Would it be possible to get Professor Sweeney?” asked a panelist at the White House’s March 17 workshop on big data at New York University. An audience member had just asked a question about how individuals -- both professional and nefarious -- could access encrypted data. The panel turned to recently appointed FTC Chief Technologist Latanya Sweeney, data anonymity researcher on leave from Harvard University, who was merely an observing audience member. “I don’t want to put her on the spot,” said the panelist, Microsoft Principal Researcher Kate Crawford. “But Latanya Sweeney has written many papers on precisely how people get access to big data."

George Mason University’s Mercatus Center criticized recent federal government efforts to improve cybersecurity protections for critical infrastructure sectors, arguing in a report Thursday that those efforts “trade emergent resilience of the Internet for opaque control of it” (http://bit.ly/1nsRnsc). President Barack Obama’s 2013 cybersecurity executive order, among other things, resulted in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s collaboration with the private sector on the voluntary Cybersecurity Framework, with the “Version 1.0” framework going public in mid-February. The Department of Homeland Security is now using its Critical Infrastructure Cyber Community program to encourage the private sector to use the framework (CD Feb 13 p5).

The transition to an IP world offers benefits but also new risks for communications failures during and after a disaster, FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson said Thursday during an FCC workshop on public safety and the IP transition. An afternoon session focused on disaster communications, with an eye on what the public and first responders should expect.

The FCC Media Bureau reduced a proposed $10,000 fine against Toccoa Falls College in Georgia to $1,000, issuing a consent decree Thursday on station WTXR-FM’s failure to properly maintain public inspection files. The consent decree process follows an FCC policy change that addressed the heavy burden that hefty fines place on student-run stations (CD May 14 p7). The change is perceived as an effort to ease the burden on college stations that have smaller budgets and may lack experienced staff, but it doesn’t fully consider the specific operations of such stations, some attorneys said.

Public safety officials face a challenge: how to ensure poorer, more rural areas of the country don’t fall behind their often richer urban counterparts as the industry transitions to IP technology. That was a major point of discussion at Thursday’s morning session of an FCC workshop focusing on incident response during and after the planned technology transition (See related story). Figuring out how to craft a national framework with minimum standards could pose difficulties, participants said, given a traditional preference among state and local authorities to do things themselves.

Automakers are moving swiftly to merge in-car technology with mobile device operating system software, as Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android gear up to challenge the dominance of Microsoft and BlackBerry’s QNX, industry executives said Wednesday at the New York Auto Show.

Those seeking to keep their joint sales agreements under the FCC’s new ownership attribution rules for JSAs will have to either show that their JSA doesn’t give one company undue control or influence over another, or accept attribution and ask for a waiver of the local ownership rule, according to an FCC official and the text of the commission’s media ownership item (http://fcc.us/1eKtYmt). Though approved at the March 31 meeting, the text of the item -- making attributable for ownership cap purposes JSAs that cover more than 15 percent of a station’s sales -- wasn’t released until Tuesday. Much attention in the intervening two weeks has focused on the specifics of the waiver policy included in the order (CD April 1 p4), with public interest groups concerned it might provide a way to get around the new rules, and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler saying it would allow JSAs that serve the public interest to remain in place.

Neustar’s first quarter revenue increased 6 percent year over year from 2013, for a quarter total of nearly $230 million, the company said Wednesday. A substantial portion of that comes from its income as Local Number Portability Administrator, a position it’s desperately trying to hold onto in the face of a bidding process it has long claimed lacks fairness and transparency (CD April 26 p9). The North American Numbering Council had a closed meeting March 26 on selection of the next LNPA.

AT&T may take a pass on next year’s TV incentive auction if the FCC adopts the spectrum aggregation rules expected to be proposed by Chairman Tom Wheeler, the carrier said in an ex parte filing made Wednesday at the commission. The FCC started briefing industry on the rules Friday (CD April 14 p1). AT&T raised the possibility in an ex parte letter on a meeting Monday between Vice President Joan Marsh and Renee Gregory, wireless adviser to Wheeler.

The departure of Bill D'Agostino as general manager of FirstNet comes amid growing questions about the proposed national network for first responders and whether FirstNet has enough independence from NTIA and the Department of Commerce, public safety officials said Tuesday. On Monday, FirstNet said D'Agostino was leaving after less than a year on the job (CD April 24 p1).