Amir Nasr

Top GOP lawmakers involved in telecommunications policy are calling on congressional Democrats and Republicans to draft bipartisan legislation that would maintain the principles of an open internet following Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s announcement that the agency will take steps to reverse its 2015 network neutrality rules.

“Consumers want an open internet that doesn’t discriminate on content and protects free speech and consumer privacy,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD), House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR), Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said in a joint statement. “It’s now time for Republicans and Democrats, internet service providers, edge providers, and the internet community as a whole to come together and work toward a legislative solution that benefits consumers and the future of the internet."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said he’s received dozens of reports showing that communications from President Donald Trump’s transition team — and possibly Trump himself — were intercepted during the transition period between Election Day and Inauguration Day. “I want to be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia or the investigation of Russian activities or the Trump team,” Chairman Nunes said.

He said his panel will “thoroughly investigate” the surveillance and dissemination of that information. While the reports show surveillance of Trump officials unrelated to the Russia investigation, Chairman Nunes said it doesn’t mean those surveillance orders don’t exist. He declined to disclose his sources for the surveillance reports. The announcement comes two days after Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee that he had seen no information that supports President Trump’s allegations that Trump Tower was wiretapped in 2016 under orders from President Barack Obama.

The House Judiciary Committee began the process of examining potential changes to a foreign intelligence-gathering program, with the panel’s top Democrat saying a key concern is how many American citizens are targeted by the law. Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI) gave varying levels of support to reforming Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law that allows for the surveillance of foreigners reasonably believed to be outside of the United States, while forbidding intelligence officials from surveilling Americans. Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Goodlatte said that while the intelligence community has labeled Section 702 as the “most important tool in battling terrorism,” it has been criticized as an “overly broad” program that collects U.S. citizens’ communications “without sufficient legal process.” “We must ensure that our protection doesn’t come at the expense of cherished liberty,” Goodlatte said, adding that strong national security tools and civil liberties “can and must coexist.”

The issue of how many U.S. citizens get their communications collected under the law, known as “incidental” collection, is central to the debate as the intelligence agencies seek a reauthorization of the statute in Congress. Conyers said committee members “require that estimate” and they won’t “simply take the government’s word on the size of so-called ‘incidental’ collection.”

Madonna stirred up controversy in Jan when she took the stage to address a massive crowd at the Women’s March on Washington in a speech featuring three F-bombs and musings of “blowing up the White House.” The networks that aired that speech, namely CNN and MSNBC, received a lot of flak for the pop star’s words: The Federal Communications Commission received 106 complaints from viewers nationwide about Madonna’s speech. The complaints primarily targeted the networks’ failure to implement a delay to censor potential vulgar language when they picked up Madonna’s Jan 21 speech, which came one day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Seventy-four of the complaints mentioned CNN, while 21 complaints targeted MSNBC’s failure to bleep Madonna’s swearing. One complaint from Missouri questioned why CBS aired the speech and five mentioned C-SPAN.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) is pushing forward with plans to draft legislation that would codify network neutrality principles into law, even if the Federal Communications Commission hasn’t taken action to roll back the agency’s 2015 Open Internet order. “Sen Thune is open to immediately working with his colleagues on legislation if there is a serious readiness on the other side of the aisle to come to the table,” said Commerce Committee spokesman Frederick Hill. “To date, Democrats haven’t been quite ready to sit down.” At the same time, Hill added that action from the FCC action could lead to “new engagement” from Democrats in a legislative effort, and Chairman Thune is “all for that.” The remarks follow recent comments from House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who said that she wanted to the let the FCC make the first move on net neutrality before legislating.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said the panel’s top tech priorities consist of updating a 1986 electronic privacy law and reauthorizing a provision in the foreign intelligence statute that allows US spies to intercept communications abroad.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was authored long before the widespread use of email and social media, doesn’t require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before inspecting emails stored for more than 180 days. That standard is based on a 1980s understanding of electronic messaging that assumed anything stored for that period of time has been abandoned. “This law is outdated and contains insufficient privacy protections for Americans’ email communications in today’s digital age,” Goodlatte said. Rep Kevin Yoder (R-KS) introduced a measure in Dec that would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before investigating an individual’s online communications that have been stored in excess of 180 days or kept in a cloud storage service.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, testified before the Senate Commerce Committee, touching on tech subjects ranging from wireless spectrum to broadband deployment. The Commerce Department has broad responsibilities in the tech field, including jurisdiction over the federal government’s airwaves, the US Patent and Trademark Office and national science labs. Most notably, Ross said he would push to get government agencies to free up unused spectrum, a longstanding goal of Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD). “We need more spectrum in the private sector, and I will try my best to help convince those government agencies that have spectrum and don’t really need it to permit it to be commercialized,” he told the committee.

