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Brendan Carr

@BrendanCarrFCC

Nov 3

This is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC's Equal Time rule.

The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct - a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election.

Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns.

In the 2016 cycle, President Obama’s FCC Chair made clear that the agency would enforce the Equal Time rule when candidate Trump went on SNL.

NBC stations publicly filed Equal Opportunity notices to ensure that all other qualifying candidates could obtain Equal Time if they sought it.

Stations did the same thing when Clinton appeared on SNL.

Federal law requires that broadcasters provide comparable time and placement to all legally qualified candidates when the Equal Time rule is triggered.

With only days before the election, NBC appears to have structured this appearance in a way that evades these requirements.

What comparable time and placement can they offer all other qualifying candidates ?

Read 8 tweets

Brendan Carr

@BrendanCarrFCC

Sep 5

Brazil’s decisions to ban X and freeze Starlink assets are part of a growing crackdown on free speech. But they also violates Brazil’s own laws.

Today, I wrote my regulatory counterparts in Brazil to address these unlawful actions.

*****
Dear ANATEL President Baigorri,

The FCC and ANATEL, the lead communications regulatory agencies in the U.S. and Brazil, have had a long-standing relationship—one built on reciprocity, respect for the rule of law, and our shared status as independent agencies established by law to operate without undue influence from the partisan political branches of our governments.

The sectors we regulate stand to benefit from continuing a partnership based on adherence to those foundational principles. Indeed, you recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the FCC’s Chairwoman that further formalized the FCC and ANATEL relationship.

Nonetheless, I am compelled to address with you today the cascading set of apparently unlawful and partisan political actions that your agency has been carrying out against businesses with U.S. ties, including your own threat to pull Starlink’s licenses and authorizations to operate in Brazil.

These punitive actions—backed publicly by the Lula Administration—are already reverberating broadly and shaking confidence in the stability and predictability of Brazil’s regulated markets. In fact, U.S. business leaders are now openly questioning whether Brazil is on the path to becoming an uninvestable market.

ANATEL is now actively enforcing a widely criticized decision by Justice de Moraes to censor X that, according to government officials in Brazil, violates Brazil’s own Constitution and your country’s statutory prohibitions against government censorship.

To make matters worse, Justice de Moraes chose to enforce his decision by freezing the assets of Starlink—even though Starlink is a separate company with different shareholders that has broken no laws.

Justice de Moraes has failed to respect universal and basic tenets of transparency, fair notice, and due process.

Indeed, it has now been revealed that Justice de Moraes has been sending social media companies secret orders to censor the political posts of elected members of Brazil’s Congress.

“If this sounds authoritarian, it is,” the Washington Post wrote this week about Justice de Moraes’s takedown campaign. Continuing, the Washington Post stated that Brazil’s recent moves come “at a substantial cost to free expression—with mandates for removals and even arrest warrants often issued under seal and with scant reasoning to support them.”

“Brazilians shouldn’t have to put up with government suppressing political viewpoints,” it concluded.

While Justice de Moraes’s actions mirror crackdowns on free speech that are taking place across the globe, I am not writing you today based on a generalized concern about free expression—though I believe strongly that communications regulators like us should stand against this trend towards censorship. Nor am I arguing that these actions by Brazil’s government somehow violate U.S. laws on free speech …

But according to Brazilian officials and legal authorities, Brazil is now violating its own laws through arbitrary and capricious actions against X and Starlink. Indeed, the Justice de Moraes decision runs headlong into Brazil’s own Constitution, which expressly prohibits “[a]ny and all censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature,” as well as other provisions of Brazilian law that further guarantee freedom of expression.

The serious and apparently unlawful actions against X and Starlink cannot be squared with the principles of reciprocity, rule of law, and independence that have served as the foundation of the FCC and ANATEL relationship and the basis for reciprocal foreign investment.

I am therefore requesting a meeting with you to address and resolve these issues. If you prefer, I will come to you in Brazil to do so.

The Washington Post agrees, calling Justice de Moraes’s actions “authoritarian” replete “with mandates for removals and even arrest warrants often issued under seal and with scant reasoning to support them.”

Musk is right, they say, de Moraes is wrong.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/…

Brazil’s authoritarian actions are already shaking confidence in the stability and predictability of its regulated markets.

As I note in my letter, business leaders like @BillAckman are now openly questioning whether Brazil is on the path to becoming an uninvestable market.

