Comcast announced it is expanding its internet data caps to Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; Houma, LaPlace and Shreveport, Louisiana; Chattanooga, Gray, Greenville, Johnson City and Rarity Bay, Tennessee; and Galax, Virginia. This year Comcast now has more Internet than TV customers, and is interested in maximizing profits. Comcast is limiting data and rolling out a $35 "unlimited" option to most of the areas that have data caps. "Comcast continues to exert its dominance in the uncompetitive market for high-speed Internet access, increasing the bottom line for its incredibly profitable broadband business," Matt Wood, the policy director for Free Press, said in an emailed statement. He added that the caps "stifle innovation and choice in online video and cloud-based services."

Matthew Lasar reports in Radio Survivor that British broadcast regulator Ofcom has closed 400 pirate radio stations lately, mostly in two London boroughs, and says it could save British taxpayers “up to” £1 million by cracking down on that city’s remaining pirates. How? “Pirate stations typically use high-rise buildings for their broadcasts, with illegal transmitters installed on rooftops or hidden in lift shafts,” Ofcom says. This is sort-of correct: pirates, like other FM broadcasters, put their antennae high up for a broader reach. “This damages residential properties owned by local authorities, disrupting residents’ lives and putting people at risk from falling equipment,” the agency claims. Actually, hanging a pirate radio antenna on a rooftop would not do any more damage than putting a television antenna there would. Ofcom quotes a group called "Homes for Haringey" saying that pirate operations have delayed key construction projects. One of their board documents blames construction delays on, among other things, "Pirate radio aerials [that] have affected the progress of the completion of external works on some schemes." Ofcom makes no effort to itemize that £1 million savings figure, and it is difficult to imagine how an antenna could delay a construction project. Ofcom also says pirate radio disrupts emergency services without giving any examples. In this latest press offensive, their "Pirate Radio Summit," Ofcom throws everything at the pirate menace except that old myth that regulators constantly sing about pirate radio bringing down airplanes.

Reuters reports that the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department are both looking into a California company broadcasting in more than a dozen major American cities, backed by a subsidiary of the Chinese government. Reuters uncovered what it is calling it a, "covert radio network," broadcasting in Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, Houston, San Francisco, and other cities. “Based on reports, the FCC will initiate an inquiry into the facts surrounding the foreign ownership issues raised in the stories, including whether the Commission’s statutory foreign ownership rules have been violated,” FCC spokesman Neil Grace said. G&E Studio is owned by James Su, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Shanghai. G&E Studio is 60 percent owned by a subsidiary of Chinese state-run radio broadcaster China Radio International. The FCC does not allow foreign governments or their representatives to hold radio licenses in America. Foreign individuals, governments, and corporations can only hold up to a 20 percent interest in a station and up to 25 percent in a U.S. parent corporation of a radio or television station. Content on G&E stations, Reuters reports, is produced at G&E's West Covina, California studios or by China Radio International in Beijing. "The news programming on these CRI-backed stations sticks closely to the Chinese government line on a host of issues, including the current military standoff in the South China Sea between China and the United States," Reuters claims. James Su’s spokeswoman declined to comment on Nov. 2, but on Sept. 16 told Reuters his radio network abides by U.S. law because he leases all the air time from stations, rather than owning them outright. Read the full story from Reuters.

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Justin Peters in Slate magazine reports that the Federal Aviation Administration has names the 26-member panel that will decide the rules of registering radio-controlled drones in the United States. And not one of the folks on the panel is a proponent of civil liberties, or privacy advocates. Sure, there are representatives from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the Aerospace Industries Association, dronemakers DJI and Parrot, online retailers Google and Amazon, and big-box retailers Best Buy and Walmart. “I think it’s not obvious to the FAA that civil liberties groups should be involved, because the FAA largely understands itself as having to balance a safety mandate against restricting innovation,” Ohio State University law professor Margot Kaminski said. “The makeup of this list reflects that framing."

[caption width="400" align="aligncenter"] Flight path of surveillance planes in Baltimore from ACLU.[/caption]
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Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney, in the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project on Oct. 30 released FBI and FAA documents with new details about the surveillance flights that flew over protests in Baltimore following the police killing of Freddie Gray. Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, reveal the FBI used infrared and night-vision cameras, and it is holding on to surveillance video it recorded from the sky. According to its flight logs, the ACLU reports, the FBI flew 10 surveillance flights over Baltimore between April 29 and May 3, with a Baltimore Police Department official also on half the flights. FAA documents show the Cessna propeller plane registered to the FBI front company, NG Research, had surveillance camera equipment on board including an infrared camera mount and a FLIR Talon multi-sensor camera system on the exterior of the plane. That FLIR system includes a “thermal imager,” an optical camera, and a “laser illuminator” for recording at night. Wessler, from the ACLU, writes, "In its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, the FBI takes the position that no Fourth Amendment protections apply to 'aerial surveillance conducted from navigable airspace.' While that is an accurate statement of Supreme Court precedent when it comes to visual observation and use of normal cameras from a plane, it fails to grapple with the effect of advances in surveillance technology. Use of infrared and night-vision camera technology changes the equation by raising the potential for invasions of privacy.... If the infrared camera is capable of observing information about the inside of private homes and offices, for example, the Supreme Court has already explained that the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement applies."

