Cuban infrastructure investment -- China won the first round

China won the first round, what about the future?

The US wants to sell Internet equipment and services in Cuba, but we have not succeeded.

In December 2014, the administration announced that we were taking "historic steps to chart a new course in our relations with Cuba and to further engage and empower the Cuban people." The following month, the US International Trade Commission began a study of the economic effects of US restrictions on trade with and travel to Cuba. They held hearings on potential exports in several sectors and I testified on potential telecommunication exports.

In March, the US sent a high-level delegation to Cuba to discuss telecommunication and the Internet and no doubt Internet service and equipment companies began analyzing the potential Cuban market. Most visibly, Google visited several times and eventually made a concrete proposal for the installation of some sort of wireless infrastructure, but that offer was rejected, perhaps for lack of trust in the US Government and Google.

Google made several trips to Cuba, but their proposal was rejected.

This month the White House extended our policy, authorizing US companies to establish a business presence in Cuba and provide "certain" telecommunications and Internet-based services or do joint ventures or enter into licensing agreements to market such services.

To date, this effort has led just a few small Internet deals like Netflix offering Cubans accounts, Airbnb renting rooms or Verizon offering cell-phone roaming in Cuba.

Cuba has turned to China, not the US, for Internet connectivity and equipment and is committed to doing so in the short term future.

China played a major role in the financing and construction of the ALBA-1 undersea cable, which connects Cuba to Venezuela and Jamaica. It was reported that China lent Venezuela $70 million to finance the cable, which was installed by a joint venture made up of Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell and Telecomunicaciones Gran Caribe (TGC) -- TGC is a joint venture between Telecom Venezuela (60%) and Cuban Transbit SA (40%), both state-owned companies.

The cable landed in Cuba in February 2011, but the first traffic was not transmitted until January 2013. Much of Cuba's international traffic continued to be routed over satellite links until July 2015, when nearly all of it had finally shifted to the cable. Cuba's international traffic continued to be routed over slow, expensive satellite links for over four years because the cable landing point is at the east end of the island and there was little domestic infrastructure to connect it to Havana and other locations.

The ALBA-1 cable traffic has shifted from satellite (blue) to cable.

At the time of the cable installation, we speculated that China might play a role in building the domestic infrastructure needed to reach it and it turns out that Cuba had awarded Huawei a contract to build a national fiber-optic network in the year 2000. Today there is a backbone network connecting the Cuban provinces to the cable landing point. The current load is light compared to expected future traffic from homes, schools, universities and public access locations, so Cuba must be planning a faster, more comprehensive backbone and I imagine Huawei is involved.

ETECSA backbone diagram, date/status unknown, source: Nearshore America

Huawei equipment was also used in the recent installation of 35 WiFi hotspots across the island. Since they claim the access points will support 50-100 simultaneous users at 1 Mb/s speed, these 35 locations must connect to the national backbone network. While 35 access points are a drop in the bucket, Cuba is committed to adding more. Counting WiFi, "navigation rooms," Youth Clubs and hotels, there are now 683 public access points in Cuba, all of which reach the backbone.

Huawei WiFi antennae

In addition to expanding public access and the backbone, they plan to make DSL connectivity available to 50% of Cuban homes by 2020. (Note that that is not to say 50% of Cuban homes will be online). Doing so will require new equipment in the telephone central offices serving those homes and Huawei will supply that equipment. Two other Chinese companies, ZTE and TP Link are providing DSL modems for network users. (ZTE has an office in Havana and may also be involved in the backbone network).

Home Internet: Huawei central office equipment and ZTE and TP Link modems

Cuba also has plans to connect all schools and make fiber connections to the backbone available to all universities. I don't know whose equipment will be used for those upgrades, but, if Huawei is the backbone vendor, I suspect that they would have the inside track on customer premises equipment (CPE). A recent market research report shows that Chinese CPE sales are growing rapidly, fueled by a large domestic market.

Lina Pedraza Rodríguez, Minister of Finance and Prices, said that Cuba is in
"very advanced" negotiations with Huawei, May 2015.

In spite of China's success in Cuba, all has not been perfect. As this Wikileaks memo from the US Interests Section in Havana shows, the Chinese have had some difficulty collecting Cuban debt. Cuba remains a tricky place to do business.

