These are things that will cause generational harm to markets, consumers, and the public interest. We’ve discussed at length about how Carr’s “leadership” has involved the complete decimation of corporate oversight as part of his cutesy-named “delete, delete, delete” agenda, which attempts to disguise regulatory capture and wholesale corruption as a government efficiency initiative.
When this stuff was fleetingly mentioned at the hearing, it was by the likes of men like Ted Cruz, who helped prop up the lazy idea that Carr’s just “clearing regulatory underbrush:”
“On day one of the new administration, the FCC, under Chairman Carr, hit the ground running and already has an impressive list of accomplishments to show. These include the Delete, Delete, Delete docket, which continues to clear out the regulatory underbrush.”
The stuff Carr is doing is the stuff consolidated industry lobbyists asked him to do. Virtually none of it is actually in the public interest. We’ve had corrupt revolving door FCC leaders many times before, but never to the level of Carr’s extremism. To her credit, a tiny portion of this stuff was brought up by Senator Maria Cantwell, but it was clearly a hearing afterthought with no serious follow up.
In his responses, Carr was repeated allowed to take a page from Elon Musk’s playbook and pretend that his dismantling of oversight of shitty broadband monopolies and large media conglomerates is an act of modernized efficiency:
“…the FCC is now pursuing the largest deregulatory effort in the agency’s history. To date, we’ve teed up for removal over 1000 rules or regulations and terminated a record 2000 inactive proceedings. Eliminating those costly regulations is part of our affordability work too. For instance, we shut down a Biden era plan that could have spiked the price of internet for millions of Americans living in apartments by up to 50%.”
That last bit? Where Carr claims to have lowered broadband costs for apartment dwellers? He’s actually referring to a Trump FCC action at the beginning of the year to kill rules preventing your landlord and your local ISP from colluding to strike predatory deals that block other competitors from doing business in your building, driving up broadband access costs. It was a complete lie, with no follow up.
Carr is, as we’ve well covered, a shameless opportunist and liar who’ll do whatever he’s told by industry or Donald Trump. If Donald Trump was a brony, you’d see Carr immediately prancing around in a velour zebra onesie. It’s not actually clear Carr believes in much of anything outside of a general disdain for corporate oversight and his post-FCC revolving door career opportunities, which likely involve being a telecom sector lobbyist so he can continue basically doing the same “work.”
Carr’s juggling two jobs at the moment; one involving keeping the party’s radical authoritarians happy with censorship and a frontal assault on what’s left of U.S. journalism and public media. But his primary job, the one he’s been groomed for by industry for decades, is in destroying whatever’s left of the FCC’s ability to rein in unchecked corporate power in all of its various forms.
In some ways, the more headline grabbing (and genuinely problematic) authoritarian censorship operates as cover for corruption. While the former role gets oodles of attention, the latter gets summarily downplayed if not outright ignored. There were no serious congressional follow up questions about Carr’s efforts to destroy functional consumer protection. It was generally congressional oversight kayfabe.
I was also struck by press coverage of Carr’s testimony. More specifically, how literally none of the press coverage could be bothered to mention any aspect of Carr’s brutal destruction of what’s left of U.S. consumer protection. Even in passing.
As a life long consumer protection reporter, it often feels like I’m Roddy Piper living in the 1988 film They Live, facing a broad, existential threat while the public and press (and even many policy folks) stumble around obliviously drinking cappuccino.
Again the harms here are generational. Whether it’s letting predatory telecom monopolies run amok and off the public, or it’s scaling back robocall protections because they might upset a “legit” telemarketer, Carr is doing generational, lasting damage to the public interest, and even in the rare instance we feign to hold him accountable before Congress, it’s treated as some kind of distant afterthought.
The implications and scope of this corruption are incalculable. Yet you’ll notice, across the vast majority of the consolidated corporate press (and even many policy circles), the decimation of consumer protection and corporate oversight is treated as a distant, boring, anecdotal tangent if not outright ignored completely.
So you may have seen that Elon Musk’s long-hyped Robotaxis have finally “launched” in Austin. And it’s going just about how you’d expect if you’re familiar with the fit and finish of Elon Musk promises.
There are about a dozen Robotaxis now operating; Model Ys with a human observer in the front seat to try and avoid calamity. And despite years of hype about this product, social media is filled with videos of Robotaxis engaging in all sorts of problematic and dangerous behavior, including routinely veering into the wrong lane, failing to accomplish basic turns, or responding poorly to unique situations.
good morning, here's a gnarly mistake from yesterday's Tesla "robotaxi" launch day: the vehicle is in a turn lane, signaling for the left, and about halfway through it bails out and decides to drive directly into an oncoming laneseems extremely chill!youtu.be/_s-h0YXtF0c?…
Elon thinks you're a crash test dummy. Watch this "robotaxi" make an absolutely bonkers mistake (and a second smaller one) as a Tesla super fan gets his first ride. Crazy. #teslatakedown #MuskMustFall
The videos have apparently gotten the attention of U.S. auto safety regulators (or what’s left of them after Trump and his courts basically lobotomized all regulatory independence). In a statement to the press, the NHTSA said they’re monitoring the situation and have asked Tesla for more information:
“NHTSA is aware of the referenced incidents and is in contact with the manufacturer to gather additional information. NHTSA will continue to enforce the law on all manufacturers of motor vehicles and equipment, in accordance with the Vehicle Safety Act and our data-driven, risk-based investigative process. Under U.S. law, NHTSA does not pre-approve new technologies or vehicle systems — rather, manufacturers certify that each vehicle meets NHTSA’s rigorous safety standards, and the agency investigates incidents involving potential safety defects. Following an assessment of those reports and other relevant information, NHTSA will take any necessary actions to protect road safety.”
But under the Trump administration, it’s all so much worse. Federal corporate oversight genuinely no longer exists. Several Supreme Court rulings have declared that U.S. regulators can no longer do basic tasks without the explicit direction of a Congress that corporations know is too corrupt to function. The rulings were the culmination of a multi-generational quest by corporate power to lobotomize corporate oversight (under the pretense they were “reining in regulators run amok” for the greater good).
Now, even if U.S. regulators do try to do their jobs, they have a very good chance of having enforcement efforts crushed by the Trump-heavy 5th or 6th circuits (see the 6th Circuit’s recent decision to vacate a long-percolating FCC effort to fine AT&T for spying on customer location data without consent). Any attempt to do anything to protect consumers, markets, or public safety will be bogged down in legal fighting for years, quite by design.
