The FCC Needs To Abolish A Lot More Than Net Neutrality

Authored by Sam Estep via The Mises Institute,

The end of the Obama administration"s regulatory regime known as net neutrality has brought with it prophecies of impending doom from across the political spectrum. Leaving aside the hyperbole, most objections stem from concerns that Internet service providers (ISPs) will start “discriminating” by offering preferential speeds and bandwidth allocation to certain websites or companies that pay for a higher tier of service. ISPs would, therefore, start to throttle the Internet speeds of normal users. This may well be the result, however, imposing stifling regulations that cement the current dominant players is only going to make to situation worse.

The reasons ISPs might be inclined to engage in these practices are mainly twofold: one, ISPs lack any competition in many parts of the country. Two, Internet traffic is increasing and ISPs are looking for ways to raise capital in order to accommodate that growth.

Before we address these issues it is worth making an important distinction: so-called “net neutrality” isn"t simply a regulation, it is a total reclassification of the Internet from an “information service” to a “telecommunication service.” This may seem like simple semantics, but the latter classification has been around far longer, and has, consequently, accumulated a bevy of regulations and restrictions confining it.(In fact the classification “information service” was created specifically to help the Interet avoid the more stringent regulation of telephone and cable services.) The FCC’s goal in this reclassification was to bring the Internet under the purview of Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, specifically, SEC.202: 

It shall be unlawful for any common carrier to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services for or in connection with like communication service, directly or indirectly, by any means or device, or to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, or locality, or to subject any particular person, class of persons, or locality to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage.

However, this reclassification has far more implications than the above. One must only peruse a little further down Title II until they happen upon this passage from Sec 214:

No carrier shall undertake the construction of a new line or of an extension of any line, or shall acquire or operate any line, or extension thereof, or shall engage in transmission over or by means of such additional or extended line, unless and until there shall first have been obtained from the Commission a certificate that the present or future public convenience and necessity require or will require the construction, or operation, or construction and operation, of such additional or extended line.

Clauses like this have been particularly hard on Small ISPs, and were one of the main reasons for the FCC’s re-evaluation of net neutrality. Even though the Title II regulations no longer directly apply to ISPs, a lack of competition still thrives off the fact that the parent companies of most ISPs are telecommunication and cable firms, which are still covered under the act. Such “common carriers” are given benefits similar to public utilities, meaning their position is secured while prospective competitors must divert resources into lobbying the gatekeepers at the FCC for a certificate or waiver. But it isn"t just federal interference that hampers competition. Fees for so-called “rights of way,” in which local governments act as needless middlemen, are another impediment. Impositions such as these effectively give telephone and cable companies government granted monopolies over certain parts of the country.

Declassification of common carriers and public utilities, repeal of charters, as well as other government constructed barriers, would allow more regional providers to compete with national ones. Such a deregulation would force companies that have exceeded their ability to function effectively due to their size, but are still being protected from competition by regulations to fail. As Thomas Sowell describes in Basic Economics:

While there are economies of scale, there are also diseconomies of scale. There may be things that companies could do better if it were larger and other things it could better if it were smaller. Eventually, diseconomies of scale begin to outweigh the economies, so it does not pay a firm to expand beyond that point. This why industries usually consist of many firms, instead of one giant, super-efficient monopoly.

The idea of a dysfunctional economy of scale propped up by regulations isn"t just a theory.

Consider how regulatory reforms, such as the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and the Bermuda agreement (which allowed domestic airlines to compete internationally) exacerbated Pan-Am’s demise and opened the way for regional airlines that had previously been restricted to domestic flights, e.g. United Airlines and Southwest, to rise to prominence in subsequent years. Consequently, Airline ticket prices have been dropping ever since. More regulations, especially those imposed under Title II, only tighten the hold of already powerful businesses in the sector, as well as discouraging investment in the Internet all together.

Another similarity between ISPs and the airline industry is that ISPs overbook. Have you ever noticed that your files are not downloading as fast as your plan advertised, or that the Internet seems slow on some days? While many things can cause these issues, usually it"s down to the fact that most ISPs simply can"t handle all, or even most, of the data usage they have allotted their users. ISPs routinely throttle user speeds for this very reason. So, unless net neutrality were simply about the right of all internet users to be suppressed equally, allowing ISPs to create tiers of preferential service would afford users more control over the Internet, not less. 

Furthermore, due to the ever increasing demand for high quality streaming services, companies like Netflix and Youtube take up more and more bandwidth. Therefore, with increasing demand and supply decreasing in turn, ISPs will inevitably raise prices on data usage until supply can be increased. In a free market the high demand for internet services, coupled with the inability of the current lot of ISPs to fully provide the services they advertise, would lead to scores of startups and competitors. However, the innumerable amount of regulations and outright monopolistic grants of the status quo, only discourage investment exacerbating the problem. Likewise, the potential profits from a foray into the industry would have to be so high as to outweigh the capital and time wasted on convincing the FCC and local governments of the company’s benevolent intentions. Repealing regulations lowers the point at which entrepreneurs and investors are willing to startup invest in competitors that, in turn, increase supply, thus decreasing the incentive for ISPs to ration their limited capabilities by implementing higher tiers of service.

Perhaps most concerning is the claim is that, without net neutrality, ISPs will start splitting the Internet into packages as in Portugal. However, this neglects the important detail that Portugal is already under the jurisdiction of the EU’s net neutrality regulations. As well as the fact that the ISP accused of this was, in fact, offering extra data for specific content in addition to their standard plan, not as an exclusive service as was misleadingly claimed.

Many comparisons can be drawn between the current consolidation of ISPs and the monopoly power by enjoyed by AT&T until it’s dissolution via antitrust law. However, the most distinct similarity is the special relationship AT&T held with the US government, which culminated in AT&T"s nationalization in 1918. This uncannily mirrors the relationships that modern ISPs possess with local and state governments. Net neutrality was simply another government intervention to protect the “public interest” from “natural monopolies” despite the history of such pretenses being destruction of competition, consolidation, and eventual monopoly.

While it may be gone for now, unless a larger deregulation occurs, the increasing consolidation of the ISP industry will inevitably be blamed on net neutrality’s elimination.

Somebody Hacked Starbucks" WiFi To Mine Cryptocurrencies

As the values of the largest cryptocurrencies have multiplied this year, so too have reports of digital-currency miners stealing resources to amplify the profitability of their operations.

In Venezuela, where electricity is heavily subsidized by the (crumbling) government, the government’s intelligence agents are ferreting out and jailing people caught mining bitcoin or other digital currencies.

Yesterday, we reported that the world’s largest oil-pipeline company discovered unauthorized digital-currency mining taking place on the company’s hardware.

And today, Cryptocoinsnews pointed out that a Starbucks in Buenos Aires had its wi-fi hacked to force a 10 second delay when connecting so it could mine Monero - currently the world’s 11th largest cryptocurrency - with people’s laptops.

The presence of the CoinHive code was discovered by the chief executive of a New York-based tech company, Noah Dinkin, who noticed something was off when he was connecting to the service. He then used Twitter to share what he found:

 

Hi @Starbucks @StarbucksAr did you know that your in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires forces a 10 second delay when you first connect to the wifi so it can mine bitcoin using a customer"s laptop? Feels a little off-brand.. cc @GMFlickinger pic.twitter.com/VkVVdSfUtT

— Noah Dinkin (@imnoah) December 2, 2017

 

Initially, Dinkin believed his laptop was being forced to mine bitcoin, users noted Coinhive only works with Monero, a cryptocurrency optimized for CPU mining that recently hit a new all-time high above $300, and has surged over 1,500% this year so far, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

A few days after Dinkin shared his findings on Twitter, Starbucks responded. The company acknowledged the issue and announced that it’s been resolved.

