The New York Times reports that Edward Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency before leaking government information, last week announced he will help develop a modified version of Apple’s iPhone for journalists to ward off government surveillance. The announcement was part of the “Forbidden Research” conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, with Snowden joining by video link from exile in Russia. Snowden teams with Andrew Huang, a computer hacker known as Bunnie, to modify a smartphone to, "alert journalists working in dangerous environments to electronic surveillance." Snowden is also on the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and said journalists need to operate without government oversight. He specifically cited a mortar attack in 2012 by the Syrian government that killed Marie Colvin, an American journalist who was reporting in Homs, Syria, for The Sunday Times of London. “The radio frequency emissions of her communications that she used to file those news reports were intercepted by the Syrian Army,” he said. If their plan works, journalists would get modified phones, "in a special case with a separate display that would provide an alert when the phone was active and transmitting data at improper times."

Photo by Kelly Benjamin.

WGXC correspondent Kelly Benjamin talks to protesters outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, including Medea Benjamin from Code Pink.

Click here to download or play this interview.

The Republican National Convention began in Cleveland July 18, and the Democratic Convention begins in Philadelphia July 25, and both have radio stories. First, both cities won't allow radio-controlled drones during the conventions, with the Federal Aviation Administration blocking 30 nautical miles in radius around the Quicken Loans Arena from 6 p.m. July 17 through 3 a.m. July 22. Radio-controlled drones not only can't be flown within 30 miles of the RNC, they are among the 26 types of items not allowed in the zone around the arena. Mike Pence, the Republican nominee for vice-president, is familiar with the airwaves. After losing two Congressional campaigns, he started hosting "The Mike Pence Show," on WRCR in Rushville, Indiana in 1994, with Pence calling himself "Rush Limbaugh on decaf." The show was syndicated by Network Indiana on 19 stations there, including WIBC in Indianapolis. Slate reports that anyone protesting Pence, or any other issue during the convention, should note what local and federal police can do with the local airwaves. Cleveland has a flash mob law, for instance, that allows the police to arrest anyone arriving at an event organized over social media “to commit a crime,” and police will then confiscate your cell phone as evidence. Ohio police and the FBI also have face recognition technology they may use, and a $50 million grant from Congress to buy equipment such as cameras, surveillance trailers, and and sound cannons. Of course, protesters will also bypass the media by broadcasting from their phones, as we've seen recently in events as diverse as a failed coup in Turkey and a sit-down protest in the U.S. Congress.

The Guardian reports that on July 15 the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Navy is using sonar in ways that could harm whales and dolphins. That reversed a lower court decision upholding the 2012 decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service to allow the Navy to use low-frequency sonar for training, testing, and routine operations. The story claims whales, seals, dolphins, and walruses could be hurt by sonar, or the underwater radio waves could disrupt their feeding and mating. The Natural Resources Defense Council led a lawsuit filed in San Francisco in 2012, arguing the Navy's sonar practices violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The appellate court agreed, saying the rules failed to meet a section of the protection act requiring peacetime oceanic programs to have, “the least practicable adverse impact on marine mammals.” The court said the fisheries service, “did not give adequate protection to areas of the world’s oceans flagged by its own experts as biologically important,” according to a summary accompanying the court’s decision. "The result is that a meaningful proportion of the world’s marine mammal habitat is under-protected,” the decision said.

Click here to play or download an audio version of this report.

Matthew Lasar reports at Radio Survivor that while there are global warming skeptics in Washington D.C., the Federal Communications Commission has authorized three new Emergency Alert System event codes that seem to confirm more powerful storms: “Extreme Wind Warning” (EWW), “Storm Surge Watch” (SWW), and “Storm Surge Warning” (SSW). FCC Chair Tom Wheeler wrote on his blog earlier this month that the current system with radio and television stations interrupting programming to alert viewers and listeners about weather warnings is a “proven life-saver, but it could be better.” The FCC spoke with the heads of Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Hurricane Center about what the most dangerous weather events are, and found they had no warnings for storm surge or high winds. Lasar explains that the Emergency Alert System includes a digital header code, then that grating two-tone attention signal, "then the automatic audio message, triggered by a specific event code, and then an End of Message code. The header code contains the event code, which classifies the emergency."