Cumulatively, it’s not hyperbole to state that federal consumer, labor, environment, and public safety protection no longer functions in this new golden age of corruption. That’s fucking dire and deadly. You simply won’t see this reality made apparent by most U.S. journalists.
If you read press coverage of the Tesla Robotaxi problems (TechCrunch, CNBC, Reuters) — or any story where regulators are involved — they all kind of act as if it’s business as usual. A reader walks away from all of those stories believing the NHTSA is truly “investigating” things, might do something about it, and there’s somebody competent managing the store. That there’s really nothing new under the sun.
Corporate media is conditioned to downplay the way that corruption has hollowed out our federal regulators because it’s a policy affluent media ownership supports. But it also feels like a lot of consumer and business journalism suffers from a sort of normalization bias. This all results in long stories about business and consumer policy that don’t mention the train has gone completely off the rails.
The Robotaxi stuff aside, that’s resulted in a lot of oblivious Americans who have no real understanding that we’re going to see widespread concussive failure of a lot of stuff they take for granted. Much of it fatal.
In Austin that means little real oversight while Tesla conducts a dangerous public beta (without Austin public input or approval) using obviously half-cooked automation. We’ll be lucky if this doesn’t ultimately end in fatalities, which, if history is any indication, once again won’t result in anything even vaguely resembling accountability for the executives or companies involved.
Tesla memestock was up ten percent the day reports emerged that the Robotaxis are dangerously undercooked. As per tradition.
Speaking as someone who has covered a whole lot of extremely weird legislating in service of that notoriously under-protected class of citizens (you know: cops), I have to say this is one the most batshit insane things I have ever seen offered up for a vote at any level of government.
Even taking into account that this is happening in Alabama, it’s so off-the-rails there’s no way I could let this pass me by on the internet slipstream. While I can kind of understand half of the bill, I am still in a slack-jawed state of disbelief of the other half.
State Representative Juandalynn Givan has filed a bill in the Alabama House of Representatives for a police abuse registry.
It would require the attorney general to create, maintain and publish a registry for individuals convicted of using or threatening to use force against a law enforcement officer.
So, it’s a sex offender registry, except for people who may have resisted arrest or accidentally bumped an officer during an “interaction,” or simply said something rude about cops in the presence of a cop. Spitting is also a crime. It’s a law that lends itself to abuse, and I’m not even talking about this bill, which is weird af.
The thing about “using force” against cops is that it’s all in the eye of the only beholder cop shops, legislators, and judges will listen to: police officers. What’s often treated and adjudicated as “assault” is often nothing more than any slight display of anger or resistance when being accosted/arrested. Very few people actually assault cops in ways most people would recognize as assault. Even fewer people kill cops, since that’s something that gets every page of the book thrown at the criminal suspect.
Unlike sex offender registries (which have their own set of problems), there appears to be no end date listed in the bill’s text. In other words, lay a finger on a cop (even inadvertently) and you’ll be on the police radar forever.
According to state rep Givan, this new form of registry is essential. Without it, cops might not know which citizens are more threatening than others. (Or which citizens might need a little extra physical “encouragement” when detained or arrested.)
“In many cases, individuals have a history of attacking or threatening officers. It’s past time for officers to have advanced knowledge of who to look out for.”
OK. Still weird, but at least there’s a reason for the creation of the list that won’t immediately provoke gales of disbelieving laughter. No, Givan is saving that part for the end of the pitch.
After ensuring this is all about protecting officers and reminding would-be offenders that it will be “difficult but not impossible” to be removed from the cop-beater list, Givan immediately gives these offenders she thinks are too dangerous to roam around unlisted a way to immediately remove themselves from the registry.
The Attorney General, before January 1, 2026, shall establish a procedure for individuals to request removal from the registry. The procedure shall include the requirement that an individual must pay five thousand dollars ($5,000) for each conviction for a qualifying offense that the individual is seeking to have removed from the registry.
Neat! So, the threat to cops is so real a registry must be created. But anyone on the registry can buy their way off of it with a $5,000 “donation” that will be deposited in the state’s “Law Enforcement Injury Fund,” which is the other thing this bill would create.
Like most laws, it only applies if you don’t have a lot of liquidity. Anyone rich enough can presumably beat on cops in perpetuity if they’re willing to, I don’t know, purchase enough assaulting-on-officer offsets to ensure deletion from law enforcement’s “people WE want to beat on” database.
Established: cop assaulters will be listed on a near-permanent registry… unless, said cop assaulter has a few grand laying around. Then they can fly under the radar until the next time they assault a cop. Perverse, but not much of an incentive.
On the other hand, now cops will have even more reason to exaggerate any physical/verbal affront into assault charges because (1) it allows cops to track the movements of even more people, and (2) it may result in even more money flowing into cop coffers via a slush fund the state AG isn’t likely to subject to scrutiny when cops start asking to make withdrawals.
I can’t see how this makes this to the governor’s desk. Then again, I’m rarely able to forecast what Alabama might do on any given legislative session day. If nothing else, it’s just a reminder there’s nothing some legislators won’t do for cops, even if it means openly courting open corruption.
Last year I warned repeatedly how a concussive series of Supreme Court rulings like Loper Bright were poised to dismantle already shaky regulatory authority and corporate oversight, turning most U.S. regulators into the legal and policy equivalent of decorative seasonal gourds. It was the ultimate victory in a generational war on accountability by consolidated corporate power and rich assholes.
Falsely framed as some sort of “noble rebalancing of constitutional authority” by bad faith lobbyists and think tankers, the goal wasn’t “balanced regulation” or “reining in out of control regulators,” it was the dismantling of nearly all meaningful corporate oversight. So even before Trump won the election, labor rights, consumer protection, environmental law, and public safety were already in very serious trouble.
Now Trump has come out with an Executive Order that attempts to finish the job. The misleadingly named “Ensuring Accountability For All Agencies” effectively tries to declare that no U.S. regulatory agency can do much of anything without the explicit approval of a mad king.
An accompanying “fact sheet” proclaims that “so called” agencies like the FCC and FTC will not be able to take any actions that contradict the will of the President:
“No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law, including but not limited to the issuance of regulations, guidance, and positions advanced in litigation, unless authorized to do so by the President or in writing by the Attorney General.”
