Your Right to Record: Protected by Law, Disrespected by Law Enforcement

Originally published at PBS MediaShift

While Feidin Santana and Ramsey Orta are hardly household names, these men played pivotal roles in one of the most important civil rights stories of our time.

They made news by using their cellphone cameras to record the police killings of two unarmed black men: Walter Scott and Eric Garner. And though they may not have realized it at the time, such recording is constitutionally protected.

But that may be little comfort to people who record tense encounters between police and the public. After filming the April 4 shooting of Walter Scott, Santana told NBC News, “I felt that my life, with this information, might be in danger. I thought about erasing the video and just getting out of the community, you know Charleston, and living some place else.”

For Telco Industry Hacks, Progress Is Just Another Word for Crony Capitalism

Published at BillMoyers.com

The Internet’s politically engaged public is here to stay. Millions of people have begun to use online tools to engage in policy fights and protect our online rights — most recently to secure historic Net Neutrality rules at the Federal Communications Commission.

Net Neutrality supporters at a 2014 rally
in front of City Hall, NYC.

That’s a good thing. But it’s rattled the cages of those on the losing side of these battles. Many of their responses don’t deserve to be taken seriously. But every so often something emerges from Washington that is so reckless and repugnant that it cannot be ignored.

On April 1, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), an industry-funded think tank, convened a panel of industry-funded “experts.” ITIF held the D.C. event to blast what it calls “tech populism” — embodied, speakers said, by groups like Free Press, the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In its place panelists touted “tech progressivism” — for which industry-funded think tanks like ITIF and the Progressive Policy Institute are the supposed standard-bearers.

We, the Internet, won

Originally published at DailyDot

We, the Internet, won.

The Federal Communications Commission has approved real net neutrality protections, which prevent Internet access providers like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon from becoming the gatekeepers to everything online.

Today’s vote puts control over the Internet where it belongs: in the hands of the people who use it everyday and in every way.

The FCC now has the authority to require that providers act as “common carriers” for all content. That means that they can only connect Internet users to the places we want to go, without slowing our ability to communicate with the people, websites, and services of our choosing.

Getting a Win for Net Neutrality

Originally published at the Seattle Times

THE Federal Communications Commission, which on Thursday is expected to circulate a groundbreaking ruling to protect the open Internet, has heard more from the public on the issue of net neutrality than on any other matter in its history.

Nearly 4 million Americans have weighed in. And according to data the agency released earlier this year, Seattle had a higher number of people per capita who urged the agency to stand up for real net-neutrality protections.

It's easy to see why.

Read the rest of the commentary at the Seattle Times...

Building an Internet Movement from the Bottom-Up

In the early days of the Arab Spring, Wael Ghonim declared, “If you want to liberate a society, just give them the Internet.”

In retrospect Ghonim, a well-known Egyptian activist at the center of Cairo protests, should not have stopped there. Just giving a society the Internet isn’t enough to set it free.

As pro-democracy and social justice movements have taken root on the Web, they’ve been challenged by official efforts to remake networks into tools of censorship and exclusion.

... story continues at Medium.com

President Obama Comes to the Defense of Gigabit CIties

On Wednesday, President Obama called for an end to rules that prevent cities towns and other communities from creating their own high-speed Internet networks.

During a speech in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to preempt state laws that restrict municipal broadband networks. The phone and cable lobby pushed hard for these bills and succeeded in getting at least 19 on the books in states ranging from North Carolina to Utah.

Four Pivotal Internet Issues as the Year Turns 2015

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler with protesters
outside agency headquarters in Washington

The death of the Internet is at hand.

Sound familiar? That’s what Internet pioneer Robert Metcalfe predicted in 1995 when he wrote that spiraling demands on the fledgling network would cause the Internet to “catastrophically collapse” by 1996.

Metcalfe, of course, was dead wrong: The Internet is still chugging along nearly twenty years later, with a predicted 3 billion users by year’s end.

Still, the Internet’s fate feels distinctly uncertain as 2015 begins. Washington is engaged in a furious debate over Net Neutrality, access to affordable broadband services is still considered a luxury for many, while governments here and abroad continue to filter digital communications to spy on everyone, crack down on dissident voices and silence speech.

Best of ...

OK. My Best Records of 2014. This took a while to compile, including hours of winnowing, playing over and again, and gathering feedback. Despite that, you're entitled to hate this list or love it. All I ask is that you give these a listen and then share your favorites for the year (listed alphabetically):

Read Our Lips: No New Internet Taxes

The tall tales of the phone and cable lobby keep crumbling down.

Last week we saw a string of the country's biggest Internet service providers, including Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable, admit what we've said all along: Reclassifying Internet access as a Title II telecom service won't hurt broadband investment. For years they've been claiming the opposite just to scare the FCC away from using Title II to protect Net Neutrality.

And here's another thing the cable lobby doesn't want you to know: Buried deep in the $1.1 trillion spending package Congress just passed is a provision to extend a moratorium on local and state taxes for Internet access. That moratorium is called the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA), and Congress just reauthorized it through October 2015.