 

As soon as we were alerted of the situation in this specific store last week, we took swift action to ensure our internet provider resolved the issue and made the changes needed in order to ensure our customers could use Wi-Fi in our store safely.

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) December 11, 2017

 

A spokesperson later on clarified that this wasn’t an isolated incident, and that the problem stemmed from the internet service provider, not Starbucks. Speaking to Motherboard, the spokesperson added that Starbucks hoped to ensure its customers are “able to search the internet over Wi-Fi securely,” and that it’s working with its service provider to remedy the issue.

Earlier this year, CCN reported the Pirate Bay’s efforts to use visitor CPU to mine Monero in order to monetize its traffic and replace the ads on its pages. The torrent index website used Coinhive, a JavaScript code that allows website admins to mine the anonymity-centric cryptocurrency with visitor’s CPUs.

Ever since the Pirate Bay tested Coinhive on its website, various actors started using the code to access other CPUs. The code was even placed on Google Chrome extensions, and on a subscription streaming service called Fight Pass, which exists to stream UFC matches.
 

Net Neutrality – The End Of Google"s Biggest Subsidy

Authored by Tom Luongo,

Net Neutrality is gone.  Good riddance.

Lost in all of the theoretical debate about how evil ISPs will create a have/have-not divide in Internet access, is the reality that it already exists along with massive subsidies to the biggest bandwidth pigs on the planet – Facebook, Google, Twitter, Netflix and the porn industry.

Under Net Neutrality these platforms flourished along with the rise of the mobile internet, which is now arguably more important than the ‘desktop’ one in your home and office. 

Google and Apple control the on-ramps to the mobile web in a way that Net Neutrality proponents can only dream the bandwidth providers like Comcast and AT&T could.

Because, in truth, they can’t.  Consumers are ultimately the ones who decide how much bandwidth costs, not the ISPs.  We decide how much we can afford these creature comforts like streaming Netflix while riding the bus or doing self-indulgent Instagram videos of our standing in line at the movies (if that’s even a thing anymore).

Non-Neutrality Pricing

Net Neutrality took pricing of bandwidth out of the hands of consumers.  It handed the profits from it to Google, Facebook and all the crappy advertisers spamming video ads, malware, scams, and the like everywhere.

By mandating ‘equal access’ and equal fee structures the advertisers behind Google and Facebook would spend their budgets without much thought or care.  Google and Facebook ad revenue soared under Net Neutrality because advertisers’ needs are not aligned with Google’s bottom line, but with consumers’.

And, because of that, the price paid to deliver the ad, i.e. Google’s cost of goods sold (COGS), thanks to Net Neutrality, was held artificially low.  And Google, Facebook and the Porn Industry pocketed the difference.

They grew uncontrollably.  In the case of Google and Facebook, uncontrollably powerful.

That difference was never passed onto the ISP who could then, in turn, pass it on to the consumer.

All thanks to Net Neutrality.

Undercapitalized Growth

With the rise of the mobile web bandwidth should have been getting cheaper and easier to acquire at a much faster rate than it has.  But, it couldn’t because of Net Neutrality.  It kept rates of return on new bandwidth projects and new technology suppressed.

Money the ISP’s should have been spending laying more fiber, putting up more cell towers, building better radios went to Google to fritter away on endless projects that never see the light of day.

The ISP’s actually suffered under Net Neutrality and so did the consumers.

And therefore, Net Neutrality guaranteed that the infrastructure for new high-speed bandwidth would grow at the slowest possible rate, still governed by the maximum the consumer was willing to pay for bandwidth, rather than what the consumer actually demanded.

And, once obtained that power was then used to punish anyone who held different opinions from the leadership in Silicon Valley.

Think it through, Net Neutrality not only subsidized intrusive advertising, phishing scams and on-demand porn but also the very censorship these powerful companies now feel is their sacred duty to enforce because the government is now controlled by the bad guys.

Getting rid of Net Neutrality will put the costs of delivering all of this worthless content back onto the people serving it.  YouTube will become more expensive for Google and all of the other content delivery networks.  Facebook video will eat into its bottom line.

The ISP’s can and should throttle them until they ‘pay their fair share,’ which they plainly have not been.

The Net effect of Net Neutrality is that your ISP may charge you more in the short run for Netflix or Hulu.  Or, more appropriately, Netflix and Hulu will have to charge you more and we’ll find out what the real cost of delivering 4k streaming content to your iPhone actually costs.

But, those costs will then go to the ISP’s such that they can respond to demand for more bandwidth.  Will they try and overcharge us?  Of course.  AT&T is just as bad as Google and/or Facebook.

But, we have the right to say no.  To stop using the services the way Net Neutrality encouraged us to through mispricing of service.  If the ISP’s want more customers then they’ll have to bring wire out to the hinterlands.

Inflated Costs, Poor Service

Net Neutrality proponents kept telling us this was the way to help keep the internet available to the poor and the rural.  Nonsense.  It kept the internet from expanding properly into the hinterlands.

I live just over the county line in rural North Florida.  To the south is a town with cable and DSL.   Between cable franchise monopolies retarding expansion across county lines and Net Neutrality keeping margins thin, my home was 10 years behind everyone else getting decent bandwidth to keep up with the needs of the modern Internet.

Bandwidth needs artificially inflated, I might add, by the misaligned cost structure engendered by Net Neutrality in the first place.

It took forever for my phone provider to upgrade the bandwidth across the county line.  I begged them for a second line for internet service, they wouldn’t even talk to me.  Why?  The return on that new line wasn’t high enough for them.

If Google was passing some of the profits from Adwords onto the ISPs I’d have multiple choices for high-speed internet versus just one DSL provider.

As always, whenever the political left tries to protect the poor they wind up making things worse for them.

The Ways Forward

The news is good for a variety of reasons. With Net Neutrality gone a major barrier to entry for content delivery networks is gone.

Blockchain companies are building systems which cut the middle man out completely, allowing content creators to be directly tipped for their work versus being supported by advertising no one watches, wants or is swayed by.

Services like Steemit and the distributed application already built and to be built on it point the way to social media cost models which are sustainable and align the incentives properly between producers of content and consumers.

Steem internalizes the bandwidth costs of using the network and pays itself a part of its token reward pool to cover those costs.  So, all that’s left is content producer and their fans.  Advertisers are simply not needed to maintain the network.

Net Neutrality was a trojan horse designed to replicate the old shout-based advertising model of the golden age of print and TV advertising.  It was a way to control the megaphone and promote a particular point of view.

Look no further than the main proponents of it.  George Soros and the Ford Foundation are two of the biggest lobbyists for Net Neutrality.  Only the political left and its Marxian fantasies of evil middle men creating monopolies fell for the lies, as they were supposed to.

The rest of us were like, “Really?  This is not a problem.”  And it wasn’t until you looked under the hood and realized all they stood to gain by it.

Now, with Net Neutrality gone the underlying problem can be addressed; franchise monopolies of cable and phone companies in geographic areas.  These laws are still in effect.  They still hang like a spectre over the entire industry.  Like Net Neutrality, these laws concentrate capital into the hands of the few providers big enough to keep out the competition.

