Buying Options

Kindle Price: $0.99

Enter a promotion code or Gift Card

Share <Embed>

Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission Is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates by [Norm Alster]

Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission Is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates Kindle Edition

by Norm Alster (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

8 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle, June 23, 2015

"Please retry"

$0.99

—

Kindle
$0.99 Read with Our Free App

Ever wonder who really runs Washington? Ever have the sense that the agencies which are supposed to regulate industry actually report to it? Ever get angry that Washington lawmakers and regulators seem more interested in protecting corporations than in protecting public health?

If so, you will want to read this fascinating account of how corporate technology interests have won inordinate access to—and power over—a major regulatory agency. The Federal Communications Commission sits at the heart of a bipartisan Washington web of institutional corruption that has for many years championed corporate interests, typically at public expense. Echoing industry, the FCC has ignored the growing evidence that wireless technologies pose serious health risks. It has indirectly taxed consumers billions to pay for the pet projects of tech executives and lobbyists. FCC policies have enabled cable companies to charge the highest rates in the world while forcing consumers to pay for channels they don’t want.

How can all this happen in a system where elected representatives approve and supervise regulatory officials? An online survey conducted for this project suggests that corporate interests have a huge ally in public ignorance of their most damaging (but obscure) triumphs and tactics.

Print length

87 pages
Language

English
Publication date

June 23, 2015
File size

1607 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login now

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B010CB0TWA
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics (June 23, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 23, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1607 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 87 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #1,319,403 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #464 in Public Administration
- #655 in Two-Hour Politics & Social Sciences Short Reads
- #1,063 in Business Ethics (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
8 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		100%
4 star 0% (0%)		0%
3 star 0% (0%)		0%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Diogenes

Think cellphones and wifi are as safe as you've been so assured?

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is a well-researched, intelligently-written book. It is as balanced as can be expected, heralding the entrenched corruption and breath-taking malfeasance of the government agencies.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Democracy is a farce without separation of wealth and state.

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2015

Verified Purchase

This short book reveals the incredible influence that wireless, cable, and technology companies wield over the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. But, while the book is ostensibly about the communications industry, it also serves as a canary in the coal mine for the larger crisis confronting modern civilization: Democracy is a farce without separation of wealth and state.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Allen Furst

Must reading

Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2015

Verified Purchase

If you're concerned about the powerful sway that lobbyists currently exert over the FCC, I strongly recommend this book.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

William J. Deangelis

EXCELLENT INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2015

"Captured Agency - How the Federal Communications Commission is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates" is best characterized as a long article or a short monograph. It is divided into ten short chapters - none of which is more than ten pages - and a short appendix. It's narrative is clear and compelling. It is written by Norm Alster, a veteran journalist who wrote this piece while a fellow at the Edmund Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University during the 2014-2015 academic year. It is a thorough, fair-minded and objective account of some very disturbing realities suggested by its title.

We are all inclined to love our cellphones and those devices which operate on wi-fi in our homes, places of business and even some of our cars. We don't think much about exposure to electromagnetic radiation that these conveniences entail. Alster has thoroughly researched the history of the development of these industries and their implementation, including the disturbing details of the FCC's involvement in that history. He has shown, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the FCC, the government agency which supposedly exists to make sure that such devices are safe, has, in many respects, failed to do so. The reasons they failed to do so are enumerated by Alster in a narrative that is anything but reassuring.

The author is no ideologue. His tone is anything but hysterical. His conclusions, while disturbing, are qualified and nuanced. His claim that the FCC failed to completely and fairly look into the safety of the implementation of a multi-billion dollar industry is so well supported so as to be entirely convincing. The details supporting this conclusion are disturbing in many ways and should be far more widely known by a public that has embraced, for the most part happily, the products this industry has made available. As for the substantive questions of whether cellphones, the towers that enable them to function, and wi-fi technology are safe, Alster comes to no dogmatic conclusions. He gives an account of a good number and wide variety of studies that have been done which bear on the issue. He is fair-minded in discussing these and is not prepared to claim that these products are unqualifiedly unsafe. He is content to conclude that they provide reason enough for concerns - concerns to which the FCC in some cases did not sufficiently investigate and in some cases systematically dismissed without nearly enough justification.

This is a short work, a good sometimes chilling, read that I would recommend to anyone. It tells us something not only about devices to which we have become accustomed to using, but also about how corporate interests can undermine the requirements of democracy and the operations of government agencies. I would especially call attention to Alster's short list of recommendations made in chapter nine of this work as evidence that this is the work of an author who is grounded, fair-minded, realistic and pragmatic in his responses to what he has unearthed.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

mtesla

An important 99 cent purchase...

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2015

I cannot improve on reviewer William Deangelis's comments. He captures the reality of this 59-page "book" (or monograph) perfectly. I will say that Alster's work accurately reflects what I have seen in my fifteen years of observing this chess game between the independent scientists/precaution advocates and the FCC/Wireless Industry. I'm often reminded of Bergman's film, "The Seventh Seal," only in this version, it is the dark powerful one who keeps playing the chess game in order to stave off the inevitable--which, from what I can see, will be the public's realization that they have been fooled.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Janine Wedel

Powerful Dissection of a Crucial Regulatory Agency

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2015

A powerful and deeply disturbing dissection of how one of the most important regulatory agencies of the past two decades, the Federal Communications Commission, has been substantially “captured” (or eviscerated/rendered impotent/defanged) by the very companies it is charged with regulating. Norm Alster makes a strong case that the tech utopians predicting that the internet and mobile devices would empower the average citizen were dead wrong. Instead, the Internet has become, as he describes, “vast hunting grounds for criminal and commercial interests, the go-to destination for the surrender of personal information, privacy and identity.” The conventional wisdom is that the explosion of digital technology was merely an inevitability given the scope of this momentous innovation. Alster, in going through the guts of the FCC’s decision-making and compromised leadership, suggests another very compelling possibility: that this runaway growth was in fact made possible because of the “light touch” regulators gave to companies eager to expand ever more widely. The ease at which the regulators swap public service for lobbying, even for someone like myself who is very familiar with the topic, is astounding. The letters Alster obtains showing the chumminess between the regulator and regulated are stomach-turning and perfectly ordinary at the same time. As Alster points out, little of this activity is “malevolent in motive” and yet the results are toxic nonetheless. Health, privacy and monopolistic concerns were all pushed aside, and with heads around the world now glued to their smart phones, there’s no going back now. An important read for anyone who wants to know how the system of influence actually works for the powerful, to the great detriment of the rest of us.

Janine R. Wedel
Author, UNACCOUNTABLE: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security
University Professor, George Mason University

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Absolutely amazing book with a variety of valuable sources and references

Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2017

Absolutely amazing book with a variety of valuable sources and references. The author is the MASTER in this field. I will definitely present this material to my graduate students, they need to be aware of it

Helpful

Buying Options

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission Is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates Kindle Edition

Product details

Customer reviews

Reviews with images

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.