The EO requires that all U.S. regulatory agencies must “submit for review all proposed and final significant regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President before publication in the Federal Register.” It also declares the President will “adjust so-called independent agencies’ apportionments to ensure tax dollars are spent wisely.”
It basically ensures that even if our captured regulators did somehow come up with a coherent proposal that challenges corporate power (already a rarity thanks to the corrupt, revolving door nature of most agencies), the President has the exclusive right to kill it, regardless of whether or not it’s within the confines of Congressional approval, or broadly, democratically popular.
Corporations last year had already lobbied successfully for the Supreme Court reversal of the Chevron Doctrine, which declared that regulatory agencies (with the kind of specific subject matter Congressmen like Ted Cruz usually lack) were free to interpret, craft, and enforce rules governing their sectors — so long as they’re within the confines of the law.
The axing of Chevron had already made it so regulators can’t do much of anything without the explicit approval of Congress. Proponents wanted you to ignore that Congress and our court system are too corrupt to function, ensuring that pretty much anything that challenges corporate or billionaire power will be declared radical and simply a bridge too far.
Companies all over the U.S. were quick to use the Supreme Court’s latest rulings to basically declare that regulators no longer have any authority to do anything, whether that’s imposing tougher pollution standards on energy companies, ending discrimination in healthcare, or trying to force your wireless carrier to keep your cellphone unlocked.
These efforts willsteadily have disastrous downstream impacts that will kill people at scale across countless sectors. But most of the media coverage I read about it has a bizarre, clinical detachment that puts the reader to sleep by the fourth paragraph, and fails to convey any sense of the dire stakes at play.
Despite what big companies and billionaires might tell you, U.S. regulators have already been on the ropes for years. They’re generally understaffed, under-funded, stocked with only the kind of dull careerists that can survive the corrupt congressional nomination process (see: what happened to Gigi Sohn), and boxed in by industry lobbying, a very broken Congress, and a steady parade of shitty court rulings.
I’ve covered the FCC for decades. The agency rarely actually tries to seriously protect consumers. And when it does try (net neutrality, privacy), those efforts routinely never last long in the face of corruption. Real consumer protection almost uniformly fails. Still, somehow in Republican and Libertarian circles a narrative has long been entrenched that agencies like the FCC have been “running amok.”
That narrative persists because of its value in selling a lie: what most of these billionaires and companies want isn’t reasonable regulation, or sensible, well crafted oversight: it’s no oversight whatsoever. Freedom to rip off consumers, to pollute, to violate labor law, and to generally misbehave in the quest for improved quarterly earnings with zero accountability. Freedom to “innovate” and acquire and consume and expand with zero concern about the downstream impact of bad choices.
As I saw these efforts unfolding last year I got increasingly vocal about it, but was often met by an arched eyebrow by cocksure policy tut-scolds, drunk on normalization bias, confident that the system would hold. Well, the system is not holding. We’re entering the golden age of fraud and corruption.
As with everything Trump, this is extremely legally dodgy and will indisputably see a court challenge. But collectively between this, DOGE, and the Supreme Court’s locked-in majority, it’s hard to believe U.S. regulators will coherently function with any sort of independence from corporate power and petulant billionaires for a very, very long time.
Even under the best case scenario where the electorate tires of the coming cascading system failures and puts an end to our dipshit kakistocracy, reversing the damage in a system now specifically designed to prevent progressive reform will be a very steep uphill climb.
That’s not to say we can’t survive and build better things. The destruction of coherent federal governance shifts most battles to the local and state level. The country can still function as a loose assortment of fractured nation states each with their varying degrees of labor protection, consumer rights, and environmental protection. Which state you live in suddenly matters more than ever.
But for now, any dream of unified, federal coherence or corporate oversight has been murdered by a loose collection of sociopaths and self-serving Dunning Kruger hustlebros, keen on stripping and selling the American experiment for scrap off the back loading dock.
Hitch yourself to a wagon and see what you get. Area dog-killer/current governor/possible DHS head Kristi Noem boarded the Trump Train when it first passed through town nearly a decade ago. Since then, she’s won the loyalty of a bunch of fascist-adjacent dipshits who don’t care how much they vote against their own interests, as long as it hurts people they don’t like. You know: immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, whatever their definition of a “lib” is, renewable energy proponents, or whatever.
Kristi Noem made it clear she was willing to step on the backs of her own constituents to ensure her rise within the Republican party by vehemently arguing against stay-at-home orders (during one of the most massive COVID outbreaks in the nation), shutting down voter-approved marijuana legalization, and — in the midst of a flood that devastated several small communities — spending money scrambling National Guard units to the Texas border rather than to nearby overflowing bodies of water.
Now, there’s this: the undermining of local and national safety by yanking funding for public broadcasting. Most people may assume it’s nothing but tasteful sweaters, smoothly modulated moderators, and the occasional Brit drama relying on public broadcasting funds.
But that’s only part of it. South Dakota Searchlight — an independent news source that never stops holding the state government’s feet to the fire — talked to people that are also affected when money for public broadcasting suddenly goes missing. Journalist Brad Johnson tracked down those who are going be hurting because potential DHS boss Kristi Noem seems to believe the public shouldn’t fund public broadcasting, despite there being no tax break in it for them even if they align with Noem’s antipathy.
It seems absurd that Gov. Kristi Noem would harm the U.S. Department of Homeland Security just before she is expected to be confirmed as its leader.
But that is what she is doing with her ill-advised plan to destroy South Dakota Public Broadcasting.
Noem launched her surprise attack on SDPB in her Dec. 3 budget address, proposing to cut slightly more than $3.6 million of its $5.6 million in state funding.
The problem with this math is that it takes $4.8 million a year just to cover the basics of public broadcasting, including whatever’s needed to keep its infrastructure up and running. Even if you may not agree with what’s being broadcast on the airwaves, it seems extremely ignorant to cut funding that affects all of the government ancillaries that depend on the state’s broadcast towers.
And yet, here we are, watching a bunch of government infrastructure being hamstrung by a performative Trumpist who’s about to bring this same level of foresight and expertise to the Department of Homeland Security.
There’s going to be a cascade of failure if there’s not enough money to keep these towers fully operational, as SDPB’s direction of engineering, SeVern Ashes told Brad Johnson:
The network is critical “to all emergency communication from the SD Division of Criminal Investigation on down to county-level emergency management systems such as ambulance, fire and local police departments such as Sioux Falls and Rapid City,” Ashes said.