So, instead of championing the end of franchise monopolies, which county governments love because they get a sizable cut of the revenue to fund non-essential programs, the Left made things worse by championing Net Neutrality.

That also needs to end.  Even if you believe that franchise monopolies were, at one point, necessary.  They are not now.  IP-based communication is now fundamentally different than copper wire for discrete services like phone and cable.  Let people run all the copper and fiber they want.  There’s plenty of room in the conduit running under our sidewalks and streets.

Let a thousand flowers bloom, as the great Lew Rockwell once told me.

Then and only then will the Internet be free.

Another Crypto Milestone: Japanese Company Offers To Pay Employees In Bitcoin

Less than a year after Japan legalized bitcoin as legal tender, part of the country’s effort pioneering effort to develop a comprehensive regulatory framework for incorporating - and regulating - digital currencies, one Japanese company is offering employees the option to be paid in bitcoin.

Because what employee wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to see their weekly paycheck fluctuate by 30% or more. Though given the digital currency’s staggering appreciation so far this year, we imagine most of the company’s workers will instead see it as an opportunity to lock in a raise every week.

The company, Internet service provider GMO Internet, plans to offer workers up to 100,000 yen (about $890) per month in the digital currency, according to Russia Today.

"Employees can receive salaries in bitcoin if they want to. We hope to improve our own literacy of virtual currency by actually using it," company spokeswoman Harumi Ishii said.

The company said the offer would be available to nearly 4,000 of its domestically-based employees. As a further enticement, the workers will reportedly get an extra 10% of their salary if they choose to receive it in digital currency.

This detail certainly piqued our interest. Bitcoin is, of course, tremendously volatile. But for the past 18 months, that trend has been mostly one-directional (which isn’t to say there haven’t been many significant downturns).

While the company has depicted itself as a bitcoin evangelizer, offering employees a 10% bonus - a significant sum spread across 4,000 employers - seems suspiciously generous.

The company said it’s interested in promoting bitcoin after joining a trading and exchange business in May and is planning to launch a new cryptocurrency mining operation next year.

“We will operate a next-generation mining center utilizing renewable energy and cutting-edge semiconductor chips in Northern Europe,” a representative for GMO said, according to Russia Today.

The firm, which is headquartered in Tokyo, operates over 60 companies in 10 countries. Given the group’s size and financial power, the bitcoin salary initiative may potentially boost the mainstream adoption of similar practices worldwide.

While many skeptics argued that bitcoin would never work as a currency (indeed, transactions can sometimes take hours to clear). Segwit 2x, the bitcoin software hard fork that was intended to relieve some of the strain on the bitcoin network, was proposed specifically to remedy this problem.

Earlier this week, we highlighted a listing on real-estate site Redfin.com where the owner of a Miami condo specified that he would only accept payment for the property in bitcoin. Redfin said it was the first time it has observed such a demand on its platform, though twitter users quickly pointed out other examples dating back to 2013.

Given the digital currency’s performance this year, bitcoin has firmly broken into the mainstream. And with the Cboe having launched its new bitcoin futures products, firms like GMO will find it easier to hedge their positions. CME Group will launch a suite of similar products next week.

Indeed, two years ago, the notion that a mainstream company would offer employees the option to be paid in bitcoin was almost unthinkable.

But barring a major crash, we imagine this trend will continue.

Net Neutrality is Not Left Vs. Right, It’s the Establishment Vs. Your Freedom

Depending on which side of the political aisle you get your information from likely depends on how you feel about the issue of Net Neutrality.

Detroit"s Digital Divide: Low Income Citizens Build Their Own Internet

The city of Detroit, in the U.S. state of Michigan, has experienced an impressive economic and demographic shift over the past 50-years.

Deindustrialization coupled with depopulation has stripped the city of it’s economic strength cascading it into turmoil. Global competition from automakers shifted manufacturing jobs out of the area. As businesses left, communities decayed, inducing a terrifying surge in violent crime. Urban rot came next festering from within and eventually sending the city into bankruptcy in 2013 where it reemerged in 2014.

Five-years later, Detroit has gotten worse – not better - and the city is having trouble providing basic utilities for its residents.

In particular, the city along with internet service providers are failing to deliver high-speed internet to a significant part of the low income areas. 

That is why one community group of technology geeks have banded together to create an internet of their own.

Equitable Internet Initiative (EII) is a program that teaches Detroit residents how to build high speed WiFi networks. EII says Detroit is one of the top 5 least connected cities in the United States coupled with 60% of the city residents that do not have access to high-speed internet. The group aims to stop the growing digital divide that is leaving many low income residents behind and forgotten in the inner cities where there is only death and destruction.

EII has trained teams in the North End, Island View, and Southwest Detroit to setup infrastructure: a church that functions as a hub and internet service provider which then a signaled is beamed to communities that don’t have access to high-speed internet.

Residents who want internet from EII have to meet two requirements:

1. can’t afford internet


2. don’t already have internet or <10 Mbps

Once the requirements are met, EII will send a team to the residential location and install an outdoor directional antenna and an indoor router with a setup time around one-hour. EII recognizes that access to high-speed internet is a worldwide problem and if that is not fixed a “digital class system” will develop.

EII wants high-speed access for everyone..Popular Mechanics also said,

The EII offers a radical proposition that would allow people to get Internet outside of a major telecom. But it’s got its own money concerns. Initially, it worked off a federal grant. When that money dried up, the deal with Rocket Fiber made it viable again.

 

But that partnership will not cover the costs of more and more internet connections growing in perpetuity. Jenny Lee, the executive director of Allied Media Projects, the group behind EII, raised the question in a recent article. “How do we do this in way that doesn’t replicate the inequities of other utility companies? Are we going to be the equivalent of water department coming to shut you off if you don’t pay your bill?”

 

One way the group hopes it will prove its worth is by creating apps. Its Next Gen Apps program teaches students coding basics like CSS, HTML, Javascript, and Node.js. Combined with the EII’s efforts to provide internet in their areas, there’s a hope that people will truly make the internet their own.

Bottomline: Detroit is a prime example of citizens working together for survival in a post collapsed bankrupt city. The one question we have: how long until government shuts down this private internet?

 

Tech Vs. Trump: The Great Battle Of Our Time Has Begun

Authored by Niall Ferguson via The Spectator,

Social media helped Donald Trump take the White House. Silicon Valley won’t let it happen again...

In the 1962 Japanese sci-fi classic King Kong vs Godzilla, the two giant monsters fight to a stalemate atop Mount Fuji. I have been wondering for some time when the two giants of American social media would square up for what promises to be a comparably brutal battle. Finally, it began last month - and where else but on Twitter?

‘Facebook was always anti-Trump,’ tweeted the President of the United States on 27 September.

Mark Zuckerberg shot back hours later (on Facebook, of course): ‘Trump says Facebook is against him. Liberals say we helped Trump. Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like. That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like.’

A platform for all ideas? Well, maybe. Others see Facebook differently. As Zuckerberg’s response to Trump acknowledged, the President is not alone in criticising him. The various inquiries into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election are turning up much that is awkward, notably that Russia bought around 3,000 Facebook ads designed to spread politically divisive posts to Americans before and after the election, as well as to promote inflammatory political protests on issues such as Muslim immigration.

