December 2016

The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC) has given the President-elect Donald Trump transition team a to-do list of 12 telecommunication priorities for creating a more diverse media in terms of access, ownership, participation and procurement. In a memorandum to the Trump team, MMTC made the following asks:

1. Appoint and support Federal Communications Commission leadership that integrates diversity and inclusion into the regulatory rulemaking and public engagement processes.
2. Preserve the FCC’s Lifeline program and improve it to enhance marketplace competition and increase the number of eligible program participants.
3. Maintain free data programs that can preserve the affordability of mobile services, especially for economically vulnerable populations who are extremely sensitive to data costs.
4. Provide for multilingual emergency information in all radio markets.
5. Ban geographic redlining in broadband deployment to ensure ubiquitous access for all communities.
6. Engage the multi-stakeholder process to enhance consumer privacy and counter 'applications redlining in the online marketplace.
7. Work with State Public Utility Commissions and the FCC to ban predatory intrastate and interstate telephone rates charged to prisoners and their families.
8. Engage the FCC and the Department of Labor to address employment discrimination in all communications industries and, especially, the dismal EEO record of the high tech industry.
9. Extend FCC equal procurement opportunity enforcement to all regulatory platforms, and engage the General Accounting Office to ensure that federal agencies and departments consider diversity in procurement when choosing suppliers.
10. Encourage the FCC to adopt an Overcoming Disadvantages Preference that would define eligible entities for competitive authorizations and thereby increase ownership diversity.
11. Incentivize Secondary Market Transactions in commercial wireless spectrum by using tax incentives, auction bidding credits and other measures.
12. Create a 'Glide Path' for the Short-Term Survival and Long-Term Humane Decommissioning of the AM Band in a Manner that Preserves Minority Ownership.

On Oct 7th, several Senators wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler regarding reports about state and local law enforcement's use of "cell site simulators" -- portable surveillance devices that collect cell phone identification and location information by mimicking cellphone towers, also known as "stingrays".

On Nov 23, Chairman Wheeler responded by discussing the conditions of cell site simulator (CSS) equipment authorizations. He wrote, "Each of our CSS equipment authorizations includes two important conditions. First, '[t]he marketing and sale of these devices shall be limited to federal, state, local public safety and law enforcement officials only.' Second, 'State and local law enforcement agencies must advance coordinate with the FBI the acquisition and use of the equipment authorized under this authorization.' Thus, our equipment authorization expressly contemplated that use of the equipment by state and local law enforcement would be under the auspices of the FBI. Notably, the implementation of these conditions does not mention nor did we require a nondisclosure agreement between a purchaser and the FBI."

Marking the 2016 year of progress, and kicking off the Computer Science Education Week 2016, the White House is announcing new actions in support of computer science education:

National Science Foundation (NSF) is announcing $20 million in planned investment in FY 2017 in support of CS education. These new investments will take place under the Computer Science for All: Researcher Practitioner Partnerships (CSforAll: RPP) program, building on NSF’s $25 million investment in FY 2016. The program aims to better understand, through research and development, how to provide high-school teachers with the preparation, professional development, and ongoing support that they would need to teach rigorous computer-science courses; and K-8 teachers with the preparation they would need to integrate computer science and computational thinking into their classrooms.

National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) will develop a CSforAll strategic framework in the coming year. The NSTC Committee on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (CoSTEM) Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force’s (FC-STEM) Computer Science for All Interagency Working Group will develop a strategic framework to guide Federal efforts to support the integration of computer science and computational thinking into K-12 education.