"Carr has called on Congress to clarify the rules. He also wants to see consumers given more rights to challenge moderation decisions and for "Big Tech" businesses to be transparent about their algorithms and allow appeals on moderation decisions.

However, this might backfire on Carr's boss, as Aaron Mackey, free speech and transparency litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), explained to The Register.

"We know that Trump's nomination of Carr to be the Chair signals that Trump approves of this general direction and motives," he explained. "But I think when the rubber hits the road in terms of what the actual rule making looks like, is there actually the political will to do these types of rule makings that, in fact, would increase liability on a platform that the President owns."

That's a reference to Truth Social – the social media service operated by Trump Media & Technology Group and majority-owned by the once and future president.

Another Carr position that may impact tech players is a proposal to make them contribute to the $9 billion Universal Service Fund, which Washington uses used to pay for comms infrastructure spending. Currently the funds are paid by telcos, but Carr feels tech firms should also contribute, since they see huge benefits from increased internet access.

That's an argument that has been made, and largely dismissed, in many other jurisdictions. Tech giants oppose it on grounds that they make big investments in submarine cables, and that their activities create demand for carriers' services."

https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/19/brendan_carr_fcc/

#USA #FCC #BigTelcos #NetNeutrality #Censorship #FreeSpeech #Section230

#EU #USA #BigTelcos #DT #DeutscheTelekom: "The lobby for EU telecom incumbents Connect Europe often tells policymakers that the industry is suffering, but Deutsche Telekom (DT) boasts results that exceed expectations.

The EU telecom industry does not have the funds to invest in infrastructure, lobby group Connect Europe has repeatedly told EU policymakers.

Meanwhile, DT, a member of Connect Europe, is “stronger than ever” and it is “tough to compete with them,” read slides presented by DT's CEO Timotheus Höttges to investors at a meeting with investors on 10 and 11 October.

DT is one of the fastest growing telcos in Europe and can continue to grow said company's board member in charge of Europe Yvette Dominique Leroy at the meeting. The company has “continuously invested in fiber and in 5G,” she said.

The two lines of argumentation are consistent, a DT senior representative told Euractiv on Monday (14 October).

"Figures by the European Commission, Enrico Letta, Mario Draghi as well as analysts converge on the fact that the EU telecom sector is currently not able to invest enough in networks due to a weak return on capital," said Maarit Palovirta, senior regulatory affairs director at Connect Europe.

This is a historic, sector-wide trend that is not affected by one good performance of one operator," she added."

https://www.euractiv.com/section/tech/news/deutsche-telekom-tells-policymakers-it-is-struggling-but-investors-it-is-thriving/

#USA #China #Surveillance #MassSurveillance #CyberSecurity #Backdoors #Encryption #BigTelcos: "Blaze told TechCrunch that the Chinese intrusions into U.S. wiretap systems are the latest example of malicious abuse of a backdoor ostensibly meant for lawful and legal purposes. The security community has long advocated against backdoors, arguing that it is technologically impossible to have a “secure backdoor” that cannot also be exploited or abused by malicious actors.

“The law says your telecom must make your calls wiretappable (unless it encrypts them), creating a system that was always a target for bad actors,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, a Stanford academic and encryption policy expert, in a thread on Bluesky. “This hack exposes the lie that the U.S. [government] needs to be able to read every message you send and listen to every call you make, for your own protection. This system is jeopardizing you, not protecting you.”

“The only solution is more encryption,” said Pfefferkorn.

The 30-year-old law that set the stage for recent backdoor abuse is the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, which became law in 1994 at a time when cell phones were a rarity and the internet was still in its infancy.

CALEA requires that any “communications provider,” such as a phone company or internet provider, must provide the government all necessary assistance to access a customer’s information when presented with a lawful order. In other words, if there is a means to access a customer’s data, the phone companies and internet providers must provide it."

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/07/the-30-year-old-internet-backdoor-law-that-came-back-to-bite/

#USA #Broadband #Fiber #DigitalDivide #BigTelcos: "Despite the obvious superiority of fiber, America has been very slow to adopt it. Our monopolistic carriers act as though pulling fiber to our homes is an impossible challenge. All those wires that currently go to your house, from power-lines to copper phone-lines, are relics of a mysterious, fallen civilization and its long-lost arts. Apparently we could no more get a new wire to your house than we could build the pyramids using only hand-tools.

In a sense, the people who say we can't pull wires anymore are right: these are relics of a lost civilization. Specifically, electrification and later, universal telephone service was accomplished through massive federal grants under the New Deal – grants that were typically made to either local governments or non-profit co-operatives who got everyone in town connected to these essential modern utilities.

Today – thanks to decades of neoliberalism and its dogmatic insistence that governments can't do anything and shouldn't try, lest they break the fragile equilibrium of the market – we have lost much of the public capacity that our grandparents took for granted. But in the isolated pockets where this capacity lives on, amazing things happen."
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

American Democracy in Action:

#USA #ATT #Lobbying #BigTelcos: "The US government has provided more detail on how a former AT&T executive allegedly bribed a powerful state lawmaker's ally in order to obtain legislation favorable to AT&T's business.

