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Consumer groups back anti-‘fast lane’ bill

Consumer interest and free speech groups are getting behind Democratic legislation to require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) block agreements to speed up some users’ Internet speeds.

The Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act from Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rep Doris Matsui (D-CA) “sends a clear signal” to the FCC, according to Public Knowledge vice president Chris Lewis.

“As the FCC continues to evaluate new net neutrality rules, it's important they understand that Americans want an Internet that everyone can succeed in, not just the companies with enough money to pay a toll to [Internet service providers]," he added.

The head of the American Library Association, which has previously supported the network neutrality concept of equal treatment for all online traffic, said the Democrats’ bill was "vitally important" to preserving free speech and education online. "It is critical for all to have equitable access to the Internet to support our nation’s social, cultural, educational and economic well-being," Barbara Stripling said.

Are smartphones the best medicine?

The explosion of medical devices and apps that integrate with smartphones has the potential to transform the healthcare system by allowing doctors to collect information about patients in real-time.

The marketing research firm Research2Guidance projects the global business in “mHealth” technology will grow 61 percent from 2013 to rake in $26 billion in revenues by 2017.

While healthcare providers and doctors are enthusiastic about the technology, federal officials are grappling with how the apps fit in with the broader regulatory system that is intended to protect patients. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is charged with overseeing of all medical devices in the United States, including apps that integrate with smartphones.

Lawmakers including Reps Michael Burgess (R-TX) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) had criticized the FDA’s approach to mHealth technology, warning a heavy regulatory hand could slow innovation and prevent useful tools from reaching the marketplace. In response, the FDA said it would use its discretion to avoid regulating the overwhelming majority of mHealth technology, because it poses only minimal risk to consumers.

Senators unveil bill to address 'massive and growing' threat

Private companies would have an easier time sharing information about cyber threats under a new bill from Senate Intelligence Committee leaders that is set to move forward.

Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) unveiled a bill that would incentivize companies to share information about cyber threats with each other and the government. The bill “responds to the massive and growing threat to national and economic security from cyber intrusion and attack, and seeks to improve the security of public and private computer networks by increasing awareness of threats and defenses,” according to a release from Feinstein’s office.

According to the release, the bill removes legal obstacles and provides liability protections for companies that want to share information about cyber threats. The bill also directs the federal government to share information about cyber threats with private companies “at the classified and unclassified levels.” The bill includes measures aimed at protecting privacy as companies share information with each other and the government.

Senators: No 'watered down' NSA reform

Three senators are doubling down on their call for a sweeping end to the National Security Agency’s “dragnet surveillance.” Sens Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) pledged to fight against “limited” and “watered down” legislation to reform the spy agency, which they said includes the bill that passed the House in May.

“This is clearly not the meaningful reform that Americans have demanded, so we will vigorously oppose this bill in its current form and continue to push for real changes to the law,” they wrote in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. “This firm commitment to both liberty and security is what Americans -- including the dedicated men and women who work at our nation's intelligence agencies -- deserve," they added. "We will not settle for less.”

The three senators, who have been among the most vocal critics of the NSA in the upper chamber, said that any reform bill must end a “loophole” allowing the government to snoop on some Americans’ emails without a warrant, add a special advocate to the federal court overseeing the intelligence community and clearly prevent bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.

Privacy groups ask President Obama not to renew NSA powers

A coalition of more than two dozen privacy and digital rights groups is asking President Barack Obama not to renew a contested National Security Agency program when its legal authority expires soon.

In a letter, organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Electronic Privacy Information Center urged Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder not to seek another court order allowing the agency to collect Americans’ phone records. The contested program is “not effective,” “unconstitutional” and “has been misused,” they wrote. “It should end.”

The NSA needs approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court every 90 days in order to continue its collection of records, which track the numbers people call as well as the length and frequency of their conversations but not what they actually talk about. The current authorization runs out.

Internet governance in transition: What's the destination?

[Commentary] With the decision to transition away from US control, addressing Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)’s longstanding accountability and "legitimacy" issues becomes even more pressing. If ICANN is not accountable to the US government or to other governments, to whom will it be accountable?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a non-profit, places a great deal of emphasis on obtaining input from the Internet "community," but in the end, it is ICANN's board that makes the decisions. That board has no external entities to which it is accountable. Meaningful accountability requires meaningful external checks, and virtually all major organizations are structured so as to be externally accountable. ICANN has no shareholders, members, or donors. The most direct way for ICANN to be externally accountable is to modify its governance structure so that board members, or at least a significant number of them, are accountable to external groups.

