Through fines proposed on Turner Broadcasting and a consent decree with MMK, licensee of a Kentucky TV station, the FCC Enforcement Bureau is sending a message to broadcasters and distributors that it’s cracking down on use of simulated emergency alert system sounds, said broadcast attorneys who follow EAS in interviews Wednesday. The actions follow an enforcement advisory by the FCC that cautioned against false and unauthorized use of the EAS attention signal (CD Nov 7 p15).

The FCC’s eighth-floor wireline aides are eager to hear ideas about potential IP transition trials, they told an FCBA audience at a brown-bag lunch at commission headquarters Wednesday. Intricate, voluntary proposals like one offered by Public Knowledge will be considered, they said, but purely voluntary trials might not be the best way to do things. An order has been circulated that would set procedures for proposing and evaluating IP transition trials, and is likely to be supported by all the commissioners (CD Jan 10 p1).

The House Commerce Committee will increase its focus on data security, cross-border data flows and the Internet Of Things in 2014, said Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., at a Technology Policy Institute event Wednesday. Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen hopes the FTC will look more at data use instead of data collection, she said at the same event.

The safe harbor agreement for transfer of European citizens’ personal data to the U.S. should be scrapped, said U.S. privacy and consumer advocates and EU lawmakers Wednesday. The U.S. Department of Commerce is “flying blind” on safe harbor, said Center for Digital Director Executive Director Jeffrey Chester in an interview. Commerce doesn’t look at the data protection practices of U.S. businesses in the U.S. or EU, so before it responds to European Commission recommendations for cleaning up safe harbor (bit.ly/IorNGe), it should order an in-depth FTC study on what U.S. businesses are doing and collecting, he said. That report will likely find that industry is using the program as a “smokescreen” to cover up European data, he said. Chester also said CDD is trying to encourage European consumer groups to file complaints with the FTC. He and other civil society groups took part in a Commerce Department International Trade Administration meeting, closed to the press, to discuss the recommendations.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s net neutrality decision loomed large as the House Communications Subcommittee held its first hearing on updating the Communications Act 24 hours after the decision’s delivery. The Wednesday hearing focused on former FCC chairmen: Dick Wiley, Reed Hundt, Michael Powell and Michael Copps. It quickly turned into scrutiny of the Tuesday Verizon v. FCC court decision, which vacated the agency’s 2010 rules (CD Jan 15 p1), and what the FCC’s role over broadband should be.

A Charter Communications buy of Time Warner Cable would likely clear regulatory hurdles more easily than a Comcast buy, but TWC’s initial rejection of the Charter offer (CD Jan 15 p12) could spark a competing bid from Comcast or another company, said several cable attorneys in interviews Tuesday. A Comcast deal to buy TWC would bring more political and regulatory scrutiny and stir up issues about vertical integration that wouldn’t be as pronounced if Charter is the buyer, said Garvey Schubert cable attorney Bruce Beckner. “It’s a much tougher sell.”

The old FCC website, which comes down Feb. 3, is much easier to use not just for those who lobby the agency but also for some members of the public, said communications industry officials who are bemoaning the looming death of a transitional website they rely on. The association and industry lawyers, a public interest official and an FCC advisory committee official who responded to our informal survey said they continue to rely on http://transition.fcc.gov/ even though some knew its fate. The new site has some advantages, and internal FCC data shared with communications lawyers during a recent meeting show it’s much more widely used than the old site, but ease of use is less than the old version, said survey respondents in interviews Tuesday. The day before, an announcement was posted on the transitional webpage that said it’s being taken down (CD Jan 14 p12).

Broadcasters and public interest groups butted heads over grandfathering UHF stations and whether the UHF discount should be eliminated, in reply comments filed in docket 13-236. Reply comments were due this week. NAB blasted the Competitive Carrier Association’s calls for examining rules on broadcast ownership and retransmission consent.

Members of Congress wrestled with questions of whether phone companies rather than the federal government should hold onto consumers’ calling metadata. The government currently stockpiles phone metadata for surveillance purposes by its intelligence agencies. On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned the five-member surveillance review group that President Barack Obama put together this fall.

For the second time in four years, the FCC failed to convince the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that it had authority to impose net neutrality rules on broadband ISPs. The anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules in the agency’s December 2010 net neutrality order were indistinguishable from prohibited common carrier restrictions, said the decision (http://1.usa.gov/1m0UQPi). Chairman Tom Wheeler’s FCC has already faced renewed calls to reclassify broadband Internet as a Title II service.