After talking about "saving" AM radio for the past two years, the Federal Communications Commission released its "AM Radio Revitalization Report and Order" Oct. 23. The plan to save AM radio is finally here, and the answer is largely to move AM stations onto the FM band. Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat, said the order will, “ease regulatory burdens on AM broadcasters and address practical problems and interference-related issues that have long plagued AM stations.” Commissioner Ajit Pai, the Republican leading the charge to bring back old time AM radio, released a statement with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn that said the order, “acknowledges the realities of the upcoming incentive auction and the need for immediate relief for AM stations.” That means he's happy commercial AM broadcasters are going to have their way on the FM frequencies through translater auctions. Now the commission will next year allow AM licensees to acquire an FM translator, even relocating one from up to 250 miles away if necessary. The next year, the FCC will hold more translator auction windows for AM broadcasters. Many other more minor actions were taken to save AM radio, but the biggest is this translator giveaway, which may preclude or pre-empt low-power FM stations and room for more non-commercial voices.

The Senate voted 74 to 21 Oct. 27 in favor of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. The bill was called by some senators necessary for national defense, while others said was another needless way for the government to surveil its citizens.

Senate has year of giant hacks fresh in its mind. Privacy crowd has 2 years of Snowden revelations fresh in theirs. https://t.co/iKmGHcCAJ0

— Kash of Alderaan (@kashhill) October 27, 2015

The Senate passed a version of CISA close to legislation passed in the House earlier this year, but the details will have to be worked out in committee. “The incentive and the framework it creates is for companies to quickly and massively collect user information and ship it to the government,” said Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst for the civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Wired reported that Apple, Reddit, Twitter, the Business Software Alliance, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, and other tech firms oppose the bill. "Even the Department of Homeland Security itself has warned in a July letter that the bill could flood the agency with information of 'dubious value' at the same time as it 'sweep[s] away privacy protections,'" Wired reported.

Wireless industry (CTIA) statement calls CISA a "constructive framework for bi-directional information sharing."

— Karl Bode (@KarlBode) October 27, 2015

People have a right to make a telephone call without that information being collected by the government.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 27, 2015

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The Guardian newspaper is reporting that the Internal Revenue Service in the United States bought several Stingray devices between 2009 and 2012. Stingrays are IMSI-catchers, or “cell-site simulators,” small devices that pretend to be cellphone towers in order to catch all local metadata and some content from phones which connect to them. "Despite their extensive capabilities, they require only a low-level court order called a PEN register, also known as a “trap and trace,” to grant permission for their use," The Guardian story says. The Harris Corporation, which makes the Stingrays, are ultra-secretive about the devices. An April Guardian report revealed non-disclosure agreements that local police and prosecutors were forced to sign with the FBI before using Stingrays. The documents demanded local authorities withdraw or even drop cases rather than reveal their use as the source of information. In September, The Guardian reported that this withholding of “discovery” evidence by Baltimore police could lead to 2,000 cases being overturned. The American Civil Liberties Union and various news outlets have now shown that at least 13 federal agencies have Stingrays now. Nate Wessler, an ACLU attorney told the Guardian: “The info showing that they are using Stingrays is generally consistent with the kinds of investigative tactics that they are engaging in, and it shows the wide proliferation of this very invasive surveillance technology.”

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Boing Boing reports that Wikimedia's case against the NSA was dismissed by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, saying they couldn't prove the National Security Agency was intercepting data between Wikipedia and its users. Wikimedia never got to challenge the legality of United States government surveillance, and instead fought over standing in the case. Judge Ellis wrote that, "plaintiffs insist that Wikipedia's over one trillion annual Internet communications is significant in volume... but size is always relative. For example, one trillion dollars are of enormous value, whereas one trillion grains of sand are but a small patch of beach." Ellis reasoned that the only people who could challenge NSA surveillance would be those told by the government they were being spied upon. Just because media reports that the government is culling through millions of metadata points, doesn't prove that some of that metadata was Wikimedia's. The American Civil Liberties Union represents Wikimedia in the case, and said, "There’s no question that the NSA is capturing and searching through their communications. That’s something the court — and everyone else — should find extremely disconcerting."

