A conservative group took credit for a barrage of anti-net neutrality comments posted on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's website this week, but it denied generating fake activism.
The Center for Individual Freedom said it did not use a bot to generate comments after news reports raised questions about the legitimacy of the posts. Between Monday and early Wednesday afternoon, the FCC had received more than 128,000 comments duplicating the language provided by CFIF.
Some supporters of a U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to repeal its recent net neutrality rules have apparently resorted to dirty tricks.
An apparent bot-generated campaign has posted more than 83,400 comments on the FCC's website supporting the agency's plan to gut its own net neutrality rules.
A handful of people whose names are on the bot-generated comments have denied making the comments, according to a report by ZDNet. The 83,400 comments, filed to the FCC's comment system between Monday and Wednesday, all contain the same text, reading in part:
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's website slowed to a crawl after comic and political commentator John Oliver urged viewers to flood the agency with comments in support of net neutrality, in what appeared to be a repeat of a 2014 incident.
With the FCC headed toward a repeal of net neutrality rules it passed in early 2015, Oliver on Sunday echoed his "Last Week Tonight" commentary on the topic from three years ago. (Note to viewers: The link to Oliver's new diatribe is not safe for work.) As in 2014, the FCC's website seemed to buckle under the load late Sunday and early Monday, but the cause may have been more sinister than a flood of people expressing their support for net neutrality rules.
Aaron Gach wasn't expecting U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to demand to search his smartphone when he returned to San Fransisco from Belgium in February.
The artist and magician, a U.S. citizen, had just attended an art event near Brussels and was targeted for advanced screening by CBP after his flight landed in the U.S. During a series of questions from CBP agents ("Did you pack your bag yourself?"), they repeatedly asked to search his smartphone, Gach said.
"Do you understand that if you choose not to unlock your phone we may need to detain your other personal effects?" one agent told him, according to a description of the encounter that Gach posted online.
During the past two years, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has targeted ever larger numbers of travelers' smartphones and laptops for searches as they cross the border into the country.
U.S. courts have generally upheld a so-called border search exception to the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, allowing CBP to search electronic devices without a court-ordered warrant. In April, a group of lawmakers introduced legislation to require warrants to search devices owned by U.S. citizens and other legal residents, but for now, the law allows for warrantless device searches.
Qualcomm, in a smartphone chip licensing spat with Apple, will reportedly ask a U.S. government agency to ban the import of iPhones into the country.
Qualcomm plans to ask the U.S. International Trade Commission to ban imports of iPhones, which are built in Asia, according to a Bloomberg Technology report. The news report cited an unnamed person familiar with Qualcomm's strategy.
A Qualcomm spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the news report.
The USITC has the power to ban imports into the U.S. for patent infringement, and the agency is frequently used by patent holders as an alternative or addition to slow-moving patent infringement lawsuits in U.S. courts.
Verizon shut down its public cloud service in early 2016, and is now unloading its virtual private cloud and managed hosting offerings to IBM.
The deal, announced Tuesday, allows IBM to improve its position in cloud computing, a spokesman said by email. Meanwhile, the deal allows Verizon to get out of the cloud infrastructure market dominated by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, allowing it to focus on its managed network, security, and communications services.
MORE: Verizon.net email being killed off — here are some alternatives
A U.S. appeals court has denied a request by broadband trade groups to rehear its decision last June to uphold the Federal Communications Commission's controversial 2015 net neutrality rules.
The court's decision on Monday is a hollow victory for net neutrality supporters. Just last Wednesday, new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced plans to repeal the rules at the agency, without a court ordering him to do so.
A U.S. Federal Communications Commission proposal to scrap the foundation for its own 2015 net neutrality rules nevertheless asks for public comment on whether it should "keep, modify, or eliminate" basic protections.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal, announced Wednesday, would remove the FCC's two-year-old classification of broadband as a broadly regulated, telecom-like service. But the text of the plan, released Thursday, suggests the FCC will consider retaining some rules prohibiting broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing web-based content and services.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will vote on May 18 to kick off a proceeding to "reverse the mistake" of the agency's 2-year-old net neutrality rules, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said.
The rulemaking proceeding would be the first step toward repealing the regulations and reversing the agency's 2015 decision to classify broadband as a regulated, telecom-like service.
Pai didn't provide a lot of detail about his proposal during a speech Wednesday, but during the rulemaking, the FCC will seek public comment on how best to move forward with new net neutrality rules or guidelines, he said. The FCC is scheduled to release the text of Pai's proposal on Thursday.
The chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is expected to announce plans to repeal the agency's 2015 net neutrality rules on Wednesday.
Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican, will likely announce a plan to reverse course on the 2-year-old regulations and end the agency's classification of broadband as a regulated, common-carrier service. In a Wednesday speech, Pai will reportedly announce that he is scheduling a vote for the FCC's May 18 meeting to begin the process of repealing the rules.
Pai has called the net neutrality rules a mistake that "injected tremendous uncertainty into the broadband market." President Donald Trump, who appointed Pai as the FCC's chairman, has also criticized the regulations.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to deregulate the providers of the business data lines connecting broadband service to many small businesses, schools, hospitals, and ATM machines.
The deregulation of business data services, or BDS, could mean broadband price hikes for those businesses as well as for mobile phone customers, critics said. BDS provides the backhaul that connects mobile towers to the wired internet.
The commission's 2-1 party-line vote ends price caps on much of the BDS market across the U.S., while retaining price regulations in about a third of the country.
Google will pay 438 million rubles (US$7.8 million) and agreed to give owners of Android smartphones in Russia new ways to change the default apps, in an antitrust settlement with the country's Federal Antimonopoly Service.
The settlement, announced Monday, ends a nearly two-year investigation by FAS into Google's control of the Android operating system. FAS had accused Google of abusing its monopoly position in mobile app stores serving the Android operating system. The fine amounts to 9 percent of Google's revenue in Russia in 2014, plus inflation, according to TASS.
If you operate a small or medium-size U.S. business, you can expect to pay more for broadband services in the near future because the U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to deregulate providers of business data lines, critics of the proposal say.
Users of ATMs, shoppers in stores that use credit card scanners, and mobile phone customers could also see prices go up after the FCC deregulates the so-called business data services (BDS) market. Schools and hospitals also depend on BDS for their broadband service, and prices could rise as much as 25 percent in areas where the FCC removes price caps, critics warn.
The FCC is scheduled to vote Thursday on a proposal from Republican Chairman Ajit Pai that would deregulate large parts of the BDS market, which generates an estimated US$45 billion a year for AT&T, Verizon, and other telecom carriers. Incumbent telecom carriers welcome the plan, saying there's plenty of competition in the BDS market, sometimes called special access.
重新改编的电视频谱的FCC拍卖已经培养了$ 19.8十亿，将更快，更可靠的服务铺平了道路为移动运营商提供全国各地。
在新的频谱可将允许运营商在未来几年内提供快速5G服务为70MHz，FCC官员说。It was the world's first two-sided auction allowing TV stations to indirectly sell spectrum to mobile carriers and other users of wireless spectrum.
The auction should speed up networks that have slowed as U.S. residents move to "data-hungry smartphones," the FCC said in a press release. About 70 percent of U.S. residents now have smartphones, the agency said.