The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit instructed a lower court to hear a zoning case brought by Roswell, Ga., after the court granted T-Mobile summary judgment on the grounds that the city’s denial of a cell tower permit sought by the carrier violated the Telecommunications Act. The unanimous decision by the three-judge panel was written by Judge Frank Hull. “After review of the briefs and record, with the benefit of oral argument, and in light of our decision in T-Mobile South, LLC v. City of Milton, Georgia, ... we reverse and remand for further proceedings,” the court said (http://1.usa.gov/1g1fonS). A key question in the case was whether Roswell’s decision denying the permit was “in writing and supported by substantial evidence contained in a written record” per the Telecom Act. “The district court adopted a reading of the ‘in writing’ requirement employed by several courts around the country,” the court said. “Under that reading, a separate written document delineating the specific reasons for the local government’s decision is required to satisfy the ‘in writing’ requirement.” The city countered the “decision was reduced in writing in numerous forms, including the denial letter, hearing minutes, and hearing transcript.” The court said the case raised the same issue raised in the City of Milton case. “This Court reasoned that the statute does not say that ’the decision [must] be “in a separate writing” or in a “writing separate from the transcript of the hearing and the minutes of the meeting in which the hearing was held” or “in a single writing that itself contains all of the grounds and explanations for the decision."’ ... Therefore, we concluded that ’to the extent that the decision must contain grounds or reasons or explanations, it is sufficient if those are contained in a different written document or documents that the applicant is given or has access to.'” The facts were nearly identical in the second case, the court said. “As in City of Milton, the City of Roswell provided T-Mobile with a written letter clearly stating that the City Council had denied T-Mobile’s request to build the proposed cell tower,” the court said. “That same letter informed T-Mobile that ‘[t]he minutes from the aforementioned hearing may be obtained from the city clerk’ and even provided T-Mobile with a contact to assist T-Mobile in obtaining the minutes. T-Mobile therefore had access to the written minutes of the City Council hearing where its request was denied.”

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai put his support behind noncommercial stations using on-air time to raise funds for third-party charities and proposing regulatory changes to improve the AM band. Allowing noncommercial educational stations to use up to 1 percent of their annual airtime to raise funds would allow stations “to help meet the humanitarian needs in their local communities and around the world, and it wouldn’t undermine the noncommercial nature of their operations,” he said Tuesday in a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters board in National Harbor, Md. A proceeding on the rule change, suggested by NRB, is still pending (CD Feb 4 p8). He rejected arguments that such a rule change would put stations in the position of having to approve some requests for airtime while denying others, or that audiences will be driven away. Broadcasters make plenty of decisions every day, “and I'm sure they can handle this one without antacid,” he said. “I don’t think that less than 15 minutes a day of charitable fundraising will alienate those who listen to or watch noncommercial stations.” If it does, “stations have every incentive to change course,” he said. He also encouraged broadcasters to participate in the comment period for the forthcoming NPRM on revitalizing the AM band (CD Sept 20 p11). The commission will have to act quickly “to give AM broadcasters relief while we come up with more permanent fixes for the band’s difficulties,” he said. The commission should go further in helping AM stations secure FM translators, he added: “We should open up a window where any AM station without an FM translator can get one so long as there is available spectrum."

The first casualties of a federal government shutdown likely will be events, including hearings on Capitol Hill, slated for this week, unless the House and Senate work out a deal that would put off a shutdown that was slated to start at midnight Monday. Bigger problems loom, including potential delays in Senate action on the nominations of Tom Wheeler and Michael O'Rielly as members of the FCC, industry officials said. NTIA has already canceled one high-profile event slated for next week.

The trade industry was still assessing the short- and long-term effects of the government shutdown Oct. 1. CBP had already said its core functions would not be immediately affected (see 13093028). And the U.S. National Airspace System was operating normally Oct. 1, with no reports of any impact to operations due to the government shutdown, said The International Air Cargo Association.

