Further Reading, Other Developments, and Coming Events (30 July)

Coming Events, Cybersecurity, FCC, Further Reading, NTIA, Other Developments, People's Republic of China, Section 230, Technology, Telecommunications 15 Minutes

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Here are Further Reading, Other Developments, and Coming Events.

Coming Events

  • On 30 July, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee’s Security Subcommittee will hold a hearing titled “The China Challenge: Realignment of U.S. Economic Policies to Build Resiliency and Competitiveness” with these witnesses:
    • The Honorable Nazak Nikakhtar, Assistant Secretary for Industry and Analysis, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce
    • Dr. Rush Doshi, Director of the Chinese Strategy Initiative, The Brookings Institution
    • Mr. Michael Wessel, Commissioner, U.S. – China Economic and Security Review Commission
  • On 30 July, the House Armed Services Committee’s Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee will hold a hearing titled “Review of the Recommendations of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission” with these witnesses:
    • Senator Angus King (I-ME), Chairman, Cyberspace Solarium Commission
    • Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Chairman, Cyberspace Solarium Commission
    • The Honorable Patrick Murphy, Commissioner, Cyberspace Solarium Commission
    • Mr. Frank Cilluffo, Commissioner, Cyberspace Solarium Commission
  • On 31 July, the House Intelligence Committee will mark up its Intelligence Authorization Act.
  • On 31 July the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress will hold a business meeting “to consider proposed recommendations.”
  • On 3 August the House Oversight and Reform Committee will hold a hearing on the tenth “Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act” (FITARA) scorecard on federal information technology.
  • On 4 August, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing titled “Findings and Recommendations of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission” with these witnesses:
    • Senator Angus S. King, Jr. (I-ME), Co-Chair, Cyberspace Solarium Commission
    • Representative Michael J. Gallagher (R-WI), Co-Chair, Cyberspace Solarium Commission
    • Brigadier General John C. Inglis, ANG (Ret.), Commissioner, Cyberspace Solarium Commission
  • On 6 August, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will hold an open meeting to likely consider the following items:
    • C-band Auction Procedures. The Commission will consider a Public Notice that would adopt procedures for the auction of new flexible-use overlay licenses in the 3.7–3.98 GHz band (Auction 107) for 5G, the Internet of Things, and other advanced wireless services. (AU Docket No. 20-25)
    • Radio Duplication Rules. The Commission will consider a Report and Order that would eliminate the radio duplication rule with regard to AM stations and retain the rule for FM stations. (MB Docket Nos. 19-310. 17-105)
    • Common Antenna Siting Rules. The Commission will consider a Report and Order that would eliminate the common antenna siting rules for FM and TV broadcaster applicants and licensees. (MB Docket Nos. 19-282, 17-105)
    • Telecommunications Relay Service. The Commission will consider a Report and Order to repeal certain TRS rules that are no longer needed in light of changes in technology and voice communications services. (CG Docket No. 03-123)
  • The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will hold the “Exploring Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trustworthiness: Workshop Series Kickoff Webinar,” “a NIST initiative involving private and public sector organizations and individuals in discussions about building blocks for trustworthy AI systems and the associated measurements, methods, standards, and tools to implement those building blocks when developing, using, and testing AI systems” on 6 August.
  • On 18 August, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will host the “Bias in AI Workshop, a virtual event to develop a shared understanding of bias in AI, what it is, and how to measure it.”