For weeks the cable lobby has been telling anyone who will listen that reclassification would sock Internet users with a "whopping" new Internet tax.

Obama, the Telcos and Getting Net Neutrality Right

In November, President Obama called for strong Net Neutrality protections, making good on promises to support the open Internet by urging the Federal Communications Commission "to make sure that consumers and not the cable companies get to decide what sites they use."

The president was following the lead of millions of Americans who had already urged the FCC to stop phone and cable companies from playing favorites with some websites while degrading access to others. The solution that Obama and so many others have called for? The FCC must reclassify Internet access service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act.

But companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to stop the FCC from taking that vital step.

And opposition to Obama's Net Neutrality statement has come from unlikely bedfellows ranging from Sen. Ted Cruz, who tweeted that Title II is "Obamacare for the Internet" (it's not) to Rev. Jesse Jackson, who claimed that the rule would take jobs from minorities (it wouldn't).

Verizon's Latest Censorship Plan Follows a Familiar Pattern

If the past is prologue, here’s what we can expect if Verizon is allowed to become the Internet’s editor-in-chief. 

On Tuesday, Daily Dot reported that Verizon is attempting to buy its way into the news cycle by creating a tech-news site, SugarString.com, to compete with the likes of Wired and The Verge.

But there's a twist: According to emails from the site's editors, SugarString will ban reporters from writing any stories about Net Neutrality or U.S. surveillance programs.

The site is now staffing up -- hiring editors and reporters to produce stories that Verizon hopes will appeal to mainstream audiences. In an email to a prospective reporter, SugarString Editor Cole Stryker wrote that the ban on coverage of Net Neutrality and spying "is pretty much it as far as content restrictions go. The upside is that we have a big budget to pay people well, make video documentaries and other fun shit."

Photographing 'On the Road'

Timothy Karr. New Jersey Meadowlands, 2014.

Ever since I first picked up a camera I have photographed from the windows of moving cars. There’s something that is both familiar and foreign about the passing scenery. This push-and-pull between the permanent and the fleeting is inherently photographic while also being rooted in an art history of making landscapes.

My road pictures usually occur as I’m shuttling one of my daughters to or from New Jersey regional soccer games — an activity that has become a cliché of suburban life in America. Yet being “on the road” has more romantic associations with the era of Kerouac and Kesey. I often like to imagine myself as suspended between these two worlds.

Why Phone and Cable Companies Want to Kill the Internet’s Most Democratic Right

Originally published by PBS MediaShift

Net Neutrality — the principle that protects Internet users’ free speech rights — is censorship.

Did you get that? You did if you happened to be reading the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages. Former Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell recently wrote a screed claiming that Net neutrality supporters have taken a turn “toward undermining free speech.”

And McDowell is not alone. Since the FCC announced its plan to make a new ruling regarding the open Internet, Washington has been overrun with phone and cable lobbyists whose sole mission is to convince the agency that real Net Neutrality rules are downright un-American.

Press Freedom Groups Pressure President Obama to Do Better

Sound advice: "The police should not be bullying or harassing journalists."

A seemingly innocuous industrial park in the Utah desert has emerged as a hot spot in the fight for press freedom.

Built under a shroud of secrecy, the Utah Data Center is the NSA’s data storage and processing facility — a place that maximizes the agency's surveillance capacity, which includes the ability to track the phone calls of U.S. reporters and store their metadata for a lengthy period of time.

While whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the extent of the government’s mass surveillance programs in 2013, news of the harassment and monitoring of journalists under the Obama administration predates the Snowden leak.

What's FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Really Afraid Of?

While millions of Americans, a nationwide coalition of mayors, and thousands of startups and small businesses called for real Net Neutrality protections this summer, the FCC’s boss remains holed up in the agency’s Washington headquarters, reluctant to engage the public on the issue.

There was no vacation for the Internet this summer.

While many Americans slipped away to the beach, Internet users were busy defending the openness of a network that has become this era’s engine for free expression, ingenuity and just about everything else.

The threat comes from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, who has proposed rules that would fundamentally change the workings of the Web — leaving its fate in the hands of a few powerful phone and cable companies.

Net Blocking: A Problem in Need of a Solution

For years a lineup of phone and cable industry spokespeople has called Net Neutrality “a solution in search of a problem.”

The principle that protects free speech and innovation online is irrelevant, they claim, as blocking has never, ever happened. And if it did, they add, market forces would compel Internet service providers to correct course and re-open their networks.

In reality, many providers both in the U.S. and abroad have violated the principles of Net Neutrality — and they plan to continue doing so in the future.

The Biggest Lie About Net Neutrality

One of the most persistent lies told in Washington is the notion that common carriage is a heavy-handed regulation that transforms innovative businesses into antiquated, government-run utilities.

Any mention of restoring this time-tested principle to the Internet causes fits among phone and cable industry lobbyists.

It's a debate now raging throughout the record number of comments filed at the Federal Communications Commission, which has put the issue of common carriage back "on the table" as it weighs new rules to protect Net Neutrality.

