Today, New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI), with the support of 12 consumer advocacy and privacy organizations listed below, published model legislation to aid state legislatures in improving privacy protections for broadband customers. Continue reading OTI Publishes Model State Legislation to Help States Protect Broadband Privacy
Category Archives: Press Room
Recent press releases issued by Media Alliance. Sometimes we’ll post newspaper, radio and broadcast interviews here as well.
Radio Group Alleges FCC Main Studio Vote Threatens Public Safety
Common Frequency, which performs engineering and regulatory assistance for educational radio stations across the Western US, says the pending decision to eliminate the main studio rule is an “egregious” oversight that disregards that only 16% of Puerto Rico’s 3.34 million residents have regained electricity, more than three weeks after Hurricane Maria ripped through the island.
Continue reading Radio Group Alleges FCC Main Studio Vote Threatens Public Safety
Who Will Pay For KCSM In The End?
originally printed in the AFT Advocate
By Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director of Media Alliance
(The Media Alliance, at media-alliance.org, is a Bay Area democratic communications advocate. Tracy fought a lonely war to save KCSM-TV between 2011 and 2013.)
When we last left off the story of KCSM-TV (see article in May 2017 Advocate), the 53-year-old public television station’s fate had become the subject of dueling lawsuits between the San Mateo Community College District, its owner and holder of the broadcasting license, and Locuspoint Networks LLC, a subsidiary of the Blackstone Group, the largest hedge firm in the world.
Board made deal with investment firm to sell KCSM’s spectrum to wireless companies Continue reading Who Will Pay For KCSM In The End?
Sanctuary Journalism: ICE’s Data Broker Thomson Reuters
Originally published at Huffington Post
by Tracy Rosenberg
U.S. media outlets have done a fairly good job outlining the injustices and cruelties of the broken immigration system and the rogue federal agency that enforces it: ICE. Abuses ranging from the blatantly illegal to the simply inhumane have been highlighted including the detention and attempted deportation of US citizens, removing brain tumor patients from the hospital, paying Motel 6 hotel desk clerks to turn in hotel guests, arresting parents while their infant children are undergoing emergency surgery, chasing domestic violence victims into court houses and trying to destroy records of in-custody deaths and rapes at detention centers.
Continue reading Sanctuary Journalism: ICE’s Data Broker Thomson Reuters
Will New York’s Cable Strike Revitalize The Labor Movement — Or Kill It?
By Robert Hennelly
An ongoing strike by 1,800 members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 in New York, against the cable giant Charter/Spectrum, could well determine whether the American labor movement has a fighting chance for a revival. The strike has gone on for almost six months, and many of the union families face foreclosure or eviction. For decades, these workers worked with the company’s corporate predecessors, made a living wage, had decent benefits, sent kids to college and made profits for their employer.
Continue reading Will New York’s Cable Strike Revitalize The Labor Movement — Or Kill It?
What Exactly is Urban Shield Preparing Law Enforcement For?
Originally published at ktvu.com
By Andre Torres
ALAMEDA COUNTY, Calif. (KTVU) – Tracy Rosenberg jumped up and down holding her protest sign outside the Alameda County Fairgrounds gate in Pleasanton last year. “I was not arrested,” she said.
Rosenberg, executive director at communications advocacy group, Media Alliance, admits to protesting the annual “Urban Shield” law enforcement disaster training event in 2016. This year was her first time actually attending the expo, although she had previously read several accounts from journalists who had documented Urban Shield.
Continue reading What Exactly is Urban Shield Preparing Law Enforcement For?
Right-Wing Extremist Group Had Booth at Urban Shield ‘To Explain Who They Are’
Originally printed in the East Bay Express 9-15-2017
By Jessica Lynn
Right-Wing Extremist Group Had Booth at Urban Shield ‘To Explain Who They Are’
The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Oath Keepers as an extremist anti-government group
Continue reading Right-Wing Extremist Group Had Booth at Urban Shield ‘To Explain Who They Are’
Leading The Nation On Broadband Privacy
July 27, 2017
For Immediate Release
Contact: Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director, Media Alliance Email: tracy@media-alliance.org Tel: (510) 684-6853
Leading The Nation On Broadband Privacy
California Poised To Protect Consumer Search and Browser Data with AB 375
Sacramento-California, perhaps the state most identified as resisting federal overreach by the Trump administration, is acting to reinstate popular broadband privacy protections enacted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) at the tail end of the Obama administration. The Republican Congress, in one of their few actions to date, invoked rarely used Congressional Review Authority (CRA) to revoke the regulations after passage, an act wildly unpopular with Americans who opposed it by a 74% margin according to You Gov’s April 2017 poll.
Assemblyman Ed Chau, the chair of the Assembly’s Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee and 49th Assembly District representative (Monterey Park/Alhambra) late-introduced AB 375 to allow California Internet users to affirmatively consent to the sale of their browser and search data by their Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) and to prevent pay-for-privacy schemes like that recently floated by AT&T, that condemn less affluent customers to the potential involuntary sale of their browser data at the discretion of their ISP. Continue reading Leading The Nation On Broadband Privacy