Roll out of devices designed to use the unlicensed spectrum in the unused TV bands known as the TV white spaces may ramp up beginning in 2015, said Microsoft Principal Group Program Manager Amer Hassan at a Microsoft panel on unlicensed spectrum Tuesday. Silicon vendors are already starting to design microchips to take advantage of the spectrum, Hassan said. The TV white spaces will become increasingly important as more devices become available that use Wi-Fi connectivity, said several panelists. The Internet of Things, in which everyday devices such as refrigerators and toothbrushes will share data and applications over the Internet, “will be dominated by unlicensed spectrum,” said Richard Thanki of the University of Southampton Institute of Complex Systems Simulation. Thanki said such technology will also have industrial applications, leading to manufacturing equipment and warehouses that take advantage of wireless connectivity. Since the devices don’t need to exchange huge amounts of data, the TV white spaces are particularly suited to their use, Thanki said. All the panelists said the number of devices that take advantage of the white spaces is on the rise. It’s possible that the incentive auction could reduce the amount of available unlicensed spectrum, said New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Project Director Michael Calabrese. The incentive auction has created “uncertainty” about how much of the white spaces will be left in the wake of the repacking process, Calabrese said.
Common Cause backed the FCC pulling a draft media ownership order circulated by then-Chairman Julius Genachowski that was a “bad idea to allow billionaire moguls to control even more of our media,” said the nonprofit on its blog Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1jfr7Df). It said current Chairman Tom Wheeler deserves credit for saying the draft will be reworked. The order, which would have allowed some types of broadcaster-newspaper cross ownership while attributing some TV station resource sharing deals in a way that might have curtailed them, was yanked from circulation earlier this month (CD Dec 16 p1). “It was an ugly dinosaur still stalking the Commission’s hallways long after it should have been extinct,” said Special Adviser to the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative Michael Copps, a former Democratic commissioner. “Maybe, just maybe, the new FCC will go on from here to become a true protector of the people’s interest on the people’s airwaves.”
A House bill asks for better disclosure from the intelligence community. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., introduced HR-3779 Monday, and it was referred to the House Intelligence Committee. His co-sponsor is Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a backer of surveillance law updates. Both are members of the Intelligence Committee. The bill text is not yet posted online, and neither the office of Himes nor Schiff was able to provide it to us Tuesday. The bill’s long title said the legislation would “require the Director of National Intelligence to annually submit reports on violations of law or executive order by personnel of the intelligence community, and for other purposes.” Members of Congress have debated intelligence community violations in their examination of surveillance law this session.
Several lawmakers praised Monday’s ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that National Security Agency phone surveillance likely violates the Fourth Amendment (CD Dec 17 p3). Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Mark Udall, D-Colo., praised the ruling on Monday. But Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., pointed to other legal support for surveillance and said the Supreme Court must resolve the question. “Clearly we have competing decisions from those of at least three different courts (the FISA Court, the D.C. District Court and the Southern District of California),” Feinstein said in a statement Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/19QvjQn). “I have found the analysis by the FISA Court, the Southern District of California and the position of the Department of Justice, based on the Supreme Court decision in [1979’s Smith v. Maryland], to be compelling.” Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., author of the original Patriot Act and the surveillance overhaul the USA Freedom Act, said the decision “highlights the need to pass” his legislation, according to his office (http://1.usa.gov/1bMrU8n). “I am encouraged by the district court’s ruling,” Sensenbrenner said. “It will add to the growing momentum behind the USA FREEDOM Act, which has garnered support from a large, diverse bloc of my colleagues and the business community. The Executive Branch should join Congress to institute meaningful reform.” Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Tom Udall, D-N.M., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., support the ruling and back updates to surveillance law. The ruling “hits the nail on the head,” Wyden said (http://1.usa.gov/1gD2yOA), in particular highlighting the ruling’s emphasis on the ineffectiveness of the surveillance. “This ruling dismisses the use of an outdated Supreme Court decision affecting rotary phones as a defense.” Paul said the ruling is “an important first step in having the constitutionality of government surveillance programs decided in the regular court system rather than a secret court where only one side is presented,” calling phone surveillance an abuse (http://1.usa.gov/18Oxu6G). “Today’s ruling is an important first step toward reining in this agency but we must go further,” Sanders said (http://1.usa.gov/IRlBX6). “I will be working as hard as I can to pass the strongest legislation possible to end the abuses by the NSA and other intelligence agencies.” Blumenthal backed congressional action, “creating greater transparency and a special advocate whose client is the Constitution to advocate on behalf of Americans’ liberty and privacy,” he said (http://1.usa.gov/1hYbYEO). Tom Udall said he hopes Monday’s “ruling will prove to be an important milestone on the path toward increased transparency and comprehensive reforms to our surveillance programs, including an end to bulk phone record collection and the creation of a new privacy advocate within the secretive FISA court” (http://1.usa.gov/18SLmQl). Privacy advocates and Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor responsible for the surveillance leaks earlier this year, also hailed the ruling.
