An effort exists to cast Net Neutrality in a political light, but it seems that most people, regardless of their political affiliation, reject that and prefer to have the protections offered by Net Neutrality remain in place. Although the Federal Communications Commission has voted to terminate Net Neutrality, one option remains, but the timer is running.
It's easy to cast this in political terms because Net Neutrality was established during the Obama administration when Tom Wheeler was the FCC chairman and dismantled by the current FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, who was named to head the FCC by Donald Trump. Pai, however, was appointed to the FCC by Barack Obama. The ISPs, understanding the political divide that exists in the nation today, are attempting to position Net Neutrality as a battle between Democrats and Republicans, between progressives and conservatives. Statistics do not support this.
Research by the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation shows that more than 80% of voters are in favor of Net Neutrality. The breakdown shows a small political bias, but voters in all political classifications favor Net Neutrality: 75% of Republicans, 89% of Democrats, and 86% of independents.
Source: http://www.publicconsultation.org/united-states/overwhelming-bipartisan-majority-opposes-repealing-net-neutrality/
Less than half of House Republicans have publicly expressed approval of the decision to end Net Neutrality and several Republican senators called on the FCC to delay its vote on the matter.
Net Neutrality was established in 2015 when the FCC reclassified the internet as a "Title II" common carrier. This distinction gave the agency the authority to pass rules that banned blocking and throttling of content, or selling faster lanes to companies wanting to get speedier access to consumers. Supporters included Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Tim Berners-Lee (widely considered to be the inventor of the Web), and virtually every company that uses the internet as part of its business operations.
Variety Magazine reported in its December 14 issue "Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, in an interview on Wednesday for Variety‘s 'PopPolitics' on SiriusXM, said the vote is a victory for telecom and cable companies, and that the danger is that the internet will begin to resemble the tiered system of cable TV platforms."
If you'd like to read the FCC rule (all 539 pages of it), you'll find it here. The FCC adopted the rule on December 14, 2017, but didn't release it until January 4, 2018.
Congress can overturn the FCC's vote using what's called a "resolution of disapproval", but it must happen quickly. The Congressional Review Act can be used, but it must be used within 60 legislative days -- days when Congress is in session. Numerous organizations have set up petition sites, but the most effective method is still writing or calling the House or Senate members who represent you.
Journalist Dana Floberg explains that the CRA empowers Congress to review new regulations and pass a joint resolution of disapproval to overrule any recent regulations it doesn't like: "Think of it as a double negative: If we repeal Pai's repeal, we could end up right back where we started -- with strong Net Neutrality rules."
Millions of Americans depend on the internet for information, entertainment, and even to work. Without Net Neutrality, cable companies can control what you see, say, and do on-line. Credible reports exists to show that the the FCC's public comment process was corrupted by millions of fake comments. Already 18 state attorneys general have filed suit. Bipartisan members of Congress have legislation to reverse the FCC's action, but they need support from voters.
The Congressional Review Act gives Congress the power to review new regulations such as the FCC's rule that destroys Net Neutrality even though it carries the double-speak name "Restoring internet Freedom".
If you believe that internet service providers will continue to play nice and deliver the content you want, consider these abuses that happened before Net Neutrality was an FCC rule:
It's likely that the ISPs will play nice for a while, perhaps long enough to lull consumers into wondering what the fuss was all about, but it's unlikely to last. Fight for the Future, a group that wholeheartedly supports Net Neutrality has created an app for Android and IOS devices that's intended to identify ISP meddling.
The app is not available for desktop computers. If you have both Android and IOS devices, you may want to install it on one or the other, but not both. The tests would reveal the same information regardless of the platform for your Wi-Fi connection. However, if you use a significant amount of data with your cellular plan, installing on multiple devices would be reasonable -- or, alternatively, running the tests with Wi-Fi turned on and then running the tests again with Wi-Fi turned off.
The app measures the speed and performance of your network and its video streaming performance, whether and how websites are blocked, and identifies systems that could be responsible for censorship or surveillance.
When you install the app, you'll find some scary warnings, including this statement: "When testing websites for censorship, you will connect to and download data from provocative or objectionable sites (e.g., pornography) that might be illegal in your country." This doesn't mean that the testing will download pornography to your computer -- only that it will attempt to connect to such sites.
The app includes the NDT Speed Test to measure network speed and performance, the DASH Streaming Test to measure video streaming performance, and a Web Connectivity Test that checks whether websites are blocked through DNS tampering, TCP/IP blocking, or by a transparent HTTP proxy. The tests collect data that can serve as evidence of internet censorship, and you will be provided with circumvention tips.
Unless you specify otherwise, data collected from the tests will be reported back to the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), which will publish measurement data so that third parties can study and verify the findings.
Users can choose to have their IP address included in the data, but this is not essential. The tests should be run occasionally and you can set the app to remind you. When problems are identified, the app will attempt to provide information about how you can work around them.