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James Reed in the Boston Globe reports that efforts have revived to make “Roadrunner,” by the Modern Lovers, the official rock song of Massachusetts. In January, a similar bill could not get a floor vote, but last week there was a public hearing about the new bill. “The song really is a love letter to Massachusetts, about driving around the state late at night with the radio on. It’s just perfect," said State Senator Robert Hedlund. Last time, representatives Josh Cutler and James Cantwell countered with a bill that would have made Aerosmith’s “Dream On” the state rock song. So far this time, there is no announced opposition. Comedian John Hodgman submitted his opinion to the hearing: "The songs says, 'I'm in love with Massachusetts.' What more testimony need be heard?" Read the full story in the Boston Globe.

There are 15 percent more radio and television stations in the United States then ten years ago, Radio World reports. There are now 31,013 licensed broadcast stations in the country as of Sept. 30, 2015. The biggest jumps in number of stations came from low-power FM (up 128 percent) and FM educational stations (up 56 percent). Low-power FM was legalized just before 2005, and expanded in the past decade, and the FCC had a rare FM educational application window in 2008, which explain the large increases. The economics of running a television station explain the 39 percent drop in VHF commercial television stations. Their bandwidth has become more valuable for commercial wireless applications then for mass broadcasting, which can be done cheaper now at other frequencies. Also fewer in numbers: Class A VHF TV stations (down 82 percent); VHF translators (down 53 percent); and VHF low-power TV stations (down 27 percent).

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The Washington Post reports many major tech companies the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), a so-called cybersecurity bill expected to see a vote in the U.S. Senate next week. Yelp, reddit, Twitter, Apple, Dropbox, and the Wikimedia Foundation, all have come out against the bill. "The trust of our customers means everything to us and we don't believe security should come at the expense of their privacy," Apple's statement on the issue said. Google, Facebook, and Yahoo are lobbying through the Computer and Communications Industry Association against the bill too. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Oct. 20 that the bill allows companies to share information on “cyber threats” with the government — but not personal data. "Things like Social Security numbers, addresses, passwords and credit information would be unrelated to a cyber threat and would, except in very exceptional circumstances, be removed," Feinstein said. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden is against the bill, and said, "If you share more information without strong privacy protections, millions of Americans will say, 'That is not a cybersecurity bill. It is a surveillance bill.'" The bill is expected to pass the Senate next week, and has support from President Obama.

The Associated Press reported Oct. 19 that the U.S. government will require registration of some publicly available radio-controlled drone aircraft. After a number of close calls and problems with drones and airports, forest fires, and sensitive government sites, government action was expected. Airport sightings of drones went from a handful last year, to hundreds in 2015, according to the Federal Aiviation Authority. Transportation secretary Anthony Foxx said, “Finding the drone has not been as much of a problem as finding the person who was using the drone.” The FAA and the Transportation Department will create a 25- to 30-member taskforce to set the parameters of the tracking system, with toys and small drones likely exempt. The Consumer Electronics Association has forecast that 700,000 drones will be sold this holiday season, the Associated Press reported.

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Current magazine reports that the average–quarter-hour listening during National Public Radio's morning drive time has dropped 11 percent in the past five years, and the afternoon audience is down 6 percent. Young people are listening even less, and the only age bracket with a listening increase is 65-plus. The "Morning Edition" show has 20 percent fewer listeners under 55 since 2010, Nielsen data shared by NPR. "All Things Considered" had a slight gain among listeners ages 12-24 and 55-64 and larger growth among 65-plus listeners. NPR is now guessing that in 2020, 30 percent of its audience will be 44-year-old or younger, a figure that was almost double in 1985. NPR's podcast downloads rose 75 percent last year, and NPR.org grew nearly 35 percent, so there is some hope for the future.

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About 15 percent of U.S. adults do not use the internet, a new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data reports. In the year 2000 almost half of Americans did not use the internet, but that rate of conversion has slowed the past three years, the survey reports. A 2013 Pew survey found three reasons people do not use the internet: no interest, too difficult to use, and too expensive. Younger americans, and those that live in urban areas, are more likely to use the internet, the survey found.

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The digital age and the do-it-yourself movement often conflict, as hacking electronics are sometimes banned or made difficult. The ARRL, the National Association for Amateur Radio, is asking the FCC to clear up if Amateur Radio licensees may modify non-amateur equipment for use on amateur radio frequencies. In March, 2014 the FCC updated requirements for U-NII devices using 5 Ghz bandwidth that includes many Wi-Fi devices and routers with regulatory language that might not allow altering the devices. In an Oct. 8 comment on a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) in ET Docket 15-170 and RM-11673 the ARRL wrote, “The Commission should clarify…that the ability of licensed radio amateurs to modify and adapt non-amateur equipment for use in the Amateur Service is beneficial, is permitted, and is not restricted by any rule of general applicability adopted in this proceeding.” The ARRL also asked the FCC not to apply any limitations proposed for Software Defined Radios, and addressed the problem of marijuana grow lights and AM and amateur radio interference. The FCC is overhauling the process where any device that might emit radio waves has to be approved to get that little FCC sticker. Electronic ballasts used in 1000W high pressure sodium or metal halide lamps have interfered with certain radio signals, with a few police officers using AM radios in their vehicle radios to locate illegal indoor marijuana growing operations by listening for interference. The ARRL said, “the only opportunity to preclude widespread sale and deployment of non-compliant RF devices, including unintentional emitters, is via the equipment authorization process.”