Our research shows that many organizations with coordination functions that are similar to ICANN's are governed by their direct users, who have a strong interest in the organization doing its job effectively. The direct users of ICANN include:

  • "Registries," which are companies that coordinate gTLDs, such as .com, .edu and .org;
  • "Registrars,” which register the second-level domain names that we all use, such as aol.com; and
  • Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), which are responsible for distributing numeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that are needed for the Internet to work.

In sum, as part of this transition, the issue of ICANN external accountability urgently needs to be addressed. We believe that our suggested system of accountability to ICANN's direct users would be the best way to move to the next phase of Internet governance.

[Lenard is president and senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute; White is a professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business]

Telecom comments flood lawmakers’ inboxes

Trade groups and associations have been rolling out policy prescriptions in recent days as part of the House Commerce Committee’s review of the nation’s telecommunications law.

The deadline for filing comments about telecommunications competition policy was June 13 and multiple organizations managed to slip in under the wire to get their voices heard.

New technologies “directly challenge each other in the marketplace in a manner not fully contemplated” when current law was written back in 1996, argued the Telecommunications Industry Association in its filing. Innovations that seem to cross previous boundaries are complicating the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) picture, it added, and new policies should be sure not to meddle with the different advancements.

“A legislative focus on specific, well-defined public interest objectives will ultimately prove more durable in achieving those objectives as technology evolves, rather than an approach which micro-manages how content providers, network operators, and customers should relate to each other,” it said.

Lawmakers prodded over email privacy

House lawmakers are being asked to support a bill to place new privacy protections on people’s emails. Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist and Katie McAuliffe, executive director of the organization’s Digital Liberty project, want members of Congress to back the Email Privacy Act as support gains momentum.

“The Email Privacy Act will overcome the 218 member threshold this week,” they wrote in a letter. “We encourage you to join fellow Representatives in co-sponsorship, if you have not done so already. Further, we encourage leadership to bring this bill to the floor for a recorded vote."

“Our Representatives should be on record and accountable to their constituencies, regarding support for the Fourth Amendment to the American Constitution," they added.

The bill, from Reps Kevin Yoder (R-KS) and Jared Polis (D-CO) would update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allows law enforcement officials to obtain emails and other communications without a warrant as long as they have been online for at least 180 days.

Lawmakers push to ban taxes on Internet service

Legislation to permanently bar states and cities from placing a tax on the Internet is moving forward in the House.

The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act, the panel announced. State and local governments are currently prohibited from enacted taxes on Internet access, but the 1998 law banning them is set to expire in 2014.

Unless new legislation goes forward, state legislatures and city councils could start eyeing Web surcharges in order to fill dwindling coffers. The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act would extend that ban indefinitely.

The bill currently has 214 cosponsors in the House, just four short of a majority. A companion bill in the Senate from Finance Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen John Thune (R-SD) has 50 cosponsors, spelling an easy path forward in both chambers.

FTC head warns about ‘massive profiles’ of info

Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez warned about the potential perils of companies that collect billions of bits of information about how people shop, eat, work and live.

The companies generate “massive profiles” about people, Ramirez said on PBS’s "NewsHour,” which include details about their income, political affiliation, health and religion, among many other areas.

“The question that causes us some deep concern is what are the implications of being categorized in that way?” she asked. “There is a potential for these categories to be used in ways that could ultimately be discriminatory or could raise other sensitive concerns.”

Sen Rubio warns of cellphone ‘crunch’

Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) is setting his sights on the nation’s airwaves. The Florida Republican is launching a new effort to turn government-run chunks of spectrum into a tool for powering people’s cellphones and tablets.

He just introduced the first of three bills that he said were part of a multi-year effort to take advantage of the resource, which is suddenly in high demand.

“We know the crunch is coming, and there’s going to have to be a steady stream of availability to keep up with the pace of demand,” he said. “The reality is that as everything is going increasingly mobile -- every sector of our lives and of the economy is moving to mobile platforms -- the increase in demand on the system is going to exponentially grow,” he said.

Rep McCarthy’s rise in House GOP leadership could be boon for tech

Silicon Valley would be one of the winners if Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becomes the next House majority leader.

The GOP whip has been a frequent guest at major tech companies’ headquarters and has had their back on nearly every issue in recent years, industry insiders say.