[…]
One federal Homeland Security agency using the tower network for communications is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ashes said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S Forest Service and Federal Aviation Administration also use the system, as does the Civil Air Patrol.
There are a half-dozen agencies that might be adversely affected by underfunding, including one Noem may soon oversee: ICE. And they’re not the only ones relying on SDPB towers. Law enforcement uses the towers to issue missing person alerts, and relay weather and traffic information. Firefighters use the same towers for communications, as do certain ambulance systems. SDPB’s towers provide communication coverage to 98% of the state.
It’s clear these towers are necessary to South Dakotans. But because Noem only sees them as relay stations for anti-conservative programming, she’s decided they can make do with half the budget for the next year. And it’s hard to believe she isn’t aware of the side benefits of SDPB’s broadcasting towers. After all, she heads the state and has all the access she needs to understand the potential collateral damage of slashing funding. But she just doesn’t care. The only point of this action is to score points with people as short-sighted, vindictive, and thoroughly wrong as she is. Unfortunately for the rest of the nation, she’s no longer just South Dakota’s problem — not if Trump gets his way.
For as long as the evening news has existed, America has been portrayed as a dangerous place to live. Reminding people we’re a very safe country — especially over the past 30 years — doesn’t draw in viewers.
I think our country right now is in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint, both gangs on the street and frankly, gangs outside of our country in the form of other countries that are, frankly, very powerful. They’re very powerful countries.
I won’t speculate as to the nature of “gangs outside of our country,” especially those in the “frankly very powerful” countries. But it’s patently false to claim the US is in the “most dangerous position it’s ever been in… from a safety standpoint.”
This sort of thing has been said repeatedly by Trump. There are variations on the theme, but the theme remains the same, no matter what the data actually says. While there was a noticeable increase in crime in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, crime rates did not increase everywhere in the country. What spikes were observed during that year have mostly receded. And, it must be noted, this happened during Donald Trump’s presidency, despite the promise he made at the beginning of his term to turn this country into a nation that automatically gives officers all the respect they’ve failed to earn on their own.
Meanwhile, social media and legacy news media outlets have contributed their part to this false narrative by insisting that viral videos of anomalous criminal behavior is representative of the nation as a whole.
A comparison of data from agencies that voluntarily submitted at least two or more common months of data for January through March 2023 and 2024 indicates reported violent crime decreased by 15.2 percent. Murder decreased by 26.4 percent, rape decreased by 25.7 percent, robbery decreased by 17.8 percent, and aggravated assault decreased by 12.5 percent. Reported property crime also decreased by 15.1 percent.
This report is far from complete. Participation by US law enforcement agencies is barely over 70%. Additionally, the FBI revamped its crime categorization, which may result in some crimes being over- or under-reported until every reporting law enforcement agency is on the same page in terms of crime classification.
But it still looks like pretty good news, even though you’ll never hear it from the alarmists and opportunists who seem to always have access to the largest megaphones.
More data has been released by another agency that compiles its own crime rate reporting. The Major Cities Chiefs Association’s report [PDF] covers 69 of the nation’s largest cities. And the drops in crime rates covered here are precipitous.
54 of the 69 major cities in the report saw drops in violent crime — defined as homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — in the first half of 2024, according to the Axios review.
Columbus, Ohio, experienced the largest percentage decline in violent crime in the nation, with a massive 41% drop so far in 2024. Omaha, Nebraska, was second with a 30% decrease.
Miami and Washington, D.C., so far, have seen 29% declines in violent crime.
Austin, Texas, saw a 28% drop, followed by New Orleans with a 26% decrease.
On top of that, Boston saw a 78% decrease in homicides. And Philadelphia — a city tough-on-crime types like to bash because of its election of a “progressive” district attorney — saw a 42% drop in homicides over the same period.
The data contradicts the narrative. But the narrative is often the only thing most people will pay attention to. Crime rates peaked in the early-1990s and have been decreasing steadily since then. Contrary to Trump’s assertions, this nation is in the safest position it’s ever been in, in terms of crime rates. More people should be made aware of these facts and adjust their actions accordingly. There’s no reason we, as a nation, should continue to put up with powerful and influential people who continue to insist otherwise.
The European government has spent a few years trying to break encryption. The results have been, at best, mixed. Of course, the EU government claims it’s not actually interested in breaking encryption. Instead, it hides its intentions behind phrases like “client-side scanning” and “chat control.” But it all just means the same thing: purposefully weakening or breaking encryption to allow the government to monitor communications.
Client-side scanning would necessitate the removal of one end of end-to-end encryption. Monitoring communications for “chat control” would mean the same thing. Fortunately, plenty of EU members disagreed with these proposals, finally forcing the EU Commission to drop its anti-encryption demands… for now.
As the EU government moves on from its failed proposal, it’s undergoing the usual stages of grief. First and foremost is denial — something often expressed in op-eds and formal statements that are short on facts or logic, but long on strawmen and cognitive dissonance.
But there’s still a desire to undermine encryption — one that simply won’t go away just because several EU members nations are against it. And here’s where the cops have decided to insert themselves, even though most EU citizens couldn’t care less about law enforcement’s thoughts on policy issues. I mean, they’re always the same sort of thing: less accountability, more power, fewer rights for citizens, etc.
Unfortunately, the ruling class tends to listen to cops because cops are part of the conjoined triangles (or whatever) that ensures people in power retain their power while being protected from the people being ruled. What works for cops works for the rest of the government, and that’s why this statement carries some weight, even if it’s exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to roll out of a cop’s mouth.
European Police Chiefs are calling for industry and governments to take urgent action to ensure public safety across social media platforms.
Privacy measures currently being rolled out, such as end-to-end encryption, will stop tech companies from seeing any offending that occurs on their platforms. It will also stop law enforcement’s ability to obtain and use this evidence in investigations to prevent and prosecute the most serious crimes such as child sexual abuse, human trafficking, drug smuggling, homicides, economic crime and terrorism offences.
The declaration, published today and supported by Europol and the European Police Chiefs, comes as end-to-end encryption has started to be rolled out across Meta’s messenger platform.
Well, ensuring public safety often takes the form of securing people’s private communications, i.e., the end-to-end encryption this formal statement rails against. I’m sure the EU police chiefs and the people who work for them appreciate the security enabled by encryption, whether its protecting their devices from the curiosity of interlopers or shielding their communications from public view.
