Commitments to broadband expansion and over-the-top services in AT&T’s public interest statement on its $67 billion planned buy of DirecTV help make a strong case for approval, some telecom industry observers said in interviews. AT&T filed its public interest statement Wednesday, as expected (CD June 12 p8). It presented the combination of its wireline and broadband service with DirecTV’s stand-alone DBS service as complementary, rather than competing. Free Press remained critical of AT&T’s effort to acquire DirecTV. AT&T also filed its Form 425 with the SEC Thursday.

An FCC Media Bureau freeze on digital replacement translator (DRT) applications and low-power, translator and Class A TV displacement applications won’t have strong consequences for broadcasters, said industry lawyers in interviews Thursday. They said the DRT freeze(CD June 12 p14) may slightly complicate things for low-power TV (LPTV) and Class A operators experiencing interference. DRTs are used by full-power stations to bridge gaps in their coverage left by the transition to DTV. LPTVs use displacement applications to move to a new channel when a full-power station interferes with their signal.

The FCC wants the private sector to lead the communications sector’s “new paradigm” on cybersecurity risk management but “must be ready” with regulatory “alternatives” if that work fails, Chairman Tom Wheeler said Thursday. Wheeler’s remarks at an American Enterprise Institute event, billed as his first major cybersecurity policy speech as chairman, expanded on the FCC’s existing message within the sector this year that it preferred a voluntary industry-led effort to a regulatory approach (CD May 19 p4). The FCC released a prepared version of Wheeler’s speech after the AEI event (http://bit.ly/1oUaNIT).

Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201 should be amended to provide for the circumvention of digital rights management software, as long as that DRM circumvention isn’t used for copyright infringement, said speakers at a Public Knowledge (PK) event on DMCA. Section 1201, designed to mitigate piracy, limits consumers’ abilities to repair their technology and the efforts of the disabled to access software in a way that meets their needs, said panelists Thursday. If Section 1201 isn’t reformed, DRM circumvention will get “worse” with the expected proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), said Corynne McSherry, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) intellectual property director.

The FCC Media Bureau opened docket 14-90 on AT&T’s proposed buy of DirecTV. As part of the transaction, AT&T plans to divest its interest in America Movil, a Mexican telecom company, the bureau said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1n6tWEc). When the applications are filed, “we will issue a separate public notice announcing that fact and setting forth a pleading schedule,” it said. The bureau also released the joint protective order in the docket. The procedures adopted in the joint protective order give appropriate access to the public “while protecting competitively sensitive information from improper disclosure,” it said (http://bit.ly/1n6xtSU).

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is teeing up a vote on the future of the E-rate program at the commission’s July 11 meeting, as expected (CD May 27 p3). Wheeler’s office is “socializing” parts of the E-rate proposal with the other commissioner offices, FCC officials told us Wednesday. It’s still unclear whether Wheeler’s proposal will call for a general expansion of E-rate or just shifting funds within the program, with one main proposal being to pay for more Wi-Fi at schools and libraries.

More than six weeks after passage, the text of the Connect America Fund order was released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1pl9HHQ). Many of the changes to the CAF order (CD June 9 p7) were primarily focused on responding to Commissioner Ajit Pai’s dissent, FCC officials told us. An FCC spokesman declined to comment on the internal editing process or whether substantive changes were made, but said the fact sheet given to reporters at the April meeting “accurately reflects the final draft.”

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 FTC is a “vigilant” enforcer of the U.S.-EU data privacy safe harbor agreement, “however, we cannot do it alone,” said Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen at the Cloud Computing Conference Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/1lnW7QP). Under the safe harbor -- a data privacy compliance program allowing companies to transfer consumer data across jurisdictions -- EU member states can refer companies for noncompliance to the FTC. But during the agreement’s 14 years, “we have received only a few safe harbor referrals from member states,” Ohlhausen said.

If broadcasters challenge the TV incentive auction order in court, the likely focus of petitions for review will be the congressional directive to use “all reasonable efforts” to preserve stations’ coverage areas, said industry officials in interviews this week. NAB President Gordon Smith said the order (http://bit.ly/1oX6QVm) ignored that directive. Broadcast attorneys described the order that was approved at last month’s FCC meeting as putting policies that would have preserved station coverage secondary. Some in the industry already have slammed the order, even before its release June 2, as not giving stations enough time to get construction permits post-repacking (CD May 23 p2).