Click here to download or play an audio version of this report.

Wired reports Facebook has launched "Secret Conversations," a beta feature that a small number of users are now testing that encrypts messages end-to-end, so know one can read the communications except for the sender and receiver. All of Facebook's 900 million users will be able to opt-in to encrypted messages later this summer. Facebook and its WhatsApp will both be encrypted, the largest services on the internet providing secure communication. Viber added encryption for its 700 million users, and Google announced in May that its messaging app Allo would also offer opt-in end-to-end encryption. Facebook is using Signal, which was created by the non-profit Open Whisper Systems, and is also available as an app on its own. “This... brings access to encrypted messaging to nearly a billion more people,” says Matt Green, a Johns Hopkins computer scientist. “If you make a list of all the messaging services that have end-to-end encryption and the ones that don’t, we’re starting to live in a world where the ones that don’t are mostly in China.”

Image from Apple's patent.

9-to-5 Mac reports that Apple just received approval for a patent on a technology that would disable locally a phone’s video and camera capabilities. A small sensor sends infrared signals containing encoded data that could disable a smartphone or tablet’s camera or microphone functions. An image in the patent paperwork shows how this technology could be used to prevent unwanted recording during concerts. But police in countries all over the world could also use it to block recordings of their actions, and there are many other applications for the technology. "An infrared emitter can be located in areas where picture or video capture is prohibited, and the emitter can generate infrared signals with encoded data that includes commands to disable the recording functions of devices. An electronic device can then receive the infrared signals, decode the data, and temporarily disable the device’s recording function based on the command," reads the patent. The FCC is no fan of jamming devices, and Apple has not revealed how, or if, it will employ the technology.

Cora Currier reports in The Intercept on the classified rules that allow the FBI to obtain journalists’ phone records with approval from two internal officials, less oversight than under normal judicial procedures, according to Currier. The Intercept is reporting on classified rules from 2013, governing the FBI’s use of National Security Letters, which allow the FBI to find out about journalists’ calls without going to a judge or informing the news organization that is under surveillance. There is an extra step if the NSL targets a journalist specifically, “to identify confidential news media sources.” Then, the general counsel and the executive assistant director talk the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division about the case. Christopher Allen, a spokesperson for the FBI would not comment other to say they are “very clear” that “the FBI cannot predicate investigative activity solely on the exercise of First Amendment rights.” Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said that the “use of NSLs as a way around the protections in the guidelines is a serious concern for news organizations.” The Reporters Committee last week filed a brief for the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s lawsuit for the FBI’s NSL rules and other documents on behalf of 37 news organizations, including The Intercept.

Hillary Clinton's campaign for president announced a tech policy plan June 28 and Techdirt looks at Clinton's proposals on encryption. Techdirt's Karl Bode writes, "she intends to continue waging war on encryption -- her plan for a "Manhattan Project" to "solve" (read: weaken) encryption still very much on the table." Clinton's proposal says, "Hillary rejects the false choice between privacy interests and keeping Americans safe. She was a proponent of the USA Freedom Act, and she supports Senator Mark Warner and Representative Mike McCaul’s idea for a national commission on digital security and encryption. This commission will work with the technology and public safety communities to address the needs of law enforcement, protect the privacy and security of all Americans that use technology, assess how innovation might point to new policy approaches, and advance our larger national security and global competitiveness interests." Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for president, is also against encryption, saying during the debate on whether Apple should open an iPhone for the FBI, "To think that Apple won't allow us to get into her cellphone? Who do they think they are?" Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson sided with Apple in that public discussion, and favors encryption. Green Party candidate Jill Stein's internet platform does not specifically mention encryption, but it does say she will, "protect the free Internet," and she has called Edward Snowden a hero.