Read 4 tweets

Brendan Carr

@BrendanCarrFCC

Aug 31

On Brazilian Justice de Moreas's order shutting down X:

The text of his 51-page decision is far more concerning and sweeping than the headlines suggest.

de Moreas’s own words make clear that he is attempting to strike a broader blow against free speech and in favor of authoritarian controls.

His opinion does not even try to hide it. He comes right out and points to Brexit and the 2016 election of President Trump as examples, in his telling, of the types of extreme “populist” outcomes that he is attempting to avoid by imposing a new censorship regime in Brazil ahead the country’s elections later this year.

But this type of censorship of a political and ideological nature is expressly prohibited by Brazil’s own Constitution.

Nonetheless, de Morea argues that free speech on X cannot be allowed to continue because the diversity of political opinions expressed on the site might influence the people of Brazil ahead of their 2024 elections. See op. at 31-32.

In other words, de Morea is arguing that free speech is a threat to democracy—a position that is as Orwellian as it is dangerous.

The opposite is true. Free speech is democracy’s check on excessive government control. Censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.

To dress up his decision, de Morea runs the warmed over playbook of labeling political speech that runs contrary to his own orthodoxy as “misinformation” and “disinformation.” But authoritarians like de Morea are not worried that people will be misled by the political messages they choose to read. He is worried that those messages will be effective.

At bottom, this decision is part of a live, ongoing, and global debate between free speech and censorship, between freedom and control. It is imperative that free speech and freedom prevail.

Or as the late NY Times editor John Oakes once said, “Diversity of opinion is the lifeblood of democracy. The minute we begin to insist that everyone think the same way we think, our democratic way of life is in danger.” Those are the stakes.

Here, de Moraes says he's banning X to influence the results of Brazil's 2024 election, arguing that the electorate might otherwise be influenced by the political views (what he calls "anti-democratic speeches") posted on X, leading to populist results.

Cites to Brexit & Trump.

The de Moraes decision runs headlong into Brazil’s own Constitution, which prohibits censorship of a political or ideological nature.

So the question is not whether his order violates free speech as a general matter, it is a question of him complying with Brazil’s own laws.

Read 4 tweets

Brendan Carr

@BrendanCarrFCC

Jun 14

In 2021, the Biden Administration got $42.45 billion from Congress to deploy high-speed Internet to millions of Americans.

Years later, it has not connected even 1 person with those funds. In fact, it now says that no construction projects will even start until 2025 at earliest.

Meanwhile, the Biden Admin has been layering a partisan political agenda on top of this $42.45B program - a liberal wish list that has nothing to do with connecting Americans.

Climate change mandates, tech biases, DEI requirements, favoring government-run networks + more.

https://x.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1562433655578193921

It gets worse

While the Biden Admin's $42.45B plan from 2021 has not resulted in even a single shovel's worth of dirt being turned, the government in 2022 revoked an award to Starlink that would have delivered high-speed Internet to 642K rural locations

https://x.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1562433655578193921

Read 4 tweets

Brendan Carr

@BrendanCarrFCC

Mar 10

Does TikTok present a threat that is any different than other Big Tech companies? Yes, definitively so.

I’ve long pressed to rein in Big Tech & end the discrimination.

Yet the evidence shows that TikTok is unlike any other Big Tech company. 🧵

newsmax.com/newsfront/tikt…

After being caught allowing personnel in Beijing access to U.S. data, TikTok promised to reform its ways & wall that data off.

But of course, TikTok did not change its ways. As the WSJ found, it kept on sharing sensitive U.S. data with China. Personnel inside China have simply ignored the “Project Texas” promises that TikTok has made to U.S. lawmakers.

Or take TikTok’s decision to enable Beijing-based personnel to spy on Americans.

Initially, TikTok denied the story and claimed that the reporters lacked journalist integrity. But eventually,
TikTok was forced to confess that, yes, it had illicitly surveilled the locations of specific Americans despite its representations to lawmakers.

Read 15 tweets

Brendan Carr

@BrendanCarrFCC

Mar 7

For years, TikTok represented that none of the sensitive data that it collects on U.S. users is available to personnel inside China.

Then leaked internal materials revealed this to be nothing more than gaslighting.

A deeply reported story broke in 2022 that pulled back the curtain on TikTok’s data flows back into China.

Based on leaked audio from 80 internal TikTok meetings, the report revealed that “Everything is seen in China,” as one TikTok official put it.

And that “everything” is more than just your average cat video.

TikTok collects reams of highly sensitive data on U.S. users, including location data, search and browsing histories, keystroke patterns, and biometric identifiers, including faceprints and voiceprints

Read 13 tweets

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