I've Been Mugged Blog

3 Strategies To Defend GOP Health Bill: Euphemisms, False Statements and Deleted Comments

[Editor's Note: today's guest post is by the reporters as ProPublica. Affordable health care and coverage are important to many, if not most, Americans. It is reprinted with permission.]

by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica

Earlier this month, a day after the House of Representatives passed a bill to repeal and replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act, Ashleigh Morley visited her congressman's Facebook page to voice her dismay.

"Your vote yesterday was unthinkably irresponsible and does not begin to account for the thousands of constituents in your district who rely upon many of the services and provisions provided for them by the ACA," Morley wrote on the page affiliated with the campaign of Representative Peter King (Republican, New York). "You never had my vote and this confirms why."

The next day, Morley said, her comment was deleted and she was blocked from commenting on or reacting to King's posts. The same thing has happened to others critical of King's positions on health care and other matters. King has deleted negative feedback and blocked critics from his Facebook page, several of his constituents say, sharing screenshots of comments that are no longer there.

"Having my voice and opinions shut down by the person who represents me -- especially when my voice and opinion wasn't vulgar and obscene -- is frustrating, it's disheartening, and I think it points to perhaps a larger problem with our representatives and maybe their priorities," Morley said in an interview.

King's office did not respond to requests for comment.

As Republican members of Congress seek to roll back the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, and replace it with the American Health Care Act, they have adopted various strategies to influence and cope with public opinion, which polls show mostly opposes their plan. ProPublica, with our partners at Kaiser Health News, Stat and Vox, has been fact-checking members of Congress in this debate and we've found misstatements on both sides, though more by Republicans than Democrats. The Washington Post's Fact Checker has similarly found misstatements by both sides.

Today, we're back with more examples of how legislators are interacting with constituents about repealing Obamacare, whether online or in traditional correspondence. Their more controversial tactics seem to fall into three main categories: providing incorrect information, using euphemisms for the impact of their actions, and deleting comments critical of them. (Share your correspondence with members of Congress with us.)

Incorrect Information

Representative Vicky Hartzler (Republican, Missouri) sent a note to constituents this month explaining her vote in favor of the Republican bill. First, she outlined why she believes the ACA is not sustainable -- namely, higher premiums and few choices. Then she said it was important to have a smooth transition from one system to another.

"This is why I supported the AHCA to follow through on our promise to have an immediate replacement ready to go should the ACA be repealed," she wrote. "The AHCA keeps the ACA for the next three years then phases in a new approach to give people, states, and insurance markets plenty of time to make adjustments."

Except that's not true.

"There are quite a number of changes in the AHCA that take effect within the next three years," wrote ACA expert Timothy Jost, an emeritus professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law, in an email to ProPublica.

The current law's penalties on individuals who do not purchase insurance and on employers who do not offer it would be repealed retroactively to 2016, which could remove the incentive for some employers to offer coverage to their workers. Moreover, beginning in 2018, older people could be charged premiums up to five times more than younger people -- up from three times under current law. The way in which premium tax credits would be calculated would change as well, benefiting younger people at the expense of older ones, Jost said.

"It is certainly not correct to say that everything stays the same for the next three years," he wrote.

In an email, Hartzler spokesman Casey Harper replied, "I can see how this sentence in the letter could be misconstrued. It's very important to the Congresswoman that we give clear, accurate information to her constituents. Thanks for pointing that out."

Other lawmakers have similarly shared incorrect information after voting to repeal the ACA. Representative Diane Black (Republican, Tennessee) wrote in a May 19 email to a constituent that "in 16 of our counties, there are no plans available at all. This system is crumbling before our eyes and we cannot wait another year to act."

Black was referring to the possibility that, in 16 Tennessee counties around Knoxville, there might not have been any insurance options in the ACA marketplace next year. However, 10 days earlier, before she sent her email, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee announced that it was willing to provide coverage in those counties and would work with the state Department of Commerce and Insurance "to set the right conditions that would allow our return."

"We stand by our statement of the facts, and Congressman Black is working hard to repeal and replace Obamacare with a system that actually works for Tennessee families and individuals," her deputy chief of staff Dean Thompson said in an email.

On the Democratic side, the Washington Post Fact Checker has called out representatives for saying the AHCA would consider rape or sexual assault as pre-existing conditions. The bill would not do that, although critics counter that any resulting mental health issues or sexually transmitted diseases could be considered existing illnesses.

Euphemisms

A number of lawmakers have posted information taken from talking points put out by the House Republican Conference that try to frame the changes in the Republican bill as kinder and gentler than most experts expect them to be.

An answer to one frequently asked question pushes back against criticism that the Republican bill would gut Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor, and appears on the websites of Representative Garret Graves (Republican, Louisiana) and others.

"Our plan responsibly unwinds Obamacare's Medicaid expansion," the answer says. "We freeze enrollment and allow natural turnover in the Medicaid program as beneficiaries see their life circumstances change. This strategy is both fiscally responsible and fair, ensuring we don't pull the rug out on anyone while also ending the Obamacare expansion that unfairly prioritizes able-bodied working adults over the most vulnerable."

That is highly misleading, experts say.

The Affordable Care Act allowed states to expand Medicaid eligibility to anyone who earned less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level, with the federal government picking up almost the entire tab. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia opted to do so. As a result, the program now covers more than 74 million beneficiaries, nearly 17 million more than it did at the end of 2013.

The GOP health care bill would pare that back. Beginning in 2020, it would reduce the share the federal government pays for new enrollees in the Medicaid expansion to the rate it pays for other enrollees in the state, which is considerably less. Also in 2020, the legislation would cap the spending growth rate per Medicaid beneficiary. As a result, a Congressional Budget Office review released Wednesday estimates that millions of Americans would become uninsured.

Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, said the GOP's characterization of its Medicaid plan is wrong on many levels. People naturally cycle on and off Medicaid, she said, often because of temporary events, not changing life circumstances -- seasonal workers, for instance, may see their wages rise in summer months before falling back.

"A terrible blow to millions of poor people is recast as an easing off of benefits that really aren't all that important, in a humane way," she said.

Moreover, the GOP bill actually would speed up the "natural turnover" in the Medicaid program, said Diane Rowland, executive vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care think tank. Under the ACA, states were only permitted to recheck enrollees' eligibility for Medicaid once a year because cumbersome paperwork requirements have been shown to cause people to lose their coverage. The American Health Care Act would require these checks every six months -- and even give states more money to conduct them.

Rowland also took issue with the GOP talking point that the expansion "unfairly prioritizes able-bodied working adults over the most vulnerable." At a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing earlier this year, GOP representatives maintained that the Medicaid expansion may be creating longer waits for home- and community-based programs for sick and disabled Medicaid patients needing long-term care, "putting care for some of the most vulnerable Americans at risk."

Research from the Kaiser Family Foundation, however, showed that there was no relationship between waiting lists and states that expanded Medicaid. Such waiting lists pre-dated the expansion and they were worse in states that did not expand Medicaid than in states that did.

"This is a complete misrepresentation of the facts," Rosenbaum said.

Graves' office said the information on his site came from the House Republican Conference. Emails to the conference's press office were not returned.

The GOP talking points also play up a new Patient and State Stability Fund included in the AHCA, which is intended to defray the costs of covering people with expensive health conditions. "All told, $130 billion dollars would be made available to states to finance innovative programs to address their unique patient populations," the information says. "This new stability fund ensures these programs have the necessary funding to protect patients while also giving states the ability to design insurance markets that will lower costs and increase choice."

The fund was modeled after a program in Maine, called an invisible high-risk pool, which advocates say has kept premiums in check in the state. But Senator Susan Collins (Republican, Maine) says the House bill's stability fund wasn't allocated enough money to keep premiums stable.

"In order to do the Maine model 2014 which I've heard many House people say that is what they're aiming for -- it would take $15 billion in the first year and that is not in the House bill," Collins told Politico. "There is actually $3 billion specifically designated for high-risk pools in the first year."

Deleting Comments

Morley, 28, a branded content editor who lives in Seaford, New York, said she moved into Representative King's Long Island district shortly before the 2016 election. She said she did not vote for him and, like many others across the country, said the election results galvanized her into becoming more politically active.

Earlier this year, Morley found an online conversation among King's constituents who said their critical comments were being deleted from his Facebook page. Because she doesn't agree with King's stances, she said she wanted to reserve her comment for an issue she felt strongly about.

A day after the House voted to repeal the ACA, Morley posted her thoughts. "I kind of felt that that was when I wanted to use my one comment, my one strike as it would be," she said.

By noon the next day, it had been deleted and she had been blocked.

"I even wrote in my comment that you can block me but I'm still going to call your office," Morley said in an interview.

Some negative comments about King remain on his Facebook page. But King's critics say his deletions fit a broader pattern. He has declined to hold an in-person town hall meeting this year, saying, "to me all they do is just turn into a screaming session," according to CNN. He held a telephonic town hall meeting but only answered a small fraction of the questions submitted. And he met with Liuba Grechen Shirley, the founder of a local Democratic group in his district, but only after her group held a protest in front of his office that drew around 400 people.

"He's not losing his health care," Grechen Shirley said. "It doesn't affect him. It's a death sentence for many and he doesn't even care enough to meet with his constituents."

King's deleted comments even caught the eye of Andy Slavitt, who until January was the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Slavitt has been traveling the country pushing back against attempts to gut the ACA.

.@RepPeteKing, are you silencing your constituents who send you questions? Assume ppl in district will respond if this is happening.

-- Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) May 12, 2017

Since the election, other activists across the country who oppose the president's agenda have posted online that they have been blocked from following their elected officials on Twitter or commenting on their Facebook pages because of critical statements they've made about the AHCA and other issues.

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Coming Soon: A New HD Video Standard For TV. Will Over-The-Air Broadcasts Remain Free?

Soon, consumers will hear about improvements in over-the-air broadcast television. Free, broadcast television has been around since forever, and High Definition (HD) broadcast signals have been around since 2009. Many consumers have chosen free, over-the-air broadcast television to avoid expensive monthly cable-TV bills.

Consumer Reports explained:

"Technically called ATSC 3.0, the new broadcast standard is—thankfully—being more generally billed as "Next-Gen Broadcast TV." There are a few big differences between our current ATSC 1.0 broadcasts and the new ones we'll receive as part of ATSC 3.0. A key one is that the new standard is IP (internet protocol)-based, which means it can carry internet content alongside traditional TV broadcasts. The broadcasts can also include 4K video and high dynamic range (HDR) content—the two biggest selling points in TVs right now."

And, consumers will be able to receive the new HD broadcast signals on their smart phones. Reportedly, the coming ATSC 3.0 standard will use a more efficient video format, called HEVC or H.265, which streaming services already use.

Last year, WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina began to broadcast using the new standard with a documentary, "Take Me Out To the Bulls' Game." The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced in February a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) which sought comments from the public about the new HD broadcast standard. That FCC announcement stated, in part:

"ATSC 3.0 has the potential to greatly improve broadcast signal reception on mobile devices and television receivers without outdoor antennas.  It is also intended to enable broadcasters to offer enhanced and innovative new features to consumers, including Ultra High Definition picture and immersive audio, more localized programming content, an advanced emergency alert system capable of waking up sleeping devices to warn consumers of imminent emergencies, improved accessibility options, and interactive services.

A coalition of broadcast and consumer electronics industry representatives petitioned the Commission to allow the use of the new standard. The upgraded technology is intended to merge the capabilities of over-the-air broadcasting with the broadband viewing and information delivery methods of the Internet using the same 6 MHz channels presently allocated for digital television (DTV)."

Like most things in life, details matter. Consumer Reports warned:

"... Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel at Consumers Union, the policy and mobilization arm of Consumer Reports, says that some consumers could lose the ability to get some ATSC 1.0 signals if the host station is located farther away than their current broadcaster.

"Our position is that next-gen TV can and will be beneficial to consumers if implemented by the FCC in a measured and conscientious manner," he says. That could include making sure the current coverage areas are preserved as much as possible, not allowing broadcasters to downgrade the quality of ATSC 1.0 broadcasts from high to standard definition, and providing consumers with education on issues such as the timing of the transition and what new equipment they may need."

So, some broadcasters might choose to cut corners while migrating to the new standard: reduce their existing HD over-the-air signal strength, degrade their existing HD signal quality, or both. Not good.

And, there's more bad news for consumers. The new HD broadcast standard may cost more. You're probably wondering how, since over-the-air broadcasts have been free since television was introduced. Consumer Reports explained:

"... broadcasters could encrypt at least part of their programming, and require users to create an account and pay for access to certain features. No details are available on how this would work from the consumer's point of view. Consumers Union and other groups say they will insist that consumers continue to have access to free over-the air high-definition TV reception."

The new HD broadcast standard should not include hidden costs or new fees for consumers. For many consumers, new televisions are expensive and out of reach. Many consumers have chosen to "cut the cord" to save money. For these consumers, free over-the-air broadcast television is vital.

Nor should broadcasters be able to cut corners and force consumers to the new HD standard by degrading their existing HD signal strength and/or quality. The new HD broadcast standard should be voluntary for consumers. Nor should consumers be forced to submit to broadcasters their personal, contact, and payment information. One of the benefits of over-the-air broadcasts is privacy.

The next-gen TV standard offers benefits to both consumers and broadcasters. The FCC must balance the needs of both, and not serve only one group. The industry uses the term "Multi-channel Video Programming Distributors" (MVPD) to describe companies that provide video content. These MVPD companies include video producers and distributors: legacy cable-TV providers, TV networks, and others that provide programming via cable, the Internet, and over-the-air broadcasts.

Some MVPDs do both: produce and distribute video content. These MVPDs have a financial bias to force consumers from free over-the-air broadcasts to their proprietary, higher cost distribution networks (e.g., cable, internet). Consumers must have the freedom to choose how they consumer video content, and not have a distribution network forced upon them via bundling, "retransmission consent system," or other MVPD tactics.

What are retransmission consent systems? This 16-142 filing by Consumer's Union, Public Knowledge, and New America's Open Technology Institute explained (Adobe PDF):

"It is increasingly axiomatic that, when MVPDs and broadcast groups engage in retransmission consent negotiations, consumers end up suffering, or footing the bill, or both. Increased broadcast retransmission consent fees are passed on to consumers by MVPDs who have little choice but to accept most broadcaster demands or face crippling blackouts.... Large MVPDs, and those which also own broadcast interests, also use the retransmission consent process to extract favorable terms, potentially limiting the growth or viability of competitive video services. Comcast, for example, is rumored to have fleshed out its fledgling over-the-top (OTT) service by exercising most-favored-nation clauses in many of its carriage contracts. Comcast can only demand such favorable contract terms due to its dominant position in the video delivery marketplace, and once again, consumers are left holding the bag..."

So, the FCC must not make things worse for consumers by allowing the new HD broadcast standard to reduce competition and raise prices. Higher prices may be good for MVPDs (and their stockholders) but not for consumers.

If you want to submit a comment or read comments already submitted about the new HD broadcast standard, search for the 16-142 Filing within the FCC's Electronic Filing & Comment System (ECFS). At press time, only 167 persons, companies, and entities had submitted filings and comments (compared to 2,869,632 comments via ECFS about Net Neutrality). Not good.

What are your opinions about the new HD video broadcast standard?

Attorneys General In Several States Announce Settlement Agreements With Target

The Office of the Attorney General (AG) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts announced on Wednesday that the state will receive $625,000 as part of the settlement agreement with Target Corporation. The settlement agreement, which includes 47 states plus the District of Colombia, resolves claims by states about the retailer's massive data breach in 2013.

Card issuers had also sued the retailer. Target settled with Visa in August, 2015 to resolve claims in which 110 million consumers' records were stolen, including 40 million credit- and debit-card numbers. Also, debit card PIN numbers were stolen.

The announcement by Massachusetts AG Maura Healey explained:

"The investigation found that the stolen credentials were used to exploit weaknesses in Target’s system, which allowed the attackers to access a customer service database, install malware on the system and then capture data from credit or debit card transactions at Target stores (including stores in Massachusetts) from Nov. 27, 2013 to Dec. 15, 2013. The stolen data included consumers’ full names, telephone numbers, email addresses, mailing addresses, payment card numbers, expiration dates, security codes, and encrypted debit PINs... The breach affected more than 41 million customer payment card accounts and contact information for more than 60 million customers nationwide. In Massachusetts, the breach compromised information from approximately 947,000 customer payment card accounts and other personally-identifying information of about 1.5 million Massachusetts residents."

Terms of the settlement require Target:

"... to develop, implement and maintain a comprehensive information security program and to employ an executive or officer who is responsible for executing the plan. The company is required to hire an independent, qualified third-party to conduct a comprehensive security assessment... to maintain and support software on its network; to maintain appropriate encryption policies, particularly as pertains to cardholder and personal information data; to segment its cardholder data environment from the rest of its computer network; and to undertake steps to control access to its network, including implementing password rotation policies and two-factor authentication for certain accounts."

California will receive $1.4 million from the settlement. New York AG Eric T. Schneiderman said about the settlement agreement:

"New Yorkers need to know that when they shop, their data will be protected... This settlement marks an important win for New Yorkers – bringing over $635,000 into the state, in addition to the free credit monitoring services for those impacted by the data breach, and key security improvements to help protect Target consumers moving forward."

Yes, indeed. Shoppers everywhere need to know their data will be protected.

Besides Massachusetts, New York and California, the other states participating in this settlement include Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

AL.com reported:

"Alabama won't be cashing in on the largest multi-state data breach settlement in history, however. The reason, according to the Alabama Attorney General's Office, is the absence of a state law that requires entities to notify customers whose information could have been exposed in a breach and then take steps to remediate any injuries.

"Alabama is one of the few states in the nation that is not a party to the recent Target settlement because our state does not have data breach notification law," said Mike Lewis, Communications Director for the Office of the Alabama Attorney General."

Connecticut and Illinois led the states' investigation. The participating states have not yet announced how the settlement money will be distributed.

[Editor's Note: a prior version of this blog post did not include the report by AL.com.]

Hacking Group Reported Security Issues With Samsung 8 Phone's Iris Recognition

The Computer Chaos Club (CCC), a German hacking group founded in 1981, posted the following report on Monday:

"The iris recognition system of the new Samsung Galaxy S8 was successfully defeated by hackers... The Samsung Galaxy S8 is the first flagship smartphone with iris recognition. The manufacturer of the biometric solution is the company Princeton Identity Inc. The system promises secure individual user authentication by using the unique pattern of the human iris.

A new test conducted by CCC hackers shows that this promise cannot be kept: With a simple to make dummy-eye the phone can be fooled into believing that it sees the eye of the legitimate owner. A video shows the simplicity of the method."

