April 2016

The purpose of this hearing is to focus on the public safety threat posed by contraband cellphones in prisons and jails, as well as the technologies that can help law enforcement combat this problem. We typically think of cellphones as useful devices. But in the hands of inmates, contraband cellphones are weapons. Inmates are using them to run drug operations, direct gang activity, order hits, extort money from inmates’ families, defraud the elderly, and harass innocent members of the public. And right now, contraband cellphones are flooding into our nation’s jails and prisons. They are flown into institutions via drones. They are thrown over prison fences. They are smuggled into facilities inside everything from underwear to legal papers. I hope today’s field hearing will reboot the conversation and build a foundation for a strong response. The Federal Communications Commission needs to do everything it can to help law enforcement combat this problem. I intend to do my part to make that happen.

Columbia Law professor Tim Wu says he thinks the Federal Trade Commission or Justice Department or both should be looking anew at Google and new evidence that it has been favoring its own content in local search. That came in a Senate Antitrust Subcommittee hearing April 5 on unfair methods of competition.

The Federal Trade Commission closed an investigation into Google search in 2013. Wu agreed with that decision but based on new evidence has changed his view of the potential consumer harm. Wu said one of the challenges of the FTC's Google investigation was that there was no strong evidence at the time of consumer harm. Google made what Wu said at the time was a convincing argument that its universal search was preferred by consumers and better overall and that was one of the reasons the investigation was closed. He said that in subsequent research, he found that some of what Google was doing, particularly in local search, "in certain areas Google is manipulating its search in an anti-competitive way and I think that evidence makes a difference and I think Google is, at this point, in a different position. I think there is stronger evidence of consumer harm now."