"Share the Safety" press conference at the Reagan Library from Troy's Yes Men.

Claire Voon reported in Hyperallegeric that Troy-based art activist group The Yes Men have now started a website called "Share the Safety," purporting to be a joint effort between the National Rifle Association and arms manufacturer Smith & Wesson to donate a gun to a “less fortunate” U.S. citizen for every gun sold. The "Share the Safety" program promised a gun to someone living in an “at-risk neighborhood” whenever someone purchases one of three Smith & Wesson weapons. Donors can also choose from ten U.S. neighborhoods. The Troy-based group has previously had fake press conferences, and a fake edition of The New York Times, making various political points with their satire. This time, the group announced the gun initiative at the Reagan Library in California. Read the full story in Hyperallegeric.

John Anderson reports in DIYMedia.net about current pirate radio action, one year after the Federal Communication Commission announced it was scaling back its enforcement bureau and creating so-called “Tiger Teams” that swoop in with a cheaper, swifter form defense against the scourge of pirate radio. "Have they even been populated and trained up yet?" Anderson asks, after reporting that enforcement actions are slightly up from a year ago, but not by any significant amount. Last week the U.S. House Appropriations Committee voted 29-17 for a Federal Communications Commission appropriations bill that would dramatically reduce the FCC budget, mostly to attempt to hamstring net neutrality rule enforcement. But that also means less money for pirate radio enforcement, and lawmakers in the New York City area, who have been very vocal in their calls for increased pirate radio enforcement given the large amount of activity on the airwaves in the area, might not be happy with the figures showing less enforcement in the area this year. So far in 2016 there have been 70 enforcement actions nationally, slightly ahead of the pace of last year's 125 actions. But, Anderson writes, "with party conventions and elections looming, it’s highly unlikely that Congress will get around to awarding any supplementary enforcement tools to the agency beforehand, and with a change in presidential administration on the horizon Chairman Tom Wheeler might very well like to leave this entire issue for his successor to sort out." Read the full story at DIYmedia.net.

(Note: John Anderson is on Wave Farm's board.)

Click here to download or play an audio version of this report.

Techdirt reports that the ultimate fate of net neutrality probably rests with the results of the November presidential election. Congress continues to try and hack away at the idea that the virtual playing field be level for digital services. Last week the U.S. House Appropriations Committee voted 29-17 for a Federal Communications Commission appropriations bill that would dramatically reduce the FCC budget and try to hamstring net neutrality rule enforcement. President Barack Obama's White House, and the federal courts, have so far supported the latest version of net neutrality against the Republican-led attacks in the House. So, clearly, net neutrality's long-term success will hinge on the results of the presidential election. Donald Trump does not support net neutrality, tweeting in 2014, “Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media.” Hillary Clinton says she supports net neutrality, but has expressed concern that regulations could mean stagnant competition among service providers, saying “we’ve got to do more about how we incentivize competition in broadband.” Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson opposes net neutrality, "regulations that would lead to a larger government role in the use of Internet bandwidth." Green Party candidate Jill Stein is in favor, and discussed the public support for the measure, saying, "And FCC got some four million letters, which were, like, 99 percent to preserve net neutrality. We have the numbers. What we don't have is the conviction and the infrastructure to use that power. And what we want to do in our campaign is to flick that switch in our brains from powerlessness to powerfulness."

