Vice

House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo (D-CA) introduced federal legislation to help communities across the country develop locally-controlled communications networks, setting up a fierce battle with anti-municipal broadband Republican Reps in Congress. The Community Broadband Act of 2016 is designed to accompany a similar Senate measure backed by Sens Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), along with several of their colleagues. Ranking Member Eshoo’s legislation comes one month after a federal court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission lacks the authority to preempt Comcast and AT&T-backed state laws that pose barriers to community broadband development.

“I’m disappointed that a recent court ruling blocked the FCC’s efforts to allow local communities to decide for themselves how best to ensure that their residents have broadband access,” Rep Eshoo said. “This legislation clears the way for local communities to make their own decisions instead of powerful special interests in state capitals.” Rep Eshoo’s bill faces steep odds of success as long as Republicans control Congress, but it nevertheless represents an important development in the nationwide movement to help local communities build their own broadband networks in order to lower prices, boost speeds, and increase competition. Rep Eshoo’s legislation would block any state law that prohibits a city, municipality or public utility from providing “advanced telecommunications capability.” Nearly two dozen states have passed such laws, often at the behest of the nation’s largest cable and phone companies, including Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T, as my colleague Jason Koebler has documented.

LinkNYC, New York City's newest communications network, includes more than 350 kiosks installed on sidewalks throughout the city and was created to repurpose payphone infrastructure through public kiosks offering free Internet, phone calls, and USB charging ports. The project is a collaboration between the city and a consortium of private technology and media companies including Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet (read: Google) company, and represents an important innovation in the “smart city” movement integrating information and communication technologies into all aspects of urban life.

I spent nearly four hours of an August afternoon walking down 3rd Avenue—where Links now appear on almost every block—to see what it actually looks like we put our newest and most innovative technology out onto city streets, instead of into our pockets. My small sample of Link users that Saturday afternoon suggests these kiosks are indeed mostly used by the city’s least privileged. Of the 15 people I saw using a Link, only two or three of them would be likely to appear on LinkNYC promotional materials (i.e., one well-dressed woman making a phone call, or one middle aged, casually-dressed tourist waiting for his phone to finish charging). Most users were camped out for the long haul, for hours or even days at a time, surrounded by their possessions and browsing music videos on YouTube, making phone calls, and checking Facebook. These campers often make themselves comfortable on makeshift chairs and couches devised from newspaper stands, milk crates, and furniture pulled from alleys and street corners.

Earlier in the summer of 2016, the north Indian state of Kashmir was hit with a new wave of riots when young militant leader Burhan Wani was killed by state police. Wani was the controversial head of Hizbul Mujahideen, a group fighting for the state to separate from India. He was embraced as a freedom fighter by many in Kashmir, and considered a terrorist by Indian officials. Kashmiris have been forced to live with regular curfews and military presence in their daily lives. Their mountain and valley homes have been caught in the crosshairs of border wars between India, Pakistan and China for decades. But in moments of peak violence the law enforcement in Kashmir has started wielding a new means of control: mobile and digital blackouts. In a region already complicated by geography and turbulence, the impact of telecommunication blackouts is significant. “There is no getting around the fact that cutting mobile links [and Internet] affects flow of information, from basic human contact to people facing health issues, to the injured—and there are thousands—not being able to reach families,” said Najeeb Mubarki, a journalist in Kashmir.

Activist group Privacy International and five Internet and communications providers lodged an application before the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the United Kingdom's use of bulk hacking powers abroad. “The European Court of Human Rights has a strong track record of ensuring that intelligence agencies act in compliance with human rights law. We call on the Court to hold GCHQ accountable for its unlawful bulk hacking practices,” said Scarlet Kim, legal officer at Privacy International. The application has been made with UK-based non-profit GreenNet, the Chaos Computer Club from Germany, Jibonet from South Korea, US internet service provider May First, and communications provider Rise Up. Privacy International is challenging whether the UK's interpretation of the Intelligence Service Act for using bulk hacking powers complies with the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

“As currently practiced, GCHQ’s hacking powers are neither in accordance with law nor proportionate, both of which they must be in order to satisfy Articles 8 and 10 [of the ECHR]. Our case focuses on the in accordance with law requirement, which says that if an intrusive surveillance practice like hacking is to be used, it must have an explicit legal basis that makes its use foreseeable and must be accompanied by stringent safeguards,” said Privacy International General Counsel Caroline Wilson Palow.