“I think every time we’ve had something up or we’ve wanted to see progress on an issue, he’s been there for us,” said Andy Halataei, senior vice president of government relations at the Information Technology Industry Council. The trade group, which includes giants like AOL, Facebook and Microsoft, named McCarthy its legislator of the year in 2012, praising his understanding of “the critical importance of technology and innovation to create jobs in California and across the country.”

From his home in Bakersfield (CA), Rep McCarthy has been a regular traveler to Silicon Valley to meet with company executives. Former aides and associates now work in the K Street shops of major tech firms like Facebook and Uber.

House Republicans urge FCC to 'defer' to states

House Republicans are warning Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler to tread carefully as he tries to open up local governments to more broadband competition.

Their letter, led by House Commerce Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rep Bill Johnson (R-OH), comes after Chairman Wheeler’s repeated pledges to make the market for Internet access more competitive by creating opportunities for community broadband projects, currently restricted by state laws.

“Inserting the Commission into the states’ economic and fiscal affairs as you have suggested ... violates state sovereignty in a manner that warrants deeper examination,” said the 60 House Republicans who signed the missive.

In their letter, the group of House Republicans urged Wheeler to defer to state governments, which “understand and are more attentive to the needs of the American people than unelected federal bureaucrats in Washington.”

Lawmakers eye Facebook’s new ad practices

Privacy-minded lawmakers are pledging to monitor Facebook’s new advertising system, which will involve tracking users across other websites and apps to better target advertising.

Facebook announced that it would begin targeting advertisements to users based on the websites they visit and apps that they use. In a blog post, the company explained that users can opt out of the web browser-based tracking through an online ad industry program and can also opt out of the app-based tracking through their smartphones’ privacy controls.

“Facebook’s announcement today to track users as young as 13 outside its website in order to gather information for targeted advertising raises a major privacy red flag,” Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) said, touting his own bill to prevent online tracking of teenagers. “It doesn’t matter where teen users are online, Facebook will create detailed digital dossiers without their permission based on what they click,” he said. “Now more than ever, we need to put rules on the books to ensure teens are protected from being tracked.”

House Intel chief ‘extremely optimistic’ on cyber bill's chances

The head of the House Intelligence Committee thinks the odds are good that the Senate will pass a long-delayed cybersecurity bill.

After a meeting with leaders of the Senate Intelligence panel, Rep Mike Rogers (R-MI) said his hopes for action soon have returned.

“That was one of the most productive meetings I thought we had this year on this issue, and I am back to being extremely optimistic that we are going to get a cyber sharing bill this year,” Rogers said. ”I am very, very encouraged by this meeting yesterday.”

Tech company, free speech groups to protect websites under attack

Online security company CloudFlare and free speech organizations are teaming up to protect “politically and artistically important” websites from attacks.

Through an initiative -- named Project Galileo -- CloudFlare will provide its tools to protect against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to websites facing free speech threats.

“Bullies should not be able to knock sites offline simply because they disagree with their content,” CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince said. CloudFlare will provide its security tools to threatened websites identified by the 15 free speech organizations that are a part of Project Galileo, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology and Access, the company said in its release announcing the initiative.

Senate Dems to FCC: Go easy on broadcasters

A group of Senate Democrats is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to show leniency to broadcasters that have resource sharing agreements, which are now banned.

In a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, the lawmakers said they worry the result of the agency’s new rules “will be less competition since certain broadcasters may be forced to cease operations, which would harm not only the broadcasters themselves but also the viewers they serve.”

Sens Charles Schumer (D-NY), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Bob Casey Jr (D-PA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) signed the letter. With their request, the Senate Democrats join Republicans and broadcasters in expressing concern that the FCC’s recent actions to curb collusion between broadcasters will unfairly hurt the companies and their viewers.

Senate to consider AT&T-DirecTV merger

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the proposed $49 billion merger of AT&T and DirecTV in late June, the panel announced. The Antitrust subcommittee’s session will be held on the same day that the House Judiciary Committee holds its hearing, on June 24.

The House panel will go first with a hearing, followed hours later by lawmakers in the Senate. The twin hearings will likely feature some skepticism from lawmakers worried that the trend of mergers among major media companies will lead to higher prices and worse service for their constituents.

Poll: Many want email privacy overhaul

A poll sponsored by civil liberties organizations shows that many people in the country want to update the law that allows the government to search emails without a warrant.

