Tech innovations on display at CES in Las Vegas last week highlight issues that need addressing, including the future of net neutrality and how to increase diversity among candidates for jobs in tech and related sectors, said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., in a Friday opinion piece in the Las Vegas Sun. Commissioners' December vote to rescind 2015 net neutrality rules is “troubling” because “while we don’t know what the next game-changing inventions will be, you can bet they involve the internet,” they said. “It’s important to ensure that connecting to our online world remains open and fair to everyone who creates and consumes online. The fight for this openness is not over” given upcoming legal challenges and a planned Congressional Review Act resolution to undo the repeal order, the Democrats said. Increasing diversity in the science, tech, engineering and math workforce is important because women hold “only 24 percent of the jobs in STEM fields,” Cortez Masto and Rosenworcel wrote: “This math needs to change,” in part via legislation and using “clubs, classes and apprenticeships to build a more diverse STEM pipeline.” The Democrats also noted an ongoing commitment to closing the “digital divide,” with “too many of our students ... falling” onto the wrong side at “a moment when digital skills are essential for future success.”

The National Retail Federation hailed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Friday to take up a South Dakota case on whether online sellers can be required to collect sales tax the same as local stores. “Antiquated sales tax collection rules have resulted in an uneven playing field that’s making it harder for Main Street retailers to compete in today’s digital economy,” said NRF President Matthew Shay. “This is a basic question about fairness, which all of our members deserve whether they’re selling in stores or online.” NRF also backs federal legislation to allow states to require out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax and to resolve details on how collection would take place rather than leaving it to each of the states to interpret how to do so, said Shay. At issue in the case, South Dakota v. Wayfair (docket 17-494), is whether the Supreme Court should repeal its 1992 decision that sales tax laws were too complicated for retailers to know how much tax to collect unless they were physically present in the customer’s state. NRF argued in a Nov. 1 amicus brief that modern computer software renders those concerns obsolete. Online merchants' groups, including the American Catalog Mailers Association, counter that the state sales tax landscape remains overly burdensome and that the states have offered no meaningful alternative to the physical-presence requirement. South Dakota has no state income tax and relies on retail taxes for much of its revenue, it argued in an Oct. 2 writ of certiorari petition. The state’s “low-density, rural population has a particularly strong incentive to take advantage of tax-free sales from internet retailers, who now quickly deliver everything from major appliances to everyday necessities throughout the country,” it said. The National Conference of State Legislatures also hailed the decision to hear the case, saying it has “long supported marketplace fairness as states are losing tens of billions of dollars per year in uncollected sales taxes.”

Comments are due Jan. 24, replies Feb. 23 on an FCC Lifeline NPRM and notice of inquiry on proposed and possible changes to the low-income subsidy program, said a notice to be published in the Federal Register Tuesday. The NPRM, NOI and an order were adopted 3-2 by commissioners Nov. 16 and released Dec. 1 (see 1711160021 and 1712010042). Under a separate rule to be published in the FR Tuesday, the Lifeline order will take effect Feb. 15, with some exceptions: Section 54.411 changes -- scrapping "port freezes" that locked Lifeline broadband and voice customers into provider services -- will take effect March 19; information-collection requirements won't take effect until after approved by the Office of Management and Budget. (See here for FR information on deadlines for January items.) An FCC robocalling order adopted Nov. 16 (see 1711160054) will take effect Feb. 12, said a rule published by the FR Friday.

The court case slowing planning for the FCC’s move to a new headquarters was dismissed from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit at the request of all parties, said a court order (in Pacer). The government, developer Trammell Crow and FCC landlord Parcel 49C sought dismissal (see 1801080050) after it became clear that Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., another federal entity, will replace the FCC in the Portals building. Parcel 49C, Trammell Crow and the commission didn’t comment on the status of the planned move.

Ajit Pai's critics should demand an end to the "ugly personal attacks" on the FCC chairman and his family over the net neutrality reversal, blogged Free State Foundation President Randolph May Thursday. "It's no secret that I support the Commission's Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIF Order)," he wrote. "I understand there are arguments on both sides. ... But it should go without saying that it's one thing to advocate your views passionately and another altogether to engage in personal attacks like those against Chairman Pai that, even now, continue unabated. Those government officials, whether currently at the FCC or in Congress, who are leading efforts, through whatever avenues, to overturn the FCC’s RIF Order bear a special responsibility to speak out forcefully and unequivocally against the personal attacks."