Finally, note that all of these sales are for equipment, not network operation. While Huawei has sold Cuba equipment, the backbone installation has been supervised by a Cuban engineer who has worked for Huawei since 2002 and Huawei does not seem to have an office in Cuba. Cuba bought Telecom Italia's share of ETECSA, Cuba's monopoly telecommunication company, in 2011 and remains independent. That may turn out to be a good or bad thing for the Cuban people, depending upon ETECSA's policy and goals.

It looks like China has won the first round. That's the bad news for US companies. The good news is that very little infrastructure has been sold so far and much of what has been sold and is planned for the near future is already obsolete by today's standards. That says there will be a much larger second round -- will the US be a player?

-----
Update 10/10

A Cuban reader commented on Huawei's success in Cuba:

In early 2000 gradually they replaced all Cisco router by Huawei, including my office. probably today 95% of all routers in Cuba are Huawei, a "legacy" of Ramiro Valdez was minister, and the millions that Cuba spent in the "battle of ideas."

He also said that Huawei has had an office in the Miramar Trade Center in Havana for over ten years. (I could not find it using Google).

Note that Ramiro Valdés called the Internet "the wild stallion of the new technologies," which "could and should be controlled and used to serve peace and development" in spite of the fact that it construes one of the "mechanisms for global extermination."

If dealing with Huawei was politically motivated, the Interent infrastructure market may open in the future. (Some readers will claim that payoffs were involved, but I have no evidence one way or the other on that).

Roundtable discussion: A society on the (long) road to informatization

The CUBA search engine is part of an effort to reduce dependence on foreign applications.

Wilfredo Gonzalez Vidal, Vice Minister of Communication is speaking. Can readers
identify the others?

A round table panel presentation on "A society on the road to informatization" was held on September 18. The following are a few of the more concrete points that were made.

Wilfredo Gonzalez Vidal, Vice Minister of Communication:

• There are about 746 ATMs nationwide, in 53 of the 168 municipalities.

Mayra Arevich Marin, chief executive of ETECSA:

• Connection speed to institutions of higher education has increased from 10-34 mbps. (Also see this post on university connectivity).
• Counting navigation rooms, Youth Clubs and hotels, there are now 683 public access points in Cuba.
• They will add more WiFi access points this year. She did not say how many, but did say they would be in nicer locations.

Reynaldo Rosado, vice president of the University of Information Science:

• Students are working on the development of 128 software and service projects.
• 13,500 young people have graduated from UCI.

Anamaris Solórzano Chacón, national director of institutional communication for the Youth Computer Club:

• Cuban search engine CUBA (Contenidos Unificados de Búsqueda Avanzada) was launched in July this year.
• Ecured, which was launched in December 2010, has more than 140,000 items and 200,000 hits daily. (It is also distributed on DVD and flash.
• The Reflejos blog platform now has 6,500 blogs and over 5,000 visits a day.

For me, the most interesting statement was by Anamaris Solórzano Chacón. When speaking of the CUBA search engine, she said it was part of an effort to reduce dependence on foreign applications.

As long as very few Cubans have access to the international Internet, it makes sense to offer their own services on the domestic intranet. But, if Cuba opens to the international Internet, as they say they will, their local services will be redundant and unable to scale and compete. Ecured will never be Wikipedia, Reflejos will never be Blogger and CUBA will never even be Bing, let alone Google Search.

China is large enough that, for political and economic reasons, they can sustain domestic versions of popular Internet services, but Cuba is not. I understand and admire the desire to be self-sufficient, but it really isn't feasible in this case. As the saying goes -- "do what you do best and link to the rest." They should invest in uniquely Cuban services.

Verizon roaming in Cuba -- much ado about not much

While Verizon customers may be able to make $2.99 per minute 2G calls, it seems their $2.05 per megabyte data service will be limited to few locations.

President Obama is continuing to use executive powers to nibble away at the embargo. Some US companies will be allowed to establish Cuban offices and Verizon has announced that they will offer roaming in Cuba.