But what works best for cops can’t be extended to the general public because, unlike cops shops, the public is known to be riddled with criminals. (Yes, I know. But I’m trying my best to explain this from the perspective of law enforcement officials, who would never admit they’re not doing much to keep their own backyards clean, so to speak.)
The letter opens with an admission by the collective of police chiefs that they’re unable to do their jobs unless tech companies do half the work for them.
We, the European Police Chiefs, recognise that law enforcement and the technology industry have a shared duty to keep the public safe, especially children. We have a proud partnership of complementary actions towards that end. That partnership is at risk.
Two key capabilities are crucial to supporting online safety.
First, the ability of technology companies to reactively provide to law enforcement investigations – on the basis of a lawful authority with strong safeguards and oversight – the data of suspected criminals on their service. This is known as ‘lawful access’.
We’ll pause here for a moment because Europol has already given us plenty to work with. First, there’s the invocation of the “children,” which is always a leading indicator of disingenuous arguments. If you’re say you’re doing it for the kids, you can get all kinds of irrational because who in their right mind would argue against someone who claims to be deeply interested in protecting children from criminals?
Then there’s the phrase “lawful access,” which means nothing more than cops believe they should have access to any potential evidence just because they have a warrant. This supposed hole in law enforcement efficiency is blamed on the advent of encryption, even though criminals have been destroying or hiding evidence for years but no law enforcement official ever sent out a statement demanding the manufacturers of fire pits, paper shredders, or bridges over bodies of water stop making it so easy for criminals to hide evidence from investigators.
Moving on, there’s more of the same stuff for a couple of paragraphs. It’s the police chiefs griping that evidence is now suddenly out of reach and that’s because tech companies won’t create encryption backdoors or just refuse to deploy encryption in the first place. More is said about crimes against children, terrorism, human trafficking, drug smuggling, and (LOL) “economic crime,” the last of which is something no government body is truly serious about because it would require prosecuting people who give them massive amounts of money in exchange for government goods and services. If you’ve heard these arguments once, you’ve heard them a thousand times. We won’t rehash them here.
But we will quote the statement again because it goes back to the “we’ve never had trouble obtaining evidence before this exact point in time” well, even though that’s clearly false.
Our societies have not previously tolerated spaces that are beyond the reach of law enforcement, where criminals can communicate safely and child abuse can flourish. They should not now. We cannot let ourselves be blinded to crime. We know from the protections afforded by the darkweb how rapidly and extensively criminals exploit such anonymity.
OK, chief. I don’t remember any mobs (flash or pitchfork-wielding) wandering into neighborhoods to destroy fireplaces, paper shredders, or toilets because those areas might be “beyond the reach of law enforcement” when it comes to ensuring evidence is always accessible to investigators. And they’ve never taken down phone lines or slashed postal vehicles’ tires just because criminals might use those methods to “communicate safely.”
Our societies have always understood criminals will have options, some of which are beyond the reach of law enforcement. They don’t want to see those options destroyed or undermined just because criminals also happen to use the same options non-criminals use.
Then there’s the unneeded swipe at “anonymity,” which suggests Europol’s top cops think online anonymity is problematic in and of itself — even the stuff that exists out in the open away from the depths of the “dark web.”
Finally, the cops of Europe reach the “nerd harder” point of their message — one that claims to be conciliatory but is anything but:
We are committed to supporting the development of critical innovations, such as encryption, as a means of strengthening the cyber security and privacy of citizens. However, we do not accept that there need be a binary choice between cyber security or privacy on the one hand and public safety on the other. Absolutism on either side is not helpful. Our view is that technical solutions do exist; they simply require flexibility from industry as well as from governments.
Whenever government entities pushing new forms of intrusion start talking about “flexibility,” that trait should only apply to those on the receiving end of the imposition. Governments will never back down. It’s always the other side that’s expected to compromise their standards and ethics.
This statement isn’t going to budge the needle for Meta or others offering the same level of security for their users. But it may light a small fire under the asses of enemies of encryption in the European government. And that’s the real danger of this collection of clichés presenting itself as a principled stance on the issue.
Look, I fucking warned Elon that this is exactly how it would go. It’s how it always goes.
Remember Parler? They promised that they would moderate “based off the FCC and the Supreme court of the United States” (a nonsensical statement for a variety of reasons, including that the FCC does not regulate websites). Then, as soon as people started abusing that on the site, they suddenly came out with, um, new rules, including no “posting pictures of your fecal matter.”
Or how about Gettr? Founded by a former Trump spokesperson, and funded by a sketchy Chinese billionaire, it promised to be a “free speech” haven. Then it had to ban a bunch of white nationalists for, you know, doing white nationalist shit. Then, suddenly, it started banning anyone who mentioned that the sketchy billionaire funder might actually be a Chinese spy.
And then there’s Truth Social. It’s also supposed to be all about free speech, right? That’s what its pitch man, Donald Trump, keeps insisting. Except, an actual study that compared its content moderation to other sites found that Truth Social’s moderation was far more aggressive and arbitrary than any other site. Among the forbidden things to “truth” about on Truth Social? Any talk of the Congressional hearings on January 6th. Much freedom. Very speech.
So, look, it’s no surprise that Musk was never actually going to be able to live up to his notoriously fickle word regarding “free speech” on Twitter. I mean, we wrote many, many articles highlighting all of this.
But, really, it would be nice if he didn’t then insult everyone’s intelligence about this and pretend that he’s still taking some principled righteous stand. It would be nice if he admitted that “oh shit, maybe content moderation is trickier than I thought” and maybe, just maybe, “Twitter actually had a really strong and thoughtful trust & safety team that actually worked extremely hard to be as permissive as possible, while still maintaining a website that users and advertisers liked.” But that would require an actual ability to look inward and recognize mistakes, which is not one of Elon’s strongsuits.
“Without commenting on any specific user accounts, I can confirm that we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk,” Irwin said. “We don’t make exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts.”
Yeah… that’s not what people are complaining about. They weren’t saying journalists should get special treatment for breaking the rules. They’re asking how the fuck did what these journalists posted break the rules?
Eventually Musk jumped on Twitter, of course, and like Irwin, tried to pretend that they were just making sure the rules applied equally to journalists as to everyone else. Except… that was always the case? The issue was that yesterday, they created new laughably stupid rules to ban an account tweeting publicly available information regarding Elon Musk’s jet. Then Musk took it further and claimed that this (again) publicly available information was “assassination coordinates.”
