Russia export controls and sanctions

President Donald Trump's intention to roll back changes to U.S. policy to Cuba would be a setback for the American technology industry, blogged TechFreedom Friday. “One way or another, Cuba’s economic future is digital,” said Austin Carson, the group's executive director. “We’re separated by a mere 90 miles, but returning to a Cold War policy that failed for almost six decades is the best way to ensure that Russia and China -- not the United States -- will have the most influence on Cuba’s burgeoning tech and telecom sectors." During the presidential campaign, Trump said he would reverse the Obama administration's opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba, and, recently, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the president is reviewing the policy. TechFreedom said many tech and telecom companies from other countries can operate freely within Cuba, while American ones are "shut out by our own government." The organization said it's a member of Engage Cuba, a national coalition of companies, groups and others focused on lifting the decades-old embargo against Cuba.

Email domains in Russia, France and Germany generated 237,000 pro-net neutrality comments filed with the FCC in a seven-day span in May, the National Legal and Policy Center said in a news release Wednesday. NLPC said its forensic analysis found that thousands of the comments were the same comment submitted repeatedly from the same foreign filer, using the same international email domain and same international address. It said thousands more were from foreign domain extensions but used nonexistent U.S. addresses. It said many of the comments filed by foreign filers used international or U.S. addresses seemingly generated by www.fakeaddressgenerator.com, since the fake addresses roughly match addresses used in filed international comments. NLPC last week said it found more than 465,000 pro-net neutrality public comments submitted with email addresses that didn't match up with the signers' names or the same email addresses were used to file multiple comments (see 1705310019). NLPC President Peter Flaherty said, "The gaming of the FCC’s comment system appears to be massive and now encompassing overseas bot campaigns utilizing fake foreign physical and email addresses to submit comments. But gaming the system to generate hundreds of thousands of comments from people that aren’t even U.S. citizens and may not even exist is unprecedented." NLPC said it plans to submit the data to a professional data forensics expert for a deeper comments analysis. The FCC didn't comment. Separately Wednesday, the Internet Foundation released a video of recent comments by ISPs on their network and broadband investments, with IA saying those levels of investment run contrary to the companies' claims the existing net neutrality rules stifle innovation and investment. IA CEO Michael Beckerman in a statement said, "Broadband investment enables a virtuous circle of innovation for the whole internet ecosystem. Strong, enforceable net neutrality rules allow this virtuous circle of growth to continue." And the Application Developers Alliance emailed us that at its meeting with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai (see 1706050055), it said it believes Congress needs to act on establishing net neutrality rules.

FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said the U.S. government's October Internet Assigned Numbers Authority oversight transition (see 1609300065 and 1610030042) failed to stop China, Russia and other countries from increasing government involvement in internet governance. O'Rielly said in April the U.S. needs to continue to play a leading role in fostering multistakeholder internet governance, saying the IANA handoff was a failed “appeasement strategy” amid policy moves and statements from the ITU, China and Russia (see 1704210062). O'Rielly again noted his concerns about China and the ITU in a new opinion piece in the New Hampshire Union Leader, saying the U.S.' “fancy strategy didn't appease anyone” already opposed to multistakeholderism. O'Rielly also cited April ITU study meetings in which Russia and several African countries sought to define OTT content providers, which he called a “veiled attempt to expand ITU jurisdiction to the internet, as well as to get its grips into popular consumer uses, such as Netflix, Skype, and WhatsApp.” The U.S. “should learn from the ICANN aftermath and redouble our efforts to quash continuous and systemic assaults on the internet by foreign governments, using all appropriate means,” O'Rielly said.

A former FTC economist said the three vacancies that have existed on the five-member commission for most of the four months since President Donald Trump took office eventually could impede investigations and merger reviews, and shortchange the White House's agenda. Two other FTC experts said last week a full slate would provide more diverse viewpoints, but they didn't think the normal course of agency business would be hurt since the commission is largely a consensus-based organization.

The worldwide WannaCry ransomware attack affecting hundreds of thousands of computers in about 150 countries gave more urgency about how to address malware's spread. It will reinforce discussions about basic cyberhygiene practices and education and automatic security software updates, experts told us. They added that WannaCry will likely just reinforce the direction of U.S. government policymaking on cybersecurity issues.

A massive worldwide ransomware attack called "WannaCry" resulted in more than 45,000 infections in 74 countries, mostly in Russia, said cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab in a Friday blog post. It said Spain's Computer Emergency Response Team CCN-CERT posted a notification that several organizations in that country were affected, plus 16 National Health Service organizations in the U.K., according to the post. Ukraine and India also were affected, but Kaspersky didn't mention the U.S. "It’s important to note that our visibility may be limited and incomplete and the range of targets and victims is likely much, much higher," said Kaspersky. It said the malware encrypts files and drops and executes a decryptor tool. "The request for $600 in Bitcoin is displayed along with the wallet," said the post. "It’s interesting that the initial request in this sample is for $600 USD, as the first five payments to that wallet is approximately $300 USD. It suggests that the group is increasing the ransom demands."

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., admonished President Donald Trump's administration Tuesday for not completing work on a promised plan for combating cyberwarfare. Trump promised in early January that his team would complete a plan within 90 days of his Jan. 20 inauguration to “aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks” (see 1701060060).

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative maintained the 11 countries included on its 2016 mid-tier priority watch list for copyright and other IP rights violations and 23 countries on that year’s lower-tier watch list (see 1604270049) in the same rankings for USTR’s 2017 Special 301 report on the global status of IP rights enforcement. On the 2017 priority watch list: China and India, which perennially appear on that list because of ongoing IP rights enforcement problems. The office again didn't include any countries on its top-tier priority foreign country list.

The U.S. still has a big role to play in international internet governance and the record shows that abrogating its responsibilities doesn’t work, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said in a Friday blog post. “Over the last several years, we’ve been lectured by many that the U.S. position on Internet governance was no longer sustainable in the larger, global community,” O’Rielly wrote. “So-called experts claimed that the U.S.’s minimal government involvement in Internet issues was no longer a prudent approach. These ‘experts’ added that if the U.S. just ceded on our sound principles a little bit, authoritarian governments of the world would end their continued effort to seek increased government regulation and control of the Internet. In other words, they sought an appeasement strategy.” The record shows that strategy won’t succeed, he said. In October, the U.S. officially terminated its last remaining contractual relationship with ICANN, he said. Six months later, “authoritarian governments continue to persist in their efforts to have multilateral organizations, such as the UN, regulate the Internet.” One case in point is a recent interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin wherein he said “the ICANN transition did not change its overall stance and Russia will continue to pursue government involvement, perhaps through the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union, in the workings of the Internet,” O’Rielly said. He pointed to discussions at the ITU’s World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly in Tunisia in October. “Member States specifically discussed such topics as the Internet of Things, cybersecurity, privacy, and the possible regulation of Internet companies and applications,” he said. “Specifically, the ITU Member States embarked on a discussion of the standards needed to facilitate such regulation and deployment.” In March came a position paper from China, “International Strategy of Cooperation on Cyberspace,” China’s “plan to seek global, multilateral governance of the Internet,” he said.

The International Trade Commission should highlight foreign countries' data localization laws as a top barrier to digital trade in a forthcoming report, telecom and tech officials said Tuesday during an ITC hearing. The commission began an investigation in February at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's request into developments in the digital trade market and how laws in the U.S. and “key foreign markets” are affecting digital trade. The ITC is examining laws in the EU, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Russia. The commission is expected to release the first of three reports on the investigation by Aug. 29, with the other two reports to be released in 2018 and 2019.