The Samsung Galaxy S8 runs the Android operating system, claims a talk time of up to 30 hours, has a screen optimized for virtual reality (VR) apps, and features Bixby, an "... intelligent interface that is built into the Galaxy S8. With every interaction, Bixby can learn, evolve and adapt to you. Whether it's through touch, type or voice, Bixby will seamlessly help you get things done. (Voice coming soon)"

The CCC report also explained:

"Iris recognition may be barely sufficient to protect a phone against complete strangers unlocking it. But whoever has a photo of the legitimate owner can trivially unlock the phone. "If you value the data on your phone – and possibly want to even use it for payment – using the traditional PIN-protection is a safer approach than using body features for authentication," says Dirk Engling, spokesperson for the CCC."

Phys.org reported that Samsung executives are investigating the CCC report. Samsung views the Galaxy S8 as critical to the company's performance given the Note 7 battery issues and fires last year.

Some consumers might conclude from the CCC report that the best defense against against iris hacks would be to stop posting selfies. This would be wrong to conclude, and an insufficient defense:

"The easiest way for a thief to capture iris pictures is with a digital camera in night-shot mode or the infrared filter removed... Starbug was able to demonstrate that a good digital camera with 200mm-lens at a distance of up to five meters is sufficient to capture suitably good pictures to fool iris recognition systems."

So, more photos besides selfies could reveal your iris details. The CCC report also reminded consumers of the security issues with using fingerprints to protect their devices:

"CCC member and biometrics security researcher starbug has demonstrated time and again how easily biometrics can be defeated with his hacks on fingerprint authentication systems – most recently with his successful defeat of the fingerprint sensor "Touch ID" on Apple’s iPhone. "The security risk to the user from iris recognition is even bigger than with fingerprints as we expose our irises a lot. Under some circumstances, a high-resolution picture from the internet is sufficient to capture an iris," Dirk Engling remarked."

What are your opinions of the CCC report?

The Guardian Site Reviews Documents Used By Facebook Executives To Moderate Content

The Guardian news site in the United Kingdom (UK) published the findings of its review of "The Facebook Files" -- a collection of documents which comprise the rules used by executives at the social site to moderate (e.g., review, approve, and delete) content posted by the site's members. Reporters at The Guardian reviewed:

"... more than 100 internal training manuals, spreadsheets and flowcharts that give unprecedented insight into the blueprints Facebook has used to moderate issues such as violence, hate speech, terrorism, pornography, racism and self-harm. There are even guidelines on match-fixing and cannibalism.

The Facebook Files give the first view of the codes and rules formulated by the site, which is under huge political pressure in Europe and the US. They illustrate difficulties faced by executives scrabbling to react to new challenges such as “revenge porn” – and the challenges for moderators, who say they are overwhelmed by the volume of work, which means they often have “just 10 seconds” to make a decision..."

The Guardian summarized what it learned about Facebook's revenge porn rules for moderators:

Reportedly, Facebook moderators reviewed as many as 54,000 cases in a single month related to revenge porn and "sextortion." In January of 2017, the site disabled 14,000 accounts due to this form of sexual violence. Previously, these rules were not available publicly. Findings about other rules are available at The Guardian site.

Other key findings found by The Guardian during its document review:

"One document says Facebook reviews more than 6.5m reports a week relating to potentially fake accounts – known as FNRP (fake, not real person)... Many moderators are said to have concerns about the inconsistency and peculiar nature of some of the policies. Those on sexual content, for example, are said to be the most complex and confusing... Anyone with more than 100,000 followers on a social media platform is designated as a public figure – which denies them the full protections given to private individuals..."

The social site struggles with how to handle violent language:

"Facebook’s leaked policies on subjects including violent death, images of non-sexual physical child abuse and animal cruelty show how the site tries to navigate a minefield... In one of the leaked documents, Facebook acknowledges “people use violent language to express frustration online” and feel “safe to do so” on the site. It says: “They feel that the issue won’t come back to them and they feel indifferent towards the person they are making the threats about because of the lack of empathy created by communication via devices as opposed to face to face..."

Some industry watchers in Europe doubt that Facebook can do what it has set out to accomplish, lacks sufficient staff to effectively moderate content posted by almost 2 billion users, and Facebook management should be more transparent about its content moderation rules. Others believe that Facebook and other social sites should be heavily fined "for failing to remove extremist and hate-crime material."

To learn more, The Guardian site includes at least nine articles about its review of The Facebook Files:

FCC Voted Yesterday To Start To Overturn Net Neutrality Rules

Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to kill net neutrality rules it enacted a couple years ago. The FCC announcement:

"The Federal Communications Commission today took the first step toward restoring Internet freedom and promoting infrastructure investment, innovation, and choice by proposing to end utility-style regulation of broadband Internet access service. In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC proposes to return to the bipartisan framework that preserved a flourishing free and open Internet for almost 20 years.  First, the Notice proposes to reverse the FCC’s 2015 decision to impose heavy-handed Title II utility-style government regulation on Internet service providers (ISPs) and return to the longstanding, successful light-touch framework under Title I of the Communications Act.

Second, the Notice proposes to return to the Commission’s original classification of mobile broadband Internet access service as a private mobile service.  Given the historical innovation and success of the wireless marketplace prior to the Title II Order, this proposal is expected to substantially benefit consumers and the marketplace.

Third, the Notice proposes to eliminate the catch-all Internet conduct standard created by the Title II Order.  Because the Internet conduct standard is extremely vague and expansive, ISPs must guess at what they are permitted to do.  Eliminating the Internet conduct standard is therefore expected to promote innovation and network investment by eliminating regulatory uncertainty."

The vote happened on the scheduled date, despite the unavailability for several hours Sunday morning, May 7, of the FCC website for public comments. The FCC said its site crashed due to a DDoS attack. Before the vote, more than 2 million persons and organizations submitted feedback to the FCC.

The vote was expected since Republicans dominate the three-member committee. FCC Chairman Pai and Commissioner Michael O'Rielly, voted for the change. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, the only Democrat on the three-member committee, voted against it. In January of this year, President Donald Trump appointed Ajit Pai, a former lawyer with Verizon, as the FCC Chairman.

In a statement about the vote, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai repeated prior claims about "heavy-handed" regulation, an internet that wasn't broken, and decreased infrastructure investment by internet service providers (ISPs). All of these claims were discussed and debunked previously after Chairman Pai's speech in April.

C/Net reported:

"Eliminating the Open Internet Order takes away the internet's level playing field and would allow a select few corporations to choose winners and losers, preventing consumers from accessing the content that they want, when they want it," said Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel for Consumers Union. Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota called it "a major step toward destroying the internet as we know it."

CNN reported:

"More than 1,000 startups and investors have now signed an open letter to Pai opposing the proposal. The Internet Association, a trade group representing bigger companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, has also condemned the plan. "The current FCC rules are working for consumers and the protections need to be kept in tact," Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Internet Association, said at a press conference Wednesday."

USA Today reported:

"Congress could eventually have a say on the issue. At about the same time the FCC was considering the issue, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., called for Congress to pass legislation "to protect the internet." Thune, who is the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged colleagues "to begin bipartisan work on such legislation without any further delay. Innovation and job creation should no longer take a backseat to partisan point-scoring," he said..."

After re-reading the FCC announcement several times, I noticed that it failed to mention nor summarize the feedback received from the public. This makes one wonder if Chairman Pai and the committee took the time to review the comments submitted. During the last thirty (3) days, the public submitted 2,174,196 filings and comments. (See image below.) The feedback included a mix of comments for and against the latest changes.

Did Chairman Pai and the committee read this feedback, or were their minds already made up? And if so, did they simply ignore more than 2 million comments? Fortunately, the public can continue to submit feedback about Proceeding 17-108 until August for the subsequent final FCC vote.

Any Half-Decent Hacker Could Break Into Mar-a-Lago

[Editor's Note: Today's guest blog post is by the reporters at ProPublica. The article explores the security issues about key locations the President visits repeatedly and does business at. It was originally published yesterday, and is reprinted with permission.]

by Jeff Larson and Julia Angwin, ProPublica; and by Surya Mattu, Gizmodo

Two weeks ago, on a sparkling spring morning, we went trawling along Florida's coastal waterway. But not for fish.

We parked a 17-foot motor boat in a lagoon about 800 feet from the back lawn of The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and pointed a 2-foot wireless antenna that resembled a potato gun toward the club. Within a minute, we spotted three weakly encrypted Wi-Fi networks. We could have hacked them in less than five minutes, but we refrained.

A few days later, we drove through the grounds of the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with the same antenna and aimed it at the clubhouse. We identified two open Wi-Fi networks that anyone could join without a password. We resisted the temptation.

We have also visited two of President Donald Trump's other family-run retreats, the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., and a golf club in Sterling, Virginia. Our inspections found weak and open Wi-Fi networks, wireless printers without passwords, servers with outdated and vulnerable software, and unencrypted login pages to back-end databases containing sensitive information.

The risks posed by the lax security, experts say, go well beyond simple digital snooping. Sophisticated attackers could take advantage of vulnerabilities in the Wi-Fi networks to take over devices like computers or smart phones and use them to record conversations involving anyone on the premises.

"Those networks all have to be crawling with foreign intruders, not just ProPublica," said Dave Aitel, chief executive officer of Immunity, Inc., a digital security company, when we told him what we found.

Security lapses are not uncommon in the hospitality industry, which -- like most industries and government agencies -- is under increasing attack from hackers. But they are more worrisome in places where the president of the United States, heads of state and public officials regularly visit.

U.S. leaders can ill afford such vulnerabilities. As both the U.S. and French presidential campaigns showed, hackers increasingly exploit weaknesses in internet security systems in an effort to influence elections and policy. Last week, cyberattacks using software stolen from the National Security Agency paralyzed operations in at least a dozen countries, from Britain's National Health Service to Russia's Interior Ministry.