Christian Fennesz and Jim O'Rourke, "Wouldn't Wanna Be Swept Away" (Editions Mego)

Techdirt reports that a recent Consumer Reports survey found the Chattanooga Electric Power Board and Google Fiber were the only two internet providers with positive consumer satisfaction ratings among 30 national ISPs. "The results were ugly for value, too, with 28 of the 30 TV service providers earning our lowest score. The two exceptions —municipal broadband company EPB Fiber Optics-Chattanooga and Google Fiber — each earned high scores from the survey respondents. Both services offer super-fast 1-gigabit-per-second (Gbps) speeds. EPB Fiber Optics-Chattanooga ranked highest in the survey for overall satisfaction, edging out Google Fiber and cable company Armstrong." While Google Fiber is well-known, the Chattanooga utility provides electric power, digital cable TV, high-speed internet, and phone services in Chattanooga utilizing a community-wide fiber optic network. Comcast, and several politicians working for giant Internet providers, have tried to kill it, and want to keep its success a secret, for fear that other municipalities will start cheap mesh networks that provide such good service. But word is getting out. This week, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke said the city's broadband service has businesses and people moving to Tennessee town. "It changed our conceptions of who we are and what is possible,” Berke said. “Before we had never thought of ourselves as a technology city." But now the downtown area has doubled its residents, and landlords often advertise the fast internet speeds as selling points. “It’s an explosion of growth in our technology sector,” he said. “That has sparked not only this (downtown) living but restaurants and bars and music and the quality of life that truly makes a city interesting, cool, hip, vibrant and energetic." Read the full story at Techdirt.

The South China Morning Post reports that, according to state-run China news agency Xinhua, police in northeast China have shut down over 300 illegal radio stations since 2015. “It was like harvesting garlic chives. A new batch would always spring up soon after you cut the previous batch,” said Liu Weidong, director of Shenyang’s wireless regulator, in the Chinese press. But is the Chinese media to be believed? Just like in the United States, the article quotes Chinese officials claiming pirate radio stations could bring down airplanes, saying that on January 9, 2015 the landings of four flights at Dalian airport in Liaoning were disrupted by a pirate station, even though there is little evidence that FM signals would bounce into the frequencies that airline pilots use to communicate. The story says that Chinese pirates can expect a 5,000 yuan fine if caught, but that many make money promoting illegal medicines, "with treatments for venereal diseases accounting for over 80 per cent of their business." Station operators often get a commission for selling more drugs, according to the Chinese media. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently said it would increase the maximum fines for pirate radio stations to 20,000 yuan. The Global Times quoted a Chinese law enforcement officer saying, "Since these offenders tend to use remote terminals to operate their transmitters, and use fake ID cards to rent rooms, it is rather hard to catch them in action." A 24-hour pirate radio station might operate with just a USB flash drive, a radio transmitter, and an antenna, the story says.

The New York Times reports that high-speed internet service is a utility, not a luxury, a federal court ruled June 14, allowing "net neutrality" to be the law of the land. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-to-1 in favor of the Federal Communication Commission's rules that prohibit broadband companies from blocking or slowing internet content to consumers, after the same court had previously ruled against an earlier version of net neutrality. “After a decade of debate and legal battles, today’s ruling affirms the commission’s ability to enforce the strongest possible internet protections — both on fixed and mobile networks — that will ensure the internet remains open, now and in the future,” said FCC chairman Tom Wheeler in a statement to the media. “Over the past two decades, this content has transformed nearly every aspect of our lives, from profound actions like choosing a leader, building a career, and falling in love, to more quotidian ones like hailing a cab and watching a movie,” wrote David Tatel and Sri Srinivasan, the two judges who voted for the rules. Lawyers for internet companies said they planned to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which is currently understaffed thanks to a Republican Congress that refuses to consider President Barack Obama's nomination to fill the empty seat. “This is an enormous win for consumers,” said Gene Kimmelman, president of the public interest group Public Knowledge. “It ensures the right to an open internet with no gatekeepers.”

MIT News reports that if there are any Foley artists left, they may soon lose their jobs to automation. A Foley artist is someone who makes sounds for radio, film, or other media. The name comes from Jack Donovan Foley, who worked with Universal Studios when they released the first sound film in 1927, "The Jazz Singer." His name lasts for the job he did, which might soon be replaced by computers. Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory recently demonstrated an algorithm that predicts sound. The program can be shown a silent video clip of an object being hit, and produce a sound that can fool human listeners. "Researchers envision future versions of similar algorithms being used to automatically produce sound effects for movies and TV shows, as well as to help robots better understand objects’ properties," MIT reports. The group recorded an estimated 46,000 videos of the sounds of objects being hit, scraped, and prodded by a drumstick and analyzed their pitch, loudness, and other features. They tested the sounds by letting subjects guess whether sounds they heard were actual recorded sounds or computer-made sounds, and subjects chose the fake sounds as real twice as often. The National Science Foundation and Shell paid for the research. Read the full story in MIT News.