The ‘Shocking’ Truth About Net Neutrality

It’s rare for liberals and conservatives to find common ground in this era of political brinkmanship. That’s why it’s been refreshing to see a strong national consensus in support of Net Neutrality, the principle that protects free speech and innovation on the Internet.

Republican Alabama Representative Spencer Bachus, a champion of First and Fourth Amendment values, recently spoke out in favor of such protections, suggesting that the FCC treat Internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon as common carriers, and prevent companies from blocking, censoring or discriminating against Internet traffic.

Big Telco Loves Fake Net Neutrality

Wheeler with protesters outside the FCC.

What do you get when you mix a cable lobbyist with a federal regulator?

You get FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. What you don’t get is Net Neutrality.

Wheeler's proposed rules for protecting the open Internet fall so spectacularly short on protecting the open Internet that all of the major phone and cable companies are lobbying Washington to support them.

On Wednesday, Mike Masnick of Techdirt looked at comments filed in the FCC proceeding by Comcast, Verizon, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and other industry representatives. His conclusion: “[A]ll of the major broadband players are pretty clear that they really, really like the FCC's plan.”

Safeguarding Free Speech in the Digital Age

Net Neutrality protests in June outside the FCC

A version originally published by Other Words

Representative Spencer Bachus stands out among conservatives.

Representing Alabama’s 6th district, he’s built his Republican political reputation as a supporter of fiscal responsibility, limited government and constitutional rights — with special attention to the First and Fourth Amendments.

Therefore, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to hear this southern Republican speak in favor of net neutrality, the principle that preserves free speech on the Web. “There shouldn’t be fast lanes on the Internet,” Bachus told Politico after a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month.

Shedding New Light on Dark Money

July 1 is a bright summer day for most of the nation, made even more so by a new tool designed to shed light on the dark money behind political advertising this year.

On Tuesday, every major broadcast television station in the United States is required to post online information about the political ads that they air. These broadcasters were already required by law to keep a "political file" on site at their stations.

Now, this file will also be maintained at the Federal Communications Commission website -- with stations posting copies of contracts showing who these political advertisers are, how much they're spending on ads, and where and when their ads air.

This includes files from the nearly 2,000 local broadcast stations in 210 broadcast markets nationwide -- a planned expansion on a 2012 ruling, which initially required only the top affiliates in the largest 50 markets to disclose online.

Big and Fast, Open and Affordable

My testimony before the New York State Public Services Commission tonight:

Hello my name is Timothy Karr. I am from Free Press, the public advocacy group that fights for everyones’ rights to connect and communicate.

Free Press has 55,000 members who call New York their home.

I first moved to New York City 25 years ago. At that time the Internet was in its infancy. It had just been made available under an open protocol. And this gave millions of everyday users the power to share information, create websites and connect with one another.

From there the network grew into a truly World Wide Web -- a people-powered engine of economic opportunity and free speech.

For more than a decade I have represented the interests of these Internet users.Wherever they are in America, people have told me one thing: They want an Internet that is big and fast, open and affordable.

I’m here tonight to tell you that this merger would accomplish none of this.

How to Tell If Your Member of Congress Is a Crony Capitalist

Last Tuesday, Rep. Eric Cantor learned the hard way that crony capitalism comes at a political cost. In a decisive 10-point upset, Cantor’s Republican primary opponent David Brat defeated the Virginia congressman after charging that he was “trying to buy this election with corporate cash.”

Few inside Washington thought charges like this would stick; for decades they’ve opened their campaign coffers to millions of dollars from Fortune 500 firms without fearing any consequences at the ballot box.

Since arriving on Capitol Hill in 2001, Cantor has received corporate contributions extending from Bank of America to Verizon and beyond. Only four other lawmakers took in more corporate cash during the most recent election cycle.

In exchange, Cantor became big businesses’ “ace in the hole.” According to TIME, big banks, energy and defense industries, insurance firms, and phone and cable companies knew they could rely on Cantor to put their interests before those of his constituents back in Virginia’s 7th District.

Time to LOCK CAPS and Save the Internet

As with many complicated issues making news, it often takes a comedian to sort things out in ways most of us can understand.

Last night John Oliver, host of the popular news-comedy show Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, informed the world about Net Neutrality in ways that were both nutritious and hilarious. Yes, funny broccoli.

The Dirty Secret Behind Rep. Latta's Anti-Net Neutrality Bill

Support for Net Neutrality has spread — in the streets, in Silicon Valley and at kitchen tables and coffee shops around the country.

But the more traction it gets nationwide, the more vicious the attacks on the open Internet have become. Most all of these attacks are generated by lobbyists and public relations flacks on the payroll of powerful phone and cable companies.

While they aren’t winning many converts to a corporate controlled Internet among the general public, they have found a few allies on Capitol Hill.

Reject This Anti-Competitive Deal: Opposing View

Originally published at USA Today

AT&T wants to spend nearly $49 billion to buy DirecTV. If you throw in DirecTV's debt, this deal would cost AT&T a whopping $67 billion. Earlier this year, Comcast proposed a merger with Time Warner Cable that would cost the company a total of about $70 billion.