For those who value their privacy, Samsung might be making it a little harder for someone to break into your phone. If you’ve ever configured your smartphone to offer up that 6-digit entry code, you’ll be pleased to know that the conglomerate has its eyes set on retinal scanning technology. But as we approach the release of the Galaxy Note 7, it's fitting to wonder exactly how secure this relatively new breed of biometrics might be.

The concept of utilizing iris scanners to unlock phones is not exactly novel. In fact, it’s old news for ZTE, a China-based multinational telecommunications company that released the ZTE Grand S, which featured retinal scanning in the form of the “Eyeprint ID,” last March. Biometrics and consumer technology have long gone hand in hand. Apple has featured fingerprint scanning through “Touch ID” in its iPhone since 2013. While such technology has proven to be reliable, it is not always the safest option. If you’ve ever seen a crime show before, you will know that fingerprints can quite easily be lifted and copied. Iris scanners, along with other biometric applications, are indeed susceptible to foul play. However, this is not to say that retinal scanning is of no use. ZTE allows for various biometrics, fingerprints, Eyeprint ID, and voice recognition, to be used in conjunction with each other. The value of such security measures are best observed in layers. Of course, the more security steps the user installs, the less likely their phone’s data is to be compromised.

The nation’s largest cable and telecommunication industry trade groups on July 29 asked a federal court for a rare “en banc” review of June’s decision upholding US rules protecting network neutrality, the principle that all content on the Internet should be equally accessible to consumers. “The likelihood that the full DC Circuit would agree to rehear the case, much less reverse the panel’s decision, is extremely remote,” Andrew Schwartzman, Benton Senior Counselor at the Public Interest Communications Law Project at Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation, wrote in a recent article. “The DC Circuit typically agrees to rehear a case only a few times each year, at most, usually where there is a sharp split on an important issue on which other circuits have taken a different stance,” Schwartzman wrote. “This case doesn’t meet those criteria and thus starts out as a particularly poor candidate for rehearing.”

There is no fixed timeline for the DC Circuit to respond to the broadband industry’s petitions. Federal courts typically respond to en banc requests within a few weeks, but given the fact that August is a slow month for the federal bench, the court could wait until September or even October to respond, according to Schwartzman.

On July 21, a Wall Street Journal reporter claimed that the Department of Homeland Security demanded access to her mobile phones when she was crossing the border at the Los Angeles (CA) airport. The case highlights the powers that border agents purport to have, and how vulnerable sensitive information can be when taken through airports in particular.

“I wanted to share a troubling experience I had with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in the hopes it may help you protect your private information,” Maria Abi-Habib, a WSJ journalist focused on ISIS and Al Qaeda wrote in a post on Facebook. Abi-Habib says she had arrived in town for a wedding, when an immigration officer approached her, and took her aside from the main queue. This by itself was not unusual, Abi-Habib writes: because of her job, she has reportedly been put on a list that allows her to bypass the usual questioning someone with her travel profile may encounter. But things changed quickly, and Abi-Habib was escorted to another part of the airport. “Another customs agent joined her at that point and they grilled me for an hour—asking me about the years I lived in the US, when I moved to Beirut and why, who lives at my in-laws' house in LA and numbers for the groom and bride whose wedding I was attending. I answered jovially, because I've had enough high-level security experiences to know that being annoyed or hostile will work against you,” she writes.