Well, except for a few minor details. First, he just fucking changed the terms of service to shut down the jet tracker, and made them so broad and vague that tons of tweets would violate the rule — including anyone using Twitter’s built-in location indicator to tweet a photo of someone else. Second, the location of his plane is public information. It’s not “assassination coordinates.” If Musk is worried about getting assassinated, hiding this account isn’t going to help, because the assassin will just go straight to the ADS-B source and get the data anyway. Third, I get that Musk claims his child was in a car that was attacked the other night, but there remain some open questions about that story. For example, the location where it occurred, as deduced by BellingCat, was not close to any airport.
Given that, it’s not at all clear how this is connected to the jet tracking service.
Furthermore, the LAPD put out a statement on this:
LAPD’s Threat Management Unit (TMU) is aware of the situation and tweet by Elon Musk and is in contact with his representatives and security team. No crime reports have been filed yet.
Which, you know, seems notable. Because if a stalker actually went after him, you’d think that rather than just posting about it on social media, he might contact the police?
But, most importantly, none of the journalists in question actually posted “real time” assassination coordinates for Musk. They had posted about this whole story having to do with content moderation decisions made by Musk. Hell, one of the journalists, Donie Sullivan, got banned for tweeting that LAPD statement.
So, yeah, it’s not about “equal treatment” for journalists. It’s about coming up with bullshit arbitrary rules that just so happen to ban the journalists who have been calling out all the dumb shit Elon has been doing. Which, you know, was the kinda thing Elon insisted was the big problem under the last regime, and insisted he was brought in to solve.
From there it got even worse. A bunch of journalists, including a few of those who were banned (who, for unclear reasons were still able to log into Twitter Spaces, the real-time audio chat feature of Twitter) began discussing all of this, and Elon Musk showed up to… well… not quite defend himself? But, uh, to do whatever this was:
It starts with (banned) Washington Post journalist Drew Harwell asking a pretty good journalistic question:
One, I don’t think anyone in this room supports stalking. I’m sorry to hear about what happened with your family. Do you have evidence connecting the incident in LA with this flight tracking data? And separately, if this is an important enough issue to you, why not enact the rule change on Twitter and give accounts like Jack Sweeney’s, time to respond to, like you said, a slight delay in providing the data? Why say last month that you would support keeping his account online for free speech and then immediately suspend not just his account, but journalists reporting on it?
Unfortunately, before Elon could say anything, another reporter, Katie Notopoulos from Buzzfeed (who started the Twitter Space) jumped in with, perhaps, a less well composed question (this isn’t criticism — coming up with questions on the spot is difficult — but I do wonder what would have happened if Musk had been allowed to respond directly to Drew’s question).
Elon, thank you for joining, I am hoping that you can give a little more context about what has happened in the last few hours with a handful of journalists being banned?
Elon then says a lot of nonsense, basically just that “doxing is bad and anyone who has been threatened should agree with this policy.”
Well, as I’m sure everyone who’s been doxed would agree, showing real-time information about somebody’s location is inappropriate. And I think everyone would not like that to be done to them. And there’s not going to be any distinction in the future between so-called journalists and regular people. Everyone is going to be treated the same—no special treatment. You dox, you get suspended. End of story.
And ban evasion or trying to be clever about it, like “Oh, I posted a link — to the real-time information,” that’s obviously something trying to evade the meaning, that’s no different from actually showing real-time information.
I mean, a lot of this is kind of infuriating. Because many of the bans that happened in the last regime, and which Musk got so mad about, were also about putting people in danger. And Musk seems singularly concerned only when he’s the target. Over the weekend, he posted some incredibly misleading bullshit about his former head of trust & safety, Yoel Roth, taking an old tweet and a clip from his dissertation and acting as if both said the literal opposite of what Roth was saying in them (in both cases, Yoel was actually highlighting issues regarding keeping children safe from predators, and Elon and legions of his fans pretended he was doing the opposite, which is just trash). Following that, a large news organization that I will not name posted a very clear description of Yoel’s home, and tweeted out a link with those details. That tweet still is on Twitter today, and Yoel and his family had to flee their home after receiving very credible threats.
Again, I repeat, the tweet that identified his home is still on Twitter today. And Elon has done nothing about it.
So spare me the claim that this is about “inappropriate” sharing of information. None of the information the journalists shared was inappropriate, and Musk himself has contributed to threats on people’s lives.
As for the whole ban evasion thing, well, that’s also nonsense, but there’s more. Notopoulos asked another question:
When you’re saying, ‘posting a link to it,’ I mean, some of the people like Drew and Ryan Mac from The New York Times, who were banned, they were reporting on it in the course of pretty normal journalistic endeavors. You consider that like a tricky attempted ban evasion?
To which Musk responded:
You show the link to the real-time information – ban evasion, obviously.
So, again, that’s not at all what “ban evasion” means. The ban was on the information. Not a link to an account. Or a reporter talking about an article that links to an account. Or a reporter talking about a police report that very loosely kinda connects to the account.
And, again, banning links to the media was the thing that I thought Musk and his fans were completely up in arms about regarding the ban on the link to the NY Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Remember? It was like a week ago that it was a “huge reveal” by Elon Musk and his handpicked reporters, who apparently revealed what was the crime of the century and possibly treason when Twitter banned a link over worries of harm. Drew Harwell, finally getting a chance to ask a question, got into this slightly awkward exchange where the two seem to be talking about different things, but Drew is making the point comparing it to the NY Post thing:
Drew: You’re suggesting that we’re sharing your address, which is not true. I never posted your address.
Elon: You posted a link to the address.
Drew:In the course of reporting about ElonJet, we posted links to ElonJet, which are now banned on Twitter.Twitter also marks even the Instagram and Mastodon accounts of ElonJet as harmful. We have to acknowledge, using the exact same link-blocking technique that you have criticized as part of the Hunter Biden-New York Post story in 2020. So what is different here?
Elon: It’s not more acceptable for you than it is for me. It’s the same thing.
Drew: So it’s unacceptable what you’re doing?
Elon: No. You doxx, you get suspended. End of story. That’s it.
And with that “end of story” he left the chat abruptly, even as others started asking more questions.
So that whole exchange makes no sense. They’re clearly talking past each other, and Elon is so focused on the “journalists doxing!” that he can’t even seem to comprehend what Drew is actually asking him there, which is comparing it to the NY Post thing.