Verizon's roaming rates will be steep -- $2.99 per minute for calls and $2.05 per megabyte for data. Most of Verizon's roving customers will be non-Cubans, so we should not read to much into the prices, but one wonders what Verizon's split with ETECSA is and whether this foreshadows ETECSA's strategy.

ETECSA's policy is a key unknown in predicting the future of the Internet in Cuba. If their goal is to maximize profit, their monopoly position will inevitably lead to high prices, conservative infrastructure investment and poor service. A goal of maximizing government revenue would do the same.

Reader Ray Rodriquez has raised another interesting question -- how does ETECSA plan to handle the data? At those prices and with relatively few users, I doubt that the volume of data will be a problem, but what about connectivity and coverage?

We have been speculating on the Cuban backbone, and have concluded that there must be connectivity from each city with a WiFi access point to the cable landing at the east end of the island since almost 100% of Cuba's international traffic is now routed over the cable.

But how many of ETECSA's cell towers are able to reach the backbone? How many are able to handle even 3G data? Looking at Cuba's annual ICT statistical report, we see that the percent of the population with (predominantly 2G) cell phone coverage has barely increased since 2010 and it has been flat at 85.3 percent since 2012.

While Verizon customers may be able to make $2.99 per minute 2G calls, it seems their $2.05 per megabyte data service will be limited to few locations.

Like the Netflix offering, this is a symbolic start, but, as we have seen -- in a nation with nearly no Internet access, a little bit gets a lot of hype.

-----
Update 9/19/2015

More on the executive easing of embargo restrictions.

El paquete update -- Cuba's largest private employer?

For several years, I've been tracking Cuba's "paquete semenal," a weekly distribution of entertainment, software, games, news, etc. on portable hard disks and flash drives.

I've noted that the compilation and distribution of the material is well organized and complete, leading to speculation that it is run by the Cuban government -- it generates revenue, provides jobs and acts as an "opiate of the masses" -- who needs the Internet when you have el paquete? (There is precedent -- there used to be a government storefront in Havana where one could bring floppy disks and get copies of the latest software releases).

Even if the government does not run el paquete, they turn a blind eye to its very visible advertising and distribution. In return, the package (like the illegal local area networks) does not include any politically sensitive material.

ABC News reports that el paquete is Cuba's number one private employer, bringing in $4 million a month.



They do not cite their sources, but it is not an outlandish claim. I don't know how many people are employed in the private sector, but, considering the goofy list of jobs that are eligible for self employment, it is believable that this popular, ubiquitous service could be the leading private employer.

And $4 million a month does not sound like a lot of revenue for such a widespread operation. According to the ABC report, terabyte hard drives with the week's material are delivered to customer's homes for 5 CUC (about $6.50). The subscriber copies as much as he or she wants and the drive is picked up the next day. That subscriber may in turn distribute material to others on flash drives or their own portable hard disks.

Elio Hector Lopez, who claims to be the head of el paquete, described a different price structure in a Forbes interview:

Most customers get the drive at home, where they exchange it for last week’s drive and the equivalent of $1.10 to $2.20. (Distributors selling to other distributors charge ten times as much.)

Regardless, $4 million seems plausible. Lopez went on to say that the original founding group had broken up, but evaded the interviewer's questions about operational details.

The following video gives a view of the distribution of el paquete:



It includes an interview of "Dany Paquete" (shown above), a 26-year old "who looks more like a lazy college sophomore than a kingpin of a national blackmarket of pirated media." He is one of two competing national distributors in Havana.

The documentary does not disclose details on the gathering of information, but suggests that editors in Miami and Havana select movies, music, etc. each week.

Dany sounds more like an MBA business man than a drug dealer and is unafraid to appear on camera. The Cuban government clearly tolerates el paquete. Even if officials are not being paid off, it satisfies many consumers, making them less likely to press for open Internet access. Had he been writing today, Karl Marx would have said "el paquete is the opium of the masses."

I recently had an opportunity to ask a senior State Department spokesman whether el paquete copyright violation had come up during discussions with the Cubans and he said "no," but the agenda of Bilateral Commission includes discussion of claims for damages. The focus will no doubt be on Cuban claims for damages resulting from the embargo and US claims for nationalized property -- might that be stretched to include "Orange is the New Black?"

