clicks to posts on social media accounts they had made for the experiment. But they also tested some verified accounts, like Ms. Vestager’s, to see if they were better protected. They were not, the researchers said.

The researchers said that to limit their influence on real conversations, they had bought engagement on posts from politicians that were at least six months old and contained apolitical messages.

Researchers found that the big tech companies were not equally bad in removing manipulation. Twitter identified and removed more than the others, the researchers found; on average, half the likes and retweets bought on Twitter were eventually removed, they said.

The researchers found YouTube the worst at removing inauthentic accounts and the most expensive to manipulate. The researchers reported 100 accounts used for manipulation in their test to each of the social media companies, and YouTube was the only one that did not suspend any and provided no explanation.

Facebook, the world’s largest social network, was best at blocking the creation of accounts under false pretenses, but it rarely took content down. Instagram, which Facebook owns, was the easiest and cheapest to manipulate.

“Fake engagement tactics remain a challenge facing the entire industry,” Facebook said in a statement. “We’re making massive investments to find and remove fake accounts and engagement every day.”

Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at Oxford University, said easy social media manipulation could have implications for European elections this year and the 2020 presidential election in the United States.

“Fake engagement — whether generated by automated or real accounts — can skew the perceived popularity of a candidate or issue,” Ms. Bradshaw said. “If these strategies are used to amplify disinformation, conspiracy and intolerance, social media could exacerbate the polarization and distrust that exist within society.”

Ms. Bradshaw, who reviewed the report independently, said the reason accounts might have not been taken down was that “they could belong to real people, where individuals are paid a small amount of money for liking or sharing posts.” This strategy, she pointed out, makes it much harder for the platforms to take action.

Still, she said the companies could do more to track and monitor accounts associated with manipulation services. And the companies could suspend or remove the accounts after several instances of suspicious activity to diminish inauthentic behavior.

“Examining fake engagement is important because accounts don’t have to be fake to pollute the information environment,” Ms. Bradshaw said. “Real people can use real accounts to produce inauthentic behavior that skews online discourse and generates virality.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/t...ipulation.html





Reddit Bans Accounts, Suspects Possible UK Vote Interference
Danica Kirka

The prospect of Russian interference in Britain’s election flared anew Saturday after the social media platform Reddit concluded that people from Russia leaked confidential British government documents on Brexit trade talks just days before the general U.K. vote.

Reddit said in a statement that it has banned 61 accounts suspected of violating policies against vote manipulation. It said the suspect accounts shared the same pattern of activity as a Russian interference operation dubbed “Secondary Infektion” that was uncovered earlier this year.

Reddit investigated the leak after the documents became public during the campaign for Thursday’s election, which will determine the country’s future relationship with the European Union. All 650 seats in the House of Commons are up for grabs.

Reddit said it believed the documents were leaked as “part of a campaign that has been reported as originating from Russia.”

“We were able to confirm that they did indeed show a pattern of coordination,’’ Reddit said.

The British government has not challenged the authenticity of the documents.

Britain’s main opposition party has argued the documents prove that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party is seeking a deal with the U.S. after Brexit that would drive up the cost of drugs and would imperil the state-funded National Health Service. The issue has been a central election theme, largely because the country deeply cherishes the health service, which has suffered under years of austerity.

Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said the 451 pages of documents, which covered six rounds of preliminary talks between U.S. and U.K. negotiators, proved that Johnson was planning to put the NHS “up for sale” in trade talks. Johnson — who was not prime minister for most of the two-year period when the trade talks took place — has rejected Corbyn’s analysis.

Britain is currently scheduled to leave the 28-nation EU on Jan. 31.

When asked about Reddit’s actions while on a campaign stop in Wales, Corbyn suggested the news was an “advanced stage of rather belated conspiracy theories by the prime minister.’’

“When we released the documents, at no stage did the prime minister or anybody deny that those documents were real, deny the arguments that we put forward. And if there has been no discussion with the USA about access to our health markets, if all that is wrong, how come after a week they still haven’t said that?” he said.

Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan told the BBC that the government is “looking for and monitoring” anything that might suggest interference in the British election.

“From what was being put on that (Reddit) website, those who seem to know about these things say that it seems to have all the hallmarks of some form of interference,’’ Morgan said. “And if that is the case, that obviously is extremely serious.’’

The spectre that Russia has meddled in Britain’s electoral process has been raised before. Critics are also questioning the British government’s failure to release a Parliament intelligence committee report on previous Russian interference in the country’s politics. They say it should have been made public before Thursday’s vote.

The Times of London reported, without saying how it got the information, that the intelligence report concluded that Russian interference might have affected the 2016 referendum on Britain’s departure from the EU, though the impact is “unquantifiable.”

The committee said British intelligence services failed to devote enough resources to countering the threat and highlighted the impact of articles posted by Russian news sites that were widely disseminated on social media, the newspaper reported.

Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson expressed concern about the new Russian interference claims.

“All of us should be concerned if a foreign country is trying to interfere in our democracy,’’ she said.

“And that is why it is so appalling that the prime minister is sitting on a report that was written weeks before the general election, that the Security Committee say should be published, into interference in U.K. democracy by foreign countries like Russia.”
https://www.stripes.com/news/europe/...rence-1.610290





ACLU Sues Homeland Security Agencies Over Phone Spying Practices

The suit calls on two border-control and immigration agencies to reveal how they use a controversial gadget that poses as a cell tower to suck up data.
Alfred Ng

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Wednesday requesting that two US Homeland Security agencies -- Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- release details on how they've been using powerful phone surveillance tools.

The ACLU is suing after the two agencies declined to provide it with documents related to International Mobile Subscriber Identity, or IMSI, catchers, more commonly known as Stingrays. These devices pretend to be cell towers and connect with nearby phones, intercepting data that details calls, messages and device location.

IMSI catchers can often pull in data from entire neighborhoods, and they're able to obtain sensitive details on people without the people even knowing. Civil liberties and privacy groups have criticized the technology for its invasive surveillance.

The two agencies have denied the ACLU's requests for information since 2017, telling the civil rights organization that "no records responsive to your request were found."

The assertion comes despite the House Oversight Committee finding, in 2016, that ICE had spent $10.6 million on 59 IMSI catchers and CBP had spent $2.5 million on 33 of the devices.

CBP declined to comment on pending litigation. ICE didn't respond to requests for comment.

In its lawsuit, the ACLU also cites two cases where ICE used IMSI catchers to track and arrest immigrants. Those cases came to light only because journalists uncovered warrants to use the devices.

In its initial request, the ACLU asked for ICE and CBP records on policies surrounding IMSI catchers, the number of times the surveillance tools were used in each field office, and when they were used on behalf of outside agencies.

In that request, the ACLU also wanted ICE to disclose how often data obtained with IMSI catchers had been used as evidence in immigration court proceedings, and details about search warrants related to the cell site simulators.

The civil liberties organization wants to know how ICE is ensuring that people's civil liberties are protected while the border agency is using IMSI catchers, and has requested documents showing what rules and regulations are in place while the devices are being used.

In April, after a separate lawsuit turned up evidence regarding warrantless border searches of electronic devices, the ACLU learned through a public records request that Homeland Security had given agents free rein over thousands of devices.
https://www.cnet.com/news/aclu-is-su...pying-devices/





We Just Got a Rare Look at National Security Surveillance. It Was Ugly.
Charlie Savage

When a long-awaited inspector general report about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation became public this week, partisans across the political spectrum mined it to argue about whether President Trump falsely smeared the F.B.I. or was its victim. But the report was also important for reasons that had nothing to do with Mr. Trump.

At more than 400 pages, the study amounted to the most searching look ever at the government’s secretive system for carrying out national-security surveillance on American soil. And what the report showed was not pretty.

The Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, and his team uncovered a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process in how the F.B.I. went about obtaining and renewing court permission under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.

