Republicans made the case against FCC net neutrality rules Friday during a House hearing and pointed to antitrust law as the better consumer protection. The Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee trotted out Republican FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright and Robert McDowell, a former Republican FCC commissioner, to back the idea. Net neutrality scholar Tim Wu and subcommittee Democrats pushed back in favor of an FCC role.

Republicans made the case against FCC net neutrality rules Friday during a House hearing and pointed to antitrust law as the better consumer protection. The Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee trotted out Republican FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright and Robert McDowell, a former Republican FCC commissioner, to back the idea. Net neutrality scholar Tim Wu and subcommittee Democrats pushed back in favor of an FCC role.

Senate Commerce Committee leaders are making progress on a Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization bill draft, the source of much industry anxiety (CD June 9 p1), but decline for now to set any release dates, they said in interviews at the Capitol Tuesday. STELA expires at the end of the year unless Congress reauthorizes it, and Commerce and Judiciary committees in both chambers have jurisdiction.

The Federal Maritime Commission formally asked the parties to the OVSA/PIL Space Charter Agreement to provide additional information about the agreement. The request prevents the agreement from taking effect as originally scheduled. Interested parties can file comments on the request by July 9. Parties to Agreement No.: 012274 are: Hamburg Sud; Hapag-Lloyd AG; CMA CGM S.A./ANL Singapore Pte Ltd. (acting as a single party); and Pacific International Lines (Pte) Ltd.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler plans to recuse himself entirely from involvement in AT&T’s wire center trial experiments, he said Friday. Wheeler was on the EarthLink board for about 10 years until resigning when he was confirmed to the chairman’s position in November. Wheeler’s EarthLink past caused him to recuse himself from the Wireline Bureau’s decision to suspend and investigate an AT&T tariff revision in the special access proceeding (CD Dec 9 p1). Industry observers then wondered if Wheeler would have to recuse himself from parts of other proceedings. One question raised by observers now is whether EarthLink participation on other, more contentious proceedings -- like Comcast’s plan to buy Time Warner Cable -- might force Wheeler’s recusal there as well.

Facebook plans to use a broader range of user Internet activity to define “interest” categories -- which can determine how ads are served to users -- upset some privacy advocates in Congress and at nonprofit groups. Until now, Facebook has used mostly activity on its own website to categorize users, it said in a Thursday news release (http://bit.ly/1n7Bg2q). “Starting soon in the US, we will also include information from some of the websites and apps you use.” Some lawmakers and industry advocates praised enhanced consumer controls included in the change.

The FBI is “piloting” use of facial recognition involving criminal mug shots as part of its Next Generation Identification (NGI) database, but that program will not involve collecting civilians’ photos from drivers’ licenses or other sources, said FBI Director James Comey Wednesday. The facial recognition pilot is limited to criminal mug shots “because those are repeatable, we can count on the equality of them and they are tied to criminal conduct, obviously,” he said. State governments occasionally send the FBI pictures of people who are licensed school bus drivers or have other sensitive professions, but such photos won’t be part of that database, Comey told the House Judiciary Committee during the hearing, which also touched on the effects the USA Freedom Act (HR-3361) would have on the FBI’s surveillance capabilities and cybersecurity work.

The FBI is “piloting” use of facial recognition involving criminal mug shots as part of its Next Generation Identification (NGI) database, but that program will not involve collecting civilians’ photos from drivers’ licenses or other sources, said FBI Director James Comey Wednesday. The facial recognition pilot is limited to criminal mug shots “because those are repeatable, we can count on the equality of them and they are tied to criminal conduct, obviously,” he said. State governments occasionally send the FBI pictures of people who are licensed school bus drivers or have other sensitive professions, but such photos won’t be part of that database, Comey told the House Judiciary Committee during the hearing, which also touched on the effects the USA Freedom Act (HR-3361) would have on the FBI’s surveillance capabilities and cybersecurity work.

The Food and Drug Administration posted a draft guidance on identification of suspect product in pharmaceutical supply chains and subsequent notifications to FDA, as required by the Drug Supply Chain Security Act. Beginning on Jan. 1, 2015, “trading partners” as defined by the 2013 law must notify FDA when they come across “illegitimate product.” The draft guidance includes scenarios that should raise red flags for supply chain participants, as well as due diligence activities that should be undertaken and the procedure for submitting and terminating notifications when illegitimate product is found. Comments on the draft guidance are due Aug. 11, according to a concurrent Federal Register notice (here).

The Computer & Communications Industry Association sees many problems in allowing Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable, CEO Ed Black told Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., in a letter Monday. “Acute competitive problems already exist in the last-mile broadband access market and not only will this merger lead to even less competition, but it would make competitive entry less likely in the future,” Black said (http://1.usa.gov/1oNT9Ez). “We are concerned that the merger will increase the quantity and enhance the effectiveness of the anticompetitive tools at the merged company’s disposal.” The combined company could degrade quality of service and raise operating costs of over-the-top content providers and charge “inflated” interconnection prices as well as withhold a bigger catalog of programming from pay-TV providers and over-the-top competitors, CCIA said. The response is “yet another indication that the proposed acquisition would stifle innovation and harm competition in the telecom industry,” Franken said in a statement. Franken also released a May 27 response from Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen on the issue of net neutrality (http://1.usa.gov/1l1jpHD). Cohen defended Comcast’s net neutrality commitments and said he believes the FCC will issue new net neutrality rules under Communications Act Section 706 by 2018, when Comcast’s obligation to follow the 2010 rules as part of its NBCUniversal acquisition will expire. Those rules are likely to survive judicial scrutiny, Cohen said. But it would be “neither fair nor appropriate” to require in this transaction “an indefinite commitment by Comcast alone” to abide by “any form of open Internet rules,” Cohen said, saying this should be an industrywide commitment. Comcast has defended the Time Warner Cable deal as one good for consumers and not likely to cause any competitive harm. Comcast had no comment on CCIA’s critique.