May 2014

Joaquín Almunia, the European Union’s antitrust chief, said that he might yet take a tougher stance toward Google in a long-running case that he and the company have been in talks to settle for more than a year.

The announcement is a potential blow for Google, which reached a tentative deal with Almunia in February by agreeing to display rivals’ links more prominently in its search results.

Google has been trying to resolve the three-year case and avoid a potential fine of up to $5 billion. But whether the announcement was an indication of a new hard line by Almunia or a diplomatic nod to the company’s many critics in Europe was not clear. And any action would still be months away.

The House Commerce Committee’s Republican leadership wants input on how and whether the Federal Communications Commission should regulate edge providers.

That was one of the questions teed up in the third in a series of white papers the committee is issuing as part of its review and planned rewrite of communications law.

The latest white paper focuses on competition policy and what role the FCC should have. Among the questions for stakeholder comment is one on competition at the network level and the substitutability of various delivery mechanisms.

"Following the Verizon decision, the reach of the Commission to regulate 'edge providers' on the Internet is the subject of some disagreement," the white paper says, then asks. "How should we define competition among edge providers? What role, if any, should the Commission have to regulate edge providers," which it describes as "providers of services that are network agnostic."

The issue the white paper raises is whether edge providers are also potentially subject to that regulation (for example, would paid priority in a search engine's rankings be something that impedes the "virtuous cycle" of unfettered access to content that the FCC is pledging to preserve through new open Internet rules).

The House Rules Committee has set the rules for the House floor debate of the USA Freedom Act (H.R. 3361).

The bill, which passed unanimously out of the Judiciary Committee would end bulk data collection by the National Security Agency, as well as boost transparency and reporting requirements for targeted data requests, require more specificity in those requests, and minimize retention and dissemination of nonpublic data.

The bill now goes to the House floor for one hour of debate, 40 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of Judiciary, and 20 minutes divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It could be scheduled for that House vote as early as May 21 according to the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), which has it on the calendar for "possible consideration."

There will be a mix of Republican and Democratic amendments to consider, including ones that would allow intelligence agencies to negotiate with telephone companies to store call record details for national security purposes, one that could require the government provide the public with the total number of requests for data and the number of individuals affected, requires probable cause for data searches, and prevents intelligence agencies from mandating that a device manufacturer, software developer, or standards organization build in a backdoor to circumvent encryption or privacy protections of their products.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued new policies requiring that all public writings and remarks -- even by former employees -- be checked beforehand for sensitive information, and circumscribing how employees can talk about classified material that’s already out in the public sphere.

Long-time intelligence reporters say it’s too soon to say whether the directives -- in effect since April -- are specifically causing sources to clam up. But the policies contribute to a climate where government sources are increasingly twitchy about talking with reporters, even on unclassified matters.