-----
Update 11/25/2015

A recent news report sheds light on the economics of el paquete distribution. It features the video shown below -- an interview of an anonymous distributor of el paquete to end users. He pays $2 a week for the paquete and the price he charges his customers is a function of the amount of data they copy. For example, eight Gbytes costs 10 Cuban pesos, about 50 cents. To become a distributor, he had to invest in a computer -- an old tower PC -- and portable external hard drives.

Distributing el paquete is a side job. He earns about $32 a month, which he uses to buy extra food -- and he sees the latest episode of his favorite TV shows.

Predicting the UK’s new surveillance law

What will this autumn’s draft Investigatory Powers Bill contain?  We can take a reasonable guess at the outline. Interception powers will get a makeover: at a minimum RIPA has to be rewritten intelligibly and reinforced to comply with human rights norms.  In the post-Snowden climate there may be a little more openness about how law enforcement and agencies use their powers.  We will hear a lot about proportionality, safeguards and oversight. 

Filling in the picture is more difficult.  Three surveillance reviews have reported in the last 6 months and between them have made almost 200 recommendations. As yet there is little indication of which ones the government intends to take up. Some of the recommendations would involve wide consultation before a decision could be taken. Yet time for consultations is running out if the draft Bill is to be put before a Joint Parliamentary Committee for pre-legislative scrutiny this autumn.

Perhaps the greatest uncertainty is around the government’s stated intention to press on with the Communications Data Bill – dubbed the Snoopers’ Charter – which stalled in December 2012 following severe criticism of the draft Bill by an all-party Joint Parliamentary Committee.  The CDB would have significantly expanded the amount and types of communications data that service providers could be required to retain (and, for the first time, be compelled to generate) for access by public authorities. After pressure from the Committee the Home Office identified three particular datatypes that it wanted UK service providers to retain: IP address resolution data, weblog data and third party data (explained below).

Bringing back the CDB is not a simple matter of dusting off the 2012 draft. Retention of some IP address resolution data was implemented earlier this year by the Counter Terrorism and Security Act.  The Anderson report accepted that retention of weblog data would be useful, but went on:

“[I]f any proposal is to be brought forward, a detailed operational case needs to be made out, and a rigorous assessment conducted of the lawfulness, likely effectiveness, intrusiveness and cost of requiring such data to be retained.”

For third party data Anderson said:

“There should be no question of progressing proposals for the compulsory retention of third party data before a compelling operational case for it has been made out (as it has not been to date) and the legal and technical issues have been fully bottomed out.”

If those recommendations are heeded, that leaves only compulsory generation of data and possibly the ‘request filter’ (see below) that could be brought forward without first making a new case for them. In any event the Anderson report contains hints that law enforcement themselves may not now be pushing so strongly for some of the most ambitious and expensive parts of the CDB. On the CDB generally Anderson comments that “law enforcement itself wishes to reserve its detailed position on these proposals pending further discussions with a Government that has a political mandate to take it forward.” [9.67]

Nor could the government reintroduce unchanged the controversial Ministerial order-making power in Clause 1 of the CDB, described by Anderson as “excessively broad”. The power was at the heart of the CDB and was intended to future-proof the legislation.  It would also have served to keep from public sight operational details of what data was being retained. The Home Office told the Joint Committee in 2012 that it would review the approach in Clause 1:  “We did receive from Mr Farr the important undertaking that Home Office officials would look at clause 1 again, and advise Ministers on whether it can be changed, enhanced or improved.”

A revised draft Communications Data Bill does exist within the Home Office. Anderson reports that:

“The Home Office sought to take the recommendations of the JCDCDB into account and produced a pared-down draft Bill in early 2013, which I have been shown. … Though I asked Ministers in late 2014 for permission to show the draft Bill (or at least a summary of it) to CSPs with whom I discussed the issues … that permission was not forthcoming. It became clear that in the absence of unified political will to progress the proposals, there has been little discussion of them with important stakeholders.”