Other Developments

  • Senate Armed Services Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-OK) has publicly placed a hold on the re-nomination of Federal Communications Commission member over the agency’s April decision to permit Ligado to proceed with its plan “to deploy a low-power terrestrial nationwide network in the 1526-1536 MHz, 1627.5-1637.5 MHz, and 1646.5-1656.5 MHz bands that will primarily support Internet of Things (IoT) services.” This is the latest means of pressing the FCC Inhofe and allies on Capitol Hill and in the Trump Administration have taken. In the recently passed “National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2021” (S.4049) there is language requiring “the Secretary of Defense to enter into an agreement with the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct an independent technical review of the Order and Authorization adopted by the FCC on April 19, 2020 (FCC 20–48). The independent technical review would include a comparison of the two different approaches used for evaluation of potential harmful interference. The provision also would require the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine to submit a report on the independent technical review.” This provision may make it into the final FY 2021 NDAA, which would stop Ligado from proceeding before the conclusion of the study.
  • Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has released yet another bill amending 47 USC 230 (aka Section 230), the “Behavioral Advertising Decisions Are Downgrading Services (BAD ADS) Act,” that “remove Section 230 immunity from Big Tech companies that display manipulative, behavioral ads or provide data to be used for them.” Considering that targeting advertising forms a significant part of the revenue stream for such companies, this seems to be of a piece with other bills of Hawley’s and others to pressure social media platforms. Hawley noted he “has been a leading critic of Section 230’s protection of Big Tech firms and recently called for Twitter to lose immunity if it chooses to editorialize on political speech.”
  • The United States National Counterintelligence and Security Center (US NCSC) issued a statement on election security on the 100th day before the 2020 Presidential Election. US NCSC Director William Evanina described the risks facing the US heading into November but did not detail US efforts to address and counter the efforts of foreign nations to influence and disrupt Presidential and Congressional elections this fall. The US NCSC explained it is working with other federal agencies and stakeholders, however.
    • US NCSC Director William Evanina explained the purpose of the press release is to “share insights with the American public about foreign threats to our election and offer steps to citizens across the country to build resilience and help mitigate these threats…[and] to update Americans on the evolving election threat landscape, while also safeguarding our intelligence sources and methods.” Evanina noted “Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has been providing robust intelligence-based briefings on election security to the presidential campaigns, political committees, and Congressional audiences.” Including the assertion “[i]n leading these classified briefings, I have worked to ensure fidelity, accountability, consistency and transparency with these stakeholders and presented the most timely and accurate information we have to offer” may be Evanina’s way of pushing back on concerns that the White House has placed people loyal to the President at the top of some IC entities who may lack independence. Top Democrats
    • The US NCSC head asserted “[e]lection security remains a top priority for the Intelligence Community and we are committed in our support to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), given their leadership roles in this area.”
    • Evanina claimed “[a]t this time, we’re primarily concerned with China, Russia and Iran — although other nation states and non-state actors could also do harm to our electoral process….[and] [o]ur insights and judgments will evolve as the election season progresses:
      • China is expanding its influence efforts to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interests, and counter criticism of China. Beijing recognizes its efforts might affect the presidential race.
      • Russia’s persistent objective is to weaken the United States and diminish our global role. Using a range of efforts, including internet trolls and other proxies, Russia continues to spread disinformation in the U.S. that is designed to undermine confidence in our democratic process and denigrate what it sees as an anti-Russia “establishment” in America.
      • Iran seeks to undermine U.S. democratic institutions and divide the country in advance of the elections. Iran’s efforts center around online influence, such as spreading disinformation on social media and recirculating anti-U.S. content.
    • Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Mark Warner (D-VA) released their response to the NCSC statement:
      • The statement just released by NCSC Director William Evanina does not go nearly far enough in arming the American people with the knowledge they need about how foreign powers are seeking to influence our political process. The statement gives a false sense of equivalence to the actions of foreign adversaries by listing three countries of unequal intent, motivation and capability together. The statement, moreover, fails to fully delineate the goal, nature, scope and capacity to influence our election, information the American people must have as we go into November. To say without more, for example, that Russia seeks to ‘denigrate what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment’ in America’ is so generic as to be almost meaningless. The statement omits much on a subject of immense importance.
      • “In our letter two weeks ago, we called on the FBI to provide a defensive briefing to the entire Congress about specific threats related to a concerted foreign disinformation campaign, and this is more important than ever.  But a far more concrete and specific statement needs to be made to the American people, consistent with the need to protect sources and methods.  We can trust the American people with knowing what to do with the information they receive and making those decisions for themselves. But they cannot do so if they are kept in the dark about what our adversaries are doing, and how they are doing it.  When it comes to American elections, Americans must decide.”
    • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Marco Rubio (R-FL) issued their own statement:
      • We are disappointed by the statement from Senator Schumer, Senator Warner, Speaker Pelosi, and Representative Schiff about Bill Evanina, the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. Evanina is a career law enforcement and intelligence professional with extensive experience in counterintelligence. His reputation as a straight-shooter immune from politics is well-deserved. It is for this reason that Evanina received overwhelming support from the Senate when he was confirmed to be Director of the NCSC and again when the Administration tapped him to lead the nation’s efforts to protect the 2020 elections from foreign interference.
      • We believe the statement baselessly impugns his character and politicizes intelligence matters. Their manufactured complaint undercuts Director Evanina’s nonpartisan public outreach to increase Americans’ awareness of foreign influence campaigns right at the beginning of his efforts.
