Showing posts with label Obama Administration. Show all posts

Is There Any Particular Reason For China To Stop Cyberscrewing the US?

9/25/2015 Unknown No comments

The massive data breach of a US government server originating from China might make for awkward conversation between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to Washington this week. But as pissed off as Obama might be, his options for fending off future Chinese hacking may be limited to incoherent mumbling and impassioned gesturing.

In July, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced it was the target of a yearlong data breach that was the largest of its kind in US government history. The records of more than 20 million people were compromised, including highly sensitive security clearance background information. Media reports citing unnamed government officials indicated the attacks originated in China, but whether the attackers had the support of the Chinese government is unclear. Though the stolen information has not shown up for sale in dark corners of the internet, reports indicate China may be compiling OPM and other stolen data into a database of US federal employees for further espionage potential, according to current and former intelligence officials.

Related: Hacks Bring Down US Background Check System — But the Worst Is Yet to Come

China's alleged cyber intrusions are not limited to traditional espionage. They also target the private sector and commercial secrets -- an issue the House and Senate leadership warned President Barack Obama about in a letter this week.

Most countries make a distinction between political and economic espionage, with the former tacitly accepted as something all nations do, while the latter is not viewed as an acceptable government activity. The Chinese government tends to conflate the two, which makes a certain amount of sense given the intimate relationship between government and private industry in China. Despite high-profile breaches like the OPM hack, the US is most concerned about halting China's economic espionage activities.

"This isn't a mild irritation, it's an economic and national security concern to the United States," National Security Advisor Susan Rice said during an address at George Washington University Monday. "Cyber-enabled espionage that targets personal and corporate information for the economic gain of businesses undermines our long-term economic cooperation, and it needs to stop."

Xi repeated what has become China's standard answer to US accusations: "China takes cybersecurity very seriously," he said. "China is also a victim of hacking. The Chinese government does not engage in theft of commercial secrets in any form, nor does it encourage or support Chinese companies to engage in such practices in any way." China has in the past expanded on these denials, citing its lack of control over independent actors — so-called "patriotic hackers" — and unsanctioned activities by local governments far from Beijing.

Determining who's doing the hacking is also challenging. Denise Zheng, deputy director and senior fellow in the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said hackers "may wear a PLA [China's People's Liberation Army] hat during the day and black hat at night."

The question of how the US should respond remains tricky. Obama last week said the attacks were straining the US relationship with China, and "that we are prepared to some countervailing actions in order to get their attention."

Those actions may not necessarily take place online.

"We've made clear that we have other punitive measure available when we do see instances of cyber intrusion and cyber theft," Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, said yesterday in a conference call with reporters. "Sanctions remain a tool of the United States, and we would be prepared, if necessary, to pursue sanctions."

Related: Chinese Cyber Attacks Trigger US MIDLIFE Crisis

Follow Shannon Hayden on Twitter: @ShannonKHayden
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F.C.C. Net Neutrality Rules Clear Hurdle as Republicans Concede to Obama

2/25/2015 Unknown

Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said that Democrats were lining up with President Obama in favor of the F.C.C. position on net neutrality. Jabin Botsford/The New York Time

WASHINGTON — Senior Republicans conceded on Tuesday that the grueling fight with President Obama over the regulation of Internet service appears over, with the president and an army of Internet activists victorious.

The Federal Communications Commission is expected on Thursday to approve regulating Internet service like a public utility, prohibiting companies from paying for faster lanes on the Internet. While the two Democratic commissioners are negotiating over technical details, they are widely expected to side with the Democratic chairman, Tom Wheeler, against the two Republican commissioners.

And Republicans on Capitol Hill, who once criticized the plan as “Obamacare for the Internet,” now say they are unlikely to pass a legislative response that would undo perhaps the biggest policy shift since the Internet became a reality.

“We’re not going to get a signed bill that doesn’t have Democrats’ support,” said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. “This is an issue that needs to have bipartisan support.”

The new F.C.C. rules are still likely to be tied up in a protracted court fight with the cable companies and Internet service providers that oppose it, and they could be overturned in the future by a Republican-leaning commission. But for now, Congress’s hands appear to be tied.

The F.C.C. plan would let the agency regulate Internet access as if it is a public good. It would follow the concept known as net neutrality or an open Internet, banning so-called paid prioritization — or fast lanes — for willing Internet content providers.

In addition, it would ban the intentional slowing of the Internet for companies that refuse to pay broadband providers. The plan would also give the F.C.C. the power to step in if unforeseen impediments are thrown up by the handful of giant companies that run many of the country’s broadband and wireless networks.