Add into the mix the Snowden fallout (the Chair of the CDB Joint Committee was unamused to find that it had not been ‘even given any hint’ of the existence of PRISM and TEMPORA), suggestions that the technological systems proposed in the CDB are no longer as relevant or appropriate as they seemed in 2012 (Anderson para 14.29) and a clutch of recent court decisions that, among other things, have invalidated (suspended until March 2016) the existing communications data retention regime under DRIPA (the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014) and we have a crystal ball that is cloudy in the extreme. 

Despite all of this, we can take a shot at predicting some of what may be in the new draft Investigatory Powers Bill. (For a more comprehensive survey of the coming debate see here.)

GCHQ’s bulk interception warrant

What is it? The bulk interception warrant under Section 8(4)of RIPA. These warrants authorise GCHQ’s TEMPORA programme of tapping into transatlantic fibre optic cables, one of the most significant Snowden disclosures.  According to the Snowden documents back in 2012 TEMPORA processed some 40 billion items a day.

Section 8(4) is primarily a foreign investigatory tool, but has significant domestic overlap.  While it focuses on capturing external communications (at least one end outside the British Islands), those communications are mixed up in the cable with wholly internal communications (both ends within the British Islands). In that situation Section 8(4) allows internal communications to be collaterally swept up into a common pool. The stream of data is filtered down by computers.  GCHQ’s analysts can then track communications of known suspects, search for suspicious material or try to join the dots of communications data to identify unknown suspects. 

GCHQ’s computers and analysts cannot trawl indiscriminately in the pool of external and internal communications. RIPA Section 16 is their fishing permit. It specifies what they can fish for and some types of hooks that they cannot use.  They may examine intercepted messages only within broad categories certified by the Minister. Without special authorisation the analysts cannot search by content for communications of people known to be within the British Islands at the time. However these constraints do not apply to communications data captured along with the intercepted communications. 

For: Regarded as a valuable tool for tracking the communications of known suspects and identifying previously unknown threats.

Against: General warrants went out with John Wilkes, yet Section 8(4) has the vice of the general warrant: collect in bulk first, then use the intercepted material to form suspicions. By contrast a targeted warrant is (or should be) justified only when there are pre-existing grounds for suspicion. There are also many specific criticisms of the bulk warrant system including the opaqueness of the drafting of RIPA Section 16, the relative absence of controls over searching and analysing captured communications data, the unworkability of the external/internal communications distinction and the ability of the Minister to authorise a search in the pool for the communications of someone known to be within the British Islands.

Status: None of the reviews has recommended abolition of bulk warrants.  Anderson has recommended several changes, including that each warrant should be much more specific in its objectives.  He has also recommended a standalone bulk communications data warrant, to be used where interception of content is not necessary.

Prediction: Bulk warrantry powers to stay, perhaps significantly modified.

Watch out for: Greater clarity of powers; public avowal of how they are used; specific objectives for warrants; tighter constraints on searching for communications of persons within British Islands; a framework for searching captured communications data; a standalone communications data warrant (perhaps including content-derived communications data); prior judicial or quasi-judicial authorisation; tighter limits on who can apply for a bulk warrant. 

More on bulk interception warrants here.

Broad Ministerial powers

What is it? A wide statutory power in Clause 1 of the draft CDB allowing Secretary of State to make regulations under which she could give notices to CSPs to generate, obtain and disclose communications data and to install designated equipment for that purpose.

For: Future proofing.

Against: Future proofing is inappropriate where intrusive powers are concerned due to unknown consequences. Legislative powers and actual capabilities should be aligned. Overly broad powers breed suspicion. If the real substance is buried two layers down in secret notices to CSPs then neither MPs nor the public can properly understand what is being voted on. An extended designated equipment power (the current RIPA power applies only to interception capability) smacks of surveillance by design, especially in conjunction with the power to compel communications data generation.

Status: Home Office told the Joint CDB Committee that it would look again at Clause 1.

Prediction: Increased specificity, but government will still want a method of future-proofing.

Watch out for: A guessing game to work out how the powers are intended to be used. Or will the government heed the ISC and Anderson’s recommendations that all intrusive capabilities should be publicly avowed?

More on future-proofing here.