“The litany of problems with the Carter Page surveillance applications demonstrates how the secrecy shrouding the government’s one-sided FISA approval process breeds abuse,” said Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The concerns the inspector general identifies apply to intrusive investigations of others, including especially Muslims, and far better safeguards against abuse are necessary.”

Congress enacted FISA in 1978 to regulate domestic surveillance for national-security investigations — monitoring suspected spies and terrorists, as opposed to ordinary criminals. Investigators must persuade a judge on a special court that a target is probably an agent of a foreign power. In 2018, there were 1,833 targets of such orders, including 232 Americans.

Most of those targets never learn that their privacy has been invaded, but some are sent to prison on the basis of evidence derived from the surveillance. And unlike in ordinary criminal wiretap cases, defendants are not permitted to see what investigators told the court about them to obtain permission to eavesdrop on their calls and emails.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Mr. Horowitz’s report on Wednesday, both Republicans and Democrats suggested that legislation tightening restrictions on FISA surveillance may be coming, and the A.C.L.U. submitted ideas to the committee.

Civil libertarians for years have called the surveillance court a rubber stamp because it only rarely rejects wiretap applications. Out of 1,080 requests by the government in 2018, for example, government records showed that the court fully denied only one.

Defenders of the system have argued that the low rejection rate stems in part from how well the Justice Department self-polices and avoids presenting the court with requests that fall short of the legal standard. They have also stressed that officials obey a heightened duty to be candid and provide any mitigating evidence that might undercut their request.

But the inspector general found major errors, material omissions and unsupported statements about Mr. Page in the materials that went to the court. F.B.I. agents cherry-picked the evidence, telling the Justice Department information that made Mr. Page look suspicious and omitting material that cut the other way, and the department passed that misleading portrait onto the court.

To give just three examples:

First, when agents initially sought permission for the wiretap, F.B.I. officials scoured information from confidential informants and selectively presented portions that supported their suspicions that Mr. Page might be a conduit between Russia and the Trump campaign’s onetime chairman, Paul Manafort.

But officials did not disclose information that undercut that allegation — such as the fact that Mr. Page had told an informant in August 2016 that he “never met” or “said one word” to Mr. Manafort, who had never returned Mr. Page’s emails. Even if the investigators did not necessarily believe Mr. Page, the court should have been told what he had said.

Second, as the initial court order was nearing its expiration and law-enforcement officials prepared to ask the surveillance court to renew it, the F.B.I. had uncovered information that cast doubt on some of its original assertions. But law enforcement officials never reported that new information to the court.

Specifically, the application included allegations about Mr. Page contained in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent whose research was funded by Democrats. In January 2017, the F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Steele’s own primary source, and he contradicted what Mr. Steele had written in the dossier.

The source for Mr. Steele may, of course, have been lying. But either way, officials should have flagged the disconnect for the court. Instead, the F.B.I. reported that its agents had met with the source to “further corroborate” the dossier and found him to be “truthful and cooperative,” leaving a misleading impression in renewal applications.

Finally, the report stressed Mr. Page’s long history of meeting with Russian intelligence officials. But he had also said that he had a relationship with the C.I.A., and it turns out that he had for years told the agency about those meetings — including one that was cited in the wiretap application as a reason to be suspicious of him.

That relationship could have mitigated some suspicions about his history. But the F.B.I. never got to the bottom of it, and the court filings said nothing about Mr. Page’s dealings with the C.I.A.

The inspector general’s report contains many more examples of errors and omissions. Mr. Horowitz largely blamed lower-level F.B.I. agents charged with preparing the evidence, but he also faulted high-level supervisors for permitting a culture in which the inaccuracies took place.

And while Mr. Horowitz obtained no documents or testimony showing that the inaccuracies stemmed from any political bias — as opposed to incompetence and negligence — he also rejected as “unsatisfactory” the explanation that the agents were busy on the larger Russian investigation and that the Page wiretap order was only a small part of their responsibilities.