Since the election, Trump has hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and British politician Nigel Farage at his properties. The cybersecurity issues we discovered could have allowed those diplomatic discussions -- and other sensitive conversations at the properties -- to be monitored by hackers.

The Trump Organization follows "cybersecurity best practices," said spokeswoman Amanda Miller. "Like virtually every other company these days, we are routinely targeted by cyberterrorists whose only focus is to inflict harm on great American businesses. While we will not comment on specific security measures, we are confident in the steps we have taken to protect our business and safeguard our information. Our teams work diligently to deploy best-in-class firewall and anti-vulnerability platforms with constant 24/7 monitoring."

The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Trump properties have been hacked before. Last year, the Trump hotel chain paid $50,000 to settle charges brought by the New York attorney general that it had not properly disclosed the loss of more than 70,000 credit card numbers and 302 Social Security numbers. Prosecutors alleged that hotel credit card systems were "the target of a cyber-attack" due to poor security. The company agreed to beef up its security; it's not clear if the vulnerabilities we found violate that agreement. A spokesman for the New York attorney general declined comment.

Our experience also indicates that it's easy to gain physical access to Trump properties, at least when the president is not there. As Politico has previously reported, Trump hotels and clubs are poorly guarded. We drove a car past the front of Mar-a-Lago and parked a boat near its lawn. We drove through the grounds of the Bedminster golf course and into the parking lot of the golf course in Sterling, Virginia. No one questioned us.

Both President Obama and President Bush often vacationed at the more traditional presidential retreat, the military-run Camp David. The computers and networks there and at the White House are run by the Defense Information Systems Agency.

In 2016, the military spent $64 million on maintaining the networks at the White House and Camp David, and more than $2 million on "defense solutions, personnel, techniques, and best practices to defend, detect, and mitigate cyber-based threats" from hacking those networks.

Even after spending millions of dollars on security, the White House admitted in 2015 that it was hacked by Russians. After the hack, the White House replaced all its computer systems, according to a person familiar with the matter. All staffers who work at the White House are told that "there are people who are actively watching what you are doing," said Mikey Dickerson, who ran the U.S. Digital Service in the Obama administration.

By comparison, Mar-a-Lago budgeted $442,931 for security in 2016 -- slightly more than double the $200,000 initiation fee for one new member. The Trump Organization declined to say how much Mar-a-Lago spends specifically on digital security. The club, last reported to have almost 500 members paying annual dues of $14,000 apiece, allotted $1,703,163 for all administration last year, according to documents filed in a lawsuit Trump brought against Palm Beach County in an effort to halt commercial flights from flying over Mar-a-Lago. The lawsuit was dropped, but the FAA now restricts flights over the club when the president is there.

It is not clear whether Trump connects to the insecure networks while at his family's properties. When he travels, the president is provided with portable secure communications equipment. Trump tracked the military strike on a Syrian air base last month from a closed-door situation room at Mar-a-Lago with secure video equipment.

However, Trump has held sensitive meetings in public spaces at his properties. Most famously, in February, he and the Japanese prime minister discussed a North Korean missile test on the Mar-a-Lago patio. Over the course of that weekend in February, the president's Twitter account posted 21 tweets from an Android phone. An analysis by an Android-focused website showed that Trump had used the same make of phone since 2015. That phone is an older model that isn't approved by the NSA for classified use.

Photos of Trump and Abe taken by diners on that occasion prompted four Democratic senators to ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether electronic communications were secure at Mar-a-Lago.

In March, the GAO agreed to open an investigation. Chuck Young, a spokesman for the office, said in an interview that the work was in "the early stages," and did not offer an estimate for when the report would be completed.

So, we decided to test the cybersecurity of Trump's favorite hangouts ourselves.

Our first stop was Mar-a-Lago, a Trump country club in Palm Beach, Florida, where the president has spent most weekends since taking office. Driving past the club, we picked up the signal for a Wi-Fi-enabled combination printer and scanner that has been accessible since at least February 2016, according to a public Wi-Fi database.

An open printer may sound innocuous, but it can be used by hackers for everything from capturing all the documents sent to the device to trying to infiltrate the entire network.

To prevent such attacks, the Defense Information Systems Agency, which secures the White House and other military networks, forbids installing printers that anyone can connect to from outside networks. It also warns against using printers that do more than printing, such as faxing. "If an attacker gains network access to one of these devices, a wide range of exploits may be possible," the agency warns in its security guide.

We also were able to detect a misconfigured and unencrypted router, which could potentially provide a gateway for hackers.

To get a better line of sight, we rented a boat and piloted it to within sight of the club. There, we picked up signals from the club's wireless networks, three of which were protected with a weak and outmoded form of encryption known as WEP. In 2005, an FBI agent publicly broke this type of encryption in minutes.

By comparison, the military limits the signal strength of networks at places such as Camp David and the White House so that they are not reachable from a car driving by. It also requires wireless networks to use the strongest available form of encryption.

From our desks in New York, we were also able to determine that the club's website hosts a database with an insecure login page that is not protected by standard internet encryption. Login forms like this are considered a severe security risk, according to the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Without encryption, spies could eavesdrop on the network until a club employee logs in, and then steal his or her username and password. They then could download a database that appears to include sensitive information on the club's members and their families, according to videos posted by the club's software provider.

This is "bad, very bad," said Jeremiah Grossman, chief of Security Strategy for cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, when we described Mar-a-Lago's systems. "I'd assume the data is already stolen and systems compromised."

A few days later, we took our equipment to another Trump club in Bedminster, New Jersey. During the transition, Trump had interviewed candidates for top administration positions there, including James Mattis, now secretary of defense.

We drove on a dirt access road through the middle of the golf course and spotted two open Wi-Fi networks, TrumpMembers and WelcomeToTrumpNationalGolfClub, that did not require a password to join.

Such open networks allow anyone within range to scoop up all unencrypted internet activity taking place there, which could, on insecure sites, include usernames, passwords and emails.

Robert Graham, an Atlanta, Georgia, cybersecurity expert, said that hackers could use the open Wi-Fi to remotely turn on the microphones and cameras of devices connected to the network. "What you're describing is typical hotel security," he said, but "it's pretty concerning" that an attacker could listen to sensitive national security conversations.

Two days after we visited the Bedminster club, Trump arrived for a weekend stay.

Then we visited the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., where Trump often dines with his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, whose responsibilities range from Middle East diplomacy to revamping the federal bureaucracy. We surveyed the networks from a Starbucks in the hotel basement.

From there, we could tell there were two Wi-Fi networks at the hotel protected with what's known as a captive portal. These login screens are often used at airports and hotels to ensure that only paying customers can access the network.

However, we gained access to both networks just by typing "457" into the room number field. Because we provided a room number, the system assumed we were guests. We looked up the hotel's public IP address before logging off.

From our desks in New York, we could also tell that the hotel is using a server that is accessible from the public internet. This server is running software that was released almost 13 years ago.

Finally, we visited the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, where the president sometimes plays golf. From the parking lot, we recognized three encrypted wireless networks, an encrypted wireless phone and two printers with open Wi-Fi access.

The Trump club websites are hosted by an Ohio-based company called Clubessential. It offers everything from back-office management and member communications to tee time and room reservations.

In a 2014 presentation, a company sales director warned that the club industry as a whole is "too lax" in managing and protecting passwords. There has been a "rising number of attacks on club websites over the last two years," according to the presentation. Clubessential "performed [an] audit of security in the club industry" and "found thousands of sensitive documents from clubs exposed on [the] Internet," such as "lists of members and staff, and their contact info; board minutes, financial statements, etc."

Still, the club software company has set up a backend server accessible on the internet, and configured its encryption incorrectly. Anyone who reaches the login page is greeted with a warning that the encryption is broken. In its documentation, the company advises club administrators to ignore these warnings and log in regardless. That means that anybody snooping on the unprotected connection could intercept the administrators' passwords and gain access to the entire system.

The company also publishes online, without a password, many of the default settings and usernames for its software 2014 essentially providing a roadmap for intruders.

Clubessential declined comment.

Aitel, the CEO of Immunity, said the problems at Trump properties would be difficult to fix: "Once you are at a low level of security it is hard to develop a secure network system. You basically have to start over."

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60 Minutes Re-Broadcast Its 2014 Interview With FBI Director Comey

Last night, the 60 Minutes television show re-broadcast its 2014 interview with former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey. The interview is important for several reasons.

Politically liberal people have criticized Comey for mentioning to Congress just before the 2016 election the FBI investigation of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's private e-mail server. Many believe that Comey's comments helped candidate Donald Trump win the Presidential election. Politically conservative people criticized Comey for not recommending prosecution of former Secretary Clinton.

The interview is a reminder of history and that reality is often far more nuanced and complicated. Back in 2004, when the George W. Bush administration sought a re-authorization of warrant-less e-mail/phone searches, 60 Minutes explained:

"At the time, Comey was in charge at the Justice Department because Attorney General John Ashcroft was in intensive care with near fatal pancreatitis. When Comey refused to sign off, the president's Chief of Staff Andy Card headed to the hospital to get Ashcroft's OK."

In the 2014 interview, Comey described his concerns in 2004 about key events:

"... [the government] cannot read your emails or listen to your calls without going to a federal judge, making a showing of probable cause that you are a terrorist, an agent of a foreign power, or a serious criminal of some sort, and get permission for a limited period of time to intercept those communications. It is an extremely burdensome process. And I like it that way... I was the deputy attorney general of the United States. We were not going to authorize, reauthorize or participate in activities that did not have a lawful basis."

