David McCabe

39 consumer advocate groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Free Press, said that placing an exemption in looming federal privacy rules for broadband providers that covers data divorced from an individual customer would be ill-advised and illegal. The Federal Communications Commission is in the process of crafting rules that, under a proposal from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, would make it harder for Internet providers to use their customers' data for most purposes. Privacy and consumer groups said in a Sept 7 letter to Chairman Wheeler that the commission shouldn’t make an exception for data that has been stripped of information that could identify the customer to whom it belongs.

“We urge the Commission to resist some parties’ request for the creation of a special carve-out for ‘de-identified’ customer information,” the groups said. “There is no room in the statute to accommodate that request.” “Even if there were, it would be harmful to consumers to allow ISPs to make an end-run around privacy rules simply by removing certain identifiers from data, while leaving vast swaths of customer details largely intact,” they added. The groups argued that it would be easy to re-connect the data with a user. “It is often trivial to re-identify data that has supposedly been de-identified," they said in the latest salvo in the battle over the rules.

The former top lobbyist for the wireless industry’s major trade association in Washington will continue his work for the group, and some of its members, as a consultant. Lobbying forms filed recently show that Jot Carpenter will lobby for CTIA, the trade group, as well as AT&T and Verizon, the nation’s top two wireless providers. His advocacy is focusing on spectrum provisions in the appropriations process as well as a bill meant to combat spoofing, or the practice of falsifying a caller ID.

Carpenter departed from the trade association in July with the intention of starting his own consulting business. At the time, he said he wanted to continue working on wireless issues. “I’m proud of CTIA’s talented team and the many things we have accomplished together during my time at the Association,” he said in a statement at the time. “From spectrum to tax policy to cybersecurity, the things we have achieved together have benefited the industry and consumers and I have been lucky to be involved in all of those efforts.” “I hope that my new venture will include remaining a part of the wireless industry for many years.” He worked at AT&T as well as other jobs in the private and public sectors before coming to the trade group. When he left, CTIA President Meredith Attwell Baker said the organization was “excited to support his new venture and hope to partner with Jot for years to come.”

Policy battles that have been mounting for months are poised to engulf the Federal Communications Commission in the final months of the Obama Administration. Sept 8 marks the deadline for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to say whether he will bring any of three major policy proposals to a vote at the commission’s meeting in September.

Major corporate players have a stake in all three debates. One proposal could give Americans more ways to watch television and, possibly, replace their living room set-top box. A second would crack down on how internet providers use customers’ personal data. And a third has the potential to bring changes to an obscure but valuable market for broadband connections that are used by big business.

Bidding concluded late in the day on Aug 30 in the first round of a historic spectrum sale to wireless providers and other buyers without regulators reaching their target for the sale. The first stage of the Federal Communications Commission’s sale ended without buyers bidding the $88.3 billion needed to hit the price target. The agency will hold another stage of the auction with a lower spectrum clearing target. A bidding pool that includes major wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon as well as other companies, like Comcast, and individuals bid roughly $22.4 billion in the first round. The high price target points to the auction’s first-of-a-kind design.

The FCC spent part of 2016 buying wireless spectrum, the invisible frequencies that carry signals to mobile devices, from broadcast stations. Now they’re attempting to resell it to wireless carriers and other bidders. The broadcasters were active participants, leading to the high cost bar that the commission needs to clear. The $88.3 billion number also includes some costs associated with the auction. The commission also set the highest possible target before the auction began for the amount of spectrum it would attempt to sell. The trade group representing broadcast stations on Aug 31 hinted that the showing in the first stage of the auction was evidence that the wireless industry's pleas for more spectrum were misleading.

A federal court ruled against a challenge to part of the Federal Communications Commission’s ongoing process of reassigning valuable wireless spectrum to mobile providers. FCC officials are currently running an auction to buy spectrum from broadcasters and sell it wireless providers and other buyers — and repackage the assignment of radio frequencies in the process.

