The Department of Homeland Security views improved cybersecurity workforce training as one of its top cyber priorities, said Phyllis Schneck, DHS deputy undersecretary-cybersecurity, during a Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing Wednesday. Subcommittee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu, D-La., and several industry witnesses also highlighted the need for more rigorous cybersecurity workforce training, but said they believe DHS needs to delineate specific training requirements. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson has emphasized cybersecurity education since he took over DHS in late December, and brought Schneck on his first cyber recruiting trips to Georgia Tech and Morehouse College, she said. DHS is working to improve cyber training by identifying necessary skills, current cybersecurity curricula and introducing scholarships involving federal cybersecurity service, Schneck said.

AT&T has done everything it can to make the TV incentive auction a failure, a year before it’s likely to start, T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham said Wednesday during a media briefing on the FCC’s proposed spectrum aggregation and incentive auction rules. AT&T in particular was in the crosshairs of competitive carriers, but broadcasters also faced sharp criticism during the briefing. The event was hosted by the New America Foundation.

The House Judiciary Committee cleared its revamped version of the USA Freedom Act (HR-3361) Wednesday, 32-0. The manager’s amendment that several key committee lawmakers unveiled (http://1.usa.gov/1mDc447) is a bipartisan “culmination of months of oversight and collaboration between members from both sides of the aisle,” Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said in his opening statement. The legislation, introduced last fall, faced a flurry of amendments during the markup session, some that succeeded and many that failed. The House Intelligence Committee plans a markup of its own competing surveillance revamp bill Thursday in closed session.

The House Commerce Committee’s latest draft of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act is poised to clear the committee Thursday during a markup session, said industry officials and Capitol Hill aides in interviews. New language in HR-4572 will allow more flexibility for TV broadcasters in the unwinding of joint sales agreements and prohibit broadcasters from joint retransmission agreements with multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) if the broadcasters are owned separately. An earlier version would have allowed MVPDs to elect joint retrans negotiation.

Pandora’s new advertising program, Promoted Stations, is an effort to “connect advertisers in a more native environment,” said Dominic Paschel, Pandora vice president-corporate finance, on a webcast of the Wedbush Transformational Technologies Management Access Conference Wednesday. Kleenex, Skechers, StubHub, Taco Bell and Toyota are among the first 10 national advertisers to join the program, currently in a beta launch, designed to help drive advertisers to custom content, the company said in a news release.

Telcordia can’t be the new local number portability administrator, because rules bar equipment manufacturers and their affiliates from filling the position, Neustar told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Friday. That’s meritless, responded Telcordia’s lawyer. It’s Neustar’s latest argument in a monthslong quest to slow down the LNPA vendor selection process, as it lobbies the agency for a new round of bids, or at least a round of comments on the proposed vendor before the FCC approves the choice. The North American Numbering Council (NANC) submitted its sealed recommendation to the Wireline Bureau late last month (CD April 28 p16).

Health apps are collecting and sharing sensitive information with a variety of third parties, said the FTC’s initial contribution to the limited study of health app data sharing practices. The information shared ranged from a smartphone’s screen size and model type to a phone’s unique device identifier (UDID) to individuals’ names and email addresses to keywords such as “ovulation,” “pregnancy” and “baby,” said Jared Ho, an attorney in the FTC Mobile Technology Unit. Ho presented the findings Wednesday during the commission’s seminar on consumer-generated and controlled health data.

Globalstar’s proposal for a low-power terrestrial service was met with calls from some carriers and associations for demonstration and testing to ensure that 2.4 GHz band unlicensed users are protected from harmful interference. The proposal had support from Dish Network and NTCH, in comments that were due this week in docket 13-213.

"Flexibility” in service options will be a keystone of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 DTV broadcast system, including the opportunity for terrestrial broadcasters to beam “hybrid” content services to fixed and mobile receivers over the air as well as via broadband, Rich Chernock, chief science officer at Triveni Digital, told the “ATSC 3.0 Boot Camp” conference Wednesday.

With many questions remaining on such issues as when most public safety answering points (PSAPs) will be able to accept text messages to 911, it’s too early for the FCC to even consider imposing text-to-911 rules, Verizon said in reply comments filed at the FCC. The commission in January agreed to seek further comment on items such as whether to impose a text-to-911 mandate on interconnected over-the-top (OTT) text providers like Apple’s iMessage or Samsung’s ChatOn (CD Jan 31 p3).