Ross also said he would work to balance privacy protections and data protectionism in data-transfer agreements such as the EU-US Privacy Shield pact. Later, he said there would need to be a balance between national security and freeing up airwaves. He also said government airwaves could “help extend broadband to more rural communities and other segments that are underserved.” Transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority will remain in place, Ross said. “As I understand it, there is no real alternative on the table to the ICANN situation. So, for the moment, there’s nothing else to consider,” Ross said. Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX), who was opposed to the transfer of power, pressed Ross further on the issue. Ross said that if he found “a realistic alternative,” he would explore it.

The Secretary of Commerce in the next administration will be responsible for a data-sharing agreement with the European Union that is worth billions to the US tech industry. President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for that post, Wilbur Ross, said he would uphold the deal, but he hinted that it might change in the future. There should be a “balance” between data protectionism and privacy, he said.

His comments at his confirmation hearing came the same day that an electronic privacy group requested that the next administration strengthen the privacy protections in the deal, fearing that US intelligence activities will hinder the free flow of data between the two continents. The United States currently has an agreement with the EU, dubbed “Privacy Shield,” that allows US-based businesses to send data to Europe without fear of running afoul of stronger European privacy laws. Privacy concerns continue to loom over it, however. At his hearing before that committee, Ross said he would commit to keeping Privacy Shield intact because it already exists and then added a cryptic comment about the future of balancing privacy and data localization laws.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) has essentially given up on a floor vote for Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel’s confirmation for a second term.

He said that a vote before her term ends on Dec. 31 is extremely unlikely despite FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s conditional pledge to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to step down immediately if it would expedite her reconfirmation. Chairman Wheeler is required by law to step down as chairman of the commission when President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20, but his term as a commissioner doesn’t end until June 2018. Before this week, he hadn’t been specific about his plans under the next administration. But his promise to stop down is being viewed as too little, too late. “If in fact he has made those representations, we’re just finding out about them now,” Chairman Thune said, adding that it seems Chairman Wheeler “wasn’t in any hurry to get out of there.” “My sense is that we’re kind of up against the clock now,” Chairman Thune said. “And it’s going to be very hard, even if Wheeler was agreeable to stepping down, to be able to get all this done between now and the time we go out.” “Even if they clear this, this is going to take a cloture vote,” Chairman Thune said, referring to a procedural maneuver that would bypass the objection of a senator or senators and takes several days. “A lot of our members are probably going to object to this.”

Without Senate confirmation for a second term, Rosenworcel’s tenure at the agency will conclude at the end of December. Chairman Thune said it’s still possible Commissioner Rosenworcel could be nominated again in January 2017, perhaps as a part of a deal to reconfirm Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai.

Rolling back network neutrality rules and replacing them with legislation that establishes the “rules of the road” for internet service providers will be a priority for House Republicans in 2017, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said.

Rep. Blackburn, a member of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team and a candidate to lead the House Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee, said Republicans are intent on reversing Obama-era net neutrality rules that reclassified broadband companies as common carriers under the 1934 Communications Act. That move allowed the Federal Communications Commission to regulate internet service providers the same way as traditional phone companies. “I think you will see us address a net neutrality fix early in the next Congress,” Rep Blackburn told an audience at a Free State Foundation event. “I also believe you are going to see a legislative solution as opposed to a regulatory solution for this issue.” Rep Blackburn added, “A legislative fix is going to give you in the industry the certainty that you need so that you know what the rules of the road are for standards for internet conduct.”