Still, it is undeniable that the agents and supervisors compiling materials for the Page wiretap application were under far more pressure than in routine counterintelligence investigations. Both in terms of the stakes and the tempo, the early Russia investigation may have had more in common with a counterterrorism investigation.

But that factor also raises the question of what goes into applications for wiretaps in lower-profile cases. Indeed, everyone involved in the Page wiretap knew that what they were working on was likely to come under close scrutiny, yet they still repeatedly failed to follow policies.

Mr. Horowitz also said senior-level supervisors bore responsibility for permitting systemic failures to fester, and his office has begun a broader audit of unrelated FISA applications.

His exposé left some former officials who generally defend government surveillance practices aghast.

“These errors are bad,” said David Kris, an expert in FISA who oversaw the Justice Department’s National Security Division in the Obama administration. “If the broader audit of FISA applications reveals a systematic pattern of errors of this sort that plagued this one, then I would expect very serious consequences and reforms.”

On rare occasions, the public has caught glimpses of problems with the information that goes into FISA applications.

In 2000, the Justice Department confessed to errors in F.B.I. affidavits submitted in 75 surveillance and search applications related to major terrorist attacks, a FISA court opinion disclosed.

The court met “to consider the troubling number of inaccurate F.B.I. affidavits” and barred an unnamed F.B.I. agent from making affidavits before the court. In response, the F.B.I. came up with far more rigorous internal procedures, pledging to ensure the accuracy of FISA affidavits by more carefully reviewing them.

But when Mr. Horowitz’s investigators looked at the underlying files for the Page applications, they found errors and omissions that showed that the F.B.I. had not scrupulously followed those procedures.

The government has fought hard to keep outsiders from seeing what goes into its FISA applications. In 2014, a federal judge in Illinois ordered the government to show a defense lawyer classified materials about the national security surveillance of his client, which would have been the first time a defense lawyer had been given such materials since Congress enacted FISA in 1978.

But the Obama administration appealed, and an appeals court overturned the order, agreeing that letting the defense counsel see the application would create an intolerable risk of disclosing sensitive government secrets.

That stands in contrast to how wiretapping works in ordinary criminal law. Targets are usually told when the surveillance ends. If they are prosecuted based on evidence gathered from the wiretap, they get to see what was in the application so their defense lawyers can argue that the government made a mistake and the evidence should be suppressed.

The prospect of that adversarial second-guessing gives criminal investigators a reason to be scrupulous about what they put into their requests for wiretaps. In the absence of that disciplining factor, the government has developed heightened internal oversight about what goes into FISA applications.

But that system demonstrably failed in the Page wiretap.

The report should call into question the legitimacy of the FISA system “whether you like Trump, hate Trump, don’t care about Trump,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said at the hearing on Wednesday.

“I’d hate to lose the ability of the FISA court to operate at a time probably when we need it the most,” Mr. Graham told Mr. Horowitz. “But after your report, I have serious concerns about whether the FISA court can continue unless there’s fundamental reform.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/u...lance-fbi.html





Defense Department To Congress: 'No, Wait, Encryption Is Actually Good; Don't Break It'
Mike Masnick

As Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham has continued his latest quest to undermine encryption with a hearing whose sole purpose seemed to be to misleadingly argue that encryption represents a "risk to public safety." The Defense Department has weighed in to say that's ridiculous. As you may recall, the DOJ and the FBI have been working overtime to demonize encryption and pretend -- against nearly all evidence -- that widespread, strong encryption somehow undermines its ability to stop criminals.

However, it appears that other parts of the government are a bit more up to date on these things. Representative Ro Khanna has forwarded a letter to Senator Graham that he received earlier this year from the Defense Department's CIO Dana Deasy, explaining just how important encryption actually is. The letter highlights how DoD employees rely on the kind of strong encryption found on mobile devices and in VPN services to protect the data of their employees, both at rest (on the devices) and in transit (across the network).