Browsing histories

What is it? Extension of current data retention powers so as to require storage of browsing histories (alias weblog data). This was one of the most contentious aspects of the draft Communications Data Bill. It is like keeping a list, which the authorities could demand to inspect, of all the books, newspapers and magazines that you have read in the last year.  Weblog data probably excludes web addresses (URLs) ‘after the first slash’. That is like listing a book, but not every page within it.

For: a step towards providing law enforcement authorities, security agencies and other public authorities with perfect visibility of anyone’s internet activity

Against: a step towards providing law enforcement authorities, security agencies and other public authorities with perfect visibility of anyone’s internet activity

Status: A centrepiece of the original draft Communications Data Bill. Anderson wants a detailed operational case to be made out, and a rigorous assessment conducted of the lawfulness, likely effectiveness, intrusiveness and cost of requiring such data to be retained.

Prediction: Bank on this one coming back in some form.

Watch out for: Ambiguity and unintelligibility of datatypes: accurate, clear explanations of the datatypes to be retained are essential if an informed debate is to take place. Will a new case be made? Will there be prior consultation separate from the pre-legislative Parliamentary scrutiny? Will it be limited to law enforcement and service providers or will the wider public and NGOs be consulted? How will invalidation of the existing data retention powers in DRIPA be addressed?

More on weblog data retention here.

Digital footprints

What is it? Retention of the geolocation data that, thanks to our smartphones and tablets, we leave like a breadcrumb trail behind us.  The Annex to the CDB Explanatory Note explained that Communications data “includes information identifying the location of equipment when a communication is or has been made or received (such as the location of a mobile phone)”. A phone call, text, software update, e-mail check, news feed update, an app checking in to its provider are all communications and they happen all the time. Each could have precise GPS or Wi-Fi location data associated with it. 

For: The ability to access a minute by minute map of our lives is useful to law enforcement.

Against: Not much different from the authorities putting a tracking bug on every one of us.

Status: The voluntary ATCSA Retention Code, which dates from 2003, specifies retention of location data for phone calls (12 months) and text messages (6 months), in latitude/longitude form.  DRIPA includes the mobile phone cell ID at the start of the communication (up to 12 months). Location data was in scope of the Secretary of State’s powers to direct retention under the draft CDB. The current German draft data retention Bill would require location data to be kept for 4 weeks.

Prediction: Probable.

Watch out for: This could get lost in the detail.

Data generation by decree

What is it? The Home Office would be able to order CSPs to generate communications data for the benefit of the authorities.  At the moment CSPs can only be made to retain data that they already generate or process in the UK. Think about that list of books, newspapers and magazines in the weblog data section (above). You don’t ordinarily keep a list? This is like compelling you to make one.

For: Law enforcement want the records to be made.

Against: Crosses a line into surveillance by design: requiring systems to be designed for benefit of the authorities. Could be used to require e.g. public wi-fi providers to collect name and address information from users.

Status: Proposed in the draft Communications Data Bill. Not yet implemented. Surprisingly little attention was paid in the three reviews to this significant extension of existing powers. 

Prediction: Data generation to reappear.

Watch out for: Will there be a lot of noise about it?

More on compelled data generation here.

Boundary between communications data and content

What is it? On the one side we have email addresses, user IDs, IP addresses, domains, and the like.  On the other side content (including URLs beyond the first slash). Public authorities have far readier access to communications data than to content.  There are also sub-divisions of communications data (traffic data, service use data, subscriber data) that under RIPA affect the conduct that is classified as interception. The powers of public authorities to demand access to communications data vary depending on the type of communications data.

Privacy advocates question the historic assumption that content is necessarily more sensitive than communications data. Changes to the dividing line would have an impact on the data that the authorities could request and a knock-on effect on the scope of communications data retention.  

Status: Anderson recommended that the boundary (including sub-divisions) should be reviewed, with input from all interested parties including service providers, technical experts and NGOs. The Intelligence and Security Committee suggested an intermediate category of ‘communications data plus’ and that content-derived information should continue to be regarded as content.

Prediction: Government will continue to maintain that communications data is less sensitive than content. Possible clarification of the boundary in areas of uncertainty such as social media and revision of communications data categories.

Watch out for: Full consultation? A definition of content? Treatment of content-derived communications data.

More on the content/communications data boundary here.

