When President Donald Trump calls old friends on one of his iPhones to gossip, gripe, or solicit their latest take on how he is doing, American intelligence reports indicate that Chinese spies are often listening — and putting to use invaluable insights into how to best work the president and affect administration policy, current and former American officials said. Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure, and they have told him that Russian spies are routinely eavesdropping on the calls, as well. But aides say the voluble president, who has been pressured into using his secure White House landline more often these days, has still refused to give up his iPhones. White House officials say they can only hope he refrains from discussing classified information when he is on them. American spy agencies, the officials said, had learned that China and Russia were eavesdropping on the president’s cellphone calls from human sources inside foreign governments and intercepting communications between foreign officials.

One thing Democrats and Republicans do agree on: The digital divide undercutting rural America needs to be fixed. But figuring out the details of achieving this goal is where the two sides diverge. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel agreed what's really needed to bring broadband to every American is a national vision on the scale of what the US government did when it brought electricity to rural America in the 1930s. "We were able to get electrification to happen in rural, hard-to-reach parts of this nation," Commissinoer Rosenworcel said. "We need to be able to do the same with broadband." Chairman Pai agrees that a "national mission when it comes to broadband," on the scale of what happened the better part of a century ago, is necessary. He said what gives people hope in small towns throughout rural America is the "promise of digital opportunity." People living in these areas want the same thing that people in big cities and suburban areas want, he emphasized. They want to be able to better educate their kids, access high-quality health care and enable precision agriculture to grow their businesses. And all of that in 2018 requires connectivity to high-speed internet service. "It really would be a game-changer for rural America if every town in this country were connected," he said. "And that idea is bipartisan in nature."

In Nov, during what we’ve dubbed Space Month, the Federal Communications Commission will take up nine items to ensure that America leads in the New Space Age, with an emphasis on cutting through the red tape. We start with improving a satellite-enabled technology that millions of Americans rely on every day without even knowing it: the positioning, navigation, and timing service known to most Americans as the Global Positioning System, or GPS. The Commission will vote on allowing American devices to access the European global navigation satellite system, known as Galileo. We’ll also be voting on a package of orders that would give the green light to companies seeking to roll out new and expanded services using new non-geostationary satellite constellations. To help these new constellations have a real impact down here on Earth, we’re also looking to expand the opportunities for satellites to serve Earth Stations in Motion (ESIMs). Additionally, I’ve proposed the first comprehensive review of the Commission’s orbital debris rules since their adoption in 2004. This proposal aims to improve and clarify these rules based on improvements in mitigation practices, and to address recent market developments. We’ll also vote on a Report and Order involving hearing aid compatibility. And finally, as part of the Commission’s ongoing Modernization of Media Regulation Initiative, we’ll also consider a Report and Order to update certain notice requirements that principally apply to cable operators.

Research I helped conduct has found that the fundamental driver of disinformation in American politics from 2015-2018 has not been Russia, but Fox News and the insular right-wing media ecosystem it anchors. All the Russians did was jump on the right-wing propaganda bandwagon: Their efforts were small in scope, relative to homegrown media efforts. And what propaganda victories the Russians achieved occurred only when the right-wing media machine picked up stories and, often, embellished them.

Throughout our work, we find clear patterns, before and after the election. The Russians are there. They are trying. But in all these cases, American right-wing media did the heavy lifting to originate and propagate disinformation. The conservative network of outlets, with Fox at its center, feeds a large minority of Americans narratives that confirm their biases, fills them with outrage at their political opponents, and isolates them from views that contradict these narratives. It is a closed propaganda feedback loop.

[Yochai Benkler is a professor at Harvard Law School and co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society]

Google will start showcasing privacy mechanisms directly within search, so you can review and delete your activity log without having to navigate to another screen, learn what data Google collects about you, and more easily find relevant granular privacy controls. Google says it will take similar steps for greater transparency across some of its other products as well. Google calls the new feature Your Data, and has experimented with offering information about data privacy in different formats like video, illustrations, and text. The idea is to help as many users as possible understand what data a service collects, why, and what controls are available.

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly suggested the agency's children's video rules might be unconstitutional. He said a good case could, and had been, made that the rules are an abridgement of broadcasters' speech rights, and thus illegal. 

"It has been argued that the FCC's children's programming requirements imposed on our nation's broadcasters...raise legitimate First Amendment concerns," he said, adding that despite "tremendous" competition and options in children's programing, the commission still maintains extensive requirements that broadcasters must adhere to," including the three-hour requirement. He said many legal scholars have argued that the rules and perhaps even the underlying statute [the Children's Television Act of 1996] are content-based restrictions not narrowly tailored to further a compelling government interest and therefore fun afoul of the First Amendment," which is legal scholar speak for "they don't meet the high bar for carveouts from Free Speech protections."

He also warned that some government-run broadband networks impose speech codes in their terms of service agreements that constitute content-based restrictions that also do not pass muster under the "strict scrutiny" test for speech regulation.