For the enormous amount of money AT&T and Comcast are shelling out for their respective mega mergers, they could deploy super-fast gigabit-fiber Internet services to every single home in America. But these companies don't care about providing better and faster services, or connecting more Americans to the Internet.

These mergers are about eliminating the last shred of competition in a communications sector that's already dominated by too few players.... (Read the full commentary at USA Today)

The Make or Break Moment for the Internet

Coauthored with Craig Aaron. Originally published at MSNBC. 

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission cast a vote that could reshape the future of the Internet. They decided to proceed with a proposal that if implemented would let Internet service providers charge content companies for priority treatment, relegating other content to a slower tier of service.

At stake is Net Neutrality – the fundamental principle that ensures that when you go online you can read, watch or download whatever you want without your phone or cable company deciding which sites will work the fastest (or not at all).

Net Neutrality is a big part of what has made the Internet an unrivaled space for free speech and economic innovation. We want to keep it that way... (Read the article at MSNBC.com)

Talking Net Neutrality for the 92nd Street Y's 'American Conversation'

Breaking the Cycle of Internet Repression

Originally published at PBS MediaShift

“If you want to liberate a society,” said Egyptian Arab Spring activist Wael Ghonim, “just give them the Internet.”

In retrospect, Ghonim should have qualified his statement to include the kind of Internet free societies need. For as online tools have become standard issue for protest movements worldwide, governments have heightened efforts to remake digital networks as a means of censorship and surveillance.

Today, the optimism about free speech and the Internet that emerged during Egypt’s 2011 uprising has been dashed by the Morsi and Sisi regimes, which have silenced online and traditional media and imprisoned dozens of journalists.

A Song for the FCC: Don’t Blow Us Up

If you think explaining tech policy is difficult, try putting it to music and lyrics. That’s exactly the challenge that faced musician and artist Jonathan Mann, who last week composed a song urging Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler to ditch his plan for a payola Internet.

For the last five years, Mann has been composing a song a day. “Don’t Blow Up the Internet” is his 1,939th. In it he asks the FCC’s five commissioners whether they work for the public — or for Internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

“Don’t blow up my home. History will judge. Are you going to kill creativity, or help give it a nudge?”

Mann, who graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 2006, says the open Internet is “integral” to his work as an artist. He submitted “Don’t Blow Up the Internet” to the FCC last week and is hoping the commissioners will listen in — and maybe even sing along.

I caught up with him over the weekend:

Strike Two: Obama's Second FCC Chairman Fails on Net Neutrality

When President Obama pledged to appoint a Federal Communications Commission chair who would protect Net Neutrality, we had no reason to doubt he'd find the right person for the job.

Obama campaigned in 2008 as a strong champion of the open Internet, saying he'd "take a back seat to no one" in safeguarding Net Neutrality.

Now the president is on his second FCC chair, and neither has proven himself up to the task.

New Post at Bill Moyers & Company

(via Moyers & Company)

Tim Karr is the senior strategist for Free Press, an advocacy organization that works to change media and technology policies, promote the public interest and strengthen democracy. He contributed this post for our “Take Action” section. “If large…

---

A Free Press Crusader on the Crimean Front Lines

Mijatovic meets with journalists Wednesday in Simferopol

Within three days of the takeover of the Crimean parliament, Dmitry Polonsky, a leader of the pro-Kremlin Russia Unity Party that seized power, urged a rally of supporters to watch only pro-Russian state TV.

All other outlets, he said, are spreading “mendacious” lies about Russian interference in Crimean affairs.

But forces aligned with Polonsky and the Kremlin did more than just switch the channel. Over the past 72 hours, armed men stormed Ukraine’s 5 Kanal TV, Black Sea TV and One Plus One TV and took the stations off the air. Those outlets are now transmitting pro-Moscow news from Russia’s Rossiya 24 TV.

President Obama Confident FCC Will Use Authority to Save Net Neutrality

President Barack Obama on Friday affirmed his strong support for Net Neutrality and expressed confidence that the Federal Communications Commission will use its authority to protect the open Internet.

“I have been a strong supporter of Net Neutrality. The new commissioner of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, whom I appointed, I know is a strong supporter of Net Neutrality,” the president said in response to a question posed by Art Hernandez of Tempe, Arizona during a live video chat.

Obama's January 31, 2014 Net Neutrality Comments

Question from Art Hernandez in Tempe: 

… I have two daughters who currently live on the east coast and as you might expect I can't afford to visit them as frequently as I'd like to. So the only opportunity that we get to spend time together is through the Internet on video chats such as this one.

My question today has to do with Net Neutrality and the recent US court of appeals ruling almost disregarding the rule of a fair and neutral Internet.

I'm curious to know if you support Net Neutrality and how you feel about the court's decision and how that decision will impact the U.S. Economy and the Internet as we currently know it?

