An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: Bill Gates thinks he has a key part of the answer for combating climate change: a return to nuclear power... Gates, who founded TerraPower in 2006, is telling lawmakers that he personally would invest $1 billion and raise $1 billion more in private capital to go along with federal funds for a pilot of his company's never-before-used technology, according to congressional staffers. "Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change, because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that's available 24 hours a day," Gates said in his year-end public letter. "The problems with today's reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation."

Gates's latest push comes at an important turn in climate politics. Nuclear power has united both unpopular industry executives and a growing number of people -- including some prominent Democrats -- alarmed about climate change. But many nuclear experts say that Gates's company is pursuing a flawed technology and that any new nuclear design is likely to come at a prohibitive economic cost and take decades to perfect, market and construct in any significant numbers... Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said TerraPower is one of many companies that is raising the public's hopes for advanced nuclear reactor designs even though they're still on the drawing boards and will remain unable to combat climate change for many years.
Jonah Goldman, of Gates Ventures, stressed to The Post that Gates was not advocating for TerraPower alone, according to GeekWire.

"Gates thinks the U.S. has 'the best minds, the best lab systems and entrepreneurs willing to take risk,' Goldman told the newspaper. 'But what we don't have is a commitment on Congress' part.'"

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via The Register: U.S. telecoms regulator the FCC has been accused of colluding with companies it is supposed to oversee in order to protect a controversial decision over new 5G networks. Chair of the House Commerce chair, Frank Pallone, has sent a letter to FCC chair Ajit Pai asking for copies of communications between the FCC and the big telcos regarding legal challenges to the regulator's 5G order, which forces local governments to charge a flat fee for installing new base stations. In the letter [PDF], Pallone strongly implies that the committee has heard from a whistleblower.

"It has come to our attention that certain individuals at the FCC may have urged companies to challenge the order the Commission adopted in order to game the judicial lottery procedure and intimated the agency would look unfavorably towards entities that were not helpful," it reads. In effect, the letter alleges that FCC staff -- almost certainly from Pai's office -- put pressure on the big telcos to challenge an order that is designed to benefit them as a way of gaming the judicial system so the case didn't end up in a court likely to overturn it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Russian hackers attempted to breach Democratic National Committee email addresses in a spear-phishing campaign just after the 2018 midterms, according to a DNC court document filed Thursday night. "The content of these emails and their timestamps were consistent with a spear-phishing campaign that leading cybersecurity experts have tied to Russian intelligence," reads the complaint. "Therefore, it is probable that Russian intelligence again attempted to unlawfully infiltrate DNC computers in November 2018." The complaint [...] said there is no evidence that the attempted hack in Nov. 2018 was successful.

Spear-phishing campaigns involve sending emails that appear to be from a trusted source in order to gain confidential information. According to CNN, the emails in question appeared to have been sent from a State Department official and contained a PDF attachment that, if opened, would allow the hacker access to the recipient's computer. The timing and content of these emails were consistent with the practices of the Russian hacking group known as Cozy Bear, one of the two groups that hacked the DNC prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. According to the cybersecurity firm FireEye, Cozy Bear attempted to hack over 20 entities in Nov. 2018, including clients in local government, transportation, defense, law enforcement, and military.

As America's government faces its longest-ever shutdown over the president's demands for border wall funding, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested "possible alternatives to a physical wall," according to one Silicon Valley newspaper: Among the president's justifications for a wall is to stop drugs from coming into the United States, so Pelosi proposed spending "hundreds of millions of dollars" for technology to scan cars for drugs, weapons and contraband at the border. "The positive, shall we say, almost technological wall that can be built is what we should be doing," Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said during her weekly press conference.

That didn't go over well with Fight for the Future, a digital rights advocacy group that on Friday started a petition asking Democrats to drop plans for a "technological wall" that it says could threaten Fourth Amendment rights that guard against unreasonable searches and seizures. "Current border surveillance programs subject people to invasive and unconstitutional searches of their cell phones and laptops, location tracking, drone surveillance, and problematic watchlists," the group's petition says...