It may be too big a stretch to claim that Russian Facebook ads swung the election in Trump’s favour. But it seems plausible that his campaign’s use of social media, particularly Facebook, gave it a vital edge that compensated for its financial disadvantage relative to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. On that, if on nothing else, I suspect Steve Bannon and Clinton would agree. ‘Facebook is now the largest news platform in the world,’ Clinton writes in her election postmortem. ‘With that awesome power comes great responsibility.’

Awesome power, yes. At the end of June, the number of active Facebook users (people who visit the site at least once a month) passed the two billion mark. WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram — all owned by Facebook — have three billion users altogether, though no doubt there is much overlap. Two- thirds of American adults are on Facebook and 45 per cent get their news from it. More than half the UK population access Facebook at least once a month. The average user is on the site for 1/16 of every day.

But great responsibility? In the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, Facebook briefly featured a bogus story that the shooter had ‘Trump-hating’ views. A fake page claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the far-left Antifa movement, saying the goal had been to kill ‘Trump-supporting fascist dogs’.

Last month, the non-profit investigative news site ProPublica revealed that Facebook’s online ad tools had helped advertisers to target self-described ‘Jew haters’ or people who had used phrases such as ‘how to burn Jews’. In the words of Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg: ‘The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part.’ Facebook ‘never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way’.

What Facebook intended and how Facebook is used turn out to be very different. The company’s motto used to be: ‘Make the world more open and connected.’ It’s no longer quite so simple.

‘For most of the existence of the company, this idea of connecting the world has not been a controversial thing,’ Zuckerberg recently said. ‘Something changed.’

What has changed is that the world has belatedly woken up to realities about social networks that were already obvious to anyone familiar with history and network science.

For most of history, it is true, hierarchies have tended to dominate distributed networks. However, there are historical precedents for technological change leading to enhanced connectedness that empowers social networks and weakens hierarchies.

The first began exactly 500 years ago, when Martin Luther launched his campaign for reform of the Roman Catholic church. Had it not been for the printing press, Luther would have been just another obscure heretic and might well have ended his life in the flames of the stake. But Gutenberg’s innovation enabled Luther’s message to ‘go viral’ — as we would now say — and it spread with remarkable speed throughout Germany and then across north-western Europe.

Luther was as much of a utopian as the pioneers of Silicon Valley in our own time. In his mind, the Reformation would create a powerful new network of pious Christians, all enabled to read the Bible in the vernacular and to establish more direct relationships with God than the indirect ones mediated by a corrupt ecclesiastical hierarchy. The vision of St Peter of a ‘priesthood of all believers’ would finally be realised.

But the true upshot of the Reformation was not harmony but polarisation and conflict. Not everyone was inspired by Luther’s message. Some sought to go further than him. Others reacted violently against the proposed reforms. The Counter-Reformation adopted the Protestants’ novel techniques of propagation and deployed them against the heretics.

Yet it proved impossible to destroy Protestant networks, even with mass executions and hideously cruel torture. If anything, persecution promoted radicalisation. Meanwhile, the constantly growing network of printed words proved itself as ready to spread madness as holiness. The witch craze of the 17th century was a classic example of a monster meme, claiming innocent lives from Scotland to Salem, Massachusetts.

There are three big differences between now and then.

First, today’s social networks are vastly bigger, faster and more widespread than those of the early modern era.

Secondly, whereas the printing press was a truly decentralised technology — Johannes Gutenberg was no Bill Gates — the ownership of today’s IT infrastructure is concentrated in remarkably few hands.

Finally, our networked age began by disrupting markets and later politics; only one religion, Islam, has been significantly affected.

But the similarities are nevertheless striking. Now, as then, newly empowered networks have led to polarisation, not harmony. Now, as then, the networks have acted as a transmission mechanism for all kinds of manias and panics as well as truth and beauty. And now, as then, the networks have eroded territorial sovereignty, weakening the established structures of political authority.

The US government sought to harness the power of social networks when the National Security Agency co-opted the big technology companies into its PRISM programme of mass domestic and foreign surveillance. But the new networks did not easily integrate into old power structures. Globally disseminated leaks, courtesy of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, exposed PRISM, while a new kind of populist politics flourished on social media.

A defining feature of social networks (as in the Reformation) is their tendency to divide rather than unite. Recent research on American blogs and Twitter reveals a similar pattern: the emergence of two self-segregated ideological communities, one liberal, the other conservative. Just as birds of a feather flock together (network geeks call it ‘homophily’) so Twitter users retweet within their political clusters. One study found that with tweets on hot-button political topics (such as gun control, same-sex marriage and climate change), the use of emotional words increases their diffusion by a factor of 20 per cent for each additional word. Ever wondered why tweets are full of expletives? Now you know.

The presidential election of 2016 was a tale of many networks. By going viral through a largely self-organised network, Trump beat Clinton’s old-school, hierarchically structured campaign, which poured money into antiquated channels like local television. Isis contributed to the febrile atmosphere with its worst attack in North America (in Orlando in June last year), prompting Trump’s populist (and popular) promise of a ‘Muslim ban’. But the Trump network had itself been penetrated by the Russian intelligence network. Trump’s campaign and, to a much smaller extent, the Russians both used Facebook and Twitter as tools to discredit his opponent and discourage potential Democratic voters.

Make no mistake: 2016 will never happen again. Silicon Valley hates Trump for too many reasons to count. The most important are his stance on immigration (on which the Valley depends for its supply of skilled software engineers) and Big Tech’s need to ‘virtue-signal’ to its most valued user demographic: the young and affluent. They lean left. So does the otherwise capitalist Valley.

The political consequences were not immediately obvious, unless you were paying close attention, but after the Charlottesville clashes between white supremacists, neo-Nazis and their various left-wing opponents, they were there for all to see. Matthew Prince, CEO of the internet service provider Cloudflare, described what happened: ‘Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet.’ On the basis that ‘the people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes’, he denied their fascistic website access to the worldwide web. As Prince himself rightly observed: ‘No one should have that power. We need to have a discussion around this with clear rules and clear frameworks. My whims and those of Jeff [Bezos] and Larry [Page] and Satya [Nadella] and Mark [Zuckerberg] shouldn’t be what determines what should be online.’ Yet that discussion has barely begun. And until it happens, it will indeed be they who decide who is allowed on the internet.

This goes to the heart of the matter. According to Zuckerberg, Facebook is ‘a tech company, not a media company… We build the tools; we do not produce any content’. Yet in practice, according to a recent Reuters investigation, ‘an elite group of at least five senior executives regularly directs content policy and makes editorial judgment calls.’ In the words of Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief of the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Zuckerberg is now ‘the world’s most powerful editor’.

It is not only neo-Nazi sites that find themselves on the online equivalent of the newsroom spike. Twitter has recently rejected paid-for tweets from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) on the grounds of ‘Hate’. These tweets were hardly excerpts from Mein Kampf: for example: ‘The fiscal cost created by illegal immigrants of $746.3bn compares to a total cost of deportation of $124.1bn.’ In the words of CIS director Mark Krikorian, ‘The internet is now a utility more important than phones or cable TV. If people can be denied access to it based on the content of their ideas and speech (rather than specific illegal acts), why not make phone service contingent on your political views? Or mail delivery?’

Google recently revealed that it is using machine learning to document ‘hate crimes and events’ in America. Among their partners in this effort is the notorious Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which maintains a list of ‘anti-Muslim extremists’ — including my wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the British liberal Muslim Maajid Nawaz — but no list whatsoever of Muslim extremists.

