All posts by Midnightschildren

Accountability and Representation

AT&T’s Digital Redlining

 

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA)  did a study based on block census data submitted to the Federal Communications Commission by AT&T about broadband services offered in the City of Cleveland and its outlying suburbs in Cuyahoga County.

The results? “A pattern of long-term systematic failure to invest in the infrastructure required to provide equitable mainstream Internet access to residents of the central city (compared to the suburbs) and to lower-income neighborhoods.  When lending institutions have engaged in similar policies and practices, our communities have not hesitated to call it redlining.  We see no reason to hesitate to call it digital redlining in this case”.

Continue reading AT&T’s Digital Redlining →

Backgrounders and Toolkits

Asset Forfeiture Report from Dept of Justice

 

An investigation into asset forfeiture from the Department of Justice.

It states: “We believe it is important for the Department to assess 1) whether these types of seizures benefit law enforcement efforts and 2) the extent to which these types of seizures present potential risks to civil liberties. We found that the Department neither formally collects nor evaluates the data necessary to determine whether its seizures and forfeitures advance or relate to federal investigations. As a result, the Department and its investigative components cannot fully evaluate and oversee their seizure and foreiture activities to ensure that they are used to advance investigations that help to dismantle criminal organizations and that they do not present a potential risk to civil liberties”.

Continue reading Asset Forfeiture Report from Dept of Justice →

Media Ownership

CPUC Slaps Charter

 

Charter ended up being the successful suitor for Time Warner Cable after Comcast’s offer for the Southern California cable/ISP giant went down in flames.

Charter, which made much of being “not nearly as bad as Comcast” got their merger, but they got it with some conditions attached, noticeably in the State of California, where the Public Utilities Commission went through a robust approval process.

However, Charter was not content with yes for an answer and spent much of the last few months agitating about the merger conditions and trying to get them abated, using typos and other lame arguments to do so.  Continue reading CPUC Slaps Charter →

Media Ownership

KCSM TV Spectrum Sale Dissolves Into Lawsuits

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California’s fifth largest public television station, KCSM-TV, has been the property of the College of San Mateo and its governing board, the San Mateo Community College District, for more than half century.

Recently the station, which once trained much of the Bay Area’s broadcasting corps with probably the best educational program ever offered at a public community college, has been very much unwanted property.

The station was put up for sale, twice, and some very reasonable offers from new operators were turned down in favor of a deal with a hedge fund, the Blackstone Group, to have subsidiary Locus Point Networks, eradicate the station entirely by selling its spectrum to wireless companies in the FCC’s spectrum auction.

The get rich quick scheme foundered. The District’s authorized bidder, who appears to have been VP Jan Roecks, failed to make a bid at some point in the complex procedure and KCSM-TV was dropped from the auction.

This article by Media Alliance ED Tracy Rosenberg describes the troubled history in the AFT May 2017 Bulletin.  Continue reading KCSM TV Spectrum Sale Dissolves Into Lawsuits →

Surveillance

DC Oversight Hearing on Facial Recognition Software

Video

March 22, 2017

  • Approximately half of adult Americans’ photographs are in a FRT database.
    • 18 states each have a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the FBI to share photos with the federal government, including from state departments of motor vehicles (DMV). The committee identified Maryland and Arizona as having MOUs with the FBI.
    • The FBI will continue to pursue MOUs with states to gain access to DMV images.
  • The FBI used facial recognition technology (FRT) for years without first publishing a privacy impact assessment, as required by law.
  • FRT has accuracy deficiencies, misidentifying female and African American individuals at a higher rate. Human verification is often insufficient as a backup and can allow for racial bias.
  • The FBI went to great lengths to exempt itself from certain provisions of the Privacy Act.

Accountability and Representation

73 Groups Challenge Facebook Censorship

 

More than 70 media justice groups wrote to Facebook, the ubiquitous social network, to challenge the company’s growing censorship of user-generated content.  A disturbing chain of incidents has included the deactivation of Korryn Gaines account before she was shot by police, the removal of iconic photos of Agent Orange attacks by the US military in Vietnam, and the disabling of several Palestinian journalists accounts after Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  Continue reading 73 Groups Challenge Facebook Censorship →