Third party data collection

What is it? A scheme that would enable the Home Office to require CSPs to collect and retain communications data from foreign services transiting their pipes.  This was part of the CDB.

For: A way of giving the authorities access to communications data that they can’t collect from overseas providers.

Against: Expensive, utility unclear.

Status: As well as demanding that a compelling operational case be made out before any proposals are progressed (see above), Anderson hints that law enforcement may be less keen than they were in 2012: “Law enforcement is also conscious that the proposal of third party data retention was a particularly expensive one, and that its utility will be peculiarly susceptible to technological developments. It may therefore be that this aspect of the Communications Data Bill is no longer judged to be the priority that it once was, even within the law enforcement community.” [9.64]

Prediction:  Anyone's guess.

Watch out for: Lack of clarity over any proposed powers; dividing line between content and communications data.

More on third party data collection here.

Request filter

What is it? A plan for a system enabling authorities to search across communications  data collections retained by multiple CSPs.  Another part of the CDB.

For: said to be less intrusive by focusing searches

Against: Federated search implies storing detailed profiles to link the databases together (CDB Joint Committee [114]).

Status: Anderson: “The Communications Data Bill contained provision for the retention of third-party data and for a request filter. Law enforcement still endorse the operational requirements which those provisions were meant to address, but want to engage further with industry on the best ways of meeting them.”

Prediction:  Anyone’s guess.

Watch out for: Clarity of technical proposal; consultation?

More on request filter here.

Judicial authorisation

What is it? Interception warrants in the UK are authorised by a Minister, not by an independent judicial or quasi-judicial body.  This has always been a bone of contention for civil liberties advocates.  Most demands to access communications data are authorised internally by the requesting authorities themselves.

For: The principle of the matter. The UK is out of step with most other liberal democracies. Internet and tech companies based in the USA may be more comfortable co-operating with judicial warrants.

Against: Ministers are in a better position to judge the political implications of issuing a sensitive warrant. They are politically accountable for their actions.

Status: Up in the air.  Anderson has recommended a new Judicial Commission to take over authorising interception warrants. RUSI has recommended a more limited scheme. The judgment in the Davis/Watson judicial review of DRIPA has said (subject to appeal) that the CJEU DRI decision means that there must be prior independent authorisation of requests for mandatorily retained communications data. It could be said that the same should apply to interception warrants.

Prediction: In the balance. The government may prefer to retain Ministerial control over warrants. But if it wants the new interception warrants regime to be legally bullet proof, the prudent course would be to go with a scheme for judicial or quasi-judicial approval of interception warrants.  Separately it has to decide how to deal with the regime for communications data demands following the Davis/Watson decision.

Watch out for:  Concentration on this issue to the detriment of others. It is important, but the scope and reach of powers is critical.

In a nation with nearly no Internet access, a little bit gets a lot of hype.

In mid June, Cuba announced a plan to provide public access at 35 WiFi hotspots. As we noted, 35 WiFi hotspots is a drop in the bucket for a nation with over 11 million people, yet they have received a lot of press coverage.

A Google search found 651 articles with all of the words Cuba, WiFi and 35 in the title since mid June when we reported the story. Google finds over a million hits for stories with those words anywhere in the post and virtually all major news outlets -- from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal and Fox News covered the WiFi roll-out.

The same thing happened when ETECSA began offering public access to the Internet in "navigation rooms," when they announced a plan to make outdated DSL service available to half of the Cuban homes and when a Cuban artist called Kcho opened a single WiFi access point at his studio.

Cuban artist Kcho received world-wide attention for a single WiFi hotspot.

In a recent Havana Times post, Irina Echarry paints a realistic picture of the "Many Unsolved Problems of Cuba’s Wi-Fi Hot Zones" -- the overcrowding, long lines, discomfort, lack of privacy, cost, danger, etc. I am happy to see Cuba take a few halting steps toward a modern, open Internet, but, as Echarry shows us, the reality does not justify the hype.

-----
Update 9/14/2015


The hype continues as Raúl Casto and Panama's president Juan Carlos Varela visit Kcho's studio. I wonder if President Obama would stop by for a photo op if I were to open my home WiFi router for use by people in my front yard? After all, I have a much faster connection to the Net than Kcho.