Coming Clean on Net Neutrality

I’m relieved that Net Neutrality’s opponents have finally come clean.

Sort of.

For years a lineup of phone and cable industry mouthpieces had called Net Neutrality “a solution in search of a problem.” The principle that prevents online censorship and blocking by service providers is irrelevant, they claimed, as these companies would never lift a finger to harm the open Internet.

But then they changed their tune.

In September’s oral arguments in Verizon vs. FCC, Verizon admitted that it did indeed plan to charge new Internet tolls and favor certain content at the expense of other sites and services.

The Information Counter-Revolution

Photo: Sasha Maksymenko

Many people in Kiev awoke Tuesday morning to a frightening text message on their phones. “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance,” it read.

Using cellphone technology, Ukraine’s dominant carriers have reportedly helped the government pinpoint the locations of their customers. Anyone with a cellphone in the vicinity of recent protests was added to a government watch list and sent the intimidating text.

The incident is just one in a growing number of attacks on Internet users. It’s a troubling sign that the information age has entered a new era — one where our rights to connect and communicate are under constant siege by governments and corporations.

The Net Neutrality Solution

In the wake of this week's devastating court decision on Net Neutrality, a consensus is emerging as to how the FCC can clean up its mess.

Tuesday's federal appeals court decision stripped the agency f its ability to stop companies like AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable from blocking websites and degrading Internet access.

More and more people are calling for a specific fix: To protect the open Internet, the FCC must reclassify broadband access as a telecommunications service.

The New York Times editorial board wrote on Wednesday that the court decision against the Open Internet Order could turn the Internet into a domain controlled only by powerful corporations:

"If this ruling stands, broadband providers would be free to strike deals with companies like Netflix and Apple to pay to have their movies, software and other data streamed to customers faster than or ahead of other content. Such deals would hurt smaller businesses or start-ups that cannot afford to pay for preferential treatment."

During oral arguments, Verizon's top legal counsel told the courts that this is exactly what the company plans to do. Their intentions are no secret, despite contradictory statements made this week by ISP executives and their lobbyists, who say we should trust carriers not to tamper with the Internet.

Will Murdoch Succeed in Burying his Past?

It’s a new year for News Corp. But the recently rebranded media colossus can’t seem to shake off a 2013 hangover.

Rupert Murdoch is plotting his empire’s expansion — growth that could include purchases of Tribune Company newspapers and, reportedly, Time Inc. But will 2014 be the year that the media mogul, who’s skilled at reinventing himself and burying old mistakes, is finally held to account?

Hacking

The News Corp phone-hacking scandal became front-page fodder in the summer of 2011, but its principal defendants went before British courts just last fall. In the months since the trial began, we‘ve learned more about the alleged “culture of corruption” that pervaded News Corp’s London operation, infecting many top executives. The outlook for former Murdoch colleagues Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson looks bleak.

Murdoch has distanced himself and his companies from these and other lead actors in the scandal — with the possible exception of his son James. And he just plunked down a multi-million-dollar sum for a 30-year lease on new headquarters at London Bridge, indicating his intent to stick around.

The Nature of Nature Photography

The Winning Shot by Paul Sounders

Three jurors for National Geographic Magazine's annual photography contest discuss their criteria for selecting this year's winners.

The photograph that they gave top honors -- Paul Sounders shot of a submerged polar bear with the Arctic sun hovering above a distant horizon -- was a clear favorite of all three.

A photograph of distinction. And yet it looks to me like an image of a type that is all too commonplace at National Geographic and other nature photography publications. While proficient in technique, composition and execution, it's all too familiar to the genre -- an animal in its natural setting -- to be staid.

Why 60 Minutes Needs a Public Editor

The New 'Black Rock'?

"The most important thing about that show is the quality," CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves told the Hollywood Reporter last year. "They take time to do those stories."

The object of Moonves' appreciation, of course, is 60 Minutes. Given the venerable news program's recent missteps, one has to wonder whether this commitment to quality -- or even basic fact-checking -- remains strong.

On Sunday, 60 Minutes aired an embarrassing "exclusive" from inside the National Security Agency, which featured a lengthy interview with NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander. But the 27-minute report failed to challenge any of the questionable claims Alexander has made about the NSA's mass surveillance programs.

The Payola Internet

Taking the Internet back to the future.

2013 could mark the end of the era of Internet openness.

If, as many expect, a federal appeals court rules to allow an Internet payola system, phone and cable companies will start to prioritize access to the few online sites and services that can afford to pay them extra.

The court deciding Verizon vs. FCC could issue its ruling as early as Christmas. The judges hearing the case in September seemed inclined to strike down the Federal Communications Commission’s ability to prevent Internet service providers from the practice of “paid prioritization,” where companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon pick winners and losers online.

Defying Washington to Save the Internet

Co-authored by S. Derek Turner

It’s a rarity in Washington to see a communications bill that actually serves the public.

But a bill Sen. Jay Rockefeller introduced last week is a direct challenge to the communications cabal that controls much of our media in the United States.

