The FTC plans to continue to “vigorously enforce” the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield as part of the agency's role as the “chief privacy enforcer” in the U.S., said acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen during a Financial Times event Wednesday. FTC and International Trade Administration officials said before President Donald Trump's inauguration they were hopeful the commission's commitment to the Privacy Shield would continue after then-President Barack Obama left office (see 1611090016, 1611100039 and 1611210032). “We have committed to investigate Privacy Shield companies on our own initiative,” Ohlhausen said. “We will prioritize referrals from European data protection authorities. And we will monitor our orders to ensure compliance with the framework. When companies don’t comply with orders, we will bring enforcement actions.” The FTC is also committed to working with EU institutions on improving the Shield's effectiveness, including participating in the European Commission's annual review of the framework and meeting with the Article 29 Working Party, Ohlhausen said. The chair said she has been “pleased to see that [the Trump administration] has affirmed its commitment” to the Privacy Shield given the framework's importance to U.S.-based business interests. EU agencies and U.S. businesses sought reassurances from the FTC after Trump's election and inauguration, including whether Trump's executive orders on immigration from some majority-Muslim countries (see 1701290001, 1702060016 and 1702100042) would affect Privacy Shield enforcement. “We don't believe it will,” Ohlhausen said. Enforcement of the Privacy Shield and other international privacy frameworks “is an integral part” of the FTC's cybersecurity and privacy program, Ohlhausen said. She cited the agency's privacy memorandums of understanding with Ireland, the Netherlands and U.K. and the agency's participation in the Global Privacy Enforcement Network. An “ongoing dialogue” with EU partners is necessary because of the ongoing misconception “that this is the Wild West” for privacy, Ohlhausen said. The FTC has “an extremely robust record” on privacy, she said.

The FCC proposed a Q2 industry USF contribution factor of 17.4 percent of interstate and international telecom service revenue from end users, said a public notice from the Office of Managing Director in docket 96-45 in Tuesday's Daily Digest. Telecom consultant Billy Jack Gregg projected March 2 the contribution factor would rise from Q1's 16.7 percent due to a drop in industry revenue (see 1703020079).

Lillian Salerno, a former Department of Agriculture deputy undersecretary, told us she's interested in being an FTC commissioner if nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but added Tuesday: "I have no idea if I'm being considered." Reuters reported Monday that Salerno is under consideration to fill the empty Democratic seat. Currently, the five-member commission has two members, acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, and Commissioner Terrell McSweeny, a Democrat. Two of the empty seats will likely be filled by Republicans while the other seat should be filled by a Democrat or independent. "I'm a 100 percent confident that if I was given the opportunity ... I would certainly try to protect consumers and particularly small business and ordinary citizens" from abuses involving people's private communications and lack of competition, said Salerno. The Texas resident, who worked in Agriculture's rural development program for five years, said she informed Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both Republicans, about her interest in being on the FTC but hasn't forwarded her name to the White House, nor has the Trump administration contacted her. She also said she hasn't been contacted by the Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. The Intercept reported Friday that Schumer wants his former chief of staff, David Hantman, to fill the FTC seat. Before setting up his own public policy firm, Hantman was Airbnb's head of global public policy for three years, after a nearly six-year stint as Yahoo vice president-global public policy. Neither Schumer's office nor the White House commented. Republican Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes has been floated as a possible nominee to head the commission.

State public utility commissions made preparations for Tuesday’s East Coast winter storm. The New York Department of Public Service was in contact with utility senior executives and monitoring the situation, said a Monday news release: Verizon, other telecom providers and energy utilities “are prepared to bring on additional manpower to minimize service disruptions, if they occur.” Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) declared a state of emergency across New York ahead of the storm, triggering conditions in the Public Service Commission's Altice/Cablevision order last year (see 1606150056). In a state of emergency, Altice, which bought Cablevision, must provide free Wi-Fi access to subscribers and nonsubscribers, must make the News12.com site available to noncustomers and share outage information with utilities at no cost, a commission spokesman emailed. Altice is in compliance with the merger conditions on states of emergency, a company spokeswoman said. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission hasn’t heard of any telecom issues yet, a PUC spokesman said Tuesday. “We've been getting regular updates from utilities -- first about their storm prep, and now regarding outages and responses.” The PUC was closed Tuesday but its emergency management team was working in coordination with the governor’s office and Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, he said. The Maryland Public Service Commission also was closed but had engineering staff doing emergency response coordination and monitoring with the Maryland Emergency Management Agency’s state emergency operations center, a PSC spokeswoman said. No telecom outages had occurred, she said. Verizon provided a storm preparation briefing Monday to the District of Columbia Public Service Commission, which opened Tuesday after a two-hour delay, an agency spokeswoman said. There were no reports of telco outages in New Jersey, but some utility wires went down that might affect cable service, said a New Jersey Board of Public Utilities spokeswoman. New Jersey declared a state of emergency, so the board closed for the day, she said. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, CenturyLink, Frontier and Windstream representatives reported no significant network outages due to the storm as of our deadline. T-Mobile said its "crews are addressing any issues that come up as quickly and as safely as possible."

