Grant Gross
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FCC faces seventh net neutrality lawsuit
Broadband provider CenturyLink has joined the long list of ISPs and trade groups suing the U.S. Federal Communications Commission over its net neutrality rules.CenturyLink filed its lawsuit Friday, becoming the seventh organization to challenge the rules approved by the FCC in late February. The FCC officially published the rules in the Federal Register, the official publication for U.S. agency rules, earlier this week, prompting a round of lawsuits.The company objected to the FCC’s reclassification of broadband from a lightly regulated information service to a more heavily regulated common-carrier service. CenturyLink spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to “build, maintain and update an open Internet network and does not block or degrade lawful content,” it said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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FCC moves toward ‘historic’ spectrum sharing plan
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has approved what some commissioners called a "historic" plan to allow private mobile broadband services to share spectrum with incumbent military users.The FCC voted Friday to approve its so-called Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) plan to open up wireless frequencies from 3550MHz to 3700MHz to new users, including new devices that could use the spectrum like current devices use Wi-Fi.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: The 700MHZ spectrum: Who owns what? Commercial access to the spectrum may still be years away, and the FCC has several sticky issues it needs to resolve, including questions about the best ways to limit inference between users in the band. But with little new spectrum available to satisfy skyrocketing demand for mobile data services, some commissioners hailed the spectrum-sharing plan as a new model for dealing with a spectrum shortage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Data breach notification bill could weaken consumer protections
Legislation that would require businesses across the U.S. to notify affected customers after a data breach is headed toward a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives even though some digital rights groups say the bill will actually weaken protections for consumers.The Data Security and Breach Notification Act, approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday, would pre-empt stronger breach notification laws in several states and would eliminate data protections of telecom account records, several consumer and digital rights groups said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Six net neutrality lawsuits: What are the complaints about?
One of the main arguments for the trade groups and ISPs that have filed six—yes, six—lawsuits against the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules is that the agency violated a 69-year-old administrative procedure law in crafting the new regulations.The two ISPs and four trade groups filing lawsuits in recent days have challenged the FCC’s decision—as part of the new net neutrality rules—to reclassify broadband as a regulated, common-carrier service, instead of its long-standing classification of broadband as a lightly regulated information service. The plaintiffs, in addition to accusing the FCC of violating administrative procedure, will argue the agency violated ISPs’ constitutional rights.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Four new lawsuits challenge FCC’s net neutrality rules
The rush is on to sue the U.S. Federal Communications Commission over its net neutrality rules, with three trade groups and AT&T filing legal challenges Tuesday.The agency now faces six lawsuits related to the regulations.Mobile trade group CTIA, cable trade group the National Cable and Telecommunications Association [NCTA] and the American Cable Association, which represents small cable operators, all filed lawsuits Tuesday, with AT&T announcing its own lawsuit late in the day.The four new lawsuits all challenge the FCC's decision to reclassify broadband as a regulated, common-carrier service, reversing a longstanding agency position that it is a lightly regulated information service. The CTIA lawsuit also focuses on the reclassification of mobile broadband.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Three new lawsuits challenge FCC’s net neutrality rules
The rush is on to sue the U.S. Federal Communications Commission over its net neutrality rules, with three trade groups filing legal challenges Tuesday.The agency now faces five lawsuits related to the regulations.Mobile trade group CTIA, cable trade group the National Cable and Telecommunications Association [NCTA] and the American Cable Association, which represents small cable operators, all filed lawsuits Tuesday.The three new lawsuits all challenge the FCC’s decision to reclassify broadband as a regulated, common-carrier service, reversing a long-standing agency position that it is a lightly regulated information service. The CTIA lawsuit also focuses on the reclassification of mobile broadband.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Three new lawsuits challenge FCC’s net neutrality rules
The rush is on to sue the U.S. Federal Communications Commission over its net neutrality rules, with three trade groups filing legal challenges Tuesday.The agency now faces five lawsuits related to the regulations.Mobile trade group CTIA, cable trade group the National Cable and Telecommunications Association [NCTA] and the American Cable Association, which represents small cable operators, all filed lawsuits Tuesday.The three new lawsuits all challenge the FCC’s decision to reclassify broadband as a regulated, common-carrier service, reversing a long-standing agency position that it is a lightly regulated information service. The CTIA lawsuit also focuses on the reclassification of mobile broadband.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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New bill would invalidate FCC’s net neutrality rules