During the interview in 2014 by 60 Minutes, then FBI Director Comey warned all Americans:

"I believe that Americans should be deeply skeptical of government power. You cannot trust people in power. The founders knew that. That's why they divided power among three branches, to set interest against interest... The promise I've tried to honor my entire career, that the rule of law and the design of the founders, right, the oversight of courts and the oversight of Congress will be at the heart of what the FBI does. The way you'd want it to be..."

The interview highlighted the letter Comey kept on his desk as a cautionary reminder of the excesses of government. That letter was about former FBI Director Herbert Hoover's investigations and excessive surveillance of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Is Comey the bad guy that people on both sides of the political spectrum claim? Yes, history is far more complicated and nuanced.

So, history is complex and nuanced... far more than a simplistic, self-serving tweet:

Dems have been complaining for months & months about Dir. Comey. Now that he has been fired they PRETEND to be aggrieved. Phony hypocrites!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017

Many have paid close attention for years. After the Snowden disclosures in 2013 about broad, warrantless searches and data collection programs by government intelligence agencies, in 2014 Comey urged all USA citizens to participate in a national discussion about the balance between privacy and surveillance.

You can read the full transcript of the 60 Minutes interview in 2014, watch this preview on Youtube, or watch last night's re-broadcast by 60 Minutes of the 2014 interview.

FCC Says Denial-Of-Service Attacks Caused Its Site To Crash Sunday Morning

Last weekend, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) website crashed during a key period when the public relied upon it to submit feedback about proposed changes to net neutrality rules. Dr. David Bray, the FCC Chief Information Officer, released a statement on Monday that the crash was due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack:

"Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos). These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host. These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC. While the comment system remained up and running the entire time, these DDoS events tied up the servers and prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments. We have worked with our commercial partners to address this situation and will continue to monitor developments going forward."

The FCC’s , Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) is the site the public users to submit and review feedback about proposed changes. Bray's statement did not identify the "bad actors" responsible for the DDoS attack, did not state the countries or locations of the illegitimate site traffic, nor offer much in the way of any substantial details.

A DDoS attack is when hundreds or thousands of internet-connected devices, often coordinated by malware and/or criminals, overwhelm a targeted website by trying to access it simultaneously. This type of attack prevents legitimate users from accessing the targeted site to perform desired tasks (view/buy products, register for services, view videos, get help, contact representatives, etc.). This can easily disable the targeted website for hours, days, or weeks. It can also disrupt businesses, and cause financial losses.

This blog and its hosting service experienced a DDoS attack in 2014 when offshore advertisers retaliated after the hosting service implemented stronger measures to block illegitimate traffic. An October, 2016 DDoS attack against Dyn, a major DNS provider, interrupted many popular websites and services including Spotify, Reddit, and Twitter. Some DDoS attacks are about politics or censorship. A September, 2016 DDoS attack disabled the Krebs On Security blog.

Generally, security experts are concerned about botnets, collections of internet-connected devices used to perform DDoS attacks. These devices can include home WiFi routers, security cameras, and unprotected computers infected with malware. Often, home devices are used without consumers' knowledge nor consent.

Others were skeptical of the FCC's explanation. Some people attributed the crash to John Oliver, the host of the "This Week Tonight" show on HBO. In 2014, the show's viewers crashed the FCC site trying to submit feedback about net neutrality. Oliver published a similar video this past weekend in support of net neutrality.

Broadcasting & Cable reported:

"Fight for the Future is calling on the FCC to release logs on the attack to an independent third party—a security researcher or media outlet—to independently verify the attack. "The agency has a responsibility to maintain a functioning website to receive large numbers of comments and feedback from the public," said Evan Greer campaign director for Fight for the Future. "They can't blame DDoS attacks without proof, they need to fix this problem and ensure that comments on this important issue are not lost."

MediaPost reported that at least two U.S. Senators have demanded answers:

"Senators Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Brain Schatz (D-Hawaii) are also seeking answers from the FCC. "As you know, it is critical to the rulemaking and regulatory process that the public be able to take part without unnecessary technical or administrative burdens," the lawmakers write. "Any potentially hostile cyber activities that prevent Americans from being able to participate in a fair and transparent process must be treated as a serious issue."

They are asking the FCC to provide details about any malicious traffic, including how many devices sent malicious traffic to the agency. The lawmakers also have asked the FCC whether it requested investigatory assistance from other federal agencies, and whether it uses any commercial protection services."

A reasonable demand for the FCC to provide proof. If the DDoS attack was a new form of 21st-centry censorship to stop concerned citizens (e.g., voters) from submitting feedback in support of net neutrality, then we all need to know. And, we need to know what the FCC is doing to protect its systems.

America's Other Drug Problem

[Editor's Note: today's guest blog post, by reporters at ProPublica, explores the waste problem in the health care industry, and the accompanying pollution. It is reprinted with permission.]

by Marshall Allen, ProPublica

Every week in Des Moines, Iowa, the employees of a small nonprofit collect bins of unexpired prescription drugs tossed out by nursing homes after residents died, moved out or no longer needed them. The drugs are given to patients who couldn't otherwise afford them.

But travel 1,000 miles east to Long Island, New York, and you'll find nursing homes flushing similar leftover drugs down the toilet, alarming state environmental regulators worried they'll further contaminate the water supply.

In Baltimore, Maryland, a massive incinerator burns up tons of the drugs each year -- for a fee -- from nursing homes across the Eastern seaboard.

If you want to know why the nation's health care costs are among the highest in the world, a good place to start is with what we throw away. Across the country, nursing homes routinely toss large quantities of perfectly good prescription medication: tablets for diabetes, syringes of blood thinners, pricey pills for psychosis and seizures.

At a time when anger over soaring drug costs has perhaps never been more intense, redistributing discarded drugs seems like a no-brainer. Yet it's estimated that American taxpayers, through Medicare, spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on drugs for nursing home patients -- much of which literally go down the tubes.

"It would not surprise me if as much as 20 percent of the medications we receive we end up having to destroy," said Mark Coggins, who oversees the pharmacy services for Diversicare, a chain of more than 70 nursing homes in 10 states. "It's very discouraging throwing away all those drugs when you know it can benefit somebody."

No one tracks this waste nationwide, but estimates show it's substantial. Colorado officials have said the state's 220 long-term care facilities throw away a whopping 17.5 tons of potentially reusable drugs every year, with a price tag of about $10 million. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 2015 that about 740 tons of drugs are wasted by nursing homes each year.

This is, of course, part of a bigger problem. The National Academy of Medicine estimated in 2012 that the United States squanders more than a quarter of what it spends on health care 2014 about $765 billion a year.

ProPublica is investigating the types of waste in health care that academics and politicians typically overlook. Our first installment examined the tens of millions worth of equipment and brand new supplies that hospitals jettison.

Today we look at the wasteful, and potentially harmful, ways nursing homes dispose of leftover meds -- and how some states, like Iowa, have found a solution.

On a recent Wednesday in Des Moines, Ami Bradwell, a certified pharmacy technician, popped open the lids of several 31-gallon bins full of prescription drugs. In each were hundreds of what are known as "bingo cards" filled with rows of pills in sealed bubbles.

"Metformin -- for diabetics," Bradwell said, holding up a card of large white pills. "It's not crazy expensive, but it's in high demand."

She held up an entire box of the anti-nausea drug Ondansetron. It goes for about $5 a pill, according to the website drugs.com. "Expensive."

Another card had three large pills stuffed in each chamber, a find Bradwell called "a 'jackpot' card. You can't live without it because it's a seizure medication."

Bradwell works for the nonprofit SafeNetRx. Each week the group takes in dozens of bins full of such drugs, as well as boxes mailed in from across Iowa and several other states -- pharmaceutical trash that exists because, for convenience and cost, long-term care pharmacies often dispense nursing home patients' medications in bulk, a month's worth at a time.

Should a patient die, leave or stop taking the drug, what's left is typically tossed. The drugs have already been paid for, by Medicare in most cases, so there's little incentive to try to recycle them. In some states, such reuse is against the law.

Some of the cards Bradwell examined that day were missing only a few pills. One card had been thrown out even though it only lacked one of its 31 doses of oxybutynin, which reduces muscle spasms of the bladder. The remaining 30 are worth more than $13.

"There are literally millions of dollars of prescription medications thrown away every day in this country," said John Forbes, an Iowa pharmacist who dispenses SafeNetRx's recovered drugs to his low-income patients.

Although most states technically allow some leftover drugs to be recycled, Iowa is one of the few rescuing a significant percentage of the drugs from destruction. The state funds the program for about $600,000 a year, said SafeNetRx CEO Jon Rosmann, who calls it a "common sense" solution. In fiscal 2016 the program recovered and distributed drugs valued at about $3.4 million. This year it's on pace to top $5 million.

Forbes, who is also an Iowa state representative, said there are additional savings when low-income patients have access to the drugs they need. Patients who don't take their drugs "end up in the emergency room," he said, "which will wind up costing our health care system way more money."

At SafeNetRx, the drugs are sorted and organized in a 1,500-square-foot room lined with shelves stacked with bins of drugs. In the center, folding tables hold hundreds of bingo cards, sorted alphabetically by generic drug name, from the blood pressure drug acebutolol to the antipsychotic ziprasidone. None of the medications are controlled substances, though those may be included in the future.

Pharmacy officials say there may be a million dollars' worth of drugs in this small room. The 30 mg syringes of the blood thinner Enoxaparin are used by patients for weeks before and after heart surgery. They can go for $13 per dose.