In my first test, the app reported possible censorship on GreenPeace.org and a potential problem on RadioIslam.org, but the organization says "A single test may not definitely prove that censorship exists, but the more data collected from different internet users and different locations, the more advocates can demonstrate censorship, call attention to negative behavior, and push for change. To do this, we need data from many users over a long time period during different hours of the day."
Each time the test runs, it selects different websites to query. Every time I have run the test, one or two sites show problems; I suspect that this has more to do with normal network congestion than with active censorship by my internet service provider. All of the other tests reported "no problems".
But now is the time to act. Contact your representative and senators, regardless of the party they belong to, and encourage them to reject the FCC's abolition of Net Neutrality rules. If we make our collective voices known now, it may be possible to show legislators that there is no political divide on this issue.
If you don't know the identifies of your representative and senators, WhoIsMyRepresentative can provide that information.
Spectre and Meltdown are hardware design flaws that expose millions of PCs, phones, tablets, and servers to attack. By allowing attackers to get around system protections and read information from memory, the flaws could reveal passwords and other sensitive data.
As we learned a week ago all Intel processors created within the past decade are vulnerable. Operating system patches can reduce the risk, but the fixes have their own flaws.
The operating system changes required are not insignificant modifications. AMD processors are not vulnerable to Meltdown, but can be affected by Spectre. Spectre is harder to exploit, so the risk is smaller. This week we found that many Android and IOS smart phones and tablets also can be compromised via these flaws. And even worse, Microsoft's operating system patch -- when applied to computers with AMD processors -- can cause the update to fail and make a rollback to the previous version of the operating system impossible.
Apple says all Macs are affected by Spectre and the company plans to release an update for computers "soon" and computers running MacOS version 10.13.2 should generally be safe.
All of the current patches from all manufacturers reduce the risks, but do not eliminate them.
Most mobile operating systems will apply patches automatically when they are available.
Samsung claims to have "effectively mitigated" the exploits with a recent patch. Google pushed out patches for its Pixel and Nexus models this week. Huawei plans to push out firmware updates, but hasn't yet indicated when that will happen. All versions of the Apple's IPhones and IPads are affected by both flaws and Apple's response, so far, has been to tell users to download apps only from the App Store and other trusted sources and to release an updated version of Safari for IOS. A update this week for IOS devices should have made most of them less likely to be victims of the Meltdown flaw. IOS 11.2.2 was pushed out on Tuesday.
The equation editor that has been included with Word for nearly 20 years is being eliminated by this month's Windows patch. The equation editor will not return and Microsoft recommends that those who need to edit or create equations in Word use MathType instead. The releases that were pushed out on Tuesday correct nearly 60 bugs. Not all of the bugs are security related, but some are.
The ability to create or edit equations in Word is something that only a few users need, but MathType is a $100 application from Design Science and the need to purchase it will undoubtedly annoy Word users who need the capability. In addition to patching 56 flaws in Microsoft products, the patch also includes Adobe Flash updates.
A week earlier, Microsoft released an out-of-cycle update that attempted to fix the Spectre and Meltdown flaws. That rushed update had several flaws for which Microsoft has announced workarounds. The most serious issue still has no workaround, though. Some Windows users with AMD devices have found that their computers will not boot, so Microsoft has suspended Windows OS updates to devices with AMD processors and says that the company is working with AMD to remedy the issue. If your computer was affected, Microsoft says you should contact AMD.
Nineteen of the bug fixes this week address problems with the Office Suite, 15 resolve problems with scripting, 7 are for the Windows kernel, 4 deal with browser issues, the the rest cover a variety of issues. Sixteen of this month's patches are labeled "critical", which is Microsoft's most serious classification. All of these deal with scripting issues.
Maybe a new router is in your plans for 2018. If so, you might want to wait for a few months because some significant changes are coming. Most of the routers you'll find now comply with the 802.11ac standard, but a few have already been released with 802.11ax. For devices that support the new standard, data transmission should be considerably faster.
But you noticed my weasel words ("for devices that support the new standard") and you're probably wondering what happens if your devices don't. The bad news is that the new modem won't make non-compliant devices any faster. But the good news is that routers are backwards compatible. Paying a little more now to buy an 802.11ax router will pay off when you buy a new computer that supports the new standard.
IEEE 802.11ax routers will operate in the existing 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrums. The data rate will be nearly 40% faster, but actual data throughput should increase by about 400% because of more efficient spectrum use.
Several companies are showing routers with the new standard at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. The 802.11ax is supposed to be released next year, but router manufacturers should have new models on the market by the middle of this year.
The increased speed will be most welcome where large numbers of devices use the router and these days that's a common situation with computers, smart phones, speakers, televisions, and appliances all connecting. The new routers will also feature more robust security.
For those who have devices scattered all around the house, a "mesh system" would be a good investment. These are systems that typically have two or three access points that communicate with each other and provide better signals over a wider area.