Free State Foundation postponed its communications policy conference set for Tuesday due to expected inclement weather. No new date was announced.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to overhaul aspects of the executive branch. It’s “a major step toward making the federal government efficient, effective and accountable to the people,” Trump said during the signing ceremony. “Today, we’re beginning the process of a long overdue reorganization of our federal departments and agencies.” Cabinet secretaries should be empowered to make their agencies as effective and “lean” as possible, Trump said. The order demands “a thorough examination of every executive department and agency to see where money is being wasted, how service can be improved and whether programs are truly serving American citizens,” Trump said. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney will oversee this process, Trump said. Expect “a detailed plan” to make the government work better based on this process, he said. Trump will work with Congress to implement the resulting recommendations, he said. Text of the order wasn't immediately released.

AT&T suffered more wireless network problems Saturday after a major 911 outage earlier in the week spurred an FCC investigation (see 1703090017). “Service has been restored for customers affected by a hardware issue which caused some calls not to connect during a brief period Saturday morning,” an AT&T spokeswoman said Monday. The company didn’t say which regions were affected, but just before 1 p.m. in the District, Alert DC reported “a nationwide outage that is impacting customers intermittently.” At about 2:30 p.m., Alert DC said the issue was resolved. “There was a failure of some systems relative to the wireless carrier AT&T,” a D.C. Office of Unified Communications spokesman emailed Monday. “I’m told the issue was sporadic and did not result in any 911 failure. Our center did test AT&T 911, and it seemed to work here.”

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information request with the FCC seeking copies of any records about the March 6 meeting between Chairman Ajit Pai and President Donald Trump (see 1703060055), including memos, briefing papers, emails and talking points, EPIC said Thursday. It requested expedited processing of the FOIA request, saying there's urgency due to Trump describing the media as "enemies of the people" and some media outlets have business before the FCC. EPIC pointed to Congress' considering using the Congressional Review Act to overturn the agency's privacy rules and the agency's stay of parts of the privacy order (see 1703010069). The FCC didn't comment Monday.

Oracle said the FCC should repudiate its prior policy of "favoring" one tech subsector over others and "establish a more level playing field," starting with actions on broadband privacy, broadband classification and cable set-top boxes. Under previous Chairman Tom Wheeler, the commission "routinely picked winners and losers in the complex and converging network ecosystem," said Senior Vice President Kenneth Glueck, Office of CEO, in a letter Monday in docket 14-28. "The prior Commission orchestrated a shift of network control from those that invest in the network to those that do not, and a shift in welfare from those that were regulated to those that were not. We urge you to return the FCC to technology- and competitor-neutral policymaking." The commission should reconsider broadband privacy rules "to ensure a consistent and fair approach," Oracle said, calling a recent FCC stay of a new ISP-specific data security rule a "laudable first step" (see 1703010069). The tech firm urged the agency to reclassify broadband internet access from a Communications Act Title II telecom service to a Title I information service "to eliminate burdens on, and competitive imbalances for, ISPs while still preserving the free and open Internet." The set-top box proceeding should be closed "to put to bed the FCC’s ill-advised interventionist instinct and instead rely on the intense innovation and competition in the marketplace," the software maker said. The FCC should work closely with the FTC, the company said.

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn urged USF reform, in a speech Monday to the WTA in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Last year, the FCC adopted reforms aimed at stabilizing the high-cost program, Clyburn said, according to written remarks. “Like with any significant reform, there are choppy waters ahead that need careful navigation.” Clyburn stressed the importance of partnerships, which “have the capability to help your bottom line, and provide a benefit for your communities.” The FCC needs to tweak some of its rules for rate-of-return carriers, she said. “I hear you when you talk about affordability, and the need to have flexibility to price your services as you see fit in the market,” she said. “I am concerned, about the affordability of rates in both rural and urban areas. It is a shame that deregulation has often meant higher rates in both urban and rural areas. But I believe rural areas should not be penalized, simply because of poor legislative or regulatory judgment. That is why I would support hitting the ‘pause’ button on rate floor increases, while we figure out a path forward that does not unduly impact rural consumers or the universal service fund.” Clyburn noted, as a Democrat, she's now in the minority at the FCC. She said she got used to that when she was a South Carolina regulator. “The difference in my role and status are readily apparent,” she said. “I was in the minority as a commissioner here in South Carolina for many years. ... I always start at the 50-yard line when it comes to formulating policy with anyone who may see the world differently than I do. … I will never entertain compromising my principles.” Among those principles, “removing consumer protections and harming competition are always going to be non-starters for me,” she said. “I will continue to sit at the table, even when we are discussing issues that have practical impacts that may make me uncomfortable.”