The FCC modified its schedule of Freedom of Information Act processing fees, which are based on the government service (GS) grade level of the employees (at "Step 5") who handle the requests. The new hourly fees run from $15.70 for GS-1s up to $87.84 for GS-15s, said a public notice Thursday. The copy charge is 10 cents per page and computer disk charge is $5.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich thanked the Google Project Zero team in an open letter Thursday for “creating the opportunity for the industry to address these new issues in a coordinated fashion,” referring to chip-based security vulnerabilities revealed last week that were initially largely attributed to Intel (see 1801030053). Jann Horn, of the Google Project Zero team, blogged last week that the team had reported the issue to Intel, AMD and ARM in June, saying: “We have discovered that CPU data cache timing can be abused to efficiently leak information out of mis-speculated execution, leading to (at worst) arbitrary virtual memory read vulnerabilities across local security boundaries in various contexts.” Variants of the issue are “known to affect many modern processors, including certain processors by Intel, AMD and ARM. For a few Intel and AMD CPU models, we have exploits that work against real software. We reported this issue to Intel, AMD and ARM on 2017-06-01,” Horn said. Intel said last week the software analysis methods -- which, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to “improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices” -- were not unique to Intel. “Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices -- with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems -- are susceptible to these exploits,” it said, adding it was working with AMD, ARM and other operating system vendors on an industry-wide approach to resolve the issue. In his Thursday letter, Krzanich thanked Google Project Zero “for practicing responsible disclosure, creating the opportunity for the industry to address these new issues in a coordinated fashion.” Krzanich outlined Intel’s pledge for “customer-first urgency,” saying that by Jan. 15 it will have issued updates for “at least 90 percent of Intel CPUs introduced in the past five years, with updates for the remainder of these CPUs available by the end of January.” Updates for older products will be handled by priority set by customers, he said. Krzanich also promised “transparent and timely communications” and “ongoing security assistance.” To accelerate security across the industry, Krzanich committed Intel will “publicly identify significant security vulnerabilities following rules of responsible disclosure and, further, we commit to working with the industry to share hardware innovations that will accelerate industry-level progress in dealing with side-channel attacks.” Intel will add funding for academic and independent research into potential security threats, he said. Google further detailed in an update Thursday how it protected Google Cloud products against "speculative execution vulnerabilities," and ensured Google Cloud customers saw minimal impact to performance.

The FCC solicited nominations for its Intergovernmental Advisory Committee, whose membership was recently doubled from 15 to 30 local, state and tribal government officials (see 1712200063). The FCC seeks to fill 18 seats, including three additional vacancies to replace Florida Public Service Commissioner Ronald Brisé, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and Edwin Lee, mayor of the city and county of San Francisco; Brisé and Reed leave office this month and Lee "unfortunately passed away in December," said a public notice Thursday. Applications are due within 60 days.

An FCC plan to create an Office of Economics and Analytics received endorsements from Tech Policy Institute Senior Fellow Thomas Lenard and American Enterprise Institute Visiting Fellow Roslyn Layton. Wayne Leighton, chief of the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, and his team "produced an excellent report" on creating an OEA that's "everything Chairman [Ajit] Pai could have hoped for," blogged Lenard Thursday. "The report contains a thoughtful and carefully researched analysis of how to better incorporate economics into the agency’s policy making, drawing on lessons from other agencies and adapting them to the needs and culture of the FCC," Lenard wrote. "Among its most important recommendations, the report proposes that the 'OEA should produce a separate, non-public memorandum on economic issues to accompany documents circulated to the Commission.' The commissioners will undoubtedly not always accept the recommendations of the economists, but their analysis, whether or not it supports the Commission’s ultimate position, should be available to the commissioners unfiltered." Pai's OEA draft order on the Jan. 30 tentative agenda is his "most important accomplishment for those who believe that policy should be informed by the best available evidence," wrote Layton, whose Forbes opinion piece was titled: "Making Government Work Again: New Office to Strengthen Role of Data at FCC."

The FCC Enforcement Bureau’s Office of the Field Director created an email address for the public to use when responding to an enforcement action from one of the bureau field offices, the bureau said in a public notice Wednesday. The new address, field@fcc.gov, is intended to streamline the operation of the field offices, the PN said. “New enforcement actions will instruct recipients to send responses to field@fcc.gov rather than to email addresses that are associated with the Bureau’s three Regions,” the PN said.