A company that asked the FTC to find its parental verification technology falls under the agency’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rule rebutted two privacy groups’ criticism. The reasons the Center for Digital Democracy and Electronic Privacy Information Center give for wanting the commission to reject the COPPA request “are based on invalid assumptions and faulty analysis,” wrote AssertID President Keith Dennis in a blog post on the company’s website Friday (http://bit.ly/14PEbq9). Using Facebook to verify that someone’s a parent, and therefore can give a kid under 13 permission to register with a website or mobile app, is based on “extensive academic research,” he wrote. “Our method also requires a parent to divulge less information than other approved” parental verification methods, Dennis wrote. CDD and EPIC make “some valid points,” and it’s correct that the company only lets parents verify their identity using a credit card for “premium” services, he said. The website or mobile app operator should be able to choose to bypass credit-card verification, which costs more than other sorts of identification checks, Dennis said. “The alternative is for AssertID to raise the pricing of our basic service offering thereby forcing all Operators to incur the costs of the alternate verification methods.” Dennis had no comment about criticism of AssertID’s plan by other COPPA participants (CD Sept 26 p20). CDD and EPIC will meet with FTC officials about the groups’ concerns, CDD Executive Director Jeff Chester told us. “We look forward to the FTC’s investigation, and addressing the objections” from the two groups, he said. “Companies can’t expect that they'll get a free pass to help children be targeted online.”

A company that asked the FTC to find its parental verification technology falls under the agency’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rule rebutted two privacy groups’ criticism. The reasons the Center for Digital Democracy and Electronic Privacy Information Center give for wanting the commission to reject the COPPA request “are based on invalid assumptions and faulty analysis,” wrote AssertID President Keith Dennis in a blog post on the company’s website Friday (http://bit.ly/14PEbq9). Using Facebook to verify that someone’s a parent, and therefore can give a kid under 13 permission to register with a website or mobile app, is based on “extensive academic research,” he wrote. “Our method also requires a parent to divulge less information than other approved” parental verification methods, Dennis wrote. CDD and EPIC make “some valid points,” and it’s correct that the company only lets parents verify their identity using a credit card for “premium” services, he said. The website or mobile app operator should be able to choose to bypass credit-card verification, which costs more than other sorts of identification checks, Dennis said. “The alternative is for AssertID to raise the pricing of our basic service offering thereby forcing all Operators to incur the costs of the alternate verification methods.” Dennis had no comment about criticism of AssertID’s plan by other COPPA participants (WID Sept 26 p11). CDD and EPIC will meet with FTC officials about the groups’ concerns, CDD Executive Director Jeff Chester told us. “We look forward to the FTC’s investigation, and addressing the objections” from the two groups, he said. “Companies can’t expect that they'll get a free pass to help children be targeted online.”

T-Mobile representatives raised concerns about a proposal by Dish Network to “take a period of up to thirty (30) months to elect whether to use its 2000-2020 MHz AWS-4 band spectrum for uplink or downlink use” and the effect on the proposed H-block auction, in a meeting with FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman and other commission officials, said an ex parte filing. The T-Mobile officials also raised broader questions about the TV incentive auction. “T-Mobile encouraged the Commission to engage in improved outreach to broadcasters, noting the importance of strong broadcaster participation in the incentive auction so that the Commission can achieve the revenue goals set by Congress in the Spectrum Act,” the filing said (http://bit.ly/15wquK5).

The International Trade Commission said it received a complaint about Garmin, Navico and Raymarine GPS navigation and display system, radar systems and related software (DN 2983), filed by Furuno Electric Co., Ltd. and Furuno U.S.A. Inc. on Sept. 23. A Federal Register notice scheduled for Sept. 30 seeks comment on any public interest issues raised by the complaint.

In a 2-1 vote, the FCC approved and released an NPRM Thursday (http://fcc.us/1fs0xoA0) that proposes eliminating the UHF ownership discount and “tentatively” decides that only ownership groups that already exist or had pending applications in front of the commission by Thursday would be grandfathered in if the rulemaking process leads to an order.

The private sector must be just as involved as the U.S. government in improving cybersecurity -- particularly when it comes to economic cyberespionage and intellectual property theft, said former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff Thursday. Chertoff is now of counsel at Covington & Burling and chairman of the Chertoff Group, which consults with companies on cybersecurity issues. Industry actors can no longer consider increasing their cybersecurity protections a “luxury” -- it’s now a necessary protection of economic growth and profitability, he said at a Covington & Burling-George Washington University Cybersecurity Initiative event. Cybertheft has become the “preferred pathway” for entities to steal intellectual property -- and it’s the most visible cyberthreat the U.S. faces, Chertoff said. Recent studies have confirmed the Obama administration’s position that the pace of economic cyberespionage and intellectual property theft are accelerating, Chertoff said. He said the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property (IP Commission) and others have estimated the theft of U.S. intellectual property is worth up to $300 billion annually.