‘YouTube doesn’t allow hate speech or content that promotes or incites violence,’ declared a recent message to YouTube content creators. But who decides what is ‘hate speech’? The phrase has become the 21st-century equivalent of ‘heresy’. It’s what you call something before you proscribe it.

Silicon Valley insists it is home to neutral network platforms. This is no longer credible. Facebook alone has, without quite meaning to, evolved into the most powerful publisher in the history of the world. Zuckerberg is William Randolph Hearst to the power of ten.

So what to do? Left-leaning Democrats have an answer: revive the progressive interpretation of anti-trust policy and break up the internet monopolies. Superficially, they have a case. Amazon controls 65 per cent of all online new book sales. Google’s market share of online search is 87 per cent in the US. In mobile social networking, Facebook and its subsidiaries control 75 per cent of the American market.

Yet who seriously cares what the hipster anti-trust types say? Silicon Valley is a huge donor to the Democrats. Why would they make life difficult for Big Tech when it so openly leans left? The real question is when Republicans (and not just the President) are going to wake up to the threat they now face.

Two big battles are looming: one on the question of net neutrality (the principle that all bits of data should be treated alike, regardless of their content or value), the other on the 1996 Communications and Decency Act, which allows tech firms exemption from liability for content that appears on their platforms. A group of senators led by Rob Portman has started the ball rolling by seeking to impose liability on companies that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking on their platforms. The initial response of the Internet Association, a trade group that is essentially a mouthpiece for the Valley, was revealing: ‘The entire internet industry wants to end human trafficking,’ it said. ‘But there are ways to do this without amending a law foundational to legitimate internet services.’ Last month, however, the IA conceded the need for ‘targeted amendments’.

This battle is only just beginning, but its outcome could be decisive in both the 2018 midterm elections to Congress and the 2020 presidential race. The regulatory status quo is not only highly favourable to Silicon Valley. It could also prove highly unfavourable to Republican candidates — though (so far as I could tell on a recent visit to Washington) the penny has not yet dropped with lawmakers who are accustomed to talking only about deregulation, not regulation.

In many ways, what we are about to witness will be a classic struggle between new networks and established hierarchies. Like King Kong’s epic slugfest with Godzilla, however, it’s far from easy to predict which side will prevail - or how much collateral damage they will both inflict on American democracy. In the old Godzilla movies, after all, the one predictable thing is that Tokyo always gets destroyed.

Russia Provides New Internet Connection To North Korea

Authored by Martyn Williams via 38North.org,

A major Russian telecommunications company appears to have begun providing an Internet connection to North Korea. The new link supplements one from China and will provide back-up to Pyongyang at a time the US government is reportedly attacking its Internet infrastructure and pressuring China to end all business with North Korea.

The connection, from TransTeleCom, began appearing in Internet routing databases at 09:08 UTC on Sunday, or around 17:38 Pyongyang time on Sunday evening. Internet routing databases map the thousands of connections between telecom providers and enable computers to figure out the best route to a destination.

Until now, Internet users in North Korea and those outside accessing North Korean websites were all funneled along the same route connecting North Korean ISP Star JV and the global Internet: A China Unicom link that has been in operation since 2010.

Global Internet connectivity to Star JV. The orange denotes the China Unicom connection and blue the TransTeleCom. The graphic shows the Russian connection coming online around 0900 UTC, a short period of instability then a stable connection with two networks. (Dyn Research)

“The addition of Russian transit would create new internet path out of the country, increasing its resilience and international bandwidth capacity,” said Doug Madory, who analyzes global Internet connectivity at Dyn Research.

The new link comes at an interesting time.

On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that US Cyber Command has been carrying out denial of service attacks against North Korean hackers affiliated with the Reconnaissance General Bureau. The attacks attempt to overwhelm their computers and the Internet connection with traffic making them slow or impossible to use.

The US cyber attack was due to end on Saturday, reported the Post. That means the new Russian connection went online just after the US Cyber Command attack ended.

TransTeleCom, or TTK, is one of Russia’s biggest telecommunications companies and a subsidiary of the Russian railway operator. Fiber optic lines are laid alongside the railway and, according to a map on its website, on a route from Vladivostok right up to the North Korean border. 

A map of the TTK network shows a link running right up to the North Korean border.

That’s presumably at the Friendship Bridge, a railway crossing over the Tumen River that connects Khasan in Russia with Tumangang in North Korea. It’s the only connection between the two countries.

The Friendship Bridge connecting Russia (right) and North Korea (left). Photo: GoogleEarth.

This isn’t the first time North Korea has had alternate routes for Internet connectivity.

From 2012 for about a year, a second link to Star JV existed via Intelsat, an international satellite telecommunications operator, but in recent years the Chinese link has been the sole connection to Star JV.

Relying on one Internet provider has always left North Korea in a precarious situation.

More than once the link has been the target of denial of service attacks. Most were claimed by the “Anonymous” hacking collective, but on at least one previous occasion, many wondered if US intelligence services had carried out the action.

North Korea has few Internet users, but access to the network is available at major universities, to foreigners via smartphone, at government departments and major companies. Elite families are also suspected of having access. The cyber units of North Korea’s military also enjoy access.

The link is also vital for overseas researchers and academics who rely on access to North Korean state media websites for information.

New Generation Of Bombs Undetectable By Airport Scanners: What&#039;s The Solution?

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

In response to Homeland Security Ponders Laptop Ban On All International Flights: Surefire Way to Stop Bombs on Planes reader Brindu sent a pair of interesting links discussing new bombs that airport scanners cannot detect.

Please consider U.S. Believes ISIS’ Bomb-Making Research Includes New Generation of Explosives.

Amid the bombed-out ruins of Mosul University, U.S. officials say they have uncovered evidence that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was developing a new type of bomb that could pass through an airport scanner undetected.

CBS News joined Iraqi Special Forces in Mosul just days after the hard-fought battle to recapture the University in January. It’s long been believed that Mosul University was the center of the militants’ bomb-making projects, using the school’s equipment and labs.

Now, U.S. officials believe that research includes a new generation of more powerful explosives that could be concealed in a computer.

When ISIS overran Mosul in 2014, they also captured the city’s international airport. And with it, all the modern security scanner and screening equipment necessary to test their new bombs.

Professional Pilots Discussion

The Professional Pilots Rumor Network, PPRuNE Website, has a discussion on undetectable bombs.

Dubaian: What’s to stop ISIS putting this clever new ‘undetectable’ stuff in pretty well anything a PAX might take on board. And it’d be easier than replumbing a laptop.

Peekay4: A working explosive is composed of several elements. These elements can be disguised within a laptop, large tablet, etc. Put them into a box of chocolates or a can of Pringles, they would be very easy to detect.

EDLB: What can they detect in checked luggage but not in a carry-on?

Peekay4: Not going into specifics but part of the reason for requiring them in checked luggage is not only for detection but also isolation (containment).

Lomapaseo: Containment from what? If they go boom as baggage the damage is variable as hell based on location. If they go boom in the cabin the damage is predictable based on seat location and/or overhead storage which is specific by PNR (boarding pass). And then there is the fire hazard from a typical LI cheap battery in passenger luggage. In the overhead or cabin, it’s specific in location and ability to assess and contain.

Infrequentflyer789: If they go boom in the cabin the damage is predictable based on exactly where the attacker decides to set it off, which is nothing to do with a boarding pass. A small boom set by a clever attacker in the right place is going to be as big a threat as a large boom placed randomly, and that’s before we get onto stuff like shaped charges and really clever placement.

