Apple’s fingerprint technology “raises substantial privacy questions,” said Senate Privacy Subcommittee Chairman Al Franken, D-Minn., in a letter to Apple Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/18Gz92n). Apple introduced a fingerprint reader on the iPhone 5S it released Friday. While passwords can change, fingerprints are permanent, he wrote. “If you don’t tell anyone your password, no one will know what it is. If someone hacks your password, you can change it -- as many times as you want. You can’t change your fingerprints. You have only ten of them. And you leave them on everything you touch; they are definitely not a secret,” he wrote. “If hackers get a hold of your thumbprint, they could use it to identify and impersonate you for the rest of your life.” Franken introduced a location privacy bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last year.

Startups are teaming up with so-called patent trolls because the patent system is so broken, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a blog post Thursday (http://bit.ly/18Gub5G). It pointed to partnerships between the intelligent thermostat company Nest and the patent assertion entity (PAE) Intellectual Ventures and between the eyeglass company Ditto and the PAE IPNav, saying “this reveals the fundamentally broken nature of the patent system -- a system ostensibly around to promote innovation.” The patent system is now more about litigation than innovation, it said, which has forced small startups “into tight corners.” In a separate blog post Thursday, Public Knowledge called Intellectual Ventures “two-faced” (http://bit.ly/18GuL3n). The company says “they are champions of invention and they're quick to point out their health and medical research,” PK wrote. But “everyone else” sees the other side of the story, it wrote. “The side that preys on businesses without penalty, that buys up patents to sue innovators building companies, and that ultimately keeps innovation at a standstill while raking in massive profits.” In response, Intellectual Ventures Chief Policy Counsel Russ Merbeth told us the public interest groups were lumping Intellectual Ventures with other companies with different business models. “They malign us and use us as an attention grabber, but what they talk about really isn’t IV, although they like to keep attributing things to us. It doesn’t really say much that is about us,” he said.

Sprint and AT&T representatives met with the Connect Appalachia Broadband Initiative Task Force to discuss their upgrades and expansion of 4G in the Appalachian region, said Connect Ohio in a news release Friday (http://bit.ly/16LMunF). Sprint’s investment in SoftBank will enable it to upgrade every tower in its network to 4G in 2014, said Connect Ohio. AT&T has invested more than $12 million in the Appalachian region in the first half of 2013, and it will continue this process through 2015, said Connect Ohio. Three towers have recently been added, with JBNets building out into Gallia County, Ohio, to make last-mile progress, said Connect Ohio. “The release of Connect Ohio’s availability maps next month will allow us to pinpoint the specific areas that have increased in broadband coverage,” said Bart Winegar, Connect Ohio technical outreach coordinator.

Morality in Media counted Wednesday’s Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing (CD Sept 19 p1) as a victory. When FCC nominee Mike O'Rielly was questioned about TV indecency law, he said he would commit to the FCC’s obligation to enforce its statutes and rules fully. Morality in Media President Patrick Trueman called the answer “refreshing.” Morality in Media and several other groups had urged the Senate Commerce Committee to ask O'Rielly about these issues. These “70 groups are particularly concerned about the direction of the FCC after President [Barack] Obama’s nominee to chair the commission, Tom Wheeler, refused to commit to decency enforcement during his hearing before the Commerce Committee recently,” Morality in Media said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1fi8slV).

Don’t undermine FirstNet, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., told Motorola CEO Greg Brown in a letter Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/1aa7bJK). His office released the letter Friday and said Rockefeller is “deeply concerned” over media reports of Motorola’s alleged campaign against the public safety broadband network, commissioned by Congress. “I urge you to immediately cease your campaign and to work constructively with the FirstNet board,” Rockefeller told Brown in the letter. In response, a Motorola spokesman said it has heard of the need for a nationwide public safety network from its customers for years and shares those views: “Moreover, we were pleased to join them and dozens of public-safety organizations to support FirstNet.” He called the company “a strong supporter of the legislation that created FirstNet, and the company believes the law that established FirstNet should be implemented to give all public safety end-users fair and reasonable access to this critical resource.” But FirstNet threatens Motorola’s “dominance” as a public safety device and equipment manufacturer, Rockefeller said, pointing to the contrast between Motorola’s public support for FirstNet and reports that it is “financing a public relations and lobbying campaign to erode support for FirstNet’s mission and work.” Rockefeller will not “abide a return to the model of costly, and often proprietary, equipment that our nation’s first responders face in narrowband communications,” he wrote. “This model has led to disparate systems even among public safety agencies in the same jurisdiction.” But the Motorola spokesman said, “Again, our objective is to help make FirstNet a success and enable local first responders to do their jobs more safely and effectively.”

