Jason Koebler

Data Broker That Sold Phone Locations Used by Bounty Hunters Lobbied FCC to Scrap User Consent

Earlier in Jan it was reported how T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint were selling cell phone users’ location data that ultimately ended up in the hands of bounty hunters and people unauthorized to handle it. That data trickled down from the telecommunications giants through a complex network of middlemen and data brokers. One of those third parties was Zumigo, a company that gets location data access directly from the telecom companies and then sells it for a profit.

Journalists Are Not Social Media Platforms’ Unpaid Content Moderators

For years tech companies have been getting free content moderation from journalists who have often been the ones unearthing illegal or problematic behaviour on huge platforms, with social networks only dealing with issues once they know that there’s an impending news article coming. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey noted the role that journalists play in counteracting disinformation that spreads and is incentivized on his platform.

If You Care About Net Neutrality, Run For Office

[Commentary]  If you care about preserving network neutrality, the most important thing you could possibly do would be to run for political office on a platform that promises to protect the free and open internet and to roll back regulatory capture by big telecom.

The FCC Cited Zero of the 22 Million Consumer Comments in its 218-Page Net Neutrality Repeal

Roughly 22 million people submitted comments during the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality regulatory proceedings. Though there was widespread fraud in the process (many dead people filed anti-net-neutrality comments), the vast majority of them favored the rules that protected the free and open internet. Jan 4, the FCC released its final rule repealing these protections: A grand total of zero consumer comments were cited.

The FCC Says Consumer Backlash Will Protect Net Neutrality

Instead of expressly banning internet service providers from blocking content or throttling it, Chairman Ajit Pai’s Federal Communications Commission will instead rely on a “consensus” among the general public and—presumably ISPs themselves—that blocking or throttling content is bad.

Internal FCC Report Shows Republican Net Neutrality Narrative Is False

A core Republican talking point during the network neutrality battle was that, in 2015, President Barack Obama led a government takeover of the internet, and President Obama illegally bullied the independent Federal Communications Commission into adopting the rules. But, internal FCC documents, revealed using a Freedom of Information Act request, show that the independent, nonpartisan FCC Office of Inspector General—acting on orders from Congressional Republicans—investigated the claim that President Obama interfered with the FCC’s net neutrality process and found it was nonsense.

To Save Net Neutrality, We Must Build Our Own Internet

Network neutrality as a principle of the federal government will soon be dead, but the protections are wildly popular among the American people and are integral to the internet as we know it. Rather than putting such a core tenet of the internet in the hands of politicians, whose whims and interests change with their donors, net neutrality must be protected by a populist revolution in the ownership of internet infrastructure and networks. In short, we must end our reliance on big telecom monopolies and build decentralized, affordable, locally owned internet infrastructure.

This Is How the Free Press Dies

[Commentary] Former Motherboard editor Ben Makuch has been pursued by the Canadian government since 2014 for doing his job. For nearly three years, our colleague and friend Ben Makuch has had the full weight of Canada's intelligence agencies, federal government, and court systems bearing down on him for the crime of committing journalism.

While Ben's case has been widely covered in Canada, it has flown under the radar of the Trump-obsessed American press. But what happened with Ben is part of a global trend to prevent the free spread of information by governments that espouse democratic values and supposedly champion an open society.

Surveillance Court Pushed Back Against Spying on Trump

The Guardian reported a shocking story alleging that the FBI asked the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for permission to spy on four members of Donald Trump’s political team who were suspected of having suspicious contact with Russian government officials. I say “shocking” not because the FBI would be interested in surveilling Trump’s team, but because, according to The Guardian, the court said no.

Here is the relevant paragraph from The Guardian’s article: "The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation."

Researchers Are Preparing for Trump to Delete Government Science From the Web

When Donald Trump takes over the federal government on January 21, his administration will also gain complete control over much of the .gov suite of websites, which currently hosts a treasure trove of publicly available, taxpayer-funded scientific research. The academic world is bracing itself: Will that data remain available after his transition?