Edmundronald: This will make Chromebooks and other net-connected empty-shell computers the tool of choice for biz travelers. Rent one or buy a cheap one as soon as you touch down.

RTD1: Rather, this will result in a massive push towards video conferencing/telepresence in lieu of business travel. I’ve been a management/technology consultant flying weekly for 20 years now, and if this ban were extended to all domestic and international flights, I’d likely either find an alternative to in-person meetings or switch careers if it were not feasible. I haven’t checked a bag (save for gate checking carry-ons on puddle jumpers) in years. I keep my timelines from landing to meeting starts pretty tight, and I count on flying time for working. I’m not unique, such a rule would be devastating for business travel.

Pax Britanica: There is always an element of business travel that is not really necessary but its hard line to draw between beneficial and essential. There are also events like conferences where most of the attendees don’t’ actually attend but meet with peers from other companies and do business just because a lot of people from one industry are in the same place. Ie the conference itself isn’t really ‘necessary’ but it’s a good opportunity to meet clients and suppliers without doing separate trips. Video links are usually fine for inside the company work and some external stuff but many cultures like the physical presence bit.

Mickjoebill: What about camera crews and photographers who carry kilos of lumpy electronic gear onboard? It is trivial to provide enough power to activate a camera to make the battery appear unadulterated when the cells have been repacked with something deadly.Unless every item is sniffed, a laptop ban seems half arsed.

ISIS Knows What We Know About Them

The preceding comment by Mickjoebill gets to the heart of the matter. And that was the point of my satirical suggestion on a  Surefire Way to Stop Bombs on Planes.

ISIS knows, that we know, that they had been working on laptops. As a result, ISIS will likely shift to an electronic toy or camera equipment (as I suggested in my post).

FAA Traffic by the Numbers

In 2105, the FAA Traffic by Numbers website shows some interesting air traffic statistics.

• There were 8,727,691 commercial flights in 2015.


• There are 7,000 planes in the sky at any given time.


• There are 23,911 flights a day

Convenience vs Safety

Does it make sense to ban all laptops on all flights as they are discussing now?

Banning laptops alone is insufficient. It is impossible to eliminate all airplane risk without banning all flights.

Reader Maxx offered this pertinent thought:

At some point to unravel a knot, you have to start pulling on the other end of the string. Technology chasing technology only goes so far.

For all the time spent harassing a new mom about baby formula, we could be using those hours to interview a 20-year-old “quiet” male with no real friends and an extensive Facebook trail to a Pakistani ISP.

When are people going to wake up and realize politically correct bull&h!t is FATAL. This is costing our economy enormously.

Feudalism And The "Algorithmic Economy"

Authored by Thaddeus Howze via Medium.com,

For the sake of this essay, feudal economic models imply the idea that a very tiny segment of the society is fantastically rich while the bulk of society works hard, has few choices about the work they do, and tend to be poorly compensated for their efforts.

feu·dal·ism: noun, historical

the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord’s land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.

Welcome to the Algorithmic Economy, a future which uses machines to determine how effective you can be and how little they can pay you in the process.

There are no unions in this economy. There are no bosses to complain to. There are no people you can ask for redress. Because in this economy, the people doing the labor are considered the least important part of the machine and it’s best if they never communicate with someone living if it can be helped.

This is just like something out of a dark and dystopian science fiction novel, except its likely happening to you, right now. If it isn’t, unless you are very fortunate, it will be, soon. I write about the near-future in my speculative fiction. Often these are my most unpopular stories because they paint technology in a less-than-ideal light.

In a world in desperate need of positive imagery, a number of famed science fiction writers such as David Brin are recommending writers look at creating more beneficial, beneficent and Utopia-oriented stories, where people see the future as something to look forward to rather than promoting the more popular (and definitely easier to write) dystopias.

I have heard David Brin and know this work does need to be done, but having the extensive background in computer technology that I do, I still feel compelled to point out just how powerful and how much effect technology can have on our society now and in the near-future.

In “Dark Harvest” I point out the future of human trafficking improving its capacity to provide “slaves to order” using social media habits to gather intelligence on users making it possible to predict their behaviors and habits. Such technologies which I see being furthered by companies like Facebook, Instagram, and now Match.com are making it even easier to find, isolate and extract people from their lives without warning and without recourse.

In “We Now Return You to Our Scheduled Advertising” I posit a world overrun by “push” information technology being used to ensure advertising cannot be stopped from being heard by potential customers.

In our current world, television advertising is diminishing due to the power of DVR technology. As a result, smartphones (because they are harder to secure) are becoming a means of forcing users to endure advertising they don’t want in order to get content.

Companies are also learning how to hack your smartphone to send you content you did not ask for, by forcing your browsers to accept cookies, they can target you with specific advertising based on your search requests. Stores can, with the right software installed, direct information to your phone in order to influence your shopping decisions.

How long before such technology becomes part of the shopping experience you cannot opt out of? Recently it became possible to push an ad to speakers at remote locations using software technology. While it was immediately repudiated, it did not stop someone from discovering it could be done.

With recent laws being created, it will be possible to extract your data from an ISP and create profiles allowing advertisers to send information directly to you, no matter where you are.

THIS WEEK, THE House of Representatives followed the Senate in voting for a resolution that throws out Obama-era regulations that would have banned your internet service provider from selling your web browsing history to advertisers. What possible reason could Congress have for repealing such a consumer-friendly policy? The refrain on the House floor yesterday was “consistency.”

“What America needs is one standard across the internet ecosystem,” said representative Greg Walden (R-OR). If services like Google and Facebook can turn data into profit, the logic goes why can’t the cable companies?

But the House’s resolution doesn’t actually apply a single, consistent standard to the internet. It maintains the broken status quo, one in which internet service providers aren’t actually at a disadvantage to websites and apps. If anything, they’re held to a lower standard. (Wired.com)

I have also written about the nature of technology in a non-fiction format discussing the future of employment, opportunities for work and the eventual need for some kind of subsidy to offset the lack of employment opportunities in the future in an essay called: “Humans Need Not Apply.”

*  *  *

In this essay, I posit something I call the “Algorithmic Economy” though it is often called the “Sharing Economy” or the “On-Demand Economy” by economists and other writers on this subject.

I prefer the “Algorithmic Economy” because it speaks to the creeping effects on decisions being made by companies and organizations, which not only include automation used in factories, but the development of apps and programs which use algorithms to direct, control and manage Human behavior.

As programmers using design-thinking engage computers to map, monitor and control Human endeavors, it is becoming more prevalent that computers are effectively in charge of Human behaviors utilizing a number of algorithms (programmed behaviors and decisions made by programmers to elicit a desired response from Humans or there programs) to enrich corporations using such technology such as Lyft, Uber, TaskRabbit and many other such “on-demand” driven businesses.

The continued existence and economic support of such companies has created companies whose values seem far greater than the benefits such corporations provide to their workers. The company is perceived to have a fantastic value which benefits investors, disrupts previous businesses or services, often unfavorably, and enriches only those at the very top of the workforce in those companies, usually executives and senior developers.

At Uber, for example, depending on the city, drivers who are, in essence the bulk of the workforce for the company can make as little as $9-$11 an hour as their only compensation for working with the company. While they are promised upwards of $30 per hour in advertising, such rates vary widely depending on the number of drivers, the time of day, the density of calls and the optimization of algorithms designed to reduce wait time for customers and to provide customers with reductions in costs per mile.