All DoD issued unclassified mobile devices are required to be password protected using strong passwords. The Department also requires that data-in-transit, on DoD issued mobile devices, be encrypted (e.g. VPN) to protect DoD information and resources. The importance of strong encryption and VPNs for our mobile workforce is imperative. Last October, the Department outlined its layered cybersecurity approachto protect DoD information and resources, including service men and women, when using mobile communications capabilities.

[....]

As the use of mobile devices continues to expand, it is imperative that innovative security techniques, such as advanced encryption algorithms, are constantly maintained and improved to protect DoD information and resources. The Department believes maintaining a domestic climate for state of the art security and encryption is critical to the protection of our national security.


So, there you have it. The Defense Department believes that strong, unbroken encryption is critical to national security, as opposed to the DOJ which appears to think (incorrectly) that it undermines national security. At the very least, this should mean that politicians should stop uncritically claiming that encryption is some sort of "debate" between privacy and national security. It is not. Encryption protects both of those things. Breaking encryption harms both privacy and national security... in the hopes that it might make law enforcement's job marginally easier.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...break-it.shtml





Facebook and Barr Escalate Standoff Over Encrypted Messages

• With 1.5 billion users, Facebook’s WhatsApp is perhaps the world’s most commonly used encrypted communications platform.
• Facebook has said it is shifting its focus to private and encrypted communications.

David McCabe, Mike Isaac and Katie Benner

Facebook executives and Attorney General William P. Barr sparred on Monday over whether encrypted messaging products should be open to law enforcement, escalating a standoff over privacy and policing.

In a letter to Mr. Barr, the executives overseeing Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger, Will Cathcart and Stan Chudnovsky, wrote that creating a so-called backdoor into their services for law enforcement would make their users less safe.

“The ‘backdoor’ access you are demanding for law enforcement would be a gift to criminals, hackers and repressive regimes, creating a way for them to enter our systems and leaving every person on our platforms more vulnerable to real-life harm,” the executives said. Their letter was sent ahead of a Senate hearing on Tuesday about encryption, at which Facebook and Apple executives testified.

At an afternoon event, Mr. Barr said dealing with problems that strong encryption created for law enforcement was one of the Justice Department’s “highest priorities.”

The Bits newsletter will keep you updated on the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry.

Mr. Barr said drug cartels, child pornographers and other criminals increasingly used and hid behind messaging apps that were beyond investigators’ access even with a warrant. Companies like Facebook are selling the idea that “no matter what you do, you’re completely impervious to government surveillance,” Mr. Barr said.

“Do we want to live in a society like that?” he asked. “I don’t think we do.”

The dueling comments were the latest volleys in a yearslong fight between tech companies and law enforcement officials over how to balance privacy and security with digital communications. It has ensnared not only Facebook but also Apple, and it promises to become more intense as more messaging services become encrypted.

In 2016, a federal judge ordered Apple to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation unlock an iPhone tied to a 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. The agency ultimately unlocked the phone without Apple’s help, easing tensions for a time.

Mr. Barr renewed the debate this year, saying Facebook’s moves toward end-to-end encryption — which shields the content of messages from everyone but the sender and recipient — makes it harder for law enforcement officers to track malicious behavior online. The technology hinders investigations of child predators and terrorists, he has said.

Mr. Barr, joined by his British and Australian counterparts, wrote an open letter to Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in October asking that he take steps to enable “law enforcement to obtain lawful access to content in a readable and usable format.” Companies, they said, “should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content,” especially for the investigations of the most serious crimes.

Lawmakers of both parties echoed those worries on Tuesday, threatening to take action if the companies didn’t satisfy their concerns.

“You’re going to find a way to do this, or we’re going to do this for you,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “You’re either the solution or you’re the problem.”

If Mr. Barr wants to push the issue with Facebook or another tech company, he could take the issue to court, as the government did during the fight over encryption with Apple in 2016. In that case, the Justice Department had secured a search warrant for the phone of an attacker in the San Bernardino shooting. Prosecutors successfully pursued a court order compelling Apple’s assistance. Apple opposed the order. But when the agency found another way to unlock the phone, it dropped the case.

