Mark Luskus: Corporate interests use stolen identities to flood Internet with fake comments

Via OtherWords.org

My identity was stolen this year. The perpetrator didn’t open credit cards in my name or gain access to my finances. Instead, they used my name to submit a comment to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in support of repealing net neutrality rules.

Those rules, enacted in 2015, declared the internet to be a free and open place. They prevent Internet service providers, or ISPs, like Comcast and AT&T from restricting access to any Web sites — either permanently or to charge you more money to access them.

Imagine your water company charging you more for the water that comes out of your shower than the water that comes out of your sink. Or imagine not being allowed to use your shower at all, even though you pay a water bill.

That’s what net neutrality rules protect consumers from when it comes to the internet.

But Ajit Pai, the current FCC chairman and a former  very high-level lawyer for Verizon, and his Republican colleagues on the commission has voted to repeal net neutrality. To do this, he had to solicit public to comment on the matter.

In the past, this has resulted in millions of pro-net neutrality comments — which makes sense, because most Americans support it. But this time, an unusual number of anti-net neutrality comments showed up.

Why? Because of the 22 million comments received, half or more of them appear to be fake, likely posted by bots or special interest organizations attempting to sway the FCC’s opinion. When I checked the FCC’s Web site, I learned that one of those fake comments used my own name and address.

Someone had stolen my identity to advocate for a position that I didn’t agree with.

Several people and organizations, including the New York attorney general, have petitioned the FCC for information on the scale and origin of fake comments. However, the FCC has rejected these petitions.

As a federal agency, the FCC should be far more concerned about the identity theft of the citizens they’re tasked to represent.

Internet providers like Verizon, the former employer of the FCC chairman, complain that net neutrality rules slow their investments in internet technology. However, ISPs exist in a shockingly non-competitive market.

More than 50 million households in the United States have only one choice of provider, and those providers score the lowest customer satisfaction rates of all 43 industries tracked by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. Personally, I’ve never had an ISP that offers reasonable customer service or internet speeds and reliability at the levels I pay for.

This isn’t an industry that consumers are satisfied with, so why should they hold even more power than they already do? No wonder they have to rely on sleazy tactics like stealing identities and posting fake comments.

The internet has become an essential tool in the 21st Century. A small handful of companies shouldn’t have the power to decide which parts of it people can access.

Corporate-funded lies and identity theft highlight a major threat to the benefits of increased communication. How can we prevent special interest groups from warping the internet to spread misinformation and further their political goals?

That’s a question we must answer, because misinformation campaigns are rampant, and they’re being used to restrict your rights and freedoms. But at the very least, a former Verizon employee shouldn’t hold the power to give ISPs a major win at the expense of consumers — and a free and open Internet.

Mark Luskus is a med student at Emory University, in Atlanta He’s  particularly interested in infectious diseases and public policy.

Chris Powell: Amidst current sexual-abuse scandals, prurience is a growth industry; 'fake media' love Trump's pro-monopoly FCC

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Suddenly it seems as if everyone has been sexually abused or worse by someone else. But it only seems to be sudden. In fact it has been going on since sex was discovered by people who had power over other people. It has become fashionable to declaim about it only recently, thanks to mass media that increasingly profit less from useful information than from mere prurience, which seems to be what most people want most these days, after sex itself.

What has this phenomenon really proved? Not much -- maybe two things.

First, that power still corrupts, most of all in regard to sex, and that its victims ordinarily keep silent about it to avoid embarrassment except when going public long afterward can unhorse a perpetrator who has achieved some high position. Then the victim's enjoyment of revenge outweighs embarrassment and may signify a sort of corruption itself.

And second, that a contemporaneous complaint to the police or at least the perpetrator's acquaintances is worth any number of belated and merely vengeful complaints. For a contemporaneous complaint can stop an abuser before he makes a career out of it.

The movie industry was infamous for this corruption long before Harvey Weinstein began taking advantage of the casting couch. Back in 1955, having spent two years as a screenwriter in Hollywood, Norman Mailer novelized about it well in The Deer Park, concluding that the world was a place "where orphans burn orphans and nothing is more difficult to discover than a simple fact." 

Having married six times, Mailer himself turned out not to be such a nice guy either. Maybe it took one to know one.


RACKETEERING ISN'T INNOVATION: To lure Amazon's second headquarters, Connecticut has joined nearly every other state and dozens of cities in offering the company billions of dollars. Amazon is to be exempted from state and municipal taxes for many years while the company strives to put other retailers out of business even though they  do  pay state and municipal taxes. 
 
It's as if the retail business isn't hard enough already. Indeed, the site that the town of Enfield, Conn., is pitching to Amazon is the Enfield Square shopping mall, which used to house the major department stores Amazon has undermined. Now Enfield Square is struggling.