For that the Consumer Choice in Online Video Act faces very long odds. But Rockefeller’s bill does so much for Internet users and video watchers that it deserves everyone’s support.

Sen. Rockefeller, who is serving out his final term in Congress, has clearly been emboldened by the open Internet movement. Over the past decade, millions of people have spoken out to preserve Net Neutrality, stop online censorship and protect our rights to connect and communicate. We recognize the power of free speech and access to information that the Internet enables, and we’re using the Internet in growing numbers to protect these rights against corporate and governmental abuse.

Self-Censorship from Beijing to the Bay Area

Online news organization ProPublica on Friday launched a special feature documenting censorship on social media in China.

China's Memory Hole focuses on censorship of users of Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, which filters out "undesirable" content from the more than 100 million items that are posted there daily.

A team of ProPublica writers, technicians and translators combed through deleted items after gaining access to and monitoring Sina Weibo's network over a five-month period.

ProPublica is vague -- perhaps intentionally -- about the actual mechanics of their monitoring.

We do know that China has assigned the task of blocking social media content to the privately held companies that run the services. It’s a comprehensive self-censorship approach that keeps the companies guessing on the limits of appropriate public discourse.

What Ted Cruz Doesn't Want You to Know

Originally published at Bill Moyers & Company

By now it seems pretty clear that Sen. Ted Cruz has a plan to occupy the White House. But he doesn't want people to know too much about it.

And he definitely doesn't want you to know about the special interests that have already begun to bankroll his political ambitions.

That's why the Texas senator's latest crusade targets the Federal Communications Commission -- and its efforts to better identify the funders of political ads.

Hacking Partisanship

Washington likes to talk bipartisanship.

 During the 16-day government shutdown, elected officials from both parties clogged the airwaves with rhetoric about crossing over, finding common cause with political foes and ending the standoff.

But sincerity was in short supply as few took real action, cheesy photo-ops notwithstanding. The agreement struck last Thursday night was more a delaying tactic than a genuine effort to resolve longstanding disputes.

This isn’t the first time reckless politics have ground Washington to a halt. Congress’ inability to agree on a budget mimics its recent failures to address climate change, income inequality and gun violence.

But there’s a new issue that seems to defy this pattern of dysfunction. It’s the subject of a hopeful new book, which documents the bipartisan (some would say “post-partisan”) organizing that in 2012 led to the defeat of two copyright bills that threatened the open Internet.

Telling the Non-Story

David Guttenfelder. Images from North Korea.

Photography defies narrative.

And it's those photographers who try without irony to control photographic detail -- to lock everything within the frame into some preconceived story -- who often fail.

When we look at images we often see something other than what the subject (and even the photographer) is trying to show.

Internet Freedom: A Disturbing View from the Trenches

Is the Internet freedom movement a thing? That depends on whom you ask, and where you live.

In the United States, more than two million people rallied to demand Net Neutrality in 2010. Our ranks swelled to the tens of millions in the 2012 fight to kill legislation that would have let Hollywood wreak havoc on the open Internet in its heavy-handed hunt for copyright pirates.

Globally, we’ve come together to protest any treaty or multinational agreement, like theTrans-Pacific Partnership, that threatens online speech and privacy.

We’ve formed international coalitions in support of the Declaration of Internet Freedom, and recently presented the U.N. Human Rights Council with international principles designed to protect our rights to free speech and privacy in the face of international mass surveillance of communications.

Found Photography and What of It

So, This Happened

Verizon's Plan to Break the Internet

Verizon has big plans for the Internet. And if that doesn’t worry you, it should.

The company is trying to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order, which prevents Internet service providers from blocking, throttling or otherwise discriminating against online content.

And in court last Monday, Verizon lawyer Helgi Walker made the company’s intentions all too clear, saying the company wants to prioritize those websites and services that are willing to shell out for better access.

She also admitted that the company would like to block online content from those companies or individuals that don’t pay Verizon’s tolls.

In other words, Verizon wants to control your online experience and make the Internet more like cable TV, where your remote offers only the illusion of choice.

Internet S.O.S.

Is the Internet on life support?

Last week we learned that U.S. and British intelligence agencies have broken the back of digital encryption — the coded technology hundreds of millions of Internet users rely on to keep their communications private.

Over the weekend, Der Spiegel reported that the NSA and its British counterpart are also hacking into smartphones to monitor our daily lives in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before the age of the iPhone.

This news, just the latest revelations from the files of Edward Snowden, only heighten our sense that we can no longer assume anything we say or do online is secure.

Telco Market Research Gone Awry

Your Rights: Gone with a Click

What do you give up every time you "agree" to a website's terms of service?

These online agreements are as ubiquitous as the sites that use them. In exchange for using Google to search the Web or Facebook to connect and share information with friends, we surrender much more than we think.

In his new documentary, Terms and Conditions May Apply, Cullen Hoback pores over the terms of service offered by these and other online companies. Buried in the fine print that few read he finds evidence that we're living in a new age of total surveillance, one that most of us unwittingly opted into with a click.

Mining China's Snapshot Memories

Story originally posted at Tumblr.