In December, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General released a report that showed searches of electronic devices at the border were up nearly 50 percent in 2017. The report also found that border agents were not always following standard operating procedures for searches, including failing to properly document such searches. In addition, information copied by agents were not always deleted as required.
The article also notes that Anduril Industries -- founded by Oculus Rift designer Palmer Luckey (and funded by Peter Thiel) -- is one of several companies already working on "a virtual border wall."

CNN also reports on a GoFundMe campaign started by an Air Force veteran to simply crowdfund the construction of the wall. Though 340,747 people pledged over $20 million, it failed to reach its $1 billion goal, and is now pointing supporters to a newly-formed non-profit corporation -- named "We Build the Wall."

Meanwhile, another 7,121 GoFundMe members have pledged $160,985 to a rival campaign raising money for ladders to climb over Trump's wall.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Older Americans are disproportionately more likely to share fake news on Facebook, according to a new analysis by researchers at New York and Princeton Universities. Older users shared more fake news than younger ones regardless of education, sex, race, income, or how many links they shared. In fact, age predicted their behavior better than any other characteristic -- including party affiliation. Today's study, published in Science Advances, examined user behavior in the months before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In early 2016, the academics started working with research firm YouGov to assemble a panel of 3,500 people, which included both Facebook users and non-users. On November 16th, just after the election, they asked Facebook users on the panel to install an application that allowed them to share data including public profile fields, religious and political views, posts to their own timelines, and the pages that they followed. Users could opt in or out of sharing individual categories of data, and researchers did not have access to the News Feeds or data about their friends.

About 49 percent of study participants who used Facebook agreed to share their profile data. Researchers then checked links posted to their timelines against a list of web domains that have historically shared fake news, as compiled by BuzzFeed reporter Craig Silverman. Later, they checked the links against four other lists of fake news stories and domains to see whether the results would be consistent. Across all age categories, sharing fake news was a relatively rare category. Only 8.5 percent of users in the study shared at least one link from a fake news site. Users who identified as conservative were more likely than users who identified as liberal to share fake news: 18 percent of Republicans shared links to fake news sites, compared to less than 4 percent of Democrats. The researchers attributed this finding largely to studies showing that in 2016, fake news overwhelmingly served to promote Trump's candidacy. But older users skewed the findings: 11 percent of users older than 65 shared a hoax, while just 3 percent of users 18 to 29 did. Facebook users ages 65 and older shared more than twice as many fake news articles than the next-oldest age group of 45 to 65, and nearly seven times as many fake news articles as the youngest age group (18 to 29). As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts. They also say that people experience cognitive decline as they age, making them likelier to fall for hoaxes.

It's been called the "Super Bowl of Astronomy," but when the American Astronomical Society's winter meeting plays out in Seattle this week, some of the stars won't be taking the field. From a report: The AAS meeting is just one of the scientific endeavors diminished by the partial government shutdown in Washington, D.C., which entered its 17th day today. NASA representatives, and researchers whose travel would typically be funded by NASA, have had to cancel their plans to be in Seattle due to the tiff involving the Trump administration and Republicans on one side, and Democrats on the other.

The shutdown affects only a quarter of the federal government -- which means that the Defense Department and the Energy Department can continue research and development activities. Work continues as well at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and at the National Institutes of Health. But most employees at NASA as well as at the Agriculture Department, the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service are on furlough. Further reading: National Parks Face Years of Damage From Government Shutdown.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today thanked Congress for preventing the U.S. government from enforcing net neutrality rules. "The Pai-led Federal Communications Commission repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules, but the repeal could have been reversed by Congress if it acted before the end of its session," reports Ars Technica. "Democrats won a vote to reverse the repeal in the Senate but weren't able to get enough votes in the House of Representatives before time ran out." From the report: "I'm pleased that a strong bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives declined to reinstate heavy-handed Internet regulation," Pai said in a statement marking the deadline passage today. Pai claimed that broadband speed improvements and new fiber deployments in 2018 occurred because of his net neutrality repeal -- although speeds and fiber deployment also went in the right direction while net neutrality rules were in place. "Over the past year, the Internet has remained free and open," Pai said, adding that "the FCC's light-touch approach is working." Pai didn't mention a recent case in which CenturyLink temporarily blocked its customers' Internet access in order to show an ad or a recent research report accusing Sprint of throttling Skype (which Sprint denies).