Other retailers and businesses generally should respond to the Amazon frenzy by demanding similar payoffs just to stay put. 

Amazon justly profits from its innovation in internet retailing but its original innovation was only to enlarge sales-tax evasion. Now the company wants direct subsidy from government. That's a racket.



‘FAKE MEDIA' LOVE TRUMP'S FCC: While President Trump rants about "fake news" from the "fake media," his Federal Communications Commission is planning to repeal regulations so that media companies can become even bigger and concentrate ownership of television and radio stations and newspapers.

The FCC, which now has a Republican majority, aims to let companies combine ownership of television and radio stations and newspapers in the same market and to let TV stations absorb each other even if doing so would leave a market with fewer than eight stations.

The commission already has repealed a rule requiring TV and radio stations to have offices in the communities they are licensed to serve.

Government policy should diversify and democratize ownership of the news media and the whole economy, not concentrate it. Concentrating ownership of the news media just makes "fake news" and propaganda easier to spread. Trump's "fake media" love his FCC. 


Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

 

Razan Azzarkani: Don't let broadband companies control the Internet

Credit: Ludovic.ferre 

Via OtherWords.org

Think about the Web sites you visit. The movies you stream. The music you listen to online. The animal videos that are just too cute not to share.

Now think about the freedom to use the Internet however and whenever you choose being taken away from you. That’s exactly what Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and other Internet Service Providers (ISPs), are trying to do.

Right now, those companies are constrained by a principle called net neutrality — the so-called “guiding principle of the Internet.” It’s the idea that people should be free to access all the content available online without ISPs dictating how, when, and where that content can be accessed.

In other words, net neutrality holds that the company you pay for Internet access can’t control what you do online.

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission adopted strong net neutrality rules that banned ISPs from slowing down connection speeds to competing services — e.g., Comcast can’t slow down content or applications specific to Verizon because it wants you to switch to their services — or blocking Web sites in an effort to charge individuals or companies more for services they’re already paying for.

But now the open Internet as we know it is under threat again. Net neutrality rules are in danger of being overturned by Donald Trump’s FCC chairman, Ajit Pai ,and such broadband companies as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.

But these corporations aren’t doing this alone. They’re getting help from at least eight handpicked members of Congress, all Republicans (Speaker Paul Ryan being the most notable), who’ve signed statements of support for overturning the neutrality rules.

Why? All we need to do is follow the money.

These eight lawmakers have all received significant campaign contributions from these corporations. That means the big broadband corporations and their special interest groups are attempting — and succeeding — to influence policymakers’ decisions on rules that affect us all.

The fun doesn’t stop there.

Ajit Pai — the FCC chairman bent on overturning net neutrality — is a former lawyer for Verizon, one of the very companies petitioning to have the rules changed. Lately Pai has been citing an academic paper arguing that the FCC “eschewed economics and embraced populism as [its] guiding principle” in making decisions on issues like net neutrality.

The catch? This paper wasn’t written by independent experts. It was funded and commissioned by CALinnovates, a telecommunications industry trade group. Their biggest member? None other than AT&T, which stands to benefit a lot if these rules are overturned.

This is just one example of “information laundering,” in which corporate-commissioned research is being used to further corporate agendas. It’s just another way corporations are using their money and influence to lobby members of Congress.

During a recent day of action, such major Web sites as Facebook, Twitter and Google stood up in defense of net neutrality by using pop-up ads, GIFs, and videos to inform the public of the issue and ask them to tell the FCC to “preserve the open Internet.”

You too can fight back against corporate influence by calling the FCC and telling them you won’t give up your right to use the Internet the way you want.

Razan Azzarkani is a Next Leader at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Craig Aaron: Get ready for pro-Trump TV 24/7 in your city

Donald Trump’s favorite local TV chain is about to get a lot bigger thanks to — wait for it — Donald Trump.

Trump’s Federal Communications Commission is paving the way for Sinclair Broadcast Group — already the nation’s largest TV conglomerate — to take over Tribune, which owns 42 stations in many of the country’s big cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Denver.

You may not have heard of Sinclair. But if you watch your local news, there’s a good chance you’re already watching a Sinclair-owned station.

Sinclair already owns 173 stations, which are local affiliates in different cities for national networks like ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC. If this merger goes through, Sinclair will own a whopping 215 stations.

No company has ever had that degree of control over local TV news, which is still the top news source for a majority of Americans.

This deal would have been unthinkable in any other administration. But Trump’s FCC is actually rewriting the rules to make it happen — and to give one of the administration’s loudest media boosters an even bigger megaphone.

Sinclair is no ordinary company: It’s notorious for slipping right-wing views and Republican talking points into its newscasts. It overrides the objections of local journalists and requires its stations to run conservative commentaries and slanted stories every day.

In March, for example, Sinclair ordered its local stations to air a Trump-friendly commentary that accused the national media of publishing “fake news.”