One box contains scores of doses of Spiriva, inhalation capsules for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that would sell for about $18 each. The antipsychotic Abilify runs about $46 per pill.

The biggest ticket items are the cancer drugs. They are typically donated directly from patients or their families. Those can run $8,000 or more per month.

The cancer drugs are passed on to people like Amber Judge, a patient advocate at Medical Oncology and Hematology Associates, a cancer clinic in Des Moines. Judge is accustomed to patients coming into her office in a panic. They've just learned they have cancer, only to find out they can't afford the drugs they need to battle the disease. That's when Judge opens one of the file drawers in her office, which are filled with tens of thousands of dollars' worth of the drugs recovered by SafeNetRx.

In one filing drawer she has about 30 boxes of Tasigna, which costs about $100 per pill. In another drawer she has a gallon-sized plastic bag with bottles of Stivarga, about $188 per pill.

The process is similar to patients receiving drug samples at a doctor's office. They leave her office with the drugs they need -- for free.

"I give them a month's supply if I have it," Judge said. "They're so thankful. They're incredulous."

In many places in the United States, however, these leftover drugs meet a very different end, one that is not only wasteful, but potentially harmful.

In recent years, scientists have detected something disturbing in the Long Island's aquifer: low levels of pharmaceuticals.

Though consumers have been warned not to flush their drugs down the toilet because sewer waste can contaminate groundwater, many still do it; more worrisome still, flushing remains a common practice at nursing homes in New York and across the country. The effects of such contamination on humans are unclear, but it has been shown to slow the metamorphosis of frogs and increase the feminization of fish.

Three years ago, New York's Department of Environmental Conservation started an annual program, funded by the state legislature, to scoop up unused medications before they were flushed. Even though the pickup service is free to facilities, only two dozen of 169 eligible Long Island nursing homes participated this February, turning over 660 pounds of drugs.

Those valuable medications didn't go into the water supply, but they didn't go to needy patients, either, though such recycling is now allowed in New York. Instead, they went to an incinerator company. Experts, including the EPA, have recommended incineration for getting rid of pharmaceuticals.

Destroying the unused drugs is always going to have environmental implications, said Carrie Meek Gallagher, region 1 director for the department. "It's always a trade-off of what's most harmful. For us, anything getting into the water is the worst solution."

The National Conference of State Legislatures said 39 states had passed laws that allowed the donation of drugs. But almost half of these states with laws lack programs to get the drugs safely from one appropriate user to another, and many of those that do have programs are focused on cancer drugs, the analysis showed.

There hasn't been a lot of public opposition to redistributing the drugs, even among drugmakers. Most concerns circle around logistics, although in Illinois trial attorneys have lobbied against a proposed program, saying it muddies liability issues.

Richard Cauchi, program director for health for the conference of state legislatures, said just passing laws doesn't guarantee success. A state agency or organization needs to oversee the program, encouraging participation and streamlining its administration so it's not a burden for pharmacies and nursing homes.

"It's a lot of work, and from a retail point of view, an expense," Cauchi said. "How do you accept these drugs? How do you confirm their safety? How do you know they meet the proper standards?"

Federal agencies are of little help, each pursuing their own, often contradictory, agendas.

The EPA discourages flushing drugs because they contaminate the water supply. But it doesn't have the authority to prohibit "sewering" the medications. Only local authorities can take that stance. It has, however, proposed reclassifying the unused drugs as hazardous waste, which would then prohibit flushing them.

The Food and Drug Administration says certain medications are so dangerous that they should be disposed of immediately, even if that means flushing them. It even provides a list of drugs recommended for flushing, mostly controlled substances like diazepam, better known as Valium, and the potent painkiller fentanyl.

The Drug Enforcement Administration wants to ensure controlled substances, like narcotic painkillers, aren't diverted to the illegal drug market. It has recommended that long-term pharmacies collect leftover drugs by placing boxes in nursing homes that must be emptied at least every three days, but that creates expense, hassle and potential liability.

Some advocates say the makers of the drugs should be responsible for disposing or recycling them. Scott Cassel, CEO of the Product Stewardship Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the environmental impact of consumer products, said the producers of batteries, electronics, paint and other products are required by law in some areas to pay for the safe disposal of their products. Similar laws require drug makers to pay for the destruction of leftover household drugs in two states and about a dozen counties, but no laws address nursing homes.

Coggins, who leads the pharmacy services for the Diversicare chain, said people in the nursing home industry would like to do something about the waste. But their options are dictated by laws and regulations, and there's been a lack of investment in cost-effective solutions like the one in Iowa.

About half the states where Diversicare operates allow the donation of unused drugs, but the programs required too much work sorting and inventorying the drugs without any reimbursement, he said. "It's like people have created legislation and it's a feel-good thing, but nobody's come back to see why it's not working."

Diversicare avoids flushing drugs whenever possible, Coggins said, but it still occurs sometimes. The organization has switched to a product called Rx Destroyer that chemically deactivates the medication so it can be put in the trash, he said, but even that is controversial because it goes into a landfill.

In many nursing homes, flushing is just part of the routine.

"Oh my goodness, it's so sad," said Jennifer Ramsey, a nurse who formerly worked as a house supervisor for a nursing home in South Haven, Mississippi. Once a month she and another nurse would gather all the unused blister packs of medication, she said, piles of them, probably worth tens of thousands of dollars. Then they would pop the pills one by one into the toilet.

"You would spend almost your whole eight-hour day doing it," Ramsey recalled.

Ramsey now works for the nonprofit Good Shepherd Pharmacy in Memphis. In Tennessee, the law requires nursing homes to destroy unused drugs on site. Good Shepherd's founder is pressing to change the law so the drugs can be saved and donated.

In March, state Rep. Cameron Sexton, a Republican whose wife is a pharmacist, introduced a bill that would allow unexpired medications to be donated in Tennessee. "Unfortunately, we don't have a process set up to do that so all these drugs have to be destroyed," he said.

Perhaps the most graphic way to see the waste firsthand is a visit to the Curtis Bay Medical Waste facility on the south side of Baltimore, home of the largest incinerator of its kind in the country.

Here Curtis Bay's fleet of trucks delivers load after load of unused, unexpired drugs from hundreds of nursing homes and other facilities and clinics up and down the East Coast. Drugs also come from medical waste companies like SteriCycle and Daniels Sharpsmart. In 2015, 204 tons of non-hazardous pharmaceutical waste came from the Daniels location in the Bronx, according to records filed in New York. Such waste includes not only drugs tossed by nursing homes, but also those from hospitals, doctors' offices and other facilities.

Inside Curtis Bay, the drugs are processed and destroyed in an area the size of several hockey rinks. A conveyor belt about 15 feet off the ground snakes through the facility loaded with hundreds of boxes of pharmaceutical and medical waste 2014 all leading to the two incineration chambers.

On a recent visit, the chamber was over 2,000 degrees, a heat that could be felt from 20 feet away.

From a platform above the incinerator's maw, you can watch as thousands of dollars of potentially lifesaving pills and medications tumble, box by box, into the steaming opening. Then they are shoveled into the blaze.

Experts say incineration is the least environmentally objectionable end-of-life option for unused drugs. But it's also the most expensive destruction method -- from 50 cents to a dollar per pound, paid for by the facilities themselves -- which is why many nursing homes resort to flushing.

Nursing homes save the disposal fees in Iowa, because they can donate them to SafeNetRx, where they benefit needy patients like Max Armstrong.

The 82-year-old suffers from multiple chronic conditions -- emphysema, congestive heart failure and more. The ailments were manageable until 2015, when he suffered blood clots in his leg and lung. Doctors put him on the generic blood thinner warfarin, but it "almost killed me," he said, so he switched to Xarelto, a newer brand name drug that costs about $700 a month.

The total tab for the Xarelto and the other 14 medications Armstrong must take each month would cost at least $1,200, according to his daughter. Armstrong, whose savings took a hit during the financial crisis, lives on $1,158 a month in Social Security.

It's "stupid" to throw away drugs that can keep so many other people healthy, Armstrong said. "There's a lot of people out there in this world who need help."

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Net Neutrality II: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (Video)

Today's post is for readers who prefer lighter, more entertaining fare. After watching the video, submit your comments at the FCC website (Proceeding 17-108).

To learn more, go here.

Seattle Strengthens Privacy Protections For Broadband And Cable Users

The city of Seattle has strengthened it privacy rules to better protect residents using cable-TV services and high-speed internet services (a/k/a broadband). The new rules go into effect on May 24, and mirrors the FCC broadband privacy rules which Congress revoked earlier this year.

The announcement by the Seattle Mayor's office explained:

"Seattle Municipal Code (SMC 21.60) grants the City of Seattle authority to issue rules related to the privacy practices of cable operators. These rules govern not only cable television services but also non-cable services, such as internet service. The new rule states cable operators must obtain opt-in consent before sharing a customer’s web browsing history or otherwise using such information for a purpose other than providing a customer with their requested service.

Comcast, CenturyLink, and Wave have cable franchise agreements with the City of Seattle and will be subject to the new rule. Under the terms of the rule, these cable operators must report their compliance by Sept. 30, 2017 and annually thereafter."

Earlier this year, a national poll found the the Republican rollback of FCC broadband privacy rules very unpopular among consumers. Despite this, President Trump signed the privacy-rollback legislation on April 3.