Jordan Pearson at Motherboard reports that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been using "Stingrays," the mass surveillance devices that are International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers. The mounties have used the surveillance devices for at least a decade, surveilling thousands of Canadians without their knowledge, and storing that information. The devices act like fake cell phone towers to force every phone nearby to reveal their unique ID, the ID of the phone’s SIM card, and its carrier and country of origin, and sometimes texts and phone calls. Since they aren't targeted surveillance tools they pick up everybody's information, the good guys and the bad guys. “This technology is so privacy-invasive that it is essential we be given enough information to ensure that it is only being used lawfully and with respect for our Charter rights,” said Brenda McPhail, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s surveillance project. “Only then can we have a real debate about whether the benefits to public safety are at all proportionate to the profound privacy risks presented by this technology.” Tamir Israel, a lawyer for the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa said, “Our working theory was that originally that these devices were used in limited and extreme cases.... Now, we’re seeing them become tools of general use. Clearly, they’ve been planning for some time to use them for day-to-day mass policing.” Read the full story at Motherboard.

Radio Revolten - International Radio Art Festival
1st to 30th October 2016 Halle (Saale), Germany

Radio as a multi-faceted art form will be presented at a four-week festival, which will take place in October 2016 in Halle (Saale) in Germany. 70 artists from 17 countries will present contemporary radio art at 15 locations in the city in the form of installations, performances, concerts and interventions. On air, the festival will broadcast on the FM frequency 99.3 MHz in Halle. 35 radio stations across the world will relay parts of the programme, and Resonance Extra in Brighton (UK) will take it over entirely.

Many of the festival performances will take place in the evenings at the Radio Revolten Club at Rathausstraße 3. Next door at number 4, Radio Revolten will host the exhibition Das Grosse Rauschen: The Metamorphosis of Radio, presenting cutting edge installations over two floors. A short distance away at the City Museum there will be a companion exhibition 'Invisible Waves' - The history of broadcasting and the attempt at its appropriation in Halle (Saale). The conference Radio Space is the Place will be held at the University of Halle. Other Radio Revolten venues include the Botanical Garden, the Hausmann's Towers and Red Tower of the market square and the Moritzburg Art Museum.

The festival will feature artistic works ranging from the opening performance event of the award-winning Resonance Radio Orchestra (UK), to individual daily encounters with the artist Marold Langer-Philippsen (SK). A performance by Alessandro Bosetti (IT) will take place in cooperation with Deutschlandradio Kultur. The festival programme features performances and installations by pioneers of radio art such as Joyce Hinterding (AU), Tetsuo Kogawa (JN), and Gregory Whitehead (US).

Radio Revolten is run by Radio Corax and co-hosted by the city of Halle (Saale). The German Federal Cultural Foundation is the main sponsor of the festival. The team of curators comprises the radio artists Knut Aufermann, Anna Friz and Sarah Washington, the editor of ORF Kunstradio Elisabeth Zimmermann and the programme coordinator of Radio Corax Ralf Wendt. Radio Revolten will be the largest and most comprehensive festival of radio art ever to be held worldwide.

Radio Revolten overview

Radio Revolten Club
At Rathausstraße 3 there will be daily radio art performances, transmitted live at 20:00 CET on the Radio Revolten frequency and streamed via the website.

Radio Revolten Central
Rathausstraße 4 will host the exhibition of contemporary art featuring international artists exploring the theme of transmission ecologies and unstable, fluctuating transmission systems. It will also be home to the festival office and radio station.