      • Prior to their public statements, Director Evanina had previewed his efforts and already offered to provide another round of briefings to the Congress on the threat and steps the US government has taken over the last three and a half years to combat it. We believe the threat is real, and is more complex than many partisans may wish to admit. We welcome these briefings, and hope our colleagues will listen to the career professionals who have been given this mission.
      •  We will not discuss classified information in public, but we are confident that while the threat remains, we are far better prepared than four years ago. The intelligence community, law enforcement, election officials, and others involved in securing our elections are far better postured, and Congress dramatically better informed, than any of us were in 2016—and our Democrat colleagues know it.
  • The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) and the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) issued “new Cloud Security Guidance co-designed with industry to support the secure adoption of cloud services across government and industry.” The agencies stated this new release “will guide organisations including government, Cloud Service Providers (CSP), and Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) assessors on how to perform a comprehensive assessment of a cloud service provider and its cloud services, so a risk-informed decision can be made about its suitability to handle an organisation’s data.” ACSC and DTA added “The Cloud Security Guidance is supported by forthcoming updates to the Australian Government Information Security Manual (ISM), the Attorney-General’s Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF), and the DTA’s Secure Cloud Strategy.”
  • The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) studied how well facial recognition technology and services could identify people wearing masks and, to no great surprise, the results were not good with respect to accuracy. NIST stressed that the facial recognition technology were not calibrated for masks in qualifying its results. In its Interagency Report NISTIR 8311, NIST found
    • Algorithm accuracy with masked faces declined substantially across the board. Using unmasked images, the most accurate algorithms fail to authenticate a person about 0.3% of the time. Masked images raised even these top algorithms’ failure rate to about 5%, while many otherwise competent algorithms failed between 20% to 50% of the time.
    • Masked images more frequently caused algorithms to be unable to process a face, technically termed “failure to enroll or template” (FTE). Face recognition algorithms typically work by measuring a face’s features — their size and distance from one another, for example — and then comparing these measurements to those from another photo. An FTE means the algorithm could not extract a face’s features well enough to make an effective comparison in the first place.
    • The more of the nose a mask covers, the lower the algorithm’s accuracy. The study explored three levels of nose coverage — low, medium and high — finding that accuracy degrades with greater nose coverage.
    • While false negatives increased, false positives remained stable or modestly declined. Errors in face recognition can take the form of either a “false negative,” where the algorithm fails to match two photos of the same person, or a “false positive,” where it incorrectly indicates a match between photos of two different people. The modest decline in false positive rates show that occlusion with masks does not undermine this aspect of security.
    • The shape and color of a mask matters. Algorithm error rates were generally lower with round masks. Black masks also degraded algorithm performance in comparison to surgical blue ones, though because of time and resource constraints the team was not able to test the effect of color completely.
    • NIST explained this report
      • is the first of a series of reports on the performance of face recognition algorithms on faces occluded by protective face masks [2] commonly worn to reduce inhalation of viruses or other contaminants. This study is being run under the Ongoing Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) executed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This report documents accuracy of algorithms to recognize persons wearing face masks. The results in this report apply to algorithms provided to NIST before the COVID-19 pandemic, which were developed without expectation that NIST would execute them on masked face images.
  • The United States National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) inside the White House announced the establishment of the Quantum Leap Challenges Institutes program and “$75 million for three new institutes designed to have a tangible impact in solving” problems associated with quantum information science and engineering. NSF added “Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes also form the centerpiece of NSF’s Quantum Leap, an ongoing, agency-wide effort to enable quantum systems research and development.” NSF and OSTP named the following institutes:
    • NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Present and Future Quantum Computing. Today’s quantum computing prototypes are rudimentary, error-prone, and small-scale. This institute, led by the University of California, Berkeley, plans to learn from these to design advanced, large-scale quantum computers, develop efficient algorithms for current and future quantum computing platforms, and ultimately demonstrate that quantum computers outperform even the best conceivable classical computers.
  • The United States Department of Energy (DOE) published its “Blueprint for the Quantum Internet” “that lays out a blueprint strategy for the development of a national quantum internet, bringing the United States to the forefront of the global quantum race and ushering in a new era of communications” and held an event to roll out the new document and approach. The Blueprint is part of the Administration’s effort to implement the “National Quantum Initiative Act” (P.L. 115-368), a bill “[t]o provide for a coordinated Federal program to accelerate quantum research and development for the economic and national security of the United States.” Under Secretary of Energy for Science Paul Dabbar explained in a blog post that “[t]he Blueprint lays out four priority research opportunities to make this happen:
    • Providing the foundational building blocks for Quantum Internet;
    • Integrating Quantum networking devices;
    • Creating repeating, switching, and routing technologies for Quantum entanglement;
    • Enabling error correction of Quantum networking functions.
  • The European Commission (EC) is requesting feedback until 10 September on its impact assessment for future European Union legislation on artificial intelligence (AI). The EC explained “the  overall  policy  objective  is  to  ensure  the  development  and  uptake  of lawful  and trustworthy  AI across the Single Market through the creation of an ecosystem of trust.” Earlier this year, as part of its Digital Strategy, the EC recently released a white paper earlier this year, “On Artificial Intelligence – A European approach to excellence and trust,” in which the Commission articulates its support for “a regulatory and investment oriented approach with the twin objective of promoting the uptake of AI and of addressing the risks associated with certain uses of this new technology.” The EC stated that “[t]he purpose of this White Paper is to set out policy options on how to achieve these objectives…[but] does not address the development and use of AI for military purposes.”