Former AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza is set to go on trial in September 2024 after being indicted on charges of conspiracy to unlawfully influence then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. AT&T itself agreed to pay a $23 million fine in October 2022 in connection with the alleged illegal influence campaign and said it was "committed to ensuring that this never happens again."

US government prosecutors offered a preview of their case against La Schiazza in a filing on Friday in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. A contract lobbyist hired by AT&T "is expected to testify that AT&T successfully passed two major pieces of legislation after the company started making payments to Individual FR-1.""

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/att-paid-bribes-to-get-two-major-pieces-of-legislation-passed-us-govt-says/

#USA #FCC #BigTelcos #Mobile #Cellphones #GeoLocation #DataProtection:"The Federal Communications Commission is fining the largest US mobile carriers a combined nearly $200 million for allegedly illegally sharing customers’ location data without their consent.

The FCC says it found the carriers “sold access to its customers’ location information to ‘aggregators,’ who then resold access to such information to third-party location-based service providers.” The agency says the carriers effectively “attempted to offload” their responsibility to get customers’ consent to share their location data with “downstream recipients.” Even after being made aware of the issue, the FCC claims, the carriers still failed to limit access to the information.

The fines vary across carriers. T-Mobile faces the largest at $80 million. Sprint, which merged with T-Mobile since the investigation began, faces a $12 million fine. AT&T faces the second-largest fine at roughly $57 million, followed by Verizon at around $47 million. T-Mobile’s and Verizon’s fines are actually lower than what was initially proposed by the agency based on their responses to the FCC’s original notice."

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/29/24144599/fcc-fine-att-sprint-verizon-t-mobile-location-data

#USA #InternetPolicy #BigTelcos #Broadband: "EFF has long advocated for affordable, accessible, future-proof internet access for all. Nearly 80% of Americans already consider internet access to be as essential as water and electricity, so as our work, health services, education, entertainment, social lives, etc. increasingly have an online component, we cannot accept a future where the quality of your internet access—and so the quality of your connection to these crucial facets of your life—is determined by geographic, socioeconomic, or otherwise divided lines.

Lawmakers recognized this during the pandemic and set in motion once-in-a-generation opportunities to build the future-proof fiber infrastructure needed to close the digital divide once and for all.

As we exit the pandemic however, that dedication is wavering. Monopolistic internet service providers (ISPs), with business models that created the digital divide in the first place, are doing everything they can to maintain control over the broadband market—including stopping the construction of any infrastructure they do not control. Further, while some government agencies are continuing to make rules to advance equitable and competitive access to broadband, others have not. Regardless, EFF will continue to fight for the vision we’ve long advocated."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/trenches-broadband-policy-2023-year-review

#USA #NetNeutrality #Broadband #BigTelcos: "“We didn’t invent the FCC because it was a boring Tuesday in 1934 and FDR said ‘I know what will perk things up!’” Feld said. “We did it, in the words of Section 1 of the Communications Act, ‘for the purpose of the national defense, for the purpose of promoting safety of life and property,’ and to ensure to all people of the United States the best communication network possible.”

“We need an internet that works predictably and reliably so we can get on with our lives,” he added.

Assuming the re-re-reclassification goes through — the process will likely take several months — we can expect it to be challenged in the courts and possibly even by a future Republican Congress (which basically overruled the FCC’s attempt to make privacy rules during the short window when broadband was a Title II carrier). So if and when the FCC finalizes the return of net neutrality, we won’t know for sure that rule is, in fact, final. History shows us that it may not be, but something has to stick sometime, right?

A version of this story was also published in the Vox Technology newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!"

https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/9/28/23893138/fcc-net-neutrality-returns

#USA #BigTelcos #PublicHealth: "At a gathering of telecom officials more than a decade ago, John Malone, a senior AT&T manager, cautioned the group about a little-known danger crisscrossing the nation.

His topic was lead-covered cables, which once carried phone service and had long been obsolete. Weren’t these ancient cables gone?

“NO,” his slide presentation said. “Some older metropolitan areas may still have over 50% lead cable,” the slide said. In some places, they posed risks for phone-company workers and the surrounding environment, Malone concluded.

For decades, AT&T, Verizon and other firms dating back to the old Bell System have known that the lead in their networks was a possible health risk to their workers and had the potential to leach into the nearby environment, according to documents and interviews with former employees.

They knew their employees working with lead regularly had high amounts of the metal in their blood, studies from the 1970s and ’80s show. Environmental records from an AT&T smelting unit in the 1980s show contamination in the soil. Government agencies have conducted inspections, prompted by worker complaints, that led to citations for violations involving lead exposure and other hazardous materials more than a dozen times over four decades, records show."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/att-verizon-lead-cables-telecom-5e329f9