The new rules in Seattle, ITD Director's Rule 2017-10 (Adobe PDF), state in part:

"- Prohibit Cable Operators from collecting or disclosing any information regarding the extent of any individual customer's viewing habits, or other use by a customer of a cable service or other service provided such as web browsing activity, without the prior affirmative consent of the customer, unless such information is necessary to render a service requested by the customer, or a legitimate business purpose related to the service.
- Require Cable Operators to fully and completely disclose customer rights and the limitations imposed on a Cable Operator's collection, use, and disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in clear language that a customer can radily understand.
- Require Cable Operators to destroy within 90 days any PII if the PII is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was collected and there are no pending requests or orders for access to shuch PII... Require Cable Operators to provide stamped, self-addressed post cards that customers can mail in to have their names and addresses removed form any lists the Cable Operators might use for purposes other than the direct provision of service to those customers.
- Establish without ambiguity that a customer, once "opting out" of the Cable Operator's mailing list, is permanently removed from that list unless that customer subsequently requests inclusion on such list."

This is a great start. The rules define PII as:

"... specific information about a customer, including, but not not limited to, a customer's (a) login information, (b) extent of viewing of video programming or other services, (c) shopping choices, (d) interests and opinions, (e) energy uses, (f) medical information, (g) banking data or information, (h) web browsing activities, or (i) any other personal or private information..."

Mayor Edward B. Murray commented about the new rules:

"Where the Trump administration continues to roll back critical consumer protections, Seattle will act... I believe protecting the privacy of internet users is essential and this policy allows the City to do just that. Because of regulation repeals at the national level, we must use all of the powers at our disposal to protect the rights of our residents."

Citizens in other major cities across the United States may want to ask what consumer-friendly privacy actions their mayors are taking.

Update: Net Neutrality, Administrative Law, The Courts, And Next Steps

A lot has happened since Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai disclosed his plan last week to kill net neutrality. While the FCC commissioners will vote on May 18 about the rules changes, a federal law could affect the outcome. First, Wired reported:

"A 1946 law called the Administrative Procedure Act bans federal agencies making “capricious” decisions. The law is meant, in part, to keep regulations from yo-yoing back and forth every time a new party gained control of the White House. The FCC successfully argued in favor of Title II reclassification in federal court just last summer. That effort means Pai might have to make the case that things had changed enough since then to justify a complete reversal in policy."

Read the text of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Learn more here.

The recent actions (e.g., privacy, net neutrality) by the Republican-led FCC have definitely resulted in both uncertainty and a yo-yoing of rules. At times, it feels like watching a tennis match. While Pai and other advocates of killing net neutrality have claimed that infrastructure investment has declined due to the reclassification by the FCC, the reality:

"During a hearing earlier this year, senator Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) pointed to US Census Bureau estimates that broadband investment increased slightly from $86.6 in 2014 to $87.2 billion in 2015..."

Data for 2016 isn't available yet. As I mentioned in a prior post, telecommunications companies made conscious decisions and could have diverted money from other spending to infrastructure. They didn't and chose this legislation path instead. Again from Wired's analysis:

"Other business considerations could also play into changes in telecom spending on network infrastructure, such as a desire to wait and let previous investments pay for themselves before making new ones. The CEO of Verizon, for example, told shareholders that Title II didn’t affect the company’s investment plans. And Martin points out that a recent auction in which companies spent $19.8 billion to buy rights to use more of the wireless spectrum doesn’t exactly look like an industry shy of investing."

"If the infrastructure argument doesn’t fly, Pai could also argue that the rules are unnecessary because proverbial fast and slow lanes for the internet never existed. The problem is that’s not true. The Bush-era FCC ordered Comcast to stop throttling BitTorrent traffic in 2008... Under a secret agreement with AT&T, Apple blocked iPhone users from making Skype calls over the carrier’s network until the FCC pressured the companies into reversing the policy in 2009..."

Read the entire Wired analysis. It makes it crystal clear how corporate ISPs are trying to rig the system for themselves and against consumers.

Second, a recent decision by a federal court rejected big telecom's petition to have the existing FCC's net neutrality rules overturned. On Monday, Ars Technica reported:

"The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied the broadband industry's petition for a rehearing of a case that upheld net neutrality rules last year. A three-judge panel ruled 2-1 in favor of the FCC in June 2016, but ISPs wanted an en banc review in front of all of the court's judges. The request for an en banc review was denied in the order issued today."

What to make of this? The bottom line is that the circuit court decided to uphold the reclassification of broadband ISPs as common carriers and the FCC's net neutrality rules. While big telecom could appeal the decision with the Supreme Court, that seems unlikely since they know that the FCC, led by Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican, has a majority of Republican commissioners who will vote to overturn net neutrality rules on May 18. And, Chairman Pai will have to overcome any challenges with the APA.

In response to the court decision, FCC Chairman Pai issued this statement:

"In light of the fact that the Commission on May 18 will begin the process of repealing the FCC’s Title II regulations, it is not surprising, as Judges Srinivasan and Tatel pointed out, that the D.C. Circuit would decide not to grant the petitions for rehearing en banc. Their opinion is important going forward, however, because it makes clear that the FCC has the authority to classify broadband Internet access service as an information service..."

Chairman Pai seems hell-bent upon ignoring the historical problems in the broadband industry that plagued consumers, in order to change the rules in favor of big telecom. Those problems led to the reclassification by the FCC. A prior blog post listed some of those problems:

"The lack of ISP competition in key markets meant consumers in the United States pay more for broadband and get slower speeds compared to other countries. Rural consumers and low-income areas lacked broadband services. There were numerous complaints by consumers about usage Based Internet Pricing. There were privacy abuses and settlement agreements by ISPs involving technologies such as deep-packet inspection and 'Supercookies' to track customers online, despite consumers' wishes not to be tracked. Many consumers didn't get the broadband speeds ISP promised. Some consumers sued their ISPs, and the New York State Attorney General invited residents to check their broadband speed with this tool. Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the internet, cited in March three reasons why the Internet is in trouble. His number one reason: consumers had lost control of their personal information... Some consumers found that their ISP hijacked their online search results without notice nor consent. An ISP in Kansas admitted in 2008 to secret snooping after pressure from Congress."

Third, big telecom is engaged in some savvy, deceptive maneuvering. Ars Technica discussed bizarre claims by Verizon:

"... Verizon's general counsel, Craig Silliman, wants you to believe that Verizon never opposed net neutrality rules, even though it sued the FCC to eliminate them. He's also making the claim that the FCC isn't even talking about eliminating the net neutrality rules, even though FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is proposing to do exactly that."

Watch the Verizon video with Verizon's Silliman. When Silliman said, "changing the legal footing," he is referring to comments by others that the FTC should regulate broadband services, and not the FCC. That places the burden on consumers and the FTC to sue when broadband providers don't deliver the services promised; assuming that broadband providers disclose in their terms-of-service and privacy policies what they will deliver. With regulation by the FCC, consumers would have been in charge of their privacy, big telecom would have been forced to be transparent and explain what they were doing, and big telecom couldn't slice up the internet into slow and fast lanes forcing consumers to pay more to access certain sites.

During the last fight about neutrality in 2014, about about 90 tech companies sent a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (Adobe PDF) encouraging the FCC to support for a free and open internet, where consumers decide where to go online with the broadband services purchased. Several notable companies signed that 2014 letter: Amazon, Dropbox, Ebay, Facebook, Gawker, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Twitter, Vonage, and Yahoo. I did not see Verizon (nor Comcast) in the list of signers.

That's some brilliant and deceptive maneuvering. Big telcom can appear reasonable and deny talking about killing net neutrality rules while knowing that their representative, Chairman Pai and his fellow Republican commissioners at the FCC, will do it for them. Again, from Ars Technica:

"No major Internet service provider has done more to prevent implementation of net neutrality rules in the US than Verizon. After years of fighting the rules in courts of law and public opinion, Verizon is about to get what it wants as the FCC—now led by a former Verizon lawyer—prepares to eliminate the rules and the legal authority that allows them to be enforced."

Fourth, the FCC released its Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM): Proceeding 17-108, "Restoring Internet Freedom" - April 26, 2017 (Adobe PDF). Just as before in 2014 - 15, the new rule is open to public comments. This means, it is time for citizens and voters to take action.

FCC Chairman Pai and others claim that the Internet was working well before, and net neutrality rules are unnecessary and a government intrusion. Ordinary broadband customers can have a great impact. It is time for consumers to submit comments to the FCC. About 25,578 people have already submitted comments. For example, a comment by Darion from Austin, Texas:

"The FCC Open Internet Rules (net neutrality rules) are extremely important to me. I urge you to protect them. Most Americans only have one choice for true high speed Internet access: our local cable company. Cable companies (and wireless carriers) are actively lobbying Congress and the FCC for the power to: i) Block sites and apps, to charge them "access fees;" ii) Slow sites and apps to a crawl, to establish paid "fast lanes" (normal speed) and slow lanes (artificially low speeds); and iii) Impose arbitrarily low data caps, so they can charge sites to escape those caps, or privilege their own services ("zero rating").
They're doing it so they can use their monopoly power to stand between me and the sites I want to access, extorting money from us both. I'll be forced to pay more to access the sites I want, and sites will have to pay a kind of protection money to every major cable company or wireless carrier—just to continue working properly!

The FCC's Open Internet Rules are the only thing standing in their way. I'm sending this to letter to my two senators, my representative, the White House, and the FCC. First, to the FCC: don’t interfere with my ability to access what I want on the Internet, or with websites' ability to reach me. You should leave the existing rules in place, and enforce them.