None of these reductions, however improve the amount of money made by drivers and passengers weren’t until recently even able to use the Uber app to leave tips for employees through the service because Uber decided they paid well enough that tipping wasn’t a requirement.

In fact, one of Uber’s more successful passenger programs, Uber-Pool, reduces the earning capacity of drivers by at least one third since, it cuts the cost of long trips to a third of their value under the expectation the driver will be able to make up those costs by moving multiple passengers, simultaneously.

A driver is expected to upon receipt of an Uber-Pool passenger expect at any time, their trip may be interrupted by a call to another passenger. They are expected to navigate to this new location, find the next passenger, assure the current passenger of no serious delay and get back on the road depositing the two (or three) of them in order to nearby destinations.

Unfortunately, this multi-passenger event rarely happens, in essence, reducing the cost of long trips to one third of their value since pooling occurs far less often than Uber is willing to admit. A $20 trip becomes a $7 trip of which become $5.25 after Uber gets its cut.

Adding insult to injury, Uber does not treat its drivers as employees, thus they are not compensated for the use of their vehicles, their repairs, wear and tear, their gasoline, their healthcare, or any other such requirements of normal companies for their employees.

Instead, the drivers must bear the entirety of the expense of their “economic opportunity” while turning over one-quarter of what they earn in every transaction.

If Uber were honest, they would reveal to most drivers, that under the majority of circumstances, drivers lose more money than they earn (due to the costs of incurred during their driving and vehicle operation), depending on how the algorithms are structured where someone is working. I suspect more than Uber is at fault here. I would suspect the entire workforce development of the future is heading toward this path.

More workers are doing part-time work, on-call work, unscheduled work, without significant healthcare, sick leave, or vacation pay than ever before. Corporations have grown to the point they are unable to cut any more costs during their operations and continue to pay out to investors and executives their incredible levels of profitability without cutting corners on the only remaining element of running a business: their workforce.

Rather than restructuring pay or expectations for investors, these business engines will continue to impoverish their workers, using gamification to extend their hours, while reducing their pay and opportunities for healthy lifestyles.

The New York Times reports:

The secretive ride-hailing giant Uber rarely discusses internal matters in public. But in March, facing crises on multiple fronts, top officials convened a call for reporters to insist that Uber was changing its culture and would no longer tolerate “brilliant jerks.”

Notably, the company also announced that it would fix its troubled relationship with drivers, who have complained for years about falling pay and arbitrary treatment.

“We’ve underinvested in the driver experience,” a senior official said. “We are now re-examining everything we do in order to rebuild that love.”

And yet even as Uber talks up its determination to treat drivers more humanely, it is engaged in an extraordinary behind-the-scenes experiment in behavioral science to manipulate them in the service of its corporate growth?—?an effort whose dimensions became evident in interviews with several dozen current and former Uber officials, drivers and social scientists, as well as a review of behavioral research.

Uber’s innovations reflect the changing ways companies are managing workers amid the rise of the freelance-based “gig economy.” Its drivers are officially independent business owners rather than traditional employees with set schedules. This allows Uber to minimize labor costs, but means it cannot compel drivers to show up at a specific place and time. And this lack of control can wreak havoc on a service whose goal is to seamlessly transport passengers whenever and wherever they want.

The Algorithmic Economy isn’t only going to stay in disruptive companies like the On-Demand workforce, it will make its way into other workforces, slowly, insidiously removing time, opportunities for growth, limiting costs by reducing perks except for the elite, in order to create the second age of feudal endeavor.

Their goal is to create a workforce bound by their economic debt to the system, forced to take whatever work they can find, while being paid as little for that work as possible, understanding ultimately, the creation of an indentured workforce is not only the result but an expected one, keeping society enfeebled and unable to create opportunities for further development.

Since all new creativity is held hostage in the hands of insensitive investors who promote the development of White business leaders to the exclusion of any other forms of creativity. Seventy five percent of all investment dollars are placed into the hands of White men. In the tech industry, most companies are run by, lead by, and pay the bulk of their company’s value to White men, the primary beneficiaries of such investment effort.

The Algorithmic Economy resembles feudalism complete with peasants who lack choices, and lords who decide who can become a lord, who remains a peasant, and defining the value of a peasant’s worth based on what the lord is willing to pay the peasant.

Like the feudal lords of old, neo-feudalism says they are willing to pay indebted students, just enough to not have any opportunity next year, either.

The older workers who might have known their worth will have to find a way to live off the land, creating their own slower growing opportunities because no one is funding anything which offers an opportunity for people to experience economic parity or the ability to own an operation which treats them humanely, pays them fairly, and doesn’t believe exploitation is an effective work and pay structure.

For most older workers, their opportunities lie with older exploitive corporations such as Walmart, known for its low pay and older workforce, or at the hands of the aforementioned Uber, who has, at least in the Bay Area, has a much older, and more minority workforce.

The driver diversity makeup is distinct from the much Whiter corporate office workers who draw the lion’s share of the money from the Algorithmic Economy they have helped to create and surely recognize how their algorithm exploits their workers.

If Uber’s programmers are smart enough to recognize how those numbers and gamification ensure their own prosperity, they are also aware that drivers earn less, stay with the company for less time and will eventually leave the company once they understand how they are being exploited.

Can such companies change their behaviors? It is unlikely given the expectations of double digit growth by investors and the stock market. Thus we can assume, such companies will continue to make money for the elite members of society while being a drain on every other aspect of our social fabric undermining individual wealth and earnings, employment opportunities, home ownership, and community development.

People without money can’t improve themselves or their communities. People who exploit those people don’t help with those communities either, creating a vacuum effect, taking money from communities without ever returning an equal or greater amount of money to those areas, ensuring the slow and inexorable decline of society over time.

Do a bit of research on the subject of the On-Demand economy. While prognostications promote the idea it is good for investors, almost no mention of the people doing the work and their eventual fates are ever mentioned. There is an amazing collection of essays on the On-Demand economy which point out the future of this industry and what it means to the modern workforce.

There will be arguments on both sides of the fence, pro and con, but my entreaty to you is simple: Read about it. Learn about it. Pay attention to the disruptive force it is having on your society because while you may believe it doesn’t affect you, you’re wrong.

Don’t take my word for it. Watch it and see for yourself. It is happening before you eyes. Don’t blink.

The workforce of the future will be smaller than you think.

How To Protect Your Online Privacy Now That Congress Sold You Out

Authored by Eric Limer via Popular Mechanics

All your private online data—the websites you visit, the content of your chats and emails, your health info, and your location—just became suddenly less secure. Not because of hackers, but because Congress just blocked crucial privacy regulations. This will allow your internet service provider to collect all your data and sell that info to the highest bidder without asking you first. Welcome to a brave new world.

A pair of resolutions, which passed through the Senate and House with exclusively Republican votes, roll back rules proposed by the Democratic leadership of the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama administration which, though passed in October, had not yet gone into effect.

The rules—which will be completely dead following the expected signature of President Trump—would have required ISPs to get explicit opt-in approval from customers before selling the following "sensitive data":

 

This doesn"t just mean that sharing that information without your explicit permission will be fine and dandy. Since the rules were rolled back through the Congressional Review Act, the FCC is also barred from creating any "substantially similar" rules down the line.

