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Speaking at a CTIA conference, Federal Communications Commission member Jessica Rosenworcel offered ideas to inform wireless policies going forward.

1. Consumers come first. We should continue to work to help prevent bill shock; help deter the sale of stolen cell phones; make contracts and bills more clear; and clean up wireless cramming.
2. Simplicity is the path to successful incentive auctions. The success of incentive auctions is built on three simple goals—making it attractive and easy for those who want to return their spectrum; treating broadcasters that want to stay on their air fairly under the law; and raising enough revenue to support a national interoperable, wireless broadband public safety network.
3. An open auction process matters. Hold public hearings to explore the four major aspects of the auctions—the reverse auction, the repacking, the forward auction, and the transition process.
4. Have a 600 MHz bandplan in place by the third quarter of this year.
5. Auction the 65 megahertz identified in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act in the third quarter of 2014—and all at once. By auctioning these bands in a single auction we can generate more interest, and get a head start on funding the public safety network.
6. Hold the incentive auction in the fourth quarter of 2014. This gives carriers time to reassess their spectrum needs following the traditional auction of 65 megahertz of spectrum identified in the law.
7. Auction 2155-2180 MHz along with the right to work with the federal incumbents in the 1755-1780 MHz band. This raises the value of the 2155-2180 MHz band and creates opportunity for specific parties to negotiate with federal users.
8. Sharing the repacking methodology by the end of the year will enhance transparency.
9. To help unpack the issues in the repacking process along the border, the Commission should convene an international working group, including minds from the federal side, state side, industry, and public.
10. Our federal spectrum policy needs to be built on carrots, not sticks. Across government, we need to consider incentives for more efficient use of federal spectrum. We must find ways for agencies to see gain and not just loss from commercial reallocation.

The U.S. response to hundreds of billions of dollars in intellectual property theft -- "hectoring governments and prosecuting individuals" -- has to date been "utterly inadequate to deal with the problem." That is according to a just-released report from the bipartisan Commission on the Theft of Intellectual Property (IPC), which can include everything from counterfeit hard goods -- pirated DVDs -- to a host of digital goods including TV and movie content.

The report found that IP theft is north of $300 billion annually, or about the equivalent of all U.S. imports to Asia. That is appropriate, since China remains the number one illegal exporter of U.S. intellectual property according to the report. The committee also calls IP theft the greatest wealth transfer in history, and one that costs millions of U.S. jobs.

H.R. 1211 would amend the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIA generally allows any person to obtain federal agency records. Specifically, the legislation would require the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to establish a single FOIA website for making requests and checking on the status of those requests; establish a Chief FOIA Officers Council to review compliance with the act and to recommend improvements; and require additional reports from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and other agencies.

CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 1211 would cost $20 million over the 2014-2018 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts. The legislation also could affect direct spending by agencies not funded through annual appropriations (such as the Tennessee Valley Authority). Therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures apply. CBO estimates, however, that any net increase in spending by those agencies would not be significant. Enacting the bill would not affect revenues. H.R. 1211 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) and would not affect the budgets of state, local, or tribal governments.

There were two stark object lessons for the technology industry in Congress. One showed the power of influence. The other showed the power of the iPhone.

In the Senate Judiciary Committee, the industry scored an enormous victory. It got its way on the immigration bill after Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, told his fellow committee members that he would not vote for the bill unless they agreed to changes that Silicon Valley pushed for. It reflected an aggressive effort by the industry: companies have vastly expanded their lobbying budgets in Washington and dispatched executives to meet with lawmakers to push for an immigration overhaul. The latest, brashest entrant is an advocacy group led by Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, which raised huge sums of money to sponsor advertisements supporting several critical Republicans who back the immigration bill.

In the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations, meanwhile, Apple‘s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, testified. He was questioned by panel members about how Apple’s subsidiaries had helped the company pay as little as one-twentieth of 1 percent in taxes on billions of dollars in income. Congressional investigators earlier this week unveiled a report detailing those tax diversions by Apple subsidiaries, based in Ireland but spanning other regions around the world.