To my senators: you have the power to stop FCC Chair Ajit Pai from abusing the rules by refusing to vote for his reconfirmation. I expect you to use that power. Pai, a former Verizon employee, has made it clear he intends to gut the rules to please his former employer and other major carriers, despite overwhelming support for the rules from voters in both parties... To the White House: Ajit Pai, a former Verizon employee, is acting in the interests of his former employer, not the American people. America deserves better... To my representative: please publicly oppose Ajit Pai's plan to oppose the rules... I would be happy to speak more with anyone on your staff about the rules and why they’re so important to me. Please notify me of any opportunities to meet with you or your staff."

Be brief. Use your own words. Submit your comments soon, since the deadline fast approaches. Also, tell your elected officials. Participate in local marches and protests. Join the Fight For The Future. Support the EFF.

The Need For A Code Of Ethics With The Internet Of Things

Earlier this week, The Atlantic website published and interview with Francine Berman, a computer-science professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, about the need for a code of ethics for connected, autonomous devices, commonly referred to as the internet-of-things (IoT). The IoT is exploding.

Experts forecast 8.4 billion connected devices in use worldwide in 2017, up 31 percent from 2016. Total spending for those devices will reach almost $2 trillion in 2017, and $20.4 billion by 2020. North America, Western Europe, and China, which already comprise 67 percent of the installed base, will drive much of this growth.

In a February, 2017 article (Adobe PDF) in the journal Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, Berman and Vint Cerf, an engineer, discussed the need for a code of ethics:

"Last October, millions of interconnected devices infected with malware mounted a "denial-of-service" cyberattack on Dyn, a company that operates part of the Internet’s directory service. Such attacks require us to up our technical game in Internet security and safety. They also expose the need to frame and enforce social and ethical behavior, privacy, and appropriate use in Internet environments... At present, policy and laws about online privacy and rights to information are challenging to interpret and difficult to enforce. As IoT technologies become more pervasive, personal information will become more valuable to a diverse set of actors that include organizations, individuals, and autonomous systems with the capacity to make decisions about you."

Given this, it seems wise for voters to consider whether or not elected officials in state, local, and federal government understand the issues. Do they understand the issues? If they understand the issues, are they taking appropriate action? If they aren't taking appropriate action, is due to other priorities? Or are different elected officials needed? At the federal level, recent events with broadband privacy indicate a conscious decision to ignore consumers' needs in favor of business.

In their ACM article, Bermand and Cerf posed three relevant questions:

1. "What are your rights to privacy in the internet-of-things?
2. Who is accountable for decisions made by autonomous systems?
3. How do we promote the ethical use of IoT technologies?"

Researchers and technologists have already raised concerns about the ethical dilemmas of self-driving cars. Recent events have also highlighted the issues.

Some background. Last October, a denial-of-service attack against a hosting service based in France utilized a network of more than 152,000 IoT devices, including closed-circuit-television (CCTV) cameras and DVRs. The fatal crash in May of a Tesla Model S car operating in auto-pilot mode and the crash in February of a Google self-driving car raised concerns. According to researchers, 75 percent of all cars shipped globally will have internet connectivity by 2020. Last month, a security expert explained the difficulty with protecting connected cars from hackers.

And after a customer posted a negative review online, a developer of connected garage-door openers disabled both the customer's device and online account. (Service was later restored.) Earlier this year, a smart TV maker paid $2.2 million to settle privacy abuse charges by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Consumers buy and use a wide variety of connected devices: laptops, tablets, smartphones, personal assistants, printers, lighting and temperature controls, televisions, home security systems, fitness bands, smart watches, toys, smart wine bottles, and home appliances (e.g., refrigerators, hot water heaters, coffee makers, crock pots, etc.). Devices with poor security features don't allow operating system and security software updates, don't encrypt key information such as PIN numbers and passwords, and build the software into the firmware where it cannot be upgraded. In January, the FTC filed a lawsuit against a modem/router maker alleging poor security in its products.

Consumers have less control over many IoT devices, such as smart utility meters, which collect information about consumers. Typically, the devices are owned and maintained by utility companies while installed in or on consumers' premises.

Now, back to the interview in The Atlantic. Professor Berman reminded us that society has met the ethical challenge before:

"Think about the Industrial Revolution: The technologies were very compelling—but perhaps the most compelling part were the social differences it created. During the Industrial Revolution, you saw a move to the cities, you saw the first child-labor laws, you saw manufacturing really come to the fore. Things were available that had not been very available before..."

Well, another revolution is upon us. This time, it includes changes brought about by the internet and the IoT. Berman explained today's challenges include considerations:

"... we never even imagined we’d have to think about. A great example: What if self-driving cars have to make bad choices? How do they do that? Where are the ethics? And then who is accountable for the choices that are made by autonomous systems? This needs to be more of a priority, and we need to be thinking about it more broadly. We need to start designing the systems that are going to be able to support social regulation, social policy, and social practice, to bring out the best of the Internet of Things... Think about designing a car. I want to design it so it’s safe, and so that the opportunity to hack my car is minimized. If I design Internet of Things systems that are effective, provide me a lot of opportunities, and are adaptive, but I only worry about really important things like security and privacy and safety afterwards, it’s much less effective than designing them with those things in mind. We can lessen the number of unintended consequences if we start thinking from the design stage and the innovation stage how we’re going to use these technologies. Then, we put into place the corresponding social framework."

Perhaps, most importantly:

"There’s a shared responsibility between innovators, companies, the government, and the individual, to try and create and utilize a framework that assigns responsibility and accountability based on what promotes the public good."

Will we meet the challenge of this revolution? Will innovators, companies, government, and individuals share responsibility? Will we work for the public good or solely for business growth and profitability?

What do you think?

The Top Complaints About Financial Services. One Complaint Type Grew 325 Percent

After encountering unresolved issues with financial services, many consumers file complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). After each complain, the CFP works hard to get each consumer a reply within 15 days. This process allows the CFPB to track which issues affect most consumers, and to identify emerging problems.

According to its April Monthly Complaint Report, debt collection issues generated the most complaints on average, and complaints about student loans grew the fastest:

"As of April 1, 2017, the CFPB has handled approximately 1,163,200 complaints, including approximately 28,000 complaints in March 2017... Student loan complaints showed the greatest percentage increase from January - March 2016 (773 complaints) to January - March 2017 (3,284 complaints), representing about a 325 percent increase. Part of this year-to-year increase can be attributed to the CFPB updating its student loan complaint form to accept complaints about Federal student loan servicing in late February 2016. The CFPB also initiated an enforcement action against a student loan servicer during this time period."

The top five categories of complaints about during March, 2017:

1. Debt collection: 8,711
2. Credit reporting: 5,498
3. Mortgages: 3,965
4. Credit cards: 2,522
5. Bank account or service: 2,476

Also during March: debt collection complaints represented about 31 percent of complaints; debt collection, credit reporting and mortgage were the top three most-complained-about consumer financial products and services. Together, these three categories represented 65 percent of complaints during March.

The top five categories of complaints since the CFPB began:

1. Debt collection: 316,810
2. Mortgages: 272,153
3. Credit reporting: 195,826
4. Credit cards: 118,732
5. Bank account or service: 115,055

The CFPB began accepting complaints for different products and services at different times:

• July 21, 2011: credit card complaints
• December 1, 2011: mortgage complaints
• March 1, 2012: bank accounts and services, private student loans, and consumer loans
• October 22, 2012: credit reporting
• April 4, 2013: money transfers
• July 10, 2013: debt collection
• November 6, 2013: payday loans
• July 19, 2014: prepaid cards, credit repair, debt settlement, and pawn and title loans
• August 11, 2014: virtual currency
• February 26, 2016: Federal student loan servicing

There were regional differences in complaint volume:

"Montana (54 percent), Georgia (46 percent), and Wyoming (45 percent) experienced the greatest complaint volume percentage increase from January - March 2016 to January - March 2017. New Mexico (-20 percent), Iowa (-5 percent), and Kansas (-0.7 percent) experienced the greatest complaint volume percentage decrease... Of the five most populated states, Texas (35 percent) experienced the greatest complaint volume percentage increase and Florida (8 percent) experienced the least complaint volume percentage increase from January - March 2016 to January - March 2017."

The report also tracks complaints by company:

The CFPB reported additional details about student loan complaints:

"Approximately 32,700 (or 74 percent) of all student loan complaints handled by the CFPB from July 21, 2011 through March 31, 2017 were sent by the CFPB to companies for review and response. The remaining complaints have been found to be incomplete (7 percent), referred to other regulatory agencies (19 percent), or are pending with the CFPB or the consumer (0.5 percent and 0.4 percent, respectively)... The most common issues identified by consumers are problems dealing with their lenders or servicers (64 percent) and being unable to repay their loans (33 percent)."

"Federal student loan borrowers reported that when contacting their loan servicers regarding financial distress, servicers provided them with information on hardship forbearance or deferment, instead of potentially more beneficial repayment options like income-driven repayment plans... loan borrowers complained of difficulty enrolling in income-driven repayment plans. Borrowers reported lost documentation, extended application processing times, and unclear guidance when seeking to switch from one income-driven repayment plan to another."

Federal student loan borrowers described their experiences when trying to obtain guidance in completing annual income recertification for their income-driven repayment plan. Borrowers reported receiving insufficient information from their servicers to meet recertification deadlines and lengthy processing times. Some federal student loan borrowers stated their payments were misapplied. Borrowers reported overpayments were not applied to specified accounts but rather applied to all accounts managed by the servicer. Additionally, some borrowers’ overpayments—intended to reduce principal balance—were credited to the account as an early payment, resulting in their ac count reflecting a paid ahead status..."

To read more, download the full "April 2017: CFPB Monthly Complaint Report: Vol. 22" (Adobe PDF).