Republicans hoped to pre-empt the F.C.C. vote with legislation, but Senate Democrats insisted on waiting until after Thursday’s F.C.C. vote before even beginning to talk about legislation for an open Internet. Even Mr. Thune, the architect of draft legislation to override the F.C.C., said Democrats had stalled what momentum he could muster.

And an avalanche of support for Mr. Wheeler’s plan — driven by Internet companies as varied as Netflix, Twitter, Mozilla and Etsy — has swamped Washington.

“We’ve been outspent, outlobbied. We were going up against the second-biggest corporate lobby in D.C., and it looks like we’ve won,” said Dave Steer, director of advocacy for the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit technology foundation that runs Firefox, a popular Web browser, referring to the cable companies. “A year ago today, we did not think we would be in this spot.”

The net neutrality movement pitted new media against old and may well have revolutionized notions of corporate social responsibility and activism. Top-down decisions by executives investing in or divesting themselves of resources, paying lobbyists and buying advertisements were upended by the mobilization of Internet customers and users.

“We don’t have an army of lobbyists to deploy. We don’t have financial resources to throw around,” said Liba Rubenstein, director of social impact and public policy at the social media company Tumblr, which is owned by Yahoo, the large Internet company, but operated independently on the issue. “What we do have is access to an incredibly engaged, incredibly passionate user base, and we can give folks the tools to respond.”

Internet service providers say heavy-handed regulation of the Internet will diminish their profitability and crush investment to expand and speed up Internet access. It could even open the web to taxation to pay for new regulators.

Brian Dietz, a spokesman for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, said the pro-net-neutrality advocates turned a complex and technical debate over how best to keep the Internet operating most efficiently into a matter of religion. The forces for stronger regulation, he said, became viewed as for the Internet. Those opposed to the regulation were viewed as against the Internet.

The Internet companies, he said, sometimes mislead their customers, and in some cases, are misled on the intricacies of the policy.

“Many of the things they have said just belie reality and common sense,” he said.

In April, a dozen New York-based Internet companies gathered at Tumblr’s headquarters in the Flatiron district to hear dire warnings that broadband providers were about to obtain the right to charge for the fastest speeds on the web.

The implication: If they did not pony up, they would be stuck in the slow lane.

What followed was the longest, most sustained campaign of Internet activism in history. A swarm of small players, like Tumblr, Etsy, BoingBoing and Reddit, overwhelmed the giants of the broadband world, Comcast, Verizon Communications and Time Warner Cable. Two of the biggest players on the Internet, Amazon and Google, largely stayed in the background, while smaller participants — some household names like Twitter and Netflix, others far more obscure, like Chess.com and Urban Dictionary — mobilized a grass-roots crusade.

“Our community is the source of our power,” said Althea Erickson, director of public policy at Etsy, an online craft market, where users embroidered pillows and engraved spoons promoting net neutrality.

In mid-October, the tech activist group Fight for the Future acquired the direct telephone numbers of about 30 F.C.C. officials, circumventing the agency’s switchboard to send calls directly to policy makers. That set off a torrent of more than 55,000 phone calls until the group turned off the spigot on Dec. 3.

In November, President Obama cited “almost four million public comments” when he publicly pressured the F.C.C. to turn away from its paid “fast lane” proposal and embrace a new regulatory regime.

Since then, the lobbying has grown only more intense. Last week, 102 Internet companies wrote to the F.C.C. to say the threat of Internet service providers “abusing their gatekeeper power to impose tolls and discriminate against competitive companies is the real threat to our future,” not “heavy-handed regulation” and possible taxation, as conservatives in Washington say.

Republicans have grown much quieter under the barrage.

“Tech companies would be better served to work with Congress on clear rules for the road. The thing that they’re buying into right now is a lot of legal uncertainty,” said Mr. Thune. “I’m not sure exactly what their thinking is.”

Mr. Thune said he was still willing to work with Democrats on legislation that he said would do what the F.C.C. is trying to accomplish, without a heavy regulatory hand: Ban paid “fast lanes” and stop intentional slowdowns — or “throttling” — by broadband companies seeking payment from Internet content providers.

But even he said Democrats were ready to let the F.C.C. do the job.

Obama Urges F.C.C. to Adopt Strict Rules on Net Neutrality

11/10/2014 Unknown

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday put the full weight of his administration behind an open and free Internet, calling for a strict policy of so-called net neutrality and formally opposing deals in which content providers like Netflix would pay huge sums to broadband companies for faster access to their customers.

The president’s proposal is consistent with his longstanding support for rules that seek to prevent cable and telephone companies from providing special access to some content providers. But the statement posted online Monday, as Mr. Obama traveled to Asia, is the most direct effort by the president to influence the debate about the Internet’s future.

In the statement, and a video on the White House website, Mr. Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to adopt the strictest set of neutrality rules possible and to treat consumer broadband service as a public utility, similar to telephone or power companies.