Scientists and university professors all around the country and in Canada believe we’re about to see widespread whitewashing and redaction of already published, publicly available taxpayer-funded scientific research, databases, and interactive tools, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Sea Level Rise viewer, NASA’s suite of climate change apps, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s maps of the country’s worst polluters. They also expect to see censorship, misrepresentation, and minimization of new government-funded research, specifically regarding climate change.

How Will President-elect Trump Deal with FOIA?

I’m a member of FOI-L, a listserv for serial Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requesters to discuss the intricacies of government sunshine laws. In the days after Donald Trump’s election, members of the listserv have been discussing what FOIA—which allows citizens to request specific government documents from federal agencies—will look like under President-elect Trump.

While we have no way of knowing what President-elect Trump will do for sure, open government and journalists are bracing for an administration that could be more obstructionist. One thing we’re very likely to see in the next administration is a flurry of new FOIA requests and lawsuits from reinvigorated liberal nonprofit groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which, to be fair, were active FOIA requesters during the Obama administration as well. You should also keep an eye on Judicial Watch, a conservative group dedicated to filing FOIAs to expose government misconduct that currently has more than 20 open lawsuits against Hillary Clinton and sued the Obama administration more than 300 times.

26 Colorado Communities Will Vote on Building Their Own Internet Networks

On, November 8, 26 separate Colorado communities will vote on whether their local governments should build high speed fiber Internet networks to compete with or replace big telecommunication Internet service providers. So-called municipal fiber ballot initiatives have become an annual tradition in Colorado, as roughly 100 communities have voted on measures that provide legal cover to governments who want to build new networks. The initiatives are required under a SB152, a law enacted in 2008 after several lobbying efforts by CenturyLink made it illegal for municipalities to provide fiber Internet to private premises without first obtaining permission in a ballot measure. In 2015, a record 47 communities passed similar referenda; no communities voted it down.

Not every city is going to become its own Internet service provider—the law requires cities to hold referenda even if they plan on partnering with companies on public-private fiber network initiatives. “The law uses broad definitions for what cities can and cannot do,” said Christopher Mitchell, director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative. “We only know of two that have failed in the last six years,” he added. “Many of these networks are tremendously successful.” Colorado is the only state in the country that has a ballot measure requirement for locally run networks; 22 other states have different laws that restrict local broadband efforts. With so many cities overwhelmingly voting in favor of local government-run broadband, Mitchell says that Colorado’s law hasn’t quite had the effect CenturyLink would have liked.

The City That Was Saved by the Internet

The “Chattanooga Choo Choo” sign over the old terminal station is purely decorative, a throwback. Since the Southern Railroad left town in the early 1970s, the southeastern Tennessee city has been looking for an identity that has nothing to do with a bygone big band song or an abandoned train. It’s finally found one in another huge infrastructure project: The Gig. At a time when small cities, towns, and rural areas are seeing an exodus of young people to large cities and a precipitous decline in solidly middle class jobs, the Gig has helped Chattanooga thrive and create a new identity for itself.

Chattanooga and many of the other 82 other cities and towns in the United States that have thus far built their own government-owned, fiber-based Internet are held up as examples for the rest of the country to follow. Like the presence of well-paved roads, good Internet access doesn’t guarantee that a city will be successful. But the lack of it guarantees that a community will get left behind as the economy increasingly demands that companies compete not just with their neighbors next door, but with the entire world. But not every rural community can just lay its own fiber. Cities and towns that build their own Internet have found themselves squarely in the crosshairs of telecommunication lobbyists and lawyers, who have managed to enact laws making it difficult or illegal to build government-owned networks. But the success of these networks is beginning to open eyes around the country: If we start treating the Internet not as a product sold by a company but as a necessary utility, can the economic prospects of rural America be saved?