Sen. John Kerry worries about a one-sided negotiation over spectrum in the House-Senate conference working on the payroll tax cut extension, the Senate Communications Subcommittee chairman said Tuesday. The extension bill, due by month-end, is expected to include spectrum auction authorization to pay for the bill. While the House and Senate Commerce committees have developed individual spectrum bills, the conference has three members from the House Commerce Committee and zero from Senate Commerce. In a speech Tuesday at a New America Foundation event, Massachusetts Democrat Kerry said he’s particularly concerned with a provision in the House bill prohibiting the FCC from setting spectrum aside for unlicensed use.
Senate Privacy Subcommittee members expressed their concern with the House’s attempt to modernize the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), during a subcommittee hearing Tuesday. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., along with Privacy Subcommittee Chairman Al Franken, D-Minn., and Ranking Member Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said the 24-year-old law should be updated, but each said they were concerned about the unintended consequences of the House amendment, HR-2471.
The FCC approved an order Tuesday rewriting the rules for the Universal Service Fund Lifeline program. Commissioners Robert McDowell and Mignon Clyburn found aspects of the order lacking, but both voted to approve the order as a whole. McDowell dissented in part and concurred in part. Clyburn issued a concurrence on one part of the order.
A demand to interview high ranking officials including FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack has soured cooperation between the government and Open Range stakeholders within Open Range’s bankruptcy proceeding, filings show (http://xrl.us/bmqcqt). The Open Range’s Unsecured Creditors Committee has sought to compel the Justice Department to make FCC and USDA officials available, something the DOJ said Friday it won’t do and isn’t required to do. Rural Utilities Service Administrator Jonathan Adelstein, RUS Broadband Division Chief Kenneth Kuchno and other RUS officials have already been interviewed and thousand of government documents have been provided, said the DOJ.
A Commerce Department official offered no certainty Tuesday about how quickly a long-promised department white paper on the administration’s privacy policy will come out. “I would hope in the coming weeks,” said Alexander Hoehn-Saric, the deputy general counsel for strategic initiatives. But he said that “it always seems to take longer than you would want.” Speaking at a webcast Practising Law Institute seminar in New York, Hoehn-Saric didn’t explain the uncertainty, and a department spokeswoman didn’t get back to us right away. A draft report was released late in 2010, the final version was promised at least as long ago as summer 2011, and members of Congress have pressed for prompt action.
Making all TV stations report quarterly on the types of local programming aired is an impractical change to the issues/program lists now required and raises First Amendment concerns, many broadcasters told the FCC. Some backed a more limited reporting requirement to replace the now-junked Form 355, while nonprofit groups sought more expansive documentation. Nonprofits representing the disabled said in comments posted Monday in docket 11-189 (http://xrl.us/bmp9v5) on a commission notice of inquiry about a successor to Form 355 that stations ought to report the extent to which their shows have captions.
Operators in Florida are pushing a bill to update the state’s communications tax law. The bill (HB-809) would prevent governments from taxing new telecom services using what the industry claimed were outdated tax laws, industry officials said. However, the bill might result in millions of dollars in lost annual tax revenue, analysts from the state’s Department of Revenue claimed.
Wi-Fi, including that available from cable operators, isn’t competitive yet with wireless carriers’ offerings, FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan said Monday. Unlicensed broadband could yet pose a competitive threat, and shows there are ways to offload traffic onto other networks, he said at a Practising Law Institute seminar in New York. But the current state of the technology’s deployment in the U.S. means the frequencies it uses are not suitable to be included in the spectrum screen the FCC uses to review deals, Kaplan said.
A serious cyberattack on the U.S. is “imminent,” said Bob Lentz, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber, identity and information assurance (CIIA). Now the president of Cyber Security Strategies, he said Monday that industrial supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are particularly vulnerable to attack. “We have reached the point where we have a clear and present and serious situation developing,” he told an event in Washington hosted by McAfee.
Wireless companies would have to disclose monitoring software installed on mobile devices under draft legislation released Monday by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. The Mobile Device Privacy Act reacts to software from Carrier IQ used by carriers to collect certain user data from cellphones, including dialed phone numbers and visited URLs. While carriers say the data collection is for customer support, the controversy has resulted in more than 50 class-action lawsuits in courts across the country. Privacy advocates celebrated the Markey bill while the wireless industry was silent.