The public notice on the C-band auction, set for a commissioner vote next week (see 2007160072), is expected to be approved as circulated by Chairman Ajit Pai, industry and FCC officials said. Commissioner offices are reviewing the notice. Officials said Tuesday no one has sought changes.
Legislators so far are reacting along party lines to NTIA’s petition (see 2007270070) that the FCC help crack down on social media. Even GOP lawmakers who were somewhat supportive cautioned regulators not to run afoul of the First Amendment.
Face recognition algorithm accuracy declines substantially with masked faces, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reported Monday. For the most accurate algorithms tested, authentication failure rates increased from 0.3% for unmasked individuals to 5% when scanning digitally masked faces, NIST said.
With the FCC 27-month-and-counting freeze on new C-band fixed satellite service earth station registrations (see 1804200003), operators with stations not on the list -- particularly operators who never had a chance to register earth stations they bought after the freeze -- are concerned they'll have to shoulder the expense of the relocation. The commission hasn't said how it will handle the dozens of filings it received this month after it solicited corrections (see 2007070037). That public notice said the International Bureau won't take applications seeking to qualify for incumbent status but instead is looking for "minor corrections" such as site address or GPS coordinate fixes. The FCC didn't comment Monday.
Verizon took a 14 cents a share COVID-19 hit, said Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis on a Friday investor call. The carrier said the pandemic sent revenue declining 5.1% to $30.4 billion mainly due to lower equipment sales amid store closures and the pandemic's impact on “customer behavior.”
Radio giants such as iHeart and Cumulus are united with low-power FM and public interest entities such as REC Networks and Prometheus Radio Project in opposition to a proposal to allow originating programming on FM translators (see 2006260029), in comments posted Friday in RM-11858. This responds to a petition from the new Broadcasters for Limited Program Origination. BLPO includes Miller Communications, Cromwell Group and Finger Lakes Radio Group.
There's no grace period for companies to continue transferring data from Europe to the U.S. without assessing its legal basis, the European Data Protection Board said in FAQs published Friday. Some stakeholders were hoping for a grace period after the European Court of Justice invalidated Privacy Shield (see 2007160002).
The FTC received at least two complaints through July 13 in response to President Donald Trump’s May 28 social media executive order (see 2007100052). The filings, which we obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, allege “deception/misrepresentation” by Facebook and Twitter.
A federal judge sought more case law on how much deference to give an FCC statement of interest (SOI) interpreting its RF safety policy as preempting an RF disclosure law in Berkeley, California. At virtual argument Thursday evening Eastern time at U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Judge Edward Chen gave CTIA and Berkeley seven days to provide legal citations on that question and the appropriate standard for overcoming courts’ usual presumption against preemption of local police power. Berkeley outside counsel Larry Lessig told us the Supreme Court supports the city's position that the SOI shouldn't get deference. Other experts differed.
The FCC will allow workers who are teleworking now to continue doing so until at least June 2021, and delayed its move to new headquarters until September 2020 over concerns about staff being infected with COVID-19 during the packing process. That's according to interviews with staff, the employee union, and a memo emailed to workers Friday by Chairman Ajit Pai’s Chief of Staff Matthew Berry. (Our earlier news bulletin on this is in front of this publication's pay wall here and the other one is at 2007240038).