Do you remember this move by AT&T, back in 2011 -  "AT&T to Throttle Top 5% of Unlimited Subscribers" - here?

Here comes the consumer response.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that  it has "..filed a federal court complaint against AT&T Mobility, LLC, charging that the company has misled millions of its smartphone customers by charging them for “unlimited” data plans while

The recent debate around the delivery of Netflix traffic in the US [see "Verizon vs. Netflix on Congestion - It is NOT Us!" - here and "Netflix - Speed to Comcast Customers Continue to Surge" - here], creating confusing among consumers, probably led the FCC to remind ISPs that the Open Internet (Net Neutrality) rules (or some of them) are still in effect.

The FCC issues a public notice, with

  
After several days of conflicting new of the future of Net Neutrality in the US, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler [pictured] decided to "Set the Record Straight", in a post to the FCC official blog. the bottom line - "It is my intention to conclude this proceeding and have enforceable rules by the end of the year".

And the rules are:


That all ISPs must transparently disclose to their subscribers

The EU voted for a new Net Neutrality law (for fixed and mobile services), that should end traffic blocking (here) or discrimination. However, there are some exceptions, including the ability to provide high-quality services. This is not final yet, and the law has to be approved by the leaders of the EU countries.

"Internet access providers would be barred from blocking or slowing down selected

While we’ve always known how important transparency is when it comes to government requests, the events of the past year have underscored just how urgent the issue is. From being the first company to disclose information about National Security Letters to fighting for the ability to publish more about FISA requests, we’ve continually advocated for your right to know.

Today, we’re updating our Transparency Report for the ninth time. This updated Report details the number of government requests we received for user information in criminal investigations during the second half of 2013. Government requests for user information in criminal cases have increased by about 120 percent since we first began publishing these numbers in 2009. Though our number of users has grown throughout the time period, we’re also seeing more and more governments start to exercise their authority to make requests.

We consistently push back against overly broad requests for your personal information, but it’s also important for laws to explicitly protect you from government overreach. That’s why we’re working alongside eight other companies to push for surveillance reform, including more transparency. We’ve all been sharing best practices about how to report the requests we receive, and as a result our Transparency Report now includes governments that made less than 30 requests during a six-month reporting period, in addition to those that made 30+ requests.

Also, people have been asking about how we respond to search warrants in the U.S., so we’ve created an entertaining video to explain in plain language how this process works. We apply the same rigorous standards presented in this video to every request we receive, regardless of type.

You deserve to know when and how governments request user information online, and we’ll keep fighting to make sure that’s the case.

Posted by Richard Salgado, Legal Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security

The FCC's had to do something after losing the Net Neutrality case to Verizon and the immediate effects it had (see related posts below).

Chairman Tom Wheeler [pictured], presented a new set of Net Neutrality rules:


"In its Verizon v. FCC decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuitinvited the Commission to act to preserve a free and open Internet. I

A new level of transparency is now required from the network providers in Israel. This relates to the two providers of broadband service - Bezeq (DSL) and HOT (Cable).

In Israel the internet service is separated into access and ISP functions, so the customer has to negotiate twice and get two bills. The new rules regulate the access providers only and as such do not mean much to the subscribers

In a year in which government surveillance has dominated the headlines, today we’re updating our Transparency Report for the eighth time. Since we began sharing these figures with you in 2010, requests from governments for user information have increased by more than 100 percent. This comes as usage of our services continues to grow, but also as more governments have made requests than ever before. And these numbers only include the requests we’re allowed to publish.

Over the past three years, we’ve continued to add more details to the report, and we’re doing so again today. We’re including additional information about legal process for U.S. criminal requests: breaking out emergency disclosures, wiretap orders, pen register orders and other court orders.

We want to go even further. We believe it’s your right to know what kinds of requests and how many each government is making of us and other companies. However, the U.S. Department of Justice contends that U.S. law does not allow us to share information about some national security requests that we might receive. Specifically, the U.S. government argues that we cannot share information about the requests we receive (if any) under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But you deserve to know.

Earlier this year, we brought a federal case to assert that we do indeed have the right to shine more light on the FISA process. In addition, we recently wrote a letter of support (PDF) for two pieces of legislation currently proposed in the U.S. Congress. And we’re asking governments around the world to uphold international legal agreements that respect the laws of different countries and guarantee standards for due process are met.

Our promise to you is to continue to make this report robust, to defend your information from overly broad government requests, and to push for greater transparency around the world.

Posted by Richard Salgado, Legal Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security

Our users trust Google with a lot of very important data, whether it’s emails, photos, documents, posts or videos. We work exceptionally hard to keep that information safe—hiring some of the best security experts in the world, investing millions of dollars in technology and baking security protections such as 2-step verification into our products.

Of course, people don’t always use our services for good, and it’s important that law enforcement be able to investigate illegal activity. This may involve requests for personal information. When we receive these requests, we:

• scrutinize them carefully to ensure they satisfy the law and our policies;
• seek to narrow requests that are overly broad;
• notify users when appropriate so they can contact the entity requesting the information or consult a lawyer; and
• require that government agencies use a search warrant if they’re seeking search query information or private content, like Gmail and documents, stored in a Google Account.

