Sen Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) -- the top Democrat on the Senate Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet Subcommittee -- led a group of 16 senators in reintroducing legislation to protect people’s personal data online. The Data Care Act would require websites, apps, and other online providers to take responsible steps to safeguard personal information and stop the misuse of users’ data. 

The Data Care Act establishes reasonable duties that will require providers to protect user data and will prohibit providers from using user data to their detriment:

• Duty of Care – Must reasonably secure individual identifying data and promptly inform users of data breaches that involve sensitive information;
• Duty of Loyalty – May not use individual identifying data in ways that harm users;
• Duty of Confidentiality – Must ensure that the duties of care and loyalty extend to third parties when disclosing, selling, or sharing individual identifying data;
• Federal and State Enforcement – A violation of the duties will be treated as a violation of an FTC rule with fine authority. States may also bring civil enforcement actions, but the FTC can intervene. States and the FTC may go after both first- and third-party data collectors.
• Rulemaking Authority – FTC is granted rulemaking authority to implement the Act.

Schatz’s Data Care Act is co-sponsored by Sens Michael Bennet (D-CO), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Ed Markey (D-MA), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Patty Murray (D-WA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Chris Murphy (D-CT).

Privacy for America, a coalition of top advertising trade organizations and companies, released a comprehensive new framework for nationwide privacy legislation that would fundamentally change the way consumer privacy and security are protected in this country. The framework represents a new approach to data privacy that would not rely on the current ‘notice and choice’ model, which presents consumers with endless and complex privacy notices that they are essentially forced to accept if they want to participate in today’s economy. Instead, this new approach clearly defines and would make illegal data practices that would harm consumers or otherwise make personal data vulnerable to breach or misuse. Among the framework’s provisions are:

• Prohibitions against using consumer data to determine eligibility for a job, health care, financial aid, insurance, credit or housing outside of existing laws governing eligibility for these important benefits;
• Prohibitions against discrimination by using consumer data to set higher prices based on an individual’s race, color, religion, sexual orientation, and more;
• Prohibitions against using sensitive information like health, financial, biometric, and geolocation data without first obtaining users’ express consent;
• Provisions protecting so-called “tweens”: a vulnerable group of consumers over age 12 and under age 16 that is actively engaged online but not often subject to constant parental oversight;
• A requirement that companies make privacy policies much easier to read and understand;
• Provisions that give consumers the right to request access to and deletion of the personal information that a company holds about them, as well as the right to port certain data from one platform to another;
• Individuals can choose to limit companies’ use of personal information to draw detailed inferences or make predictions about them, with certain exceptions; and
• Significant new rulemaking authority, resources, and staff that will allow the Federal Trade Commission to more aggressively pursue and punish bad actors, bolstered by enforcement by state attorneys general.

The Department of Agriculture is providing $6 million to expand high-speed broadband infrastructure that will provide e-Connectivity for nearly 650 new customers in rural Wheeler and Grant counties. Oregon Telephone Corporation (OTC) will use a ReConnect Program grant to deploy 89 miles of fiber to serve some of the most remote areas of the continental United States. The new broadband infrastructure will provide network speeds ranging from 30 megabits per second (Mbps) to 1 gigabyte per second (Gbps). The network will allow Voice-Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video services to be delivered to each customer. Currently, many areas around the town of John Day lack internet service faster than 1.5 Mbps. In a public-private partnership with John Day in its capacity as the leader of the intergovernmental Grant County Digital Network Coalition, OTC is working to provide the fastest internet access to as many residents at the lowest price possible. Under the partnership, OTC will build a fiber network and deliver broadband service to residents and businesses while leasing infrastructure to John Day to provide service to public agencies. The first new fiber route is northwest of John Day. It will connect the towns of Long Creek, Monument and Spray. The second route will start at the northern edge of the town of Seneca and continue to Canyon City, just south of John Day. Overall, this expanded fiber optic network will extend broadband across a 242-square-mile area that includes 418 households, 22 businesses, 22 farms, three schools and two fire stations. Almost 650 new customers will be able to receive reliable access to high-speed internet services, improving the quality of life for those who live and work in these remote, rural communities.

In 2013, 17 percent of consumers in both China and the US had access to a fiber internet connection. Fast forward to 2019, China’s penetration has jumped to 86 percent while the US is only at 25 percent. While America continues to suffer from an immense digital divide, China’s government has made incredible progress building out a state-sponsored super network of fiber optic connections. Despite the constant posturing and discussion about the importance of fiber, the US has not been effective at deploying a nationwide fiber optical network. Why is this? Though there are many factors contributing to this trend, a few stick out as especially difficult obstacles: 

• Lack of Private Competition
• Inadequate Broadband Mapping
• Inefficient National Funding Programs
• Absence of Common Sense State-Level Infrastructure Policies

The total projected collected interstate and international end-user revenue base to be used in determining the contribution factor for the Universal Service support mechanisms for the first quarter of 2020 is $11,129,976,956.

To increase the quality of local journalism in Ohio, the Federal Communications Commission is requiring three newspapers to stop printing daily.  Back in 1975, a thousand media ecosystems ago, the FCC passed a well-intentioned rule that said a city’s newspaper couldn’t be owned by the same company that owns one of its TV or radio stations. There were only a few available slots in each market for a TV station, and those were divvied up by the FCC; there was, even then, usually only one, maybe two newspapers in most cities. In that limited environment for local media, it made sense to say different people needed to own a paper and a station. But the FCC rule grandfathered in the many newspapers that already owned a TV station. And over time, enforcement of the rule weakened.

If you’re grandfathered in, though, that exemption goes away if you sell your outlet to someone else. And that’s what happened with Cox — a once-proud news company. Cox owned the Dayton Daily News — it was the newspaper that started the company, actually — and WHIO-TV in Dayton. (Also, four radio stations. And two nearby county-seat papers, the Springfield News-Sun and the Hamilton Journal-News.) So when it agreed to sell a controlling share to Apollo Global Management in February for $3.1 billion, there was the possibility of a problem. That possibility grew stronger when a surprise court ruling pushed the FCC to enforce the rule more strictly.