CNET just published a fierce pro-net neutrality editorial co-authored by Nancy Pelosi, the soon-to-be Majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, with Mike Doyle, the expected Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, and Frank Pallone, Jr. the expected Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The three representatives argue that "the Trump FCC ignored millions of comments from Americans pleading to keep strong net neutrality rules in place." The FCC's net neutrality repeal left the market for broadband internet access virtually lawless, giving ISPs an opening to control peoples' online activities at their discretion. Gone are rules that required ISPs to treat all internet traffic equally. Gone are rules that prevented ISPs from speeding up traffic of some websites for a fee or punishing others by slowing their traffic down....

Without the FCC acting as sheriff, it is unfortunately not surprising that big corporations have started exploring ways to change how consumers access the Internet in order to benefit their bottom line.... Research from independent analysts shows that nearly every mobile ISP is throttling at least one streaming video service or using discriminatory boosting practices. Wireless providers are openly throttling video traffic and charging consumers extra for watching high-definition streams. ISPs have rolled out internet plans that favor companies they are affiliated with, despite full-page ads swearing they value net neutrality. And most concerning, an ISP was found throttling so-called "unlimited" plans for a fire department during wildfires in California.

Make no mistake, these new practices are just ISPs sticking a toe in the water. Without an agency with the authority to investigate and punish unfair or discriminatory practices, ISPs will continue taking bolder and more blatantly anti-consumer steps. That is why we have fought over the past year to restore net neutrality rules and put a cop back on the ISP beat. In May, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill restoring net neutrality rules. Despite the support of a bipartisan majority of Americans, the Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives refused our efforts to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

Fortunately, the time is fast coming when the people's voices will be heard.
The editorial closes by arguing that "Large corporations will no longer be able to block progress on this important consumer protection issue."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Legislation to restore net neutrality rules now has 180 supporters in the U.S. House of Representatives, but that's 38 votes short of the amount needed before the end of the month. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution, already approved by the Senate, would reverse the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules. But 218 signatures from U.S. representatives (a majority) are needed to force a full vote in the House before Congress adjourns at the end of the year.

Net neutrality advocates previously said they needed 218 signatures by December 10 to force a vote. But an extension of Congress' session provided a little more time. "[Now that the Congressional session has officially been extended, members of Congress could be in town as late as December 21st," net neutrality advocacy group Fight for the Future wrote yesterday. "This means we have until the end of the year to get as many lawmakers as possible signed on to restore net neutrality." A discharge petition that would force a vote on the CRA resolution gained three new supports in the past two weeks, but even if all Democrats were on board it still wouldn't be enough to force a vote. Republicans have a 236-197 House majority, and only one House Republican has signed the petition.

"Democrats are expected to use their upcoming control of the House to push for strong net neutrality rules," reports NBC News: "The FCC's repeal sparked an unprecedented political backlash, and we've channeled that internet outrage into real political power," said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights-focused non-profit organization. "As we head into 2019, net neutrality supporters in the House of Representatives will be in a much stronger position to engage in FCC oversight...." Gigi Sohn, a former lawyer at the FCC who is now a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, said she expects Democrats to use their new power to push for the restoration of strong net neutrality rules -- and for the topic to be on the lips of presidential hopefuls. "I have no doubt that bills to restore the 2015 rules will be introduced in both the Senate and the House relatively early on," Sohn said....

Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC commissioner who has been a vocal supporter of net neutrality, noted that it has become a national issue -- and one that has broad approval from Americans. She pointed to a University of Maryland study that found 83 percent of people surveyed were against the FCC's move to undo the rules around net neutrality... Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation...said he is "extraordinarily confident" that proponents of net neutrality will win. "It really just boils down to how one side of the polling is in this space," Falcon said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: A group of Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Thursday saying that the company's previous explanations to Congress about its Rekognition software were inadequate. Democratic lawmakers expressed concern about the potential threat the technology poses to civil liberties in the hands of police. "Facial recognition technology may one day serve as a useful tool for law enforcement officials working to protect the American public and keep us safe," the letter reads. "However, at this time, we have serious concerns that this type of product has significant accuracy issues, places disproportionate burdens on communities of color, and could stifle Americans' willingness to exercise their First Amendment rights in public." In the letter on Thursday, the Democratic members requested that Amazon provide them with results from accuracy tests of the Rekognition software. They also asked again for information on their government clients and if they audited law enforcement's use of facial recognition to ensure that its not being employed in violation of civil rights law. "Customer trust, privacy, and security are our top priorities at AWS," Michael Punke, Amazon's vice president for global public policy, wrote in response. "We have long been committed to working with federal and state legislatures to modernize outdated laws to enhance the privacy and security of our customers by preventing law enforcement from accessing data without a warrant."

Democrats have proposed the "Stopping Grinch Bots Act" to make it illegal to use bots to shop online and also outlaw reselling items purchased by bots. "Lawmakers label them 'Grinch' bots because, during the holiday season, resellers use them to buy inventory of highly coveted toys that can be resold at highly inflated prices," reports CNET. "Often times, these bots are so quick that they can purchase entire stocks of items before people can even add them to their carts." From the report: Sens. Tom Udall, Richard Blumenthal and Chuck Schumer along with Rep. Paul Tonko made the announcement on Black Friday. While the proposed legislation is focused around the holiday season and toys, the Grinch Bots act would apply to all retailers online. Toys aren't the only items that resellers online send swarms of bots to. Security researchers noted that bots designed to buy rare sneakers are a persistent issue, as developers will create AI to buy shoes from companies like Nike and Adidas as quickly as possible. The proposed bill leaves it open for security researchers to use bots on retailer websites to find vulnerabilities. "Middle class folks save up -- a little here, a little there -- working to afford the hottest gifts of the season for their kids but ever-changing technology and its challenges are making that very difficult. It's time we help restore an even playing field by blocking the bots," said Schumer, a Democrat from New York, in a statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: Amid reports that first daughter and White House senior advisor Ivanka Trump exchanged hundreds of official government business emails using a personal email account, top Democrats on Capitol Hill "want to know if Ivanka complied with the law" and in the next Congress plan to continue their investigation of the Presidential Records Act and Federal Records Act. Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat who's in line to become the next chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee next year, promises any potential investigation into Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's emails won't be like the "spectacle" Republicans led in the Clinton email probe.

The Oversight committee has jurisdiction over records and transparency laws, and Cummings helped write an update to the Presidential and Federal Records Acts that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2014. That measure mandates that every federal employee, including the President, forward any message about official business sent using a private account to the employee's official email account within 20 days. "We launched a bipartisan investigation last year into White House officials' use of private email accounts for official business, but the White House never gave us the information we requested," Cummings, D-Md., noted. "We need those documents to ensure that Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and other officials are complying with federal records laws and there is a complete record of the activities of this Administration. My goal is to prevent this from happening again -- not to turn this into a spectacle the way Republicans went after Hillary Clinton. My main priority as Chairman will be to focus on the issues that impact Americans in their everyday lives."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Three U.S. Senate Democrats today asked the four major wireless carriers about allegations they've been throttling video services and -- in the case of Sprint -- the senators asked about alleged throttling of Skype video calls. Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent the letters to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, noting that recent research using the Wehe testing platform found indications of throttling by all four carriers.

