Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., introduced the first cybersecurity bill of the 113th Congress Wednesday. S-21, the Cybersecurity and American Cyber Competitiveness Act (http://xrl.us/bob2o7), is a message bill that expresses the sense of Congress that legislation is required to secure the nation’s communications networks from cyberattacks. The bill is cosponsored by democratic Sens. Tom Carper of Delaware, Dianne Feinstein of California, Carl Levin of Michigan, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Chris Coons of Delaware. The bill creates no new mandates and is intended to show that comprehensive cybersecurity legislation is going to be one of the top priorities of this Congress, a Commerce Committee aide said. The text expresses the sense of Congress that cybersecurity legislation should enhance the security and resiliency of U.S. communications networks, encourage cyberthreat information sharing, increase the capability of the U.S. to detect and respond to cyberattacks against critical infrastructure networks, promote cybersecurity research and development, training and education, and protect the privacy of U.S. citizens, among other goals. “The private sector and the government must work together to secure the networks that are vital to American businesses and communities,” Rockefeller said in a news release. Carper bemoaned the Senate’s failure to pass cybersecurity legislation in the last congress and said S-21 will “help lay the groundwork for a framework that can balance the needs and concerns of both government and the private sector -- and keep Americans safe.” Feinstein said: “Our national and economic security depend on robust information sharing, and I look forward to working with my colleagues again this Congress to develop strong incentives for this practice, coupled with the needed privacy protections.”
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities adopted several measures Wednesday to help in storm responses, as a result of last fall’s Superstorm Sandy. The bulk of the board’s order (http://xrl.us/bob2ot) focused on procedures for electric distribution companies to prevent prolonged power outages and ensure better coordination. These directives included one telecom requirement, however, which told the companies they “shall implement a cell phone application that customers can use to report outages and receive system outage information,” the board said.
Nielsen said 20.6 million people tuned into TV coverage of Monday’s Inauguration between 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Eastern. That marked a drop from the 37.7 million who watched at least part of the 2009 Inauguration coverage, it said. The NAB touted the higher ratings of broadcast networks that covered the event compared to cable networks. “Once again, when Americans wanted to watch history in the making they turned to broadcast television,” an NAB spokesman said.
A cable operator facing an FCC must-carry complaint by a broadcaster that has filed other such complaints for the same station seeks a third delay to respond, after two earlier extensions were granted by the Media Bureau (CD Jan 16 p17). Atlantic Broadband wants three more weeks to answer Western Pacific Broadcast’s complaint for WACP Atlantic City, N.J., to Feb. 12, the operator said. The motion for extension said Western Pacific doesn’t object to the delay. The sides “continue attempts to resolve their issues, and believe they may be able to do so without the need for Commission intervention,” said the motion posted Tuesday in docket 12-1 (http://xrl.us/bob2oe).
Central Texas Telephone Cooperative needs the FCC to act quickly on its petition for waiver and application for review of USF rules, it told Wireline Bureau officials Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bob2nb). Central Texas has high capital expenses because it buries cable in the rocky terrain it serves, but this also means extremely low operating expenses, the telco said. Under the current regression model, which looks at capital expenditures and operating expenditures separately, the co-op’s “substantial cost savings” are not being recognized and the company’s costs are “arbitrarily” being labeled as “imprudent,” the telco said. By collapsing the opex and capex results into “one overall loop cost output,” the commission could take into consideration operating efficiencies, the telco said. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel has urged the agency to combine the two separate benchmarks into one benchmark “to simplify the regression analysis and provide carriers with flexibility to meet our new limits” (CD Nov 20 p5).
The Kentucky Public Service Commission granted Boomerang Wireless status as an eligible telecommunications carrier as long as the company complies with its commitments to the PSC as well as to FCC rules. The company is certified for “the purpose of offering Lifeline service only in the underlying carriers’ licensed service areas throughout the state” and will now be able to receive federal and Kentucky USF money for that service, the PSC said in its Tuesday order (http://xrl.us/bob2nj). Boomerang will advertise the Lifeline service and comply with the FCC’s certification rules, the PSC added. The “planned wireless Lifeline offering will provide eligible customers with the following two alternative Lifeline plans: 125 units that roll over; or 250 units without roll over,” one unit the equivalent of one minute or one text, and customers will get free handsets and can “purchase additional airtime,” it said. Other included services, without charge, are voicemail, call forwarding, three-way calling, caller I.D. and call-waiting services.