And, of course, it also seems relevant to the January 6th/Donald Trump decision, which Musk has also roundly criticized. One of Musk’s buddies, Jason Calacanis, was also in the space defending Musk, and I only heard bits and pieces of it because (1) Twitter Spaces kept kicking me out and (2) before the Space ended, Twitter took all of Spaces offline, meaning that the recording isn’t available (Musk is claiming on Twitter that it’s a newly discovered bug, though tons of people are assuming, as people will do, that Musk pulled the plug to get the journalists to stop talking about him).
However, on Twitter, Calacanis tweeted what he insisted was a simple message:
It’s just so obvious to everyone: don’t dox or stalk anyone.
Someone will get hurt or worse.
💕Be good to each other💕
If you are splitting hairs on the definition of these words, or claiming it’s public information, you’re missing the basic human concept here: people’s safety.
But, again, this brings us right back around to the top of the story. “It’s just so obvious” is a traditional part of this content moderation learning curve. It always seems so obvious that, “sure, this speech is legal, but man, it seems so bad, we gotta take it down.” In this case, it’s “don’t stalk the billionaire CEO” (which, yeah, don’t do that shit).
But this is how content moderation works. There’s a reason the role is called “Trust & Safety” because you’re trying to weigh different tradeoffs to make things trustworthy and safe. But Musk hasn’t been doing that. He seems only focused on his own safety.
And Calacanis’s claim that people are “missing the basic human concept here: people’s safety” well… that brings me to January 6th and Twitter’s decision to ban Trump. Because, you know, as Twitter explained publicly at the time and was re-revealed recently in Musk’s “Twitter Files,” this was exactly the debate that went on inside Twitter among its executives and trust & safety bosses.
They looked at the riot at the Capitol where people literally died, and which the then President seemed reluctant to call off, realized that there was no guarantee he wouldn’t organize a follow up, decided that “people’s safety” mattered here, and made the hard call to ban Trump. To protect people’s safety.
Now, you can criticize that decision. You can offer alternative arguments for it. But there was a rationale for it, and it’s the exact same one Musk and his team are now using to justify these bans. But we’re not seeing the screaming and gnashing about how this is “against free speech” or whatever from Musk and his supporters. We’re not likely to see Musk have Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss do a breathless expose on his internal DMs while all this went down.
That’s what’s hypocritical here.
(And we won’t even get into Musk going back on his other promise that they wouldn’t do suspensions any more, just decreased “reach” for the “bad or negative” tweets).
Every website that has third party content has to do moderation. Every one. It’s how it works. And every website has the right to moderate how they want. That’s part of their editorial discretion.
Musk absolutely can make bad decisions. Just like the previous Twitter could (and did). But it would be nice if they fucking realized that they’re doing the same damn thing, but on a much flimsier basis, and backed by utter and complete nonsense.
I asked Calacanis about the “public safety” issue and the Trump decision on Twitter, and got… a strange response.
In response he says:
I am a fan of using the blocking and mute tools for almost everything you don’t like at this joint.
Which, when you think about it, is a weird fucking response. After all, he was just going on and on about how it was righteous to ban a bunch of journalists because of “people’s safety.” But also that these problems can be solved by muting and blocking? So either he thinks Musk should have just muted and blocked all these reporters… or… what? It also does not actually respond to the question.
And, once again, we’re back to the same damn thing with content moderation at scale. Every decision has tons of tradeoffs. People are always going to be upset. But there are principled ways of doing it, and non-principled ways of doing it. And Elon/Jason are showing their lack of principles. They’re only trying to protect themselves, and seem to feel everyone else should just use “mute” and “block.”
Oh, and finally….
This post went on way longer than I initially intended it to, but there is an important postscript here. Last night, when we wrote about the banning of the @JoinMastodon account on Twitter, I actually downplayed the idea that it was about Team Musk being scared of a rapidly growing competitor. I was pretty sure it was because of the link to the @ElonJet account that was now working on Mastodon. And, that’s certainly the excuse that Musk and friends are still giving.
Buuuuut… there are reasons to believe it’s a bit more than that. Because as the evening wore on, Twitter basically started banning all links to any Mastodon server they could find. A bunch of people started posting examples. Some screenshots:
Those were just a few of many, many examples that can be found on both Twitter and Mastodon of Twitter effectively blocking any links to more high profile Mastodon servers (it appears that smaller or individual instances are still making it through).
Even more ridiculous, they’re banning people from updating their profiles with Mastodon addresses.
See that screenshot? It says “Account update failed: Description is considered malware.”
So, yeah, they’re now saying that if you put your Mastodon bio in your profile, it’s malware. Given that, it’s a little difficult to believe that this is all just about “public safety” regarding Elon stalkers, and not, perhaps, a little anti-competitive behavior on the part of an increasingly desperate Elon Musk.
Today a federal appeals court delivered a decidedly mixed decision in the FCC’s ongoing quest to kill net neutrality and telecom sector oversight. On the one hand, the new 2-1 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit backs much of the FCC’s Orwellian-named “Restoring Internet Freedom” order, which not only repealed the FCC’s 2015 net neutrality rules, but gutted much of the agency’s authority over broadband providers. That decision shoveled any remaining telecom oversight to an FTC that experts say lacks the authority or resources to actually police giants like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast (the whole point).
But the ruling wasn’t without a few notable catches. The court was quick to kick several aspects of the agency’s order back to the FCC for revision. The court noted the FCC failed completely to explore how the repeal would harm public safety and efforts like the FCC’s Lifeline program, which doles out a modest $9 monthly subsidy to low-income users to be used on wireless, phone, or broadband service (they have to choose one). Pai’s been trying to undermine this Reagan-era program for several years, so the fact his FCC didn’t think about the impact gutting FCC authority would have isn’t surprising.
The biggest part of the court’s ruling is that it shot down the FCC’s attempt to stop states from protecting net neutrality. In the wake of the FCC’s repeal, 29 states have proposed their own state-level net neutrality rules, one of the biggest reasons ISPs haven’t been pushing their luck. Some of these efforts, like California’s SB822, actually go further than the FCC’s 2015 rules did in policing things like zero rating (ISPs using usage caps as an anti-competitive weapon, something they’re already doing).