When conducting national security investigations, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation can issue a National Security Letter (NSL) to obtain identifying information about a subscriber from telephone and Internet companies. The FBI has the authority to prohibit companies from talking about these requests. But we’ve been trying to find a way to provide more information about the NSLs we get—particularly as people have voiced concerns about the increase in their use since 9/11.

Starting today, we’re now including data about NSLs in our Transparency Report. We’re thankful to U.S. government officials for working with us to provide greater insight into the use of NSLs. Visit our page on user data requests in the U.S. and you’ll see, in broad strokes, how many NSLs for user data Google receives, as well as the number of accounts in question. In addition, you can now find answers to some common questions we get asked about NSLs on our Transparency Report FAQ.


You'll notice that we're reporting numerical ranges rather than exact numbers. This is to address concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations. We plan to update these figures annually.

Posted by Richard Salgado, Legal Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security

(Cross-posted on the Public Policy Blog)

Today we’re releasing new data for the Transparency Report, showing that the steady increase in government requests for our users’ data continued in the second half of 2012, as usage of our services continued to grow. We’ve shared figures like this since 2010 because it’s important for people to understand how government actions affect them.

We’re always looking for ways to make the report even more informative. So for the first time we’re now including a breakdown of the kinds of legal process that government entities in the U.S. use when compelling communications and technology companies to hand over user data. From July through December 2012:

• 68 percent of the requests Google received from government entities in the U.S. were through subpoenas. These are requests for user-identifying information, issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”), and are the easiest to get because they typically don’t involve judges.
• 22 percent were through ECPA search warrants. These are, generally speaking, orders issued by judges under ECPA, based on a demonstration of “probable cause” to believe that certain information related to a crime is presently in the place to be searched.
• The remaining 10 percent were mostly court orders issued under ECPA by judges or other processes that are difficult to categorize.

User data requests of all kinds have increased by more than 70 percent since 2009, as you can see in our new visualizations of overall trends. In total, we received 21,389 requests for information about 33,634 users from July through December 2012.


We’ll keep looking for more ways to inform you about government requests and how we handle them. We hope more companies and governments themselves join us in this effort by releasing similar kinds of data.

One last thing: You may have noticed that the latest Transparency Report doesn’t include new data on content removals. That’s because we’ve decided to release those numbers separately going forward. Stay tuned for that data.

Posted by Richard Salgado, Legal Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security

By guest blogger Jamie Holter

Boy, our Street Smarts answer in the Everett Herald sure sparked a lot of debate this week. We responded to a reader question about the cost of putting a sign in a particular location. In the original article (printed two weeks ago), we were explaining why we DIDN’T put the sign in the location because, among other things, cost was an issue. When we were explaining how costs can be high, we used an outside, worst-case scenario number factoring in everything that could go wrong as support for our position to not put up the sign. We also tried to explain that putting up a sign is not as simple as pounding a couple posts into the ground. We threw out some upper end, worst-case scenario numbers…and they went viral.

Example of a sign that can cost up to $10,000

KIRO 97.3 radio host Dori Monson challenged us live on air to compare his cost list to ours. Here’s the interview. Here’s a write up. (Incidentally, I like this one because it shows a picture of the kind of sign and many people think we are talking about a small side-of-the-road speed limit sign.) As you heard, the end result shows Monson Construction and WSDOT were about the same.

Then KOMO AM 1000’s Ken Schram gave us the Schrammie. If you don’t know, that’s an award he gives out each week for waste or a “duh” moment. What can I say? WSDOT is low-hanging fruit for the media.

Example of a sign that can cost up to $77,000

So here, once again, is an attempt at the breakdown of possible costs – all variable of course due to the location and size of the sign: There is coordination with utilities so you don’t cut fiber lines; there’s ordering the sign, building the sign with special bracing so it doesn’t flap in the wind, driving to and from the site, gas for all the vehicles, digging holes, placing rebar, pouring concrete, installing anchor plates, closing lanes for several hours, bringing a hoist out to place the 15-foot tall posts and setting up the 250 pound sign. It’s specially designed to “break away” so when someone hits it, drivers won’t be injured. You need special materials for that. Returning to the area a second time when the concrete has cured to finish the work. All in all, this particular kind of sign in a similar location cost $10,000. Our workers make $20/hour. When they work at night they get an additional 65 cents an hour.

We work hard to keep our costs down and our transparency up. We work hard to explain the process of following laws, laws designed to keep people safe on the highways, laws designed to keep our water and air clean (AKA “environmental regulations”), laws that say signs must be large enough you can see them with old eyes driving by at 65 miles per hour and laws that say you can’t kill someone with a defective sign after you build it and walk away.

It is frustrating to us when we try to be accountable to taxpayers and explain a worst case and best case scenarios, readers and media quickly jump to the worst numbers.