"All online traffic should be treated equally, and Internet service providers should not discriminate against particular content or applications for competitive advantage purposes or otherwise," the senators wrote. Specifically, the Wehe tests "indicated throttling on AT&T for YouTube, Netflix, and NBC Sports... throttling on Verizon for Amazon Prime, YouTube, and Netflix... throttling on Sprint for YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Skype Video calls... [and] delayed throttling, or boosting, on T-Mobile for Netflix, NBC Sports, and Amazon Prime by providing un-throttled streaming at the beginning of the connection, and then subsequently throttling the connection," the senators' letters said.

Twitter has deleted over 10,000 disinformation bots discouraging Americans from voting in Tuesday's midterm elections.

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Twitter said that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had brought the accounts to their attention. "For the election this year we have established open lines of communication and direct, easy escalation paths for state election officials, DHS, and campaign organizations from both major parties," the spokesperson said. The company said it believes the network of accounts was run from the United States.
The 10,000 accounts were deleted in late September and early October, Reuters reports: The number is modest, considering that Twitter has previously deleted millions of accounts it determined were responsible for spreading misinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Yet the removals represent an early win for a fledgling effort... The DCCC launched the effort this year in response to the party's inability to respond to millions of accounts on Twitter and other social media platforms that spread negative and false information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other party candidates in 2016, three people familiar with the operation told Reuters... The DCCC developed its own system for identifying and reporting malicious automated accounts on social media, according to the three party sources.

Democrats and Republicans in Washington can't agree on much of anything these days. One thing they do agree on: The digital divide undercutting rural America needs to be fixed. But figuring out the details of achieving this goal is where the two sides diverge. From a report: So how are policy makers working to solve this problem? I traveled to Washington last month to talk about this topic with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican, and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, the only Democrat on the commission. Specifically, I wanted to know what they see as the cause of this divide and how they think it can be bridged. One thing they agreed on: Deploying broadband is expensive in many parts of the country, making it hard for traditional providers to run a business building and operating networks. "In big cities and urban areas where you have dense populations, the cost of deployment is lower," Rosenworcel said. "When you get to rural locations it's harder because financing those networks, deploying them and operating them is just more expensive." She added, "That's not a reason not to do it. We're just going to have to get creative and find ways to connect everyone everywhere."

It might even take what Pai called a "national mission" to get the job done. But before you can really get things going, you have to address one key issue, Rosenworcel said. "Our broadband maps are terrible," she said. "If we're going to solve this nation's broadband problems, then the first thing we have to do is fix those maps. We need to know where broadband is and is not in every corner of this country." You can't solve a problem you can't measure, she added. [...] Pai agrees that the inaccuracies of the FCC's maps are a major problem. And he acknowledges that relying solely on self-reported data from the carriers is an issue. But he blames the previous Democrat-led administration for creating the problem and says his administration has been left to clean up the mess. He said that when he became chairman in January 2017, the FCC had to sift through that self-reported data based on parameters that individual carriers defined, creating a mismatched data set. "So we didn't just have apples and oranges," he said. "We had apples, oranges, bananas and many other fruits." He said his administration has tried to streamline the process so the FCC is at least gathering the same self-reported information from each carrier. But he admits that the process is still flawed. To rectify that, the agency has developed a challenge process. "We've asked the American public, state and local officials, and carriers, consumer groups, farm groups in rural states to challenge those maps and tell us where they're inaccurate," he said.