But the court found that if the FCC is going to void its authority over ISPs, it can’t then turn around and try to pre-empt states from protecting consumers themselves:
“We uphold the 2018 Order, with two exceptions. First, the Court concludes that the Commission has not shown legal authority to issue its Preemption Directive, which would have barred states from imposing any rule or requirement that the Commission ?repealed or decided to refrain from imposing? in the Order or that is ?more stringent? than the Order. 2018 Order ? 195. The Court accordingly vacates that portion of the Order. Second, we remand the Order to the agency on three discrete issues: (1) The Order failed to examine the implications of its decisions for public safety; (2) the Order does not sufficiently explain what reclassification will mean
for regulation of pole attachments; and (3) the agency did not adequately address Petitioners? concerns about the effects of broadband reclassification on the Lifeline Program.
ISPs have, and will continue to, whine incessantly about the perils of having to adhere to dozens of state-level net neutrality laws, but that’s a problem of their own making. While large ISPs (and the Pai FCC) have tried to frame the FCC’s 2015 rules as hugely draconian and restrictive, in reality they were fairly modest by international standards. And while the Trump DOJ (now not coincidentally run by former Verizon General Counsel Bill Barr) sued California for trying to protect consumers, this new ruling will likely complicate those efforts.
The court ruling supporting the majority of the FCC’s repeal remains a bit surprising. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, a regulator has to base major policy decisions on solid justifications and hard data. But the FCC not only failed utterly to show that industry changes warranted such a reversal, its primary justification for repeal (that net neutrality rules stifled industry investment) has been repeatedly proven false. In reality the FCC effectively neutered itself at the behest of largely predatory telecom monopolies, at times using outright fraud to accomplish the goal. And so far, our courts are cool with it, apparently feeling constrained by previous Brand X court declarations (something made clear by Judge Patricia Millett):
“I join the Court’s opinion in full, but not without substantial reservation. The Supreme Court’s decision in [the Supreme Court’s Brand X decision] compels us to affirm as a reasonable option the agency’s reclassification of broadband as an information service based on its provision of Domain Name System (“DNS”) and caching. But I am deeply concerned that the result is unhinged from the realities of modern broadband service.”
No shit. A good chunk of the ruling goes well out of its way to support the FCC’s reasoning, especially as it relates to the FCC contention that the broadband sector is competitive (if you’re new to US telecom, it’s not):
So yeah. As usual, what the courts declare to be valid, and what’s actually intellectually and ethically valid are entirely different things. While you’ll see a lot of bickering over the legalese in this decision, don’t forget what really happened here: telecom lobbyists convinced the FCC to effectively neuter itself, using bogus data, massaged economic analysis, and fraud to accomplish it against the will of the the bipartisan majority of the public. And again, the United States legal system, at least up to this point, is largely cool with that.
While the appeals court ruling could still make its way to the Supreme Court (a major reason ISPs backed Kavanaugh), there are still several other paths for net neutrality supporters here. One, the state laws should work to help rein in some of the industry’s worst impulses. But the ruling could also foster support for the three page Save The Internet Act, which would fully restore the 2015 FCC rules as an act of Congress. That bill passed the House last year but was blocked by McConnell in the Senate, one of a million considerations up for voter contemplation during the looming elections.
We’ve noted how the telecom industry been having great success in the Trump era eliminating FCC, FTC, and state authority over telecom monopolies. The underlying industry justification is that gutting consumer protections will somehow magically improve competition and spur investment by regional telecom monopolies, a decades-old claim that has never been true, and yet somehow never dies. In reality, when you kill regulatory oversight of natural monopolies (without shoring up the underlying competition issues beneath), the problem only tends to get worse. It’s something you probably noticed if you’ve had any interactions with Comcast lately.
Last week the perils in this particular course of action were laid bare when Verizon was busted first throttling and then trying to upsell first responders while they were trying to combat wildfires in California. Gigi Sohn, one of the ex-FCC staffers that helped craft the rules, did a good job pointing out how the FCC’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” order didn’t just kill net neutrality, it punted the FCC’s ability to hold ISPs like Verizon accountable for issues just like this one:
“…Even assuming that Verizon?s actions were not technically a violation of the 2015 net neutrality rules? express prohibition against throttling internet traffic, the company?s actions may still have violated the 2015 rules.
Those rules permitted complaints to be filed pursuant to what was called the ?general conduct rule,? which prohibited broadband providers from unreasonably interfering or disadvantaging ?end users? ability to select, access, and use broadband internet access service or the lawful internet content, applications, services, or devices of their choice.? Certainly, the FPD could have made a persuasive case that Verizon was unreasonably interfering with its ability to use broadband internet access service. But, since the repeal of net neutrality, that avenue was not available.”
Telecom monopolies have claimed that killing the FCC’s oversight authority of ISPs is no big deal because the FTC will quickly rush in and fill the void. But as we’ve noted repeatedly, this argument was not made in good faith; whereas the FCC was perfectly-crafted for telecom oversight, the FTC lacks the authority and bandwidth to police ISPs, meaning most meaningful punishment never happens (check out the FTC’s half-decade long effort to hold AT&T accountable for lying to customers about throttling as just one example, or the total failure to police bogus fees).
In the wake of last week’s scandal, you’ll notice Ajit Pai’s FCC hasn’t so much as issued a peep about Verizon’s face plant. Undaunted, a group of eighteen Senators have fired off a letter to the FTC (pdf) urging it to, you know, maybe investigate Verizon:
“We believe the Federal Communications Commission, as the expert regulatory agency, should be responsible for the oversight of public safety networks and communications networks as a whole. Unfortunately, with its repeal of the 2015 Open Internet Order, the FCC has abdicated its jurisdiction over broadband communications and walked away from protecting consumers, including public safety agencies. We, therefore, call on the FTC to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive acts or practices stemming from this incident.”
Good luck with that. Companies like Verizon have been spending millions of dollars to erode FCC, FTC, and state authority over ISPs. In Verizon’s preferred regulatory paradigm, both state and federal regulators could be powerless to hold Verizon accountable for wrongdoing, even in screw ups of this magnitude. And if any federal “investigation” happens it will be superficial at best–thanks to a neutered FCC, an over-extended FTC, and states handcuffed by Ajit Pai’s historically-unpopular Restoring Internet Freedom order.
That’s because in the Trump administration (like countless past administrations before it), telecom monopolies like AT&T and Comcast are quite literally directing policy. After all, nobody wants to risk angering deep-pocketed campaign contributors. And these companies’ central, puerile tech policy thesis is that when you let telecom monopolies (with thirty-years of anti-competitive behavior under their belt) run amok without meaningful oversight or competition, miracles happen.