Low-power television (LPTV) services, small regional stations that have a secondary position to full-power broadcasters, were not protected from potential difficulties during that repacking process by the commission. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied a challenge from Mako Communications, an LPTV operator, to the FCC’s decision not to extend those protections to its operations, citing a prohibition on altering their spectrum rights in the law authorizing the repacking. The court said that the FCC’s decision not to offer the protections did not change the rights of LPTV broadcasters, since full-power stations already have priority when it comes to using wireless spectrum. “As a general matter, LPTV stations’ secondary status renders them subject to displacement insofar as they cause interference to primary services,” Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote in the ruling. "Today's court ruling validates the Commission's Incentive Auction design in light of the Spectrum Act’s goals," said an FCC spokesperson. "The Commission values the important role that low-power TV and TV translator stations play in the communities they serve. With that in mind, we have taken — and continue to consider — steps to assist any displaced low power stations to find feasible channels after the close of the auction."

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy filed a federal complaint over WhatsApp’s decision to share consumer data with parent company Facebook. WhatsApp announced recently that it was planning to provide information about its users for Facebook's targeted advertising unless users choose to opt out. EPIC and the Center for Digital Democracy say that the change betrays previous promises Facebook has made on privacy. “When Facebook acquired WhatsApp, WhatsApp made a commitment to its users, to the Federal Trade Commission, and to privacy authorities around the world not to disclose user data to Facebook,” said EPIC President Marc Rotenberg. “Now they have broken that commitment.”

Specifically, the complaint invokes the FTC’s jurisdiction to police unfair and deceptive practices, as well as a 2012 agreement between Facebook and the agency that the company would take certain steps to protect user privacy. Central to their case is a long history of WhatsApp making privacy a core part of its brand. The company now makes end-to-end encryption the default setting for its users, for example, and over the years has said that it is not interested in leveraging its customers’ info.

AT&T’s top policy executive is leaving the company. Jim Cicconi will retire at the end of September from the company where he’s worked for more than a decade. Cicconi will be replaced by Bob Quinn, who leads the company’s federal regulatory advocacy.

Facebook said that it would start displaying advertisements to users who have an ad blocker installed on their desktop browsers.

Its decision comes amid rising concerns from the advertising industry that the proliferation of ad blocking software is hurting their business. Facebook said that it believes that it now gives users enough control over what ads they see to warrant circumnavigating the blocking software. “We’ve designed our ad formats, ad performance and controls to address the underlying reasons people have turned to ad blocking software,” said Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth. “When we asked people about why they used ad blocking software, the primary reason we heard was to stop annoying, disruptive ads,” he said. “As we offer people more powerful controls, we’ll also begin showing ads on Facebook desktop for people who currently use ad blocking software.” Bosworth also slammed ad blocking software that stops blocking ads from publishers or services that pay for the privilege, calling that “a practice that is at best confusing to people and that reduces the funding needed to support the journalism and other free services that we enjoy on the web.” The move aligns Facebook, at least in spirit, with the publishers over whom it has significant power as a primary channel for content distribution.

Republicans believe they are finally close to overhauling a landmark law that has been a cornerstone of tech and telecom regulation for decades.

The effort to update the Communications Act, which gives the Federal Communications Commission its authority, has been years in the making and has powerful support. John Thune (R-SD), the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and veteran lawmakers on the House Commerce Committee are vowing to make changing the law a centerpiece of their 2017 agenda. Proponents of updating the law, first written in 1934 and last revised in 1996, say it's showing its age and is ill-suited to dealing with a world dominated by high-speed internet and mobile devices instead of phone service and traditional radio broadcasts.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s top digital operative said that she sees it as a victory if they can use content online to "personally" distract GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. “If we can distract him personally for 15 minutes a day, I’ll take that as a win,” said Jenna Lowenstein. “He’ll go on a rant on TV about something that took us an hour to make and he’s been thinking about it for 36 hours.”

Lowenstein said, however, that the bulk of the campaign's efforts on Twitter were focused on persuading voters and making the campaign's case. Clinton’s campaign has been willing to engage directly with Trump on Twitter, despite the real estate developer’s aggressiveness on the platform and willingness to engage in tweet wars. In talking about the campaign's digital strategy, Lowenstein also referenced a joke that originated with Twitter user Mark Hammer in June: “The genius of the Trump Clinton Twitter war of 2016 is that it consumes Trump's every waking minute & Clinton doesn't know it's happening.”