Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano signed a cybersecurity agreement with Dutch Minister of Security and Justice Ivo Opstelten Wednesday. The agreement aims to strengthen U.S. and Dutch cybersecurity collaboration over incident management and response activities, control systems security, and cybersecurity exercises, Napolitano said.
The Google Doodle on Google’s main website Wednesday paid tribute to Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, the German physicist who was the first to broadcast and receive radio waves. Google marked Hertz’s 155th birthday.
The FCC should require broadcast stations to make political files publicly available online, said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and seven other Democratic senators. In a Wednesday letter to Chairman Julius Genachowski, the senators supported the FCC proposed rule to make that change. Currently, stations are only required to make the files available on paper. “Taking the additional step of having these documents available online would create transparency in a time of increasing campaign-finance secrecy,” the senators said. “The information in these files should be available in an online, searchable database, and disclosures should include information about the people and organizations that purchase political advertisements.” The senators urged the FCC to take broadcasters’ views into consideration “and do everything possible to find a cost-effective and efficient method for publishing this information online, especially for small- and medium-sized stations."
Lawyers for the NCTA, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable and Comcast lobbied FCC officials on a proposed waiver of an FCC ban on encrypting the basic cable service tier for all-digital cable systems, ex parte notices and a letter to the commission show (http://xrl.us/bms9bz and http://xrl.us/bms9b5). Allowing encryption of the basic tier would reduce service visits and signal theft, the letter said. Boxee and its customers, who have opposed the cable industry waiver request, will still have options should the commission proceed with a waiver grant, the letter said. They can still watch over-the-air broadcast TV signals, subscribe to a basic-tier package and, “like other basic-only customers, qualify for a free set-top box or CableCARD under the proposed equipment conditions,” the letter said. And Boxee could build a CableCARD slot into its device to access encrypted channels, the letter said. “We understand that Boxee would prefer that all cable operators rely on traps to accommodate Boxee’s business decision to launch Live TV without accounting for encryption,” the letter said. But “traps were designed for an analog environment,” it said. The lawyers also threw cold water on an FCC staff idea to relocate clear QAM channels to higher frequencies and install low-end traps, the letter showed. “The suggestions would be very expensive and technically challenging and would still result in a less secure, less flexible approach than the basic encryption technology that is used by every non-cable MVPD."
GMV will build flight dynamics and payload transponder management systems for Space Systems/Loral, which is building the Thor 7 satellite for Telenor Satellite Broadcasting. The satellite is expected to be launched next year.
The Senate Antitrust Subcommittee hearing on Verizon’s purchase of SpectrumCo licenses is set for March 21, the subcommittee said Wednesday. Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., first announced the hearing earlier this month (CD Feb 2 p10). The title is: “The Verizon/Cable Deals: Harmless Collaboration or a Threat to Competition and Consumers?” The subcommittee hasn’t released a witness list for the hearing, scheduled at 2 p.m. in Room 226, Dirksen Building.
Google’s plans to integrate consumer information on most of Google’s products is troubling, 37 attorneys general said in a letter to Google CEO Larry Page. Attorneys general from Maryland, Washington, California and other states requested a meeting with Google. Consumers may want the information in their Web history “to be kept separate from the information they exchange via Gmail.” It “rings hollow” to call consumers’ ability to exit the Google products ecosystem a “choice” in an Internet economy “where the clear majority of all Internet users use … at least one Google product on a regular basis.” The invasion of privacy will be costly for many users to escape, the letter said. Google “has not only failed to provide an ‘opt-in’ option, but has failed to provide meaningful ‘opt-out’ options as well.” Consumer Watchdog supported the request by the state lawyers: Google “has spun the new policies as ‘improving user experience,'” Consumer Watchdog said. The attorneys general asked Google to respond no later than Feb. 29. The updated privacy policy will make Google’s privacy practices easier to understand, a Google spokesman said. “We've undertaken the most extensive notification effort in Google’s history” and Google continues to offer choice and control over how people use Google services. “Of course we are happy to discuss this approach with regulators globally."
Public safety agencies should jointly procure land mobile radios to save money, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bms8wf). GAO recommended that the Department of Homeland Security facilitate joint purchasing. “The price of handheld LMR devices is high -- often thousands of dollars -- in part because market competition is limited and manufacturing costs are high,” GAO said. Also, public safety agencies “cannot exert buying power in relationship to device manufacturers, which may result in agencies overpaying for LMR devices,” GAO said. Joint procurements would allow “agencies requiring similar products to combine their purchase power and lower their procurement costs,” it said. While the national public safety broadband network -- set up under legislation passed last week by Congress -- should improve interoperability and data transfer rates, it likely won’t support mission-critical voice for “10 years or more,” GAO said. As a result, “first responders will continue to rely on their current LMR systems for the foreseeable future.” GAO cited several challenges slowing deployment of the public safety broadband network, including governance, getting adequate funds and ensuring interoperability, reliability and security. DHS agreed with GAO’s recommendation, GAO said.
The median annual household income in Puerto Rico is $18,862, according to the most recent Census data, an attorney for Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico said in a letter to the commission. The company submitted the information to update its application to extend a waiver of CableCARD rules. Without the waiver, Liberty said it wouldn’t be able to introduce new services that are affordable to its subscribers (CD Sept 20 p3). The median income for Liberty Cablevision’s service areas is probably even lower “given that Liberty does not serve the most affluent part of Puerto Rico, which is San Juan,” the letter said. “However, the above figure is sufficient to demonstrate that the economic conditions in Liberty’s service area remain substantially different from the continental United States,” where the median household income is more than $50,000, the letter said.
Adams Cable Equipment’s CableCARD waiver request, though nominally based on the FCC’s Baja Broadband order “continues to ignore key elements” of that waiver order, TiVo General Counsel Matthew Zinn wrote in a letter to the commission (http://xrl.us/bms8eg). The Baja waiver was limited in its duration and scope and based on extreme and non-speculative financial hardship, Zinn said: “ACE’s waiver shares none of these elements.” Moreover, ACE’s comparison of the costs of a TiVo and operator-supplied DVR are flawed because it includes TiVo’s service fees but not cable operators’, Zinn said. “Unless ACE is somehow proposing to guarantee to the FCC that cable operators will not charge customers a DVR service fee if they use a refurbished DVR, its ‘real cost’ calculation is as unsound as the rationale for its waiver request,” he said.