A group of Republican lawmakers has introduced a bill that would invalidate the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s recently passed net neutrality rules.The legislation, introduced by Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican, is called a resolution of disapproval, a move that allows Congress to review new federal regulations from government agencies, using an expedited legislative process.The resolution is the quickest way to stop what Collins called heavy-handed regulations that will hamper broadband deployment and could increase taxes and fees, he said in a statement. “We’ll all be paying more for less,” he added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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New cyberthreat information sharing bill may be more friendly to privacy
A new bill designed to encourage businesses and government agencies to share information about cyberthreats with each other may go farther toward protecting the privacy of Internet users than other recent legislation in the U.S. Congress.The National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement NCPA Act, introduced Monday in the House of Representatives by two Texas Republicans, appears to do a “much better job” at protecting privacy than two bills that have passed through the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, said Robyn Greene, policy counsel at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Digital rights groups protest US ruling to block digital transmissions
A decision by a U.S. government agency prohibiting the transmission of 3D dental records into the U.S. could open the door to further content restrictions on the Internet, digital rights groups have said.The heart of the question is whether the U.S. International Trade Commission can block digital goods, in additional to physical ones, from being imported to the U.S. The Motion Picture Association of America has watched the agency’s decision closely, with an eye on using the USITC to block websites.The USITC’s decision concerns a patent dispute between two companies that make clear dental braces, but it could have larger consequences and is the wrong way to deal with infringement complaints, the rights groups said Friday in a letter to the agency.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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HP tells cybersecurity customers to focus on people and processes
To protect themselves against cyberattacks, organizations should focus more on training their employees and improving their internal processes instead of buying new technology, according to one tech vendor.Yet, businesses and government agencies often focus on the next “silver bullet” product, unaware that most cybersecurity problems stem from flawed procedures and human error, said Art Gilliland, senior vice president and general manager for Hewlett-Packard’s software enterprise security products.“This is hard for a product guy to say out loud to an audience, but invest in your people and process,” Gilliland said at HP’s Software Government Summit in Washington, D.C. “The first thing that always gets negotiated out of every [security software] contract is the training and the services.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Complaint alleges YouTube Kids pushes advertising content
The six-week-old YouTube Kids service is a “hyper-commercialized” environment that intermixes advertising and other programming in a way that deceives its target audience, a coalition of privacy and children’s advocacy groups said in a complaint to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.Joining in giving YouTube Kids the big thumbs-down are the Center for Digital Democracy, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. They say the video app, targeted toward preschool children, blurs the lines between advertising and other programming using methods that are prohibited by federal regulations on commercial television.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Senator wants bomb-making information removed from the Internet
After two U.S. women were charged this week with conspiring to build bombs in support of terrorist groups, a U.S. senator wants two publications that include bomb-making instructions deleted from the Internet.Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, called for the 44-year-old Anarchist Cookbook and al-Qaeda’s Inspire Magazine to be banished from the Web, notwithstanding the difficulty of removing material from the entire Internet or the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. It’s not the first time that Feinstein has tried to ban publications that instruct would-be bomb-makers.“I am particularly struck that the alleged bombers made use of online bomb-making guides like the Anarchist Cookbook and Inspire Magazine,” Feinstein, a veteran member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “These documents are not, in my view, protected by the First Amendment and should be removed from the Internet.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Obama cyberattacker sanctions raise due process, attribution concerns
