April 2017

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence April 19 published a document advocating for the protection of what newly minted spy chief Dan Coats has described as the “crown jewels” of the intelligence community. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, in particular Section 702, authorizes the bulk of the intelligence community’s overseas digital collection powers. A new informational questionnaire published by the ODNI, says maintaining those surveillance powers is “the intelligence community’s top legislative priority for 2017.” If Congress didn’t reauthorize those authorities, it would “greatly impair the ability of the United States to respond to national security threats,” the document notes.

Sen Marco’s Rubio’s (R-FL) longest-serving paid adviser, Alex Burgos, is leaving the Republican’s Capitol Hill office to lobby and plot strategy for the technology industry. Burgos will officially begin work at TechNet — which bills itself as the “national, bipartisan network of innovation economy CEOs and senior executives” — on April 25 as its vice president of federal policy, government relations, and communications.

With so many consumers and businesses voluntarily transitioning to the newer IP-based and wireless services, the Federal Communications Commission, under the prior Administration, began a series of proceedings to examine what, if any, changes needed to be made to its regulations to facilitate the transition and allow incumbent providers the ability to quickly modernize their legacy networks and services. As these proceedings concluded in 2015 and 2016, the results in many ways did not facilitate, much less accelerate, the transition to these newer, more capable services. Indeed, in many ways the orders made the transition more cumbersome. With the item set for a vote April 20, the FCC moves in a different direction.

This Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) demonstrates that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai not only recognizes the importance of the technology transition that is already underway, but that he is willing to tackle the issue head on early in his leadership. Not only will the proposed rules foster and accelerate broadband investment in unserved areas, they should make telecommunication companies more formidable competitors to cable broadband companies. AT&T looks forward to participating in the forthcoming proceeding and supports its goal of providing access to broadband services for all Americans.