According to the survey from Vox Populi Polling, more than 80 percent of people in six states and the greater Los Angeles area wanted to overhaul the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which allows warrantless searches of emails that are older than 180 days. Additionally, between 64 and 72 percent of people in those areas thought that online privacy is becoming increasingly important. And in four states, more than 70 percent of voters said they would be more likely to support a candidate looking to update the law.

“There is a rare, overwhelming and incredibly diverse consensus among voters that ECPA needs to be updated,” Brent Seaborn, a Vox Populi Polling partner, said. “These levels of support are nearly unheard of in politics today... All candidates should note that this issue carries power whether they are involved in general election races or primary campaigns.”

Rep Walden: No hearings for Comcast, AT&T mergers

Despite calls from Democrats, the top House Republican on telecom issues isn’t planning to hold hearings on the proposed multi-billion dollar deals to combine giants in the telecom industry.

“It’s not really our intent to hold individual hearings on every merger,” Rep Greg Walden (R-OR), chairman of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, said. “You’ve got these agencies that have the ability to do an independent look,” including the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice, he said.

Democrats on the committee called on Rep Walden and the Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) to hold hearings on the recently-announced $45 billion deal to combine Comcast and Time Warner Cable as well as the $49 billion deal to merge AT&T and DirecTV. Rep Walden said he receives these requests regularly, but his subcommittee is “trying to focus on the bigger policy issues.”

Rep Walden noted that other committees, including the House Judiciary Committee, are holding hearings on the proposed mergers. He said he does have concerns that the FCC will use the hearings to achieve its regulatory goals, such as net neutrality, without going through agency process.

Comcast hits back on tech group’s merger opposition

Comcast is pushing back on the tech industry’s opposition to the cable giant’s merger with Time Warner Cable. The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) -- which includes Google, Facebook, Aereo and T-Mobile -- is wrong to say that the merger will harm competition and consumers, Comcast Vice President of Government Communications Sena Fitzmaurice said.

"Every market Comcast operates in is highly competitive, and we compete actively every day against some of CCIA's members,” she said. Fitzmaurice criticized CCIA for its “inaccurate figures” about Comcast’s market share if the proposed merger goes through.

Mobile banking could help low-income people, feds say

The federal consumer watchdog says mobile banking services present enormous potential benefits for low-income people. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said it will take a closer look at how mobile banking and financial services applications can empower unbanked and underbanked people to take better control of their personal finances.

"For the economically vulnerable, mobile (banking) can enhance access to safer, more affordable products and services in ways that can improve their economic lives," the agency wrote in the Federal Register.

The CFPB issued a request for information as it considers how to regulate mobile banking services. The bureau said 74,000 people each day signed up for mobile banking services in 2013, many of whom are low-income individuals whose only access to the Internet is through their phone, the agency said. According to a Federal Reserve study, 39 percent of underbanked people use mobile banking applications.

Chairman Leahy pushes ‘narrow’ bill to keep satellite TV from going dark

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced a bill to reauthorize the law governing the satellite television marketplace. Chairman Leahy noted the narrow focus of the bill, which he said “may not please all stakeholders.”

“My focus is on the consumers who stand to lose access to broadcast television content in the event that Congress is unable to pass a bill by the end of the year,” he said. The bipartisan bill from Chairman Leahy and Senate Judiciary ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) reauthorizes the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA) for five years.

Key provisions of that law are set to expire by the end of 2014, which would keep satellite television companies from providing broadcast programming to subscribers who are unable to get the broadcast programming otherwise.

“If Congress does not act by the end of 2014 to reauthorize the distant signal license, approximately 1.5 million consumers will lose access to the broadcast television programming that they are currently receiving,” Chairman Leahy said.

Supreme Court called into secrecy fight

The Supreme Court is being called to weigh in on a years-long Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the high court to decide whether the Obama administration should hand over a secret memo allowing the FBI to obtain phone records without any judicial process.

"The public has a fundamental right to know how the federal government is interpreting surveillance and privacy laws," EFF senior counsel David Sobel said. "If the [Justice Department’s] Office of Legal Counsel has interpreted away federal privacy protections in secret, the public absolutely needs access to that analysis. There is no way for the public to intelligently advocate for reforms when we're intentionally kept in the dark," he added.

The disputed memo first came to light in a 2010 report from the department’s inspector general.