Where do old negatives go to die?

Frenchman Thomas Sauvin knows well the life-span of color film. For years he has scoured China for cast off snapshots from the local population.

But it wasn't until he saw an ad placed in a local newspaper that he found out.

Mr. Xiao Ma is a silver-nitrate recycler based in the suburbs of Beijing. Mr. Xiao places local ads offering to buy used film from Chinese citizens. The film is destined for a vat of acid, where negatives are disintegrated and separated into their base elements, one of which -- silver nitrate -- has resale value.

Sauvin buys them in bulk from Xiao instead, rescuing hundreds of thousands of Kodak "memories" from oblivion. He then painstakingly "mines" the negatives for images to be included in a series called Beijing Silvermine.

Obama's NSA Reforms Off to a Bad Start

President Barack Obama's decision late Friday to suggest reforms to the government's surveillance programs caught many data protection and free speech advocates by surprise.

Is he serious about plans to check the government's massive spying operation and uphold the rights of everyday Americans?

EFF's Rainey Reitman responded with caution: "We take Obama's promises today with a healthy dose of skepticism ... [T]he devil will be in the details when it comes to whether his proposals will be effective."

On Monday, one devilish detail emerged when the White House instructed James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, to form the "high-level group of outside experts," that President Obama had promised to Americans on Friday.

Are You Ready to Dump Cable?

As CBS and Time Warner Cable remain locked in a three-week battle over retransmission fees, you have to wonder when their millions of viewers will throw in the towel and abandon cable altogether.

This latest dispute is nothing new. Media giants often grapple over retransmission fees, which cable companies pay to broadcasters for the right to include their channels in cable offerings.

News Corp and Time Warner Cable were in a standoff over fees in 2009. In 2011, DirecTV and News Corp engaged in a similar dispute.

Retransmission fees have increased more than 13-fold over the past seven years, from $215 million in 2006 to an estimated $3 billion by the end of 2013, according to SNL Kagan. The money has given a boost to the broadcast and production companies on the dial, but cable companies don't want to foot the bill. They solve this problem by passing these fees on to their subscribers.

Obama's Four Reforms to U.S. Government Surveillance Programs

Transcribed from video of President Obama's Aug. 9 press conference:

1. "I will work with Congress to pursue appropriate reforms to section 215 of the Patriot Act."
   
2. "I will work with Congress to improve the public’s confidence in the oversight conducted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court … To build greater confidence I think we should consider additional changes to the FISC. One of the concerns that people raised is that a judge reviewing a request from the government to conduct programmatic surveillance only hears one side of the story… assuring that the government’s position is challenged by an adversary."
   
3. "We can and must be transparent. I have directed the intelligence community to make public as much information about these program as is possible…. At my direction the Department for Justice will make public the legal rationale for the government’s collection activities under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The NSA is taking steps to put in place a full time civil liberties and privacy officer, and release information that details its mission, authority and oversight."
   
4. "We’re forming a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies. We need new thinking for a new era … I am tasking this independent group to step back and review our capabilities particularly our surveillance technologies."

Is TMZ the Future of Local News?

On Tuesday, I took part in an on-air discussion at NJ News Commons about the future of local news in New Jersey and beyond.

Exhibit A was Fox Broadcasting Company’s decision to replace WWOR’s evening newscast with Chasing New Jersey, a TV newsmagazine modeled after the celebrity gossip show TMZ.

Chasing New Jersey is Fox’s attempt to reinvent local news. Its format — young reporters “chasing” events around the state and reporting them back in conversations with colleagues — is a departure from the standard news fare featuring co-anchors seated before a teleprompter.

The switch is Fox’s attempt to appeal to a younger demographic, especially those 18-to-34-year-olds that advertisers pay top dollar to reach.

Speech Notes from Today's Restore the Fourth Rally

Photograph by Peter Micek

Follows are my speech notes from today's "Restore the Fourth" protest in Manhattan.

As we didn't have a PA system these were delivered using the call and response of the "mic check," popularized  by the Occupy Wall Street movement, where the speaker speaks briefly and the crowd repeats his or her words en masse.

We had a good turnout today with 1,000 people braving heat and holiday crowds to march from Union Square to Federal Hall where we read the Fourth Amendment in the shade of the statue of George Washington:

Obama. Like Nixon, but Worse

Is Barack Obama like Richard Nixon?

Until recently that pairing seemed odd. Obama and Nixon are leaders from different generations, leading different parties with distinctly different styles.

Yet both used excessive force to crack down on whistleblowers and journalists. And while their tactics have differed, the goal was the same: to silence and criminalize those who expose government wrongdoing.

Obama, however, may have learned from his predecessor's mistakes. While Nixon broke the law to attack dissenting voices, Obama has distorted it to the same effect.

Jimmy Carter vs. 'Jimmy Carter'

Carter Christening 'Carter' in 2004

Late last week. Former President Jimmy Carter chimed in on the NSA surveillance scandal and the plight of whistle blower Edward Snowden.