Throughout the hearing on Tuesday, Facebook and Apple representatives said the companies were committed to working with law enforcement. The witness from Facebook detailed how the company could detect malicious content despite encryption.

Encrypting its messaging products is the central aspect of Facebook’s plan to rebrand itself as privacy focused, after being battered for years by revelations that it mishandled user data. But it has also put the company, which is already the subject of consumer privacy and antitrust investigations, on another collision course with governments around the world.

In recent years, Facebook has undergone a networkwide shift from spreading information openly through the News Feed to more private channels, like Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram Direct. As users have flocked to one-to-one and private group messaging, it has become more difficult to root out the spread of illicit activity — drug dealing, child pornography, firearms trafficking.

The network also has come under intense criticism for the role private messaging has played in the proliferation of misinformation. In the months before the Brazilian presidential election in October 2018, WhatsApp groups created by anonymous users spread misleading voting and candidate information.

In most regions outside the United States, WhatsApp plays an outsize role in how people communicate with one another, surpassing standard text messaging and other methods. Facebook’s strategy, led by Mr. Zuckerberg, has been to seize on that popularity and focus more on private and group-chat experiences.

In March, Mr. Zuckerberg unveiled a grand plan to encrypt and knit together the back ends of the company’s messaging services, an enormous feat of coding that could take years. The move could eventually help Facebook monetize those services, which account for relatively little revenue.

Jay Sullivan, who oversees privacy and integrity for Messenger, told lawmakers at Tuesday’s hearing, “We think it is critical that American companies lead in the area of secure, encrypted messaging.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/t...ncryption.html





Scaring People into Supporting Backdoors
Bruce Schneier

Back in 1998, Tim May warned us of the "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse": "terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers." I tended to cast it slightly differently. This is me from 2005:

Beware the Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse: terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and child pornographers. Seems like you can scare any public into allowing the government to do anything with those four.

Which particular horseman is in vogue depends on time and circumstance. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US government has been pushing the terrorist scare story. Recently, it seems to have switched to pedophiles and child exploitation. It began in September, with a long New York Times story on child sex abuse, which included this dig at encryption:

And when tech companies cooperate fully, encryption and anonymization can create digital hiding places for perpetrators. Facebook announced in March plans to encrypt Messenger, which last year was responsible for nearly 12 million of the 18.4 million worldwide reports of child sexual abuse material, according to people familiar with the reports. Reports to the authorities typically contain more than one image, and last year encompassed the record 45 million photos and videos, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

(That's wrong, by the way. Facebook Messenger already has an encrypted option. It's just not turned on by default, like it is in WhatsApp.)

That was followed up by a conference by the US Department of Justice: "Lawless Spaces: Warrant Proof Encryption and its Impact on Child Exploitation Cases." US Attorney General William Barr gave a speech on the subject. Then came an open letter to Facebook from Barr and others from the UK and Australia, using "protecting children" as the basis for their demand that the company not implement strong end-to-end encryption. (I signed on to another another open letter in response.) Then, the FBI tried to get Interpol to publish a statement denouncing end-to-end encryption.

This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on backdoors: "Encryption and Lawful Access: Evaluating Benefits and Risks to Public Safety and Privacy." Video, and written testimonies, are available at the link. Eric Neuenschwander from Apple was there to support strong encryption, but the other witnesses were all against it. New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance was true to form:

In fact, we were never able to view the contents of his phone because of this gift to sex traffickers that came, not from God, but from Apple.

Let me be clear. None of us who favor strong encryption is saying that child exploitation isn't a serious crime, or a worldwide problem. We're not saying that about kidnapping, international drug cartels, money laundering, or terrorism. We are saying three things. One, that strong encryption is necessary for personal and national security. Two, that weakening encryption does more harm than good. And three, law enforcement has other avenues for criminal investigation than eavesdropping on communications and stored devices (this is just one example).

So let's have reasoned policy debates about encryption -- debates that are informed by technology. And let's stop it with the scare stories.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archiv...g_people_.html

















Until next week,

- js.



















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