New U.S. government sanctions targeting the bank accounts of suspected cyberattackers raise questions about due process for people who feel they’re wrongly accused and about how agencies will identify the source of attacks.The new sanctions, announced by President Barack Obama’s administration Wednesday, would allow the U.S. Department of the Treasury to freeze the funds held in U.S. banks of people and organizations suspected of engaging in malicious cyberattacks that pose a “significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, economic health, or financial stability” of the U.S., according to information released by the White House.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Thousands call on Congress to overturn net neutrality rules
Opponents of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules aren’t giving up, with a conservative advocacy group saying it has collected more than 540,000 signatures on a petition asking Congress to overturn the agency’s action.American Commitment, a group with connections to Republican billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, delivered those petitions to Congress this week. Each petition went to the three members of Congress, one representative and two senators, representing the person signing the letter, American Commitment said.“The landslide 2014 elections made crystal clear that the American people reject larger, more intrusive government,” the Web form leading to the letters says in part. “But President [Barack] Obama reacted by moving even further left, ignoring the fact the Federal Communications Commission is supposed to be an independent agency, and openly demanding the FCC take the most radical action imaginable: reducing the Internet to a ‘public utility,’ imposing sweeping new taxes and destroying private investment, competition, and innovation while putting bureaucrats firmly in control.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Silk Road investigators charged with stealing bitcoin
Two former U.S. government agents face charges related to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin while assisting with an investigation of the Silk Road underground online marketplace, with one accused of using a fake online persona to extort money from operators of the site.Facing charges of wire fraud and money laundering are Carl Force, 46, of Baltimore, a former special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, and Shaun Bridges, 32, of Laurel, Maryland, a former special agent with the U.S. Secret Service. Both served on the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, which investigated illegal activity on the Silk Road website, the Department of Justice said Monday in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Congress moves quickly on cyberthreat information sharing
The U.S. Congress is moving forward quickly with legislation that would encourage private companies to share cyberthreat information with government agencies, despite concerns that two leading bills weaken consumer privacy protections.The House of Representatives Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to approve the Protecting Cyber Networks Act (PCNA), just two days after the bill was introduced.The House bill “is a cybersurveillance bill at least as much as it is a cybersecurity bill, and it is written so broadly that it could wind up making the Internet less safe,” Robyn Greene, policy counsel at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute [OTI], said by email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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US lawmakers push for auctions of gov’t spectrum
A group of U.S. lawmakers has reintroduced legislation aimed at encouraging government agencies to give up their spectrum by allowing the agencies to share in the profits when the spectrum is auctioned to commercial mobile carriers.The Federal Spectrum Incentive Act, introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives Thursday, mirrors legislation that was introduced in the House in 2013 but failed to pass. But the need for the bill is growing, sponsors argue, because of the skyrocketing consumer demand for commercial mobile and unlicensed WiFi spectrum.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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China discloses cyberwarfare unit, no one surprised
It came as a shock to just about no one in the cybersecurity industry that China has a cyberware unit, which was acknowledged by the government there this week.While the Chinese government has long denied attacking U.S. targets, U.S. businesses and government agencies have complained for years about attacks originating from China.The Chinese government noted the existence of the country’s cyberwarfare unit in “The Science of Military Strategy,” a publication put out by a research institute of the People’s Liberation Army, according to news reports this week. The U.S. military has acknowledged its own cyberwarfare capabilities for over a decade.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Net neutrality rules: Separating fact from hype
The net neutrality debate in the U.S. over the past year has been filled with hyperbole, speculation and questionable claims, coming from both sides of the debate.Let’s look at some of the hype and compare it to what we know from the U.S. Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality order, released last week, and from other information.Four million people in favor of the rulesThere seems to be a misconception, driven as much by media coverage as actual statements by net neutrality advocates, that nearly all of the 4 million comments filed with the FCC in the proceeding were in favor of strong net neutrality rules. There’s some debate over analysis done on the final numbers, but we do know that a substantial number of comments came from people opposed to new rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here