"I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far," President Carter told CNN's Suzanne Malveaux. "And I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive... Bringing it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial." (Video at 2:15)

Last year, Carter railed against the U.S. government for losing moral ground on a series of human rights issues. "Recent laws have canceled the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications," he wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed.

Meanwhile, the latest NSA disclosure revealed just how deep the U.S. government's was willing to go to listen in on communications both at home and abroad -- eavesdropping that involves Carter more in name than in spirit.

Glenn Greenwald: Exposing the Rot

The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald just offered an inside account of his relationship with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. During a speech at the Socialism 2013 conference in Chicago, Greenwald praised Snowden and those like him who shed light on abuse by the powerful.

Greenwald said that Snowden's sacrifice inspired him to continue to reveal the full extent of U.S. government surveillance efforts. To that end, Greenwald gave the audience a preview of his next Snowden exposé:

"There's another document that I probably shouldn't [share with you] because it’s not published," Greenwald said. "You’re getting a little preview."  It's a report on "a brand new technology [that] enables the National Security Agency to redirect into its own repositories one billion cell phones calls every single day." (video at 40:00).

For now we'll have to wait on Greenwald to divulge more.

Five Questions for the Next FCC Chief

Tom Wheeler, the White House's pick to head the Federal Communications Commission, was for years a well-heeled lobbyist for cable and wireless companies.

He also served the president's 2008 and 2012 election campaigns as a top "bundler," raising more than $700,000 from undisclosed donors in support of Obama.

Many in the public interest community see Wheeler's insider status as more of a minus than a plus. Wheeler's confirmation hearing in the Senate today is the nominee's best chance to prove these skeptics wrong.

Why William Eggleston is the Greatest Living Photographer, and Why He'll Never Admit to it

William Eggleston, Untitled, 1973

A show of William Eggleston’s early work hangs for another six weeks at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It’s been a good year for the photographer, if you count exhibits at major international venues as “good.”

What D.C. Doesn't Get About NSA Surveillance

Watching conventional wisdom form in Washington can be appalling. The emerging consensus on surveillance this past week has D.C.'s pundit class saying that privacy violations are a small price to pay for keeping Americans safe.

But conventional wisdom is wrong. Trampling over our most essential rights is never OK. All of us should be free to connect and communicate without fear of government intimidation.

Too many of Washington's talking heads and politicos don't seem to get this. Their profound misreading of the Constitution has put our democracy on a perilous path toward a surveillance state.

Dancing Around the First and Fourth Amendments

Originally published by Other Words

Whether you think spying is OK or not often depends on your relationship to the information being collected.

If you’re on the gathering end, the invasion of someone else’s privacy doesn’t seem like a big deal. But if you’re the one whose private life is being pried into, this kind of surveillance seems like a very big deal indeed.

This dynamic is at work with the unfolding story about National Security Agency programs that vacuum up the telephone and Internet data of millions of people.

On Gregory Halpern and the Documentary Dogma

Photographer Gregory Halpern talks about his approach to taking pictures with Cameron Van Loos at ASX:

“To ask what one’s ethics are when making photographs of other people is as complicated as asking what one’s ethics are in general. 

“I should start by explaining why I don’t call my work documentary. To begin with, the way the word “documentary” is understood by still photographers, particularly in the US, is extremely limited and strict. The second is that I am not primarily motivated by the desire to document things. I am motivated more by the desire to create things, to make photographs that rely on things/facts found ‘in the world’ but that are then shaped and altered according to my vision of them.”

Newspaper Readers Speak Out Against the Kochs

Opposition to the Koch Brothers' reported plan to take over eight Tribune Company newspapers has spread from activist groups, unions, lawmakers and journalism advocates to the readers of these papers.

Thousands in Los Angeles have pledged to unsubscribe from the Los Angeles Times should the deal move forward.

And the New York Times reported that news of the potential sale "is setting off a firestorm of opposition" in California. Ten public employee unions joined with state legislative leaders to oppose the sale of the Los Angeles Times to the wealthy industrialists.

Internet Uncertainty

Our Internet freedoms are what we make of them.

When asked whether the Internet has been a force for good or evil, Zeynep Tufekci likes to answer "Yes."

In other words, it is both the best of times and the worst of times for the Internet. It's also the best and worst of times for the freedoms the Internet is supposed to nurture.

Tufecki should know. As a fellow at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, she focuses on the politics of free speech in social media. Over the years she's traced this push and pull with particular attention to the Middle East and North Africa (Tufecki is a native of Turkey).

Putting up a Fight with the Internet Racket

Is your internet bill too high? You can thank the phone and cable companies for that.

Today, high-speed broadband services offered by these national carriers cost more than $500 a year and even more when customers are forced to bundle internet access with cable or phone packages. These rates put access out of reach for millions.

And the Americans who can afford this essential service can choose from only one or two kinds of providers: either a big phone or cable company.

Market dominance suits the phone and cable giants. As the real cost of hooking up your home declines, they keep hiking their rates... (Read the full op-ed in the New Jersey Star-Ledger)