Radio Revolten Conference
A two-day conference on the subject of radio art will be carried out in cooperation with the Experimental Radio programme of the Bauhaus University Weimar.

Radio Revolten Radio
In the festival studio of Radio Revolten a 24/7 radio art programme will be created from the radiophonic work of guest artists alongside offerings from radio stations around the world. This will be broadcast on 99.3 FM in Halle, and streamed on www.radiorevolten.net. A newspaper format programme guide will invite people in the transmission area to both listen in and venture out to discover the transmission venues across the city.

In addition, a new alliance of independent broadcasters will form with a potential reach of 200 million listeners across the world. 35 radio stations have agreed to broadcast productions from Radio Revolten including Deutschlandradio Kultur (Germany), ORF Ö1 (Austria), Resonance FM (London), Wave Farm WGXC 90.7 FM (New York), FSK (Hamburg), and members of the Radia network and the European Broadcast Union group Ars Acustica.

Accompanying programme
Entitled Trans-Positionen [Trans-Positions] the Werkleitz Festival 2016 will explore radio as a form of acoustic art through diverse media. Curator Martin Hartung has invited Hampus Lindwall (SE) and Leif Elggren (SE) to present an audio-visual performance in the Moritzkirche activating Friedrich Jürgenson’s Audioscopic Research Archive, on loan from the ZKM in Karlsruhe. The archival collection will be on display throughout Radio Revolten in the foyer of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. A multi-part international film series at the Kino Zazie curated by Florian Wüst will explore the relationship between sound and the electronic image.

The German Association of Free Radios (BFR) has located its annual meeting in Halle, and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) will host their European conference during the festival, bringing hundreds of additional radio-oriented visitors to the city.

Sponsors The main sponsors of Radio Revolten are the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes) and the Media Authority of Saxony-Anhalt (Medienanstalt Sachsen-Anhalt). The city of Halle is the co-host, and the patron is the Lord Mayor Dr. Bernd Wiegand. Radio Revolten is a project of Radio Corax.

Web
http://www.radiorevolten.net

Contact:
Helen Thein, Press Officer
Radio Revolten
Radio Corax
Unterberg 11
06108 Halle
helen-thein@radiorevolten.net
Tel. +49 (0)151 75034547

February marked 20 years since then-President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated several media industries, and has led to fewer media choices for consumers. Just five years after the act passed Salon reported that just two radio companies — Clear Channel and Viacom’s Infinity Broadcasting — controlled one-third of all radio advertising revenue, and The Hill reported that only four phone companies — Verizon, SBC, BellSouth and Qwest — handled 95 percent of local telecommunications service. Today, 97 percent of Americans have at least three choices for mobile phone service. A study from the Federal Communications Commission in 2006 called "Review of the Radio Industry" found that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 led to a drastic decline in the number of radio station owners as the actual number of commercial stations in the United States increased. At the time the Act was passed in 1996 there was a large pirate radio movement committing civil disobedience on the airwaves to prove that there was room for more stations on the air. A Philadelphia-based pirate group that organized others reported getting calls from commercial radio owners at the time who, forced by the economics the Telecommunications Act created, were being forced to sell their stations to large conglomerates. A Future of Music study in 2002 found that, "Since passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Clear Channel (now called iHeartMedia) has grown from 40 stations to 1,240 stations — 30 times more than congressional regulation previously allowed." And that study also found four parent companies control two-thirds of the nation’s radio news format listeners with, Viacom and Disney’s ABC Radio, also control major television networks. Since 1996, joint operating agreements have halved the number of television news organizations in most markets. So while there may be more media choices 20 years after the Telecommunications Act passed, in many formats, those "choices" are controlled by just a handful of companies. Common Cause has said, “In many ways, the Telecom Act failed to serve the public and did not deliver on its promise of more competition, more diversity, lower prices, more jobs and a booming economy.... Instead, the public got more media concentration, less diversity, and higher prices.”