Further Reading

  • “Google Takes Aim at Amazon. Again.” – The New York Times. For the fifth time in the last decade, Google will try to take on Amazon, in part, because the latter’s dominance in online retailing is threatening the former’s dominance in online advertising. Google is offering a suite of inducements for retailers to use its platform, Google Shopping. One wonders if Google gains traction whether Amazon would point to the competition as proof it is not engaged in anti-competitive practices to regulators.
  • “Twitter’s security woes included broad access to user accounts” – Ad Age. This piece details the years long tension inside the social media giant between strengthening internal security and developing features to make more money. Not surprisingly, the latter consideration almost always trumped the former, a situation exacerbated by Twitter’s growing use of third-party contractors to handle back end functions, including security. Apparently, many contractors would spy on celebrities’ accounts, sometimes using workarounds to defeat Twitter’s security. Even though this article claims it was only contractors, one wonders if some Twitter employees were doing the same. Whatever the case, Twitter’s board has been warned about weak security for years and opted against heeding this advice, a factor that likely allowed the platform to get hacked a few weeks ago. Worse still, the incentives do not seem aligned to drive better security in the future. 
  • “We’re in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. Big Tech is already preparing for the next one.” – Protocol. For people who think large technology companies have not had a prominent enough role during the current pandemic, this news will be reassuring. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), a non-profit organized under Section 501(c)(6) of United States’ tax laws, has commenced with a “Public Health Tech Initiative” “[t]o ensure an effective public sector response to future pandemics like COVID-19.” This group “will explore and create recommendations for the use of technology in dealing with and recovering from future public health emergencies.”
  • “Car Companies Want to Monitor Your Every Move With Emotion-Detecting AI” – Vice’s Motherboard. A number of companies are selling auto manufacturers on a suite of technology that could record everything that happens in your car, including facial analysis algorithms, for a variety of purposes with financial motives such as behavioral advertising, setting insurance rates, and others. The United States does not have any laws that directly regulate such practices whereas the European Union does, suggesting such technology would be deployed less in Europe.
  • “Russian Intelligence Agencies Push Disinformation on Pandemic” – The New York Times. United States (US) intelligence agencies declassified and share intelligence with journalists purporting to show how Russian Federation intelligence agencies have adapted their techniques in their nonstop disinformation campaign against the US, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and others. As Facebook, Twitter, and others have grown adept at locating and removing content from obvious Russian outlets like RT and Sputnik, Russian agencies are utilizing more subtle techniques, aiming at the same goal of undermining confidence among Americans and elsewhere in the government.

© Michael Kans, Michael Kans Blog and michaelkans.blog, 2019-2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Michael Kans, Michael Kans Blog, and michaelkans.blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Published by Michael Kans

An attorney who specializes in technology policy, law, and politics with other areas of expertise.

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