Verizon Wireless and AT&T tend to pay more for the spectrum licenses they buy, and flexible use licenses are “significantly more valuable” than those with a more restricted use, wrote Scott Wallsten, Technology Policy Institute vice president of research. His paper is titled “Is There Really a Spectrum Crisis? Quantifying the Factors Affecting Spectrum License Value.” Wallsten analyzed the more than 69,000 licenses sold by the FCC since 1996. Larger geographic licenses generally sell for less per MHz/POP and that “contrary to conventional wisdom, more bandwidth is not correlated with higher values,” the paper said (http://bit.ly/10K0NHt) “All else equal, license prices increased steadily since about 2007, suggesting that demand for wireless services has been outpacing improvements in technological efficiency,” Wallsten concluded. “Whether or not spectrum values justify the moniker ‘crisis,’ the results emphasize the economic costs of artificially restricting the supply or use of spectrum, the complex interplay of factors that affect spectrum license value, and the importance of making long-term credible regulatory commitments."
Google’s latest “transparency report” for the first time segments U.S. government requests for user data by the legal process used “when compelling communications and technology companies to hand over user data,” said Richard Salgado, legal director for law enforcement and information security. His blog post (http://bit.ly/10IAoK6) announced the half-year report (http://bit.ly/K14OhJ). Two-thirds of U.S. requests came through subpoenas issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and “are the easiest to get because they typically don’t involve judges,” Salgado said. One in five came through ECPA search warrants, which are “generally” issued by judges based on a probable-cause demonstration that “information related to a crime” is available in the search target, he said. The rest were “mostly court orders issued under ECPA by judges or other processes that are difficult to categorize,” Salgado said. Google received 21,389 requests for information about 33,634 users July-December 2012 worldwide, a 70 percent increase since the company started publishing numbers on requests in 2009, he said. The new report doesn’t include information on content removals as past reports have because Google will release those numbers separately in the future, he said. Advocacy groups pounced on particular parts of the report. TechFreedom President Berin Szoka pointed to a “disturbing growth in government surveillance online,” in an email blast. It’s “even more disturbing” that the vast majority of requests don’t require a court order to obtain information and ensure that the government has shown probable cause “to believe a crime has actually been committed,” Szoka said. Because Google doesn’t distinguish between subpoenas “properly issued” for basic information and those issued improperly for things like email text, the report “doesn’t really tell us the full extent of unconstitutional privacy invasions” or confirm law-enforcement claims that they are getting warrants for content information even when not required, he said. Congress -- and the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in particular -- should reform ECPA “immediately” to ensure that “smaller companies without legal staffs” aren’t turning over user information wholesale without proper authorization, Szoka said. Privacy International pointed to Google’s stats on European Union member countries’ requests for information, in another email blast: 7,254 requests about 9,240 users during the period, which PI called a “100% increase over the past three years.” The numbers shine a harsh light on improper requests, PI said: Italy, Spain, France and Germany got less than half their requests “fully or partially fulfilled,” and only 17 percent of Poland’s requests were fulfilled. The “alarming statistics” justify the work PI is doing with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other organizations to “soon” publish a set of “International Principles on Communications Surveillance and Human Rights,” said Carly Nyst, PI head of international advocacy.
Conviva said it signed a six-year agreement with HBO to keep providing video optimization support for HBO’s HBO GO and MAX GO products. Through the deal, Conviva will also provide more services to HBO’s international partners to support HBO GO abroad, it said.
The FCC should call off its planned incentive spectrum auction, the Advanced TV Broadcasting Alliance said in comments filed with the agency this week. The comments came ahead of a Friday deadline for responses to the commission’s notice of proposed rulemaking on the auction. (See separate report in this issue). The alliance, whose members include full-power TV station owners such as Sinclair Broadcast Group, vendors such as Rohde & Schwarz and low-power TV (LPTV) operators, has been promoting a spectrum overlay plan that would set up a new broadcast TV standard that could offer both TV and mobile wireless services (http://xrl.us/bob2iq). “The current [FCC] plan is based on the assumption that the incentive auction is necessary to solve a spectrum crisis and that wireless carriers have the only solutions,” the alliance said (http://xrl.us/bob2iu). An auction, and the subsequent repacking of the TV band, would be “an unnecessary expense and burden to the American people [that] ignores the value delivered by ’the whole’ of television broadcast industry,” the alliance said. If the commission proceeds with an auction, it should protect LPTV operators, the alliance said. Repacking LPTV stations without the proper protection would put at risk “the investments that LPTV owners have made in reliance on Commission orders and policies regarding LPTV,” the alliance said. “When LPTV licensees accepted secondary status in the broadcast television band, it was with the understanding that LPTV was secondary in the broadcast spectrum only to full-power television stations” and there would be enough spectrum to accommodate secondary LPTV service, it said.