May, 21 2020, 12:00am EDT
The Trump FCC's Net Neutrality Repeal Is Still Wrong
WASHINGTON
On Wednesday, Free Press condemned the Federal Communications Commission's abandonment of its authority to safeguard internet users and promote universal and affordable access to an open internet.
In 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit commanded the FCC to examine the impacts of removing Title II as a source of authority for broadband's inclusion in the Lifeline subsidy program. The court also ordered the agency to analyze and account for its decision's impacts on public safety and broadband-infrastructure policy. Wednesday evening was the deadline for public comments to the agency on this process.
The court found that the FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai had arbitrarily and capriciously failed to address the serious cascading implications of scrapping its Title II classification of broadband internet access service, with the Commission committing "straightforward legal error" by refusing to consider these questions properly in its headlong rush to get rid of strong Net Neutrality rules and the legal framework on which they stood.
Free Press' reply comments filed Wednesday evening note that the agency's "misguided repeal of Net Neutrality and its authority over broadband internet access service harms the Lifeline program, pole-attachment regulation, and public safety," concluding "the best remedy for such harms would be for the Commission to once again correctly classify broadband as a Title II service protected by strong open-internet rules."
Free Press Policy Manager Dana Floberg made the following statement:
"It's still just as clear today as ever that the FCC should reclassify broadband as a Title II service. The only dissenting views in this proceeding came from broadband-industry-aligned lawyers, lobbyists and front groups whose arguments rest on unproven claims that the Trump FCC's repeal has somehow spurred a golden age of broadband investment and fiber deployment. But these investment claims are built on falsehoods and disinformation with zero evidence in actual investment figures.
"Chairman Pai's shameless credit-taking for broadband-market growth is driven by his own arrogance rather than actual numbers. Deployment in the years following his 2017 decision to reclassify broadband access continued on the trajectory established during the Obama era. Any growth in fiber-to-the-home buildout is not due to Pai's actions but to the completion of projects that ISPs publicly announced well before Pai settled into the FCC chair.
"Restoring Title II authority is the only way to give internet users the legal protections they need to access an open and affordable internet. Title II formed the solid legal foundation for popular Net Neutrality protections. But it also gave the agency the authority it needed to deal with the issues the court sent back to the FCC: ensuring that vital broadband-affordability programs like Lifeline could promote internet adoption to communities that have been stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide.
"The Trump FCC's unjustified repeal of the Net Neutrality rules in 2017 tossed out the agency's best source of authority to promote broadband competition, protect public safety and more. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the need to treat broadband as an essential service more obvious than ever before. But the FCC response to the pandemic has been largely limited to the chairman merely exhorting broadband providers to sign a voluntary pledge to keep people connected, despite evidence that many of these ISPs are already breaking their promises to internet users.
"Back in 2017, millions of people of all political stripes demanded that the FCC protect a free and open internet. Instead, Chairman Pai imposed his unmoored, ideological vision for stewarding and safeguarding people's internet access. The court's remand shows that Pai's interpretation of his agency's legal authority rests on very unstable ground. There's little sense in the FCC pretending it can address these crucial broadband issues without restoring its authority to do so first."
Free Press was created to give people a voice in the crucial decisions that shape our media. We believe that positive social change, racial justice and meaningful engagement in public life require equitable access to technology, diverse and independent ownership of media platforms, and journalism that holds leaders accountable and tells people what's actually happening in their communities.
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House Dems Voice 'Deep Concern' Over Biden Claim That Israel Is Legally Using US Arms
A letter from 26 lawmakers notes the "stark differences and gaps" between what Biden administration officials say and the opinions of "prominent experts and global institutions" accusing Israel of genocide.
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More than two dozen House Democrats on Tuesday challenged the Biden administration's claim that Israel is using U.S.-supplied weapons in compliance with domestic and international law—an assertion made amid an ongoing World Court probe of "plausibly" genocidal Israeli policies and practices in Gaza.
Citing "mounting credible and deeply troubling reports and allegations" of human rights crimes committed by Israeli troops in Gaza and soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank, 26 congressional Democrats led by Texas Reps. Veronica Escobar—who co-chairs President Joe Biden's reelection campaign—and Joaquin Castro asked U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines "whether and how" their agencies determined Israel is lawfully using arms provided by Washington.
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While the lawmakers didn't mention the International Court of Justice's January 26
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The lawmakers' letter came amid reports of fresh Israeli atrocities, including a drone strike on a playground in the Maghazi refugee camp in northern Gaza that killed at least 11 children. Eyewitnesses described a "horrific scene of children torn apart."
While Biden has called out Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" in Gaza—much of it carried out using U.S.-supplied warplanes and munitions including 2,000-pound bombs that can level whole city blocks—his administration has approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel, has repeatedly sidestepped Congress to fast-track emergency armed aid, and is seeking to provide the key ally with billions of dollars in addition weaponry atop the nearly $4 billion it gets annually from Washington.
This, despite multiple federal laws—and the administration's own rules— prohibiting U.S. arms transfers to human rights violators.
According to Palestinian and international officials, more than 110,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since October 7. Most of the dead are women and children. At least 7,000 Palestinians are also missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.
Around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced in what many Palestinians are calling a second Nakba, a reference to the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
A growing number of not only progressive lawmakers but also mainstream Democrats are calling for a suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel.
On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who was criticized earlier in the war for not calling for a cease-fire—stood beside a photo of a starving Gazan girl while declaring "no more money for" the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his "war machine."
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The wife of jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sharply criticized "assurances" the U.S. government made as the U.K. High Court considers allowing the 52-year-old Australian's extradition to the United States, where he faces 175 years in prison.
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Responding on social media, his wife, Stella Assange—who is an attorney—blasted the U.S. assurances as "weasel words."
"The United States has issued a nonassurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty," she said. "It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution's previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen."
"The Biden administration must drop this dangerous prosecution before it is too late."
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The U.K. court's next hearing is scheduled for May 20. Last week, reporters asked U.S. President Joe Biden about requests from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and members of the country's Parliament to drop the extradition effort and charges. He said that "we're considering it."
So far, the Biden administration has ignored significant pressure from Australian and U.S. politicians as well as human rights and press freedom groups, and continued to pursue the extradition of Julian Assange, who was charged under former President Donald Trump—the Republican expected to face the Democratic president in the November election.
Assange was charged under the Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for publishing classified documents including the "Collateral Murder" video and the Afghan and Iraq war logs. Since British authorities dragged Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London—where he lived with political asylum for seven years—he has been jailed in the city's Belmarsh Prison.
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Following recent reports that Google may soon expand its tech collaboration with the Israeli government, dozens of the company's employees on Tuesday entered its offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California and announced that they wouldn't leave until executives pull out of its $1.2 billion cloud services and data contract with the country.
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In Sunnyvale, workers began occupying the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, while employees in the company's New York office began a sit-in in a common space.
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Former Google cloud software engineer Eddie Hatfield, who was fired last month for disrupting a Google Israel event, was among those who protested in New York.
The sit-ins came a week after Time magazine reported that Google has entered further negotiations with the Israeli government in recent weeks, even as international human rights experts raise alarm that Israeli officials have directly caused famine to take hold in parts of Gaza by blocking humanitarian aid.
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