In theory, the information collected will be stored under some sort of ID separate from your actual name. But that"s a cold comfort considering the level of detail in this sort of information would make your identity a dead giveaway, and ISPs can hardly be trusted to keep your identifying information suitably safe from prying eyes. After all, they"ll be building dossiers any hacker would love to steal.

What to do? There are a few things you can do to try and keep your data safe, and while they aren"t necessarily easy or free, they"re worth it if you value your privacy.

Opt out with your ISP

Your ISP may not need your permission to sell your data, but you can still go to them and tell them not to do it. The catch, of course, is this requires you to be proactive, and there"s no real guarantee that this will protect you completely. Still, do it. Get on the phone or visit the website of your ISP and opt out of every ad-related thing—and into every privacy-related thing—you can find. The process can be a little arduous—often requiring the use of your ISP-given email address that you probably never use—and it may not take effect immediately either. All the better reason to do it now.

Time Warner/Spectrum customers can find their privacy dashboard here. Comcast customers can opt out of some targeted programs using these instructions. Verizon customers can find opt out options here. Remember, your phone company is technically an ISP too, so look up your options on that front as well.

Opting out is an important first step, but it is not enough to actually preserve your privacy. Your ISP is not necessarily giving you the opportunity to opt out of all its ad-targeting programs. As the policy counsel at the Open Technology Institute, Eric Null, told Gizmodo, it is "highly unlikely" the new FCC will go after ISPs that aren"t offering robust opportunities to opt-out.

Some smaller ISPs, which survive on small and satisfied customer bases as opposed to a large and captive audience, are more incentivized to protect your privacy with gusto. In fact, a whole host of small ISPs wrote a letter to Congress opposing this move. If you"re lucky enough to have the option of switching to one, now might be a good time.

Keep your data out of your ISP"s hands in the first place

Your ISP is uniquely suited to snoop on your information. Anything you put online has to pass through its hands. Email you send through Gmail, chats through Facebook Messenger—they all travel through your ISP before they reach the service that actually sends them on. But while it is impossible to cut your ISP out of this exchange entirely, you can hide the data as you are sending it.

Apps with end-to-end encryption can encrypt your private information on the phone or computer you"re using, ensuring that it is coded and protected through the entire delivery process. So while your ISP can see the data go by, they can"t make sense of it.

Secure chat apps like Signal will be crucial to keep your chats private not only from the government and hackers, but from your ISP. Just make sure these services have security measures that are open-source and trusted by experts who can help keep them honest. You can also encrypt data manually, using a standard like PGP, before you send it off into the web, but it can be an arduous process, because you have to ensure that the recipient has the means to decode that info and read it.

The most seamless solution is to pay for a Virtual Private Network—a VPN—which allows you to encrypt all the data that passes through your ISP. This means that while your ISP is still doing the work of hauling your data around, it can"t understand any of it. The downside to this is that VPNs (at least any VPNs you can trust) are not free. Most good ones will require a yearly subscription. Furthermore, you aren"t hiding your personal data from everyone, you are just entrusting it to the VPN instead of your ISP, so do your research and choose a VPN you trust not to sell you out. Fortunately, since VPNs exist exclusively to keep your data private, they are pretty incentivized to keep you happy.

The only one you can really trust to protect you is you.

The short and uncomfortable truth is this: Until more robust privacy protections are put in place, the burden of protecting your online data falls on you. Keep it in mind, do your research, and remember that your monopolized ISP has every reason in the world to sell you out and wring your data for every dime that it is worth. The only one you can really trust to protect you is you.

Britain Passes The "Snooper Charter" Ending All Privacy

Submitted by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

Britain has passed what everyone calls the “snooper’s charter” otherwise known as the Investigatory Powers Bill.

This new legislation establishes the legal framework authorizing the government to hack into devices, networks and services in bulk and to create vast databases of personal information on all UK citizens. This is a preliminary step for a movement to impose worldwide taxation on Brits.

This is really to hunt money, not terrorism.

The “snooper’s charter” requires internet, phone and communication app companies to store records for 12 months and allow authorities to access them whenever they demand. That data will include anything you look at or search on the internet as well as all your telephone calls and text messages. Meanwhile, security agencies will be able to force companies to decrypt data avoiding the Apple confrontation in the USA. They are also imposing limitations on the use of end-to-end encryption.

They want EVERYTHING you do. This has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with terrorism.

This is the hunt for taxes coming to a head in 2017.

Here"s a reminder, via Wired.com"s Matt Burgess, of what the legislation includes:

Hacking power

For the first time, security services will be able to hack into computers, networks, mobile devices, servers and more under the proposed plans. The practice is known as equipment interference and is set out in part 5, chapter 2, of the IP Bill.

This could include downloading data from a mobile phone that is stolen or left unattended, or software that tracks every keyboard letter pressed being installed on a laptop.

"More complex equipment interference operations may involve exploiting existing vulnerabilities in software in order to gain control of devices or networks to remotely extract material or monitor the user of the device," a draft code of conduct says.

The power will be available to police forces and intelligence services. Warrants must be issued for the hacking to take place.

Bulk hacking

For those not living in the UK, but who have come to the attention of the security agencies, the potential to be hacked increases. Bulk equipment interference (chapter 3 of the IP Bill) allows for large scale hacks in "large operations".

Data can be gathered from "a large number of devices in the specified location". A draft code of practice says a foreign region (although it does not give a size) where terrorism is suspected could be targeted, for instance. As a result, it is likely the data of innocent people would be gathered.

Security and intelligence agencies must apply for a warrant from the Secretary of State and these groups are the only people who can complete bulk hacks.

Commissioners

To help oversee the new powers, the Home Office is introducing new roles to approve warrants and handle issues that arise from the new powers. The Investigatory Powers Commissioner (IPC) and judicial commissioners (part 8, chapter 1 of the IP Bill) will be appointed by Theresa May, or whoever the serving prime minister is at the time.

The IPC will be a senior judge and be supported by other high court judges. "The IPC will audit compliance and undertake investigations," the government says.

"The Commissioner will report publicly and make recommendations on what he finds in the course of his work," guidance on the original bill says (page 6). "He will also publish guidance when it is required on the proper use of investigatory powers."

Web records

Under the IP Bill, security services and police forces will be able to access communications data when it is needed to help their investigations. This means internet history data (Internet Connection Records, in official speak) will have to be stored for 12 months.

Communications service providers, which include everything from internet companies and messenger services to postal services, will have to store meta data about the communications made through their services.

The who, what, when, and where will have to be stored. This will mean your internet service provider stores that you visited WIRED.co.uk to read this article, on this day, at this time and where from (i.e. a mobile device). This will be done for every website visited for a year.

Web records and communications data is detailed under chapter 3, part 3 of the law and warrants are required for the data to be accessed. A draft code of practice details more information on communications data.

Bulk data sets

As well as communications data being stored, intelligence agencies will also be able to obtain and use "bulk personal datasets". These mass data sets mostly include a "majority of individuals" that aren"t suspected in any wrongdoing but have been swept-up in the data collection.

These (detailed under part 7 of the IP Bill and in a code of practice), as well as warrants for their creation and retention must be obtained.

"Typically these datasets are very large, and of a size which means they cannot be processed manually," the draft code of practice describes the data sets as. These types of databases can be created from a variety of sources.

Finally, we leave it to Edward Snowden to summarize just how insane this bill is...

The UK has just legalized the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes farther than many autocracies. https://t.co/yvmv8CoHrj

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 17, 2016