L-3 Communications renewed its contract with XTAR for $5.6 million. XTAR will provide X-band satellite connectivity “to the U.S. Army for manned airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission support,” XTAR said in a news release. XTAR will deliver space segment capacity on multiple XTAR-Eur beams, including the Middle East and global beams, XTAR said. “The satellite will support connectivity to Army-operated King Air 350 and Dash 8 aircraft.” Located at 29 degrees, the satellite provides commercial X-band coverage from eastern Brazil across the Atlantic Ocean, it said.
ViaSat’s Exede Evolution satellite Internet plan will offer unlimited access for email and webpages using download speedus of up to 12 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 3 Mbps. The service “eliminates data usage caps for these essential online services and provides a fixed cap for other activities, such as video streaming,” ViaSat said in a press release (http://bit.ly/18xcdDJ). ViaSat is offering the plan in 30 states, “which includes much of the Exede national footprint,” it said. The expansion of the service plan represents the second phase of its introduction earlier this year, ViaSat said.
Dish Network and Sprint plan to develop and deploy next year a fixed wireless broadband service trial in Corpus Christi, Texas, the companies said Tuesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1jeRERc). Depending on a customer’s location, Dish will install either a ruggedized outdoor router or an indoor solution, they said. Both solutions will feature built-in high-gain antennas to receive the 4G test-driven development long term evolution signal on Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum, they said. The companies plan to expand into additional markets in the future, they said.
Correction: What the then-FCC chairman, who was Bill Kennard, recused himself over in 1998 was an order on repealing political editorial and personal attack rules (CD Dec 16 p6).
The urban rates survey must be completed and returned by Jan. 17, the FCC Wireline Bureau said in a public notice Monday (http://bit.ly/1bUKsUS). The bureau plans to collect the rates offered by providers of fixed services identified using the most recent Form 477, with separate samples for fixed voice and fixed broadband services, it said. Providers required to complete the survey can expect to receive an email this week with an online reporting form, the notice said.
The FTC should move forward with its proposed study of the business practices of patent assertion entities (PAEs), Public Knowledge said Monday in comments it filed jointly with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Engine Advocacy. The FTC voted in late September to propose doing a study using its authority under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act (CD Sept 30 p15). Comments on the proposed study were due Monday. The proposed study would “bring many of these unseen practices to light, by requiring those entities to disclose relevant information about their business practices,” Public Knowledge said. “With this information, the FTC will take a first step in discovering and uncovering the true extent of the impact of patent assertion abuses on today’s economy.” The Software & Information Industry Association said it “strongly” supports the proposed study, which would “add significantly to the existing literature and evidence on PAE behavior.” There have been other studies on PAE activities, but they have focused on available litigation data, said SIIA. The FTC’s proposed study “has the opportunity to be much different and to provide a more complete picture of the PAE landscape and its detrimental effects due to the FTC’s unique Congressional authority to collect nonpublic information,” SIIA said. “Certain licensing agreements, patent acquisition information, and cost and revenue data that was not available to researchers in prior studies would be potentially available to the FTC” (http://1.usa.gov/1bUz6jC).