President Donald Trump has accused Twitter of targeting his followers for removal from the social media platform, amid complaints by conservatives that social media companies have been discriminating against right-wing voices. From a report: "Twitter has removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join -- they have stifled growth to a point where it is obvious to all," Trump said in a tweet Friday. "A few weeks ago it was a Rocket Ship, now it is a Blimp! Total Bias?" Trump and some other Republicans have complained that Facebook, Alphabet's Google and Twitter have censored or suppressed conservative voices. Democrats have called that a diversion from concern over Russia's use of social-media platforms to influence the 2016 presidential election and over the proliferation of offensive content. In his opening remarks during a meeting with state attorneys general in September, Attorney General Jeff Sessions raised concerns that social media companies have a political agenda and have the power to manipulate public opinion, according to Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: Democrats in the House of Representatives are promising to push for federal regulation of tech companies if they retake the House in November. Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, has drafted an Internet Bill of Rights and shared it with influential tech journalist Kara Swisher. It includes liberties like the right to access and transport personal data collected about you, an opt-in framework for data collection, and net neutrality protections. Rep. Nancy Pelosi charged Khanna with drafting the principles, according to an essay by Swisher published in the New York Times.

The list includes the right to obtain, correct, or delete personal data "where context appropriate and with a fair process." That's not nearly as sweeping as the "right to be forgotten" included in Europe's landmark General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect earlier this year. The Bill of Rights would also require companies that collect personal data to notify users of breaches in "a timely manner" and mandate "reasonable business practices and accountability to protect your privacy." Swisher calls it "an admirable list" but is concerned that codifying the principles "will be like pushing back the ocean." Many big tech companies have business models built entirely on collecting as much user data as possible.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Verizon lobbyist is trying to become the attorney general of New York in the upcoming November election. Verizon executive Leecia Eve is one of four candidates in the Democratic primary for the seat vacated when Eric Schneiderman resigned after assault allegations from four women. If elected, Eve says she would recuse herself from Verizon matters and New York State's appeal of the federal net neutrality repeal. As a Verizon executive, Eve defended the company from the city's allegations. Still, Eve has argued that her Verizon experience will help her prosecute "bad corporate actors" -- but without being so harsh that businesses would stop coming to the state. "Her Verizon experience, Eve contends, is 'extremely helpful: I know how corporations work,' leaving her 'best prepared to go after bad corporate actors,' but 'not to radiate to business not to come to New York,'" news organization City Limits wrote Tuesday after interviewing Eve.

Eve would not be involved in investigating Verizon if she won the election. "Under ethics rules, Eve confirms, she'd recuse herself from cases involving Verizon or other telecom issues, leaving policy decisions to senior staff," City Limits reported. Eve also confirmed that she would recuse herself from the New York attorney general office's ongoing lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission. Along with more than 20 other states, New York has asked a federal court to reverse the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules, a repeal that was supported by Verizon. Here's an excerpt from Eve's bio on her campaign site: "As Vice President for Government Affairs for Verizon for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, Leecia oversees policy and ensures governmental compliance for a company that innovates and invests billions in New York State and puts nearly 20,000 New Yorkers to work every day. She also serves as a Commissioner of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey."

According to Ars, recent polls show that Eve is in last place behind three other Democrats running for the office.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: California's state Assembly yesterday approved a strict net neutrality bill despite opposition from the telecom industry. California's Senate already approved an earlier version of the bill in May. But some minor changes were made in the Assembly, so the Senate must vote on the bill again today before going into recess. If the Senate approves, California Governor Jerry Brown would have until September 30 to sign the bill into law. The bill would prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or throttling lawful traffic, and from requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers. The bill also imposes limits on data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating") and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality protections by slowing down traffic at network interconnection points. Yesterday's Assembly vote was 61-18. All 55 Democratic members of the Assembly and six Republicans voted for the bill. All 18 votes against it came from Republicans. "ISPs have tried hard to gut and kill this bill, pouring money and robocalls into California," Electronic Frontier Foundation Policy Analyst Katharine Trendacosta said. "California could pass a gold standard net neutrality bill, providing a template for states going forward. California can prove that ISP money can't defeat real people's voices."

UPDATE: The state Senate approved the bill 23-11. It's now headed to California Gov. Jerry Brown's desk, where he's expected to sign the legislation since it has garnered the support of top state Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Kamala Harris.