This behavior is nothing new for Sinclair: This is the same company that aired the distorted Swift Boat movie that helped sink John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election. Sinclair also refused to fire commentator Armstrong Williams after the FCC fined the company in 2007 for airing government propaganda and failing to disclose his conflicts of interest.

Instead, Sinclair put Williams in charge of one of its front companies.

And Sinclair went all out for Trump in 2016. Jared Kushner, the president’s adviser and son-in-law, has bragged about a special deal he struck with Sinclair to get Trump uninterrupted favorable coverage. The company has been hiring Trump-campaign spokespeople as analysts ever since.

Now Sinclair’s getting its payback.

If this deal goes through, the company’s cookie-cutter, Trump-boosting content could reach more than 70 percent of the U.S. population. But to pull off its takeover of Tribune, Sinclair needs the FCC to change the rules,

So that’s exactly what FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is doing: As one of his first acts, he changed how the agency calculates station reach so Sinclair could dodge the ownership limits. In fact, the FCC is now pretending that Sinclair would reach just 44 percent of the national audience — even though the company is already boasting to investors that it will actually reach a much greater share.

Sinclair would still need to sell off a couple of stations to get under the national cap. So company lobbyists are pushing to get rid of any limits whatsoever.

The FCC’s ownership rules were designed to ensure a diversity of local voices and opinions — ut women and people of color own very few TV stations. Instead of creating olicies hat romot equity and opportunity, the Trump FCC would rather super-size Sinclair.

For years, Sinclair has been using every trick in the book to evade and undermine the rules. Now the game has changed: Instead of appointing a referee to call corporate fouls, Trump gave the whistle to Chairman Pai, a full-throated cheerleader for runaway consolidation.

If you don’t like this rigged game, now is the time to make your voice heard.

Craig Aaron is the president and CEO of Free Press. 

Chris Powell: Grossly misrepresenting immigration; Trump's hypocritical gift to big broadcasters

MANCHESTER, CONN.

Hundreds of people gathered at the Connecticut Capitol, in Hartford, on April 29 to misrepresent the immigration issue. They were assisted by Gov. Dannel Malloy, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Rep. John B. Larson. The rally was said to be in support of immigrants, as if the country in general and President Trump in particular oppose  any and all  immigration.

But of course the controversy is about illegal immigration, and the elected officials -- all Democrats -- and the other speakers didn't want to address that. The Democratic position seems to be that anyone who breaks into the country illegally and reaches a "sanctuary city," such as New Haven or a "sanctuary state," such as Connecticut, should be exempt from enforcement of immigration law.

The April 29  rally  goers were especially concerned about an illegal immigrant living in Derby, Luis Barrios, whom federal immigration officials have ordered to return to Guatemala by May 4. Yes, Barrios apparently hasn't done anything to deserve priority for deportation, but then he has not  been given priority.

It turns out that an immigration court ordered him deported in 1998 -- 19 years ago, during the Clinton administration, a Democratic administration -- after he missed a court hearing, but enforcement was repeatedly postponed, giving him time to marry and start a family here in the hope of gaining an exemption. While news organizations reported that Barrios could not attend a rally in his support at the federal building in Hartford over the weekend because he was working, they did not explain how someone ordered deported so long ago had been given permission to work all these years.

Yes, Guatemala is dangerous and many Guatemalans like Barrios would prefer to be here. But is this country to take everyone who wants to leave Guatemala or other troubled countries? Should there be no rules for immigration into the United States? The rally did not address those questions and the news organizations attending it obligingly declined to ask them.

xxx

President Trump long has been denouncing the news media as "dishonest" for purveying "fake news." He did it again over the weekend, declining to attend the annual dinner of the White House news correspondents so he could address a rally of his supporters in Harrisburg, Pa. The president said he was thrilled to get away from the "Washington swamp," adding: "A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation's capital right now. If the media's job is to be honest and to tell the truth, the media deserves a big fat failing grade."

Yet just a few days earlier the president's appointee as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, told a meeting of television and radio broadcasters in Las Vegas that the commission wants to repeal many regulations, including those that prevent concentration of ownership of broadcast companies and their acquisition of newspapers in the same market.

So if Big Media is "dishonest," why should the Trump administration facilitate its enlargement? Why shouldn't the administration want to break up the big media companies? For with broadcast licenses there are only two policy options: to concentrate ownership or to diversify it. Ownership of the broadcasting industry is already highly concentrated, so if the industry is "dishonest," more consolidation will make it only more so.

The contrast between the president's anti-media rhetoric and his administration's broadcast-station ownership consolidation policy suggests that Trump doesn't really believe what he is telling people. The contrast suggests that "fake news" is just Trump's way of distracting people from the swamp creatures he is empowering even as he denounces them

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.