A Q&A with House Communmications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-PA).

“I believe access is a right,” Chairman Doyle says. “We shouldn’t be able to block any group of people from access to the internet.”  According to Chairman Doyle, the Save the Internet Act will not only restore net neutrality protections but will also reaffirm the power and authority of the Federal Communications Commission. “Today, nobody is enforcing any rules. There’s no cop on the beat,” Doyle explains. “Chairman Ajit Pai, when he revealed the open internet order, basically just abdicated the FCC’s authority to regulate the ISPs.” He emphasizes that “you need a cop on the beat. These rules wouldn’t have been put into place if there was never this kind of behavior on the part of ISPs. We didn’t just dream all this up.”

As with other efforts to pass similar protections, Chairman Doyle’s bill has been met with fierce resistance from Republicans in Congress. However, recent polling consistently reports that a bipartisan majority of Americans supports net neutrality. “The opponents are really just a handful of companies,” says Chairman Doyle. “Not the American people.”

Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has made the issue of rural broadband a major talking point as she begins her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Gov Tim Walz (D-MN) has promised he’d attack the problem like a “moonshot.” Meanwhile, a Republican-sponsored bill with bipartisan support is making its way through the Minnesota Legislature, promising $35 million a year in each of the next two years for rural broadband upgrades. All the talk about addressing the issue is encouraging, broadband advocates say. But with one in five rural Minnesota households still lacking access to high-speed, wired internet service, there’s a long way to go. Gov Walz's “moonshot” would simply return annual broadband spending to its 2016 level of $35 million. That number dropped to $20 million in 2017 and to zero in 2018 after then-Gov. Mark Dayton (D-MN) vetoed the Legislature’s omnibus spending bill. In the budget negotiations that followed, broadband was left on the cutting-room floor. The key difference is that the current proposal runs for two years.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed policy that could jeopardize the collection of vital information for weather prediction, the heads of the Commerce Department and NASA say. This data is disseminated across wireless radio frequencies known as “spectrum.” It enables transmission of information from satellites, weather balloons, ocean buoys, weather radars and other technologies that are used by government agencies and the private sector. But some of this same spectrum is coveted by commercial wireless providers for their next-generation 5G networks. The federal government’s science-focused agencies and the FCC are battling over spectrum policy and its allocation. The question in this dispute boils down to in essence: What’s the bigger priority — the 5G network for wireless providers or accurate weather forecasts?  A Feb 28 letter from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine urged the FCC to remove a policy paper on its website containing a proposal that “would have a significant negative impact on the transmission of critical Earth science data — an American taxpayer investment spanning decades and billions of dollars with data supporting public safety, natural disaster and weather forecasting." The letter said the FCC posted the proposal when “there was no consensus in the interagency on this topic.” On March 8, the FCC replied to the letter and rejected the request.

The following items have been adopted by the Federal Communications Commission and deleted from the list of items scheduled for consideration at the March 15 Open Meeting:

1. Review of the Commission’s Rules Governing the 896-901/935-940 MHz Band (WT Docket No. 17-200): The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would propose to reconfigure the 900 MHz band to create a broadband segment to facilitate technologies and services for a wide variety of businesses, including critical infrastructure, as well as seek comment on various transition mechanisms to achieve this goal.
2. Streamlined Reauthorization Procedures for Assigned or Transferred Television Satellite Stations (MB Docket No. 18-63); Modernization of Media Regulation Initiative (MB Docket No. 17-105): The Commission will consider a Report and Order that streamlines the reauthorization process for television satellite stations when they are assigned or transferred.

On Facebook's map of humanity, the node for "you" often includes vast awareness of your movements online and a surprising amount of info about what you do offline, too. The company has near-total awareness of every move you make on its website or in its apps. Facebook does scan your chat messages, but it isn't exactly reading them — it runs an automated scan for child pornography and other banned content. Facebook sees you less thoroughly outside its own digital turf, but it still sees a lot. This data comes from two places: partner services and third-party information brokers. Facebook has tools that partner websites use to integrate with Facebook, including the inclusion of "Like" and "Share" buttons, as well as a tracking cookie known as Facebook Pixel. Facebook knows your location, even if you haven't directly given it permission to access your phone's GPS, by tracking the IP address of the phones, computers and other devices you use to access its servers.

Google, a shrewd Washington player, has shifted into overdrive and adapted its approach as calls to regulate Big Tech have grown louder. A person familiar with Google’s strategy for influencing public debate says the company generally doesn’t seek to change experts’ thinking but, rather, to underwrite their time and encourage them to be more vocal on issues important to Google. Google may pre-vet op-eds and ask that certain statements be made stronger or weaker, which seems small but ends up having a big impact, the person said. "Google is much savvier at this game than Comcast or AT&T in that it doesn’t pay for strict quid pro quos. Its strategy relies on social capture,” one congressional staffer said.Google finds an organization that seems to share Google’s values and then donates money without a specific ask, the staffer said.

Regulating big tech is quickly becoming a central theme of the 2020 presidential race. But many of the tech-industry insiders I spoke with, including some who agree with Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) that the big companies are too powerful, cautioned that some of the details in her proposal were too vague, and could backfire if put into effect as written. Warren’s plan is a bold first stab at reform, and some of her proposals make a lot of sense. But I’d offer a few edits.

• Apply specific fixes to specific problems: Rather than one giant package that crams everything together, a set of effective tech regulations would treat each problem discretely, and address each with surgical precision.
• Split off cloud businesses.
• Get rid of the “app tax”: Stop Apple and Google, the makers of the two dominant mobile operating systems, from taking unfair advantage of mobile app developers.
• Don’t get lured into a censorship debate: focus squarely on competition, and avoid being sucked into partisan debates about content censorship.

Nielsen says set-top-box/return-path data coming from pay-TV providers and other sources can underrepresent certain viewer groups -- in particular Hispanic and African-American homes, compared to other household types. Compared with official US Census estimates and Nielsen’s representative national panel, these homes -- many coming from cable, satellite and telco platforms -- underrepresent Hispanics by 33%, Spanish-language dominant Hispanics by 49% and African Americans by 34%. Nielsen adds that when you compare set-top-box/return-path data homes with over-the-air/broadband only, the situation is even worse. Set-top-box data measurement under-represents Hispanics by 50%, Spanish-language dominant Hispanics by 68% and African Americans by 38%.

The United States and its allies are arguing over whether governments should use telecommunications equipment manufactured by Huawei. However, 5G is not the only important communications network. In other parts of the world such as Latin America and Africa, Huawei is laying the submarine cables that carry most long-distance communications traffic. Other countries are more willing to work with Huawei because they know that the United States, too, has tapped into global cable networks. By taking advantage of the opportunity to tap into the world’s communications network, the US government has damaged its ability to counter the expansion of Chinese and non-US firms. Its current efforts to constrain Huawei and other Chinese firms in Europe do not address other countries’ lack of confidence in the proposed American alternatives.

[Jack Hasler is a PhD candidate in political science at George Washington University.]

He prefers Sharpies over email. His aides cart around cardboard boxes of work papers — not laptops — for him to sift through on Air Force One. On pressing technology matters, he prefers a nonscientific approach. In short, President Donald Trump often operates on the theory that older is better. “It doesn’t put the best face forward for the United States to have a president talking that way,” Darrell West, the director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview. “It makes us look like we’re not a scientifically literate country.”