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James Careless in Radio World has a long story about longwave radio, and its inevitable demise in England. Longwave, as the name suggests, are large waves, near AM on the dial, and in the UK largely in the 148.5–253 kHz range. Like AM radio, transmitting requires a large antenna to create that big wave, and the sound quality means broadcasting music does not work. Recently, Irish state broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann announced it would end its longwave Radio 1 service to Britain Jan. 1, but the same Radio 1 programming would still be available on the Web and via the Freesat satellite TV service. Longwave loyalists, many of them Irish who listened for Irish news from in England, though, successfully protested and petitioned and persuaded the government to postpone RTÉ’s longwave closure until Jan. 1, 2017. It was the third attempt to end longwave in England that was put off. Eventually, though, the transmissions will end. The BBC has bought up the entire world supply of specially-crafted one-meter tall glass valves, but they will run out in a few years. “We have purchased whatever parts we can find, but the truth is that when our current longwave transmission equipment becomes irreparable, our long-wave service will be off-air for good,” Denis Nowlan, network manager for BBC Radio 4, said. “The BBC has committed to continue to sustain the medium for as long as the current infrastructure is viable, but that’s it.” You can read the full story at Radio World.

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Wired reports about the FireChat app from the company Open Garden. FireChat, and the similar Serval Project, build mesh networks by connecting smartphones via the device’s Bluetooth or peer-to-peer Wi-Fi. Every smartphone with FireChat then becomes a node that can carry and deliver text messages. People can build their own decentralized networks without any corporate or governmental interference. “In a sense it’s like a blind postman,” says Christophe Daligault, Open Garden’s chief marketing officer. FireChat launched in the spring of 2014, and it has been used during protests in Iraq, France, and Ecuador, and also in natural disasters. During student protests in Hong Kong recently, more than 500,000 people downloaded the app over a couple days. "FireChat works on phones as long as they’re less than 200 feet apart, but in times when the density is spotty, the company will use a GreenStone, a little plastic module that stores messages and uses Bluetooth to extend the network," Wired reports. The company hopes that enough people will use the app that they can turn it into a totally free mobile carrier that could replace one's paid phone service. “I don’t know when we’ll cross the chasm so that this technology will become ubiquitous enough that everyone can benefit from it,” says Daligault from Open Garden.

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The New York Times reported Oct. 10 that Apple disabled its news app in China. The new app debuted in June in the U.S., with testing in England and Australia. Users find it works overseas but not in China, with instead an error message: “Can’t refresh right now. News isn’t supported in your current region.” Larry Salibra, who founded software testing service Pay4Bugs, said on Reddit last week, “They’re censoring news content that I downloaded and stored on my device purchased in the USA, before I even enter China just because my phone happens to connect to a Chinese signal floating over the border.” Salibra proved Apple isn’t using location tracking and geofencing to shut down the News App, but is basing shutdowns on the mobile network where the phone is connected. Apple also disables the Apple Maps this way in favor of a Beijing-approved map service. Salibra says the concern here is that is if Apple is using watching real-time cell network data to make changes to a device even if location services are disabled in their privacy settings.

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Kevin Goldberg reports in the Communications Law Blog that webcasting rates for 2016-2020 may be set soon, and he writes webcasters have reasons for optimism. The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) is concluding its Webcasting IV proceeding, and has issued two orders so far, and the Register of Copyrights has issued a separate ruling. The CRB has adopted a settlement agreement between SoundExchange and College Broadcasters, Inc. (CBI) with approved terms applying to “Noncommercial Educational Webcasters." That agreement comes with one exception that works in webcasters favor. The CRB has also adopted a partial settlement, negotiated by both SoundExchange and National Public Radio, for public radio broadcasters. Commercial webcasters lack the lobby power of the other groups, and have not made and settlement with the CRB yet. But the Register of Copyrights recently issued a memorandum saying direct licensing agreements between webcasters and record labels can be entered into evidence and considered by the CRB to decide rates. "I’m guessing that CRB’s final decision won’t appear until mid-December," Goldberg writes, basing his prediction on when the CRB acted in 2010. Read complete details about the agreements so far at the Comm Law Blog.