“We cannot allow Internet service providers to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas,” Mr. Obama wrote in the statement.

The F.C.C. is an independent agency not subject to Mr. Obama’s direct authority. But the president is adding his voice to the 3.7 million people who submitted comments to the agency, most on behalf of a free and open Internet in which broadband companies could not pick which content would arrive quickly and which would be slowed down.

Mr. Obama said that new rules under consideration by the F.C.C. should adhere to several key principles: No website or service should be blocked by an Internet service provider; no content should be purposefully slowed down or sped up; there should be more transparency about where traffic is routed; and no paid deals should be made to provide a speed advantage to some providers over others in delivering content.

That last principle would directly affect some of the megadeals already being made by companies like Netflix, whose video streaming service has been gobbling up bandwidth and slowing down the Internet as millions of people attempt to watch movies and television shows on their computers and tablets.

Earlier this year, Netflix struck a deal with Comcast under which it pays Comcast for a direct connection into its broadband network so subscribers experience less delay in viewing Netflix’s streaming video.

Mr. Obama said he opposed such deals and urged the commission to adopt rules that would prevent them.

“Simply put: No service should be stuck in a ‘slow lane' because it does not pay a fee,” Mr. Obama wrote. “That kind of gatekeeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth. So, as I have before, I am asking for an explicit ban on paid prioritization and any other restriction that has a similar effect.”

Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, on Monday said he welcomed the president’s input and said he agreed that the Internet should remain free and open. But he did not say whether he would fully support reclassifying broadband as a utility. He did say, however, that the F.C.C. would need more time to formulate its rules, meaning that a proposal was unlikely to come by the end of the year.

Mr. Wheeler had most recently been leaning toward a hybrid approach to net neutrality, one that would keep a light touch on the consumer end of Internet service but that would apply the more strict Title II oversight to the relationship between an Internet service provider and content companies.

“Whether in the context of a hybrid or reclassification approach,” he said, “Title II brings with it policy issues that run the gamut from privacy to universal service to the ability of federal agencies to protect consumers, as well as legal issues ranging from the ability of Title II to cover mobile services to the concept of applying forbearance on services under Title II.”

“We found we would need more time to examine these to ensure that whatever approach is taken, it can withstand any legal challenges it may face,” he said.

Reaction from some of the biggest broadband companies was swift and negative. Shares of some of the big broadband providers, including Comcast and Time Warner Cable, were down about 3 percent on Monday morning.

Verizon, which brought the court challenge that struck down the F.C.C.'s 2010 rules on net neutrality, called Mr. Obama’s proposal “a radical reversal of course that would in and of itself threaten great harm to the Internet.”

Both Verizon, which provides both wired and wireless broadband services, and CTIA-The Wireless Association, the leading mobile phone association, also decried Mr. Obama’s call to apply net neutrality rules to wireless broadband.

“Imposing antiquated common carrier regulation, or Title II, on the vibrant mobile wireless ecosystem would be a gross overreaction,” said Meredith Attwell Baker, president and chief executive of the trade association and a former Republican commissioner for the F.C.C.

Such action “would impose inappropriate regulation on a dynamic industry and would threaten mobile providers’ ability to invest and innovate, all to the detriment of consumers,” she said.

Consumers groups hailed the president’s statement. Gene Kimmelman, president of Public Knowledge, said: “Today the Obama administration expanded its leadership to promote an open Internet by supporting the strongest tools to prevent blocking or throttling of Internet traffic, and by also supporting the strongest tools to deter fast lanes and prioritized traffic on the public’s most essential communications platform of the 21st century.”

Play Video|2:53

How Net Neutrality Works

The future of protecting an open Internet has been the subject of fierce debate, and potential changes to the rules by the Federal Communications Commission could impact your online experience.

Video by Natalia V. Osipova and Carrie Halperin on May 15, 2014.
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We petition the obama administration to: President Obama, Lets Preserve Net Neutrality. Lets start treating broadband like a communications service!

11/07/2014 Unknown

We petition the obama administration to:

President Obama, Lets Preserve Net Neutrality. Lets start treating broadband like a communications service!

The FCC is spitting in the eyes of the millions of Americans who demanded real Net Neutrality by reclassifying ISP's as Title II services.
We need the FCC to implement a strong Title II rule that bans fees and discrimination.
If they don’t, Obama will go down in history as the president who broke the Internet.
But there’s hope:
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler can correct the agency’s past mistakes and truly protect our nation’s communications infrastructure. The agency must take the necessary steps to make broadband networks open, accessible, reliable and affordable for everyone.
Tell the FCC to do its job and preserve the openness of the Internet.

SIGN PETITION HERE

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