The FCC scheduled a second webinar Oct. 3 aimed at answering questions about applying for a new low-power FM license. It will be 1-2:30 p.m., the commission said in a news release (http://bit.ly/14qpQjU). The session mainly will be a Q-and-A period “where potential applicants can ask Media Bureau staff their specific questions on areas such as the LPFM Channel Finder, creating a CDBS [Consolidated Database System] account” and other issues, it said. It will be streamed live at http://www.fcc.gov/live.

The Rural Utilities Service announced almost $40 million in loans to improve telecommunications capability in four states, said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a news release Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/16e7Psl). Three projects in four states received loans to create fiber-to-the-premises networks: Keystone-Farmers Cooperative Telephone Company in Iowa received $7.6 million, the Colton Telephone Company in Oregon received $7.3 million, and the Interstate Telecommunications Company in South Dakota and Minnesota received $24.9 million.

Vonage is still in the pre-trial phase detailed in the VoIP provider’s proposal for direct access to numbers, it told the FCC in a letter Thursday (http://bit.ly/1aOFjMm). It’s applying for initial codes in trial markets, establishing local routing numbers (LRNs) and testing routing and porting, it said. Its LRNs in Atlanta and Boston markets became effective across the industry on Sept. 1 -- a “necessary condition” to begin operational testing, Vonage said. Vonage expects to start provisioning new customers and transitioning existing numbers to its operating company numbers around Oct. 1, it said.

The IEEE approved the 802.3bk amendment to its 802.3 ethernet standard to enable higher-density and longer-reach applications of Ethernet Passive Optical Networks. Enabling extended EPON applications will optimize ownership costs for network operators, IEEE said Thursday. “As operators around the world seek to build higher-density and more cost-effective optical access networks that connect more customers, service providers are grappling with a number of scalability challenges associated with delivery of mobile backhaul and guaranteeing connectivity to remote customers,” said Marek Hajduczenia, chair of IEEE’s 802.3bk Extended EPON Task Force, in a news release. “The development of IEEE 802.3bk was an open, market-driven effort to amend the Ethernet standard to allow a given EPON deployment to support more users over longer distances than previously possible.” The amendment to the 802.3 standard expands the EPON service area while reducing the cost per subscriber, IEEE said. The extended EPON will also reduce the footprint and power consumption of central equipment per customer and the cost of service upgrades and fiber deployments, the group said (http://bit.ly/1fdGS9r).

The “whole community” approach is the best way to prepare for disasters, said Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, testifying Thursday on behalf of the National Governors Association and the Governors Homeland Security Advisors Council before the House Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications (http://bit.ly/14nzsfk). He outlined “intergovernmental and public-private collaboration, effective coordination and enhanced communication” as major components of this strategy. The implementation of FirstNet is one demonstration of this approach, he said. Grants need to be better aligned with preparing for disasters, however, and cybersecurity remains a huge challenge for governors, promising NGA cyber recommendations to come next week, Ghilarducci said. “This country still needs to develop a process that defines and effectively measures our preparedness capabilities,” subcommittee Chairwoman Susan Brooks, R-Ind., said in her opening statement (http://1.usa.gov/1btUptn). She also pointed to the importance of interoperable communication, as did the International Association of Fire Chiefs in its testimony from Arlington County Fire Department Chief James Schwartz (http://1.usa.gov/157Lwne).