Washington Post

Once pilloried by consumer advocates and comedian John Oliver as a shill for big business, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler took many by surprise as he brought challenge after challenge to the dominance of the companies he once represented. “I have always been the insurgent versus the incumbent,” he said.

Welcoming the votes of his Republican colleagues when it was politically convenient, forging ahead unilaterally when it wasn't, Chairman Wheeler sought to turn a staid federal office better known for policing celebrity wardrobe malfunctions and distributing airwave licenses into a consumer protection agency that would shape U.S. companies and technologies of the future. But now a dark cloud looms over Wheeler's legacy as Republicans — led by President-elect Donald Trump — prepare to undo some of the most significant regulations approved under his watch. No policy inspires as much fury among technologically minded Republicans as net neutrality, a signature FCC initiative that turned Internet service into a kind of 21st-century utility. Subjecting Internet providers to the same obligations that traditional phone companies must meet, Wheeler's decision to ram the policy through over conservative objections led to intense outrage from his political opponents. A federal court upheld the rules in the face of an industry lawsuit, appearing to settle the matter once and for all.

As President-elect Donald Trump and his people lay waste to various media-government norms and standards, they now appear intent on defanging the retraction request. The Presidential Transition Team on Tuesday issued one such document that accused CNN of the following journalistic malpractice: “On January 16, 2017, CNN broadcast a story by Manu Raju, titled ‘First on CNN: Trump’s Cabinet pick invested in company, then introduced a bill to help it,’ which omitted facts and drew conclusions in an effort to attack President-Elect Donald Trump’s designee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Tom Price.” The piece, said the retraction request, was “blatantly false.” It was not.

A Q&A with outgoing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Asked, "What would you say were your biggest accomplishments and, by contrast, your biggest defeats or setbacks?" Chairman Wheeler replied, "I'm really proud of what we did on net neutrality. I'm proud about what we did on privacy. I'm proud of what we did on cybersecurity. I'm proud of what we did on E-Rate. I'm proud of what we did on Lifeline. There are a lot of things I look back on with pride, and smile. I mean, we were the first to have spectrum for 5G in the world. We expanded the rural broadband program. I mean, I'm proud, when I look back on it." Asked, "What are you going to do now? Do you see yourself staying in tech policy?" Chairman Wheeler replied, "I'm a network guy. I've spent the last 40 years of my life in new and evolving networks. I don't think the cat can change his stripes. I'm going to go to the Aspen Institute and decompress for about three months. I don't intend to go crawl under a rock someplace."

Vice President-elect Mike Pence pledged that the incoming administration would work with Republican and Democratic mayors alike on priorities facing America’s cities, including passage of a “big” infrastructure bill.

Appearing before a gathering of the US Conference of Mayors in Washington, Pence relayed that he had told President-elect Donald Trump that he would be dropping by and that Trump offered this instruction: “Tell 'em we’re going to do an infrastructure bill, and it’s going to be big.” Trump has pledged to mobilize anywhere from half a trillion to a trillion dollars to upgrading the nation’s aging roads, bridges and transportation hubs. But rather than relying entirely on direct federal spending, the Trump plan could utilize an investment tax credit to spur private spending.

When President-elect Donald Trump rails against the “dishonest” media, roughly half of Americans agree with his premise — that the press treats him unfairly. But even more people think Trump is unfair to the media. Those are among the results of a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, which showed that 47 percent of Americans generally view media coverage of Trump as unfair; 49 percent say coverage is fair (plus-2) but the poll's margin of error is 3.5 points. Call it an even split. Public opinion is clearer on Trump's treatment of the media: 57 percent characterize it as unfair, and just 38 percent call it fair. That's a 19-point gap.

So why, you might ask, does Trump keep up a fight in which he looks like the more flagrant offender? It appears that his anti-media screeds do more damage to his own reputation than to his target's. The answer could have something to do with the way public opinion breaks down along demographic lines. In short, Trump's attacks on the media overwhelmingly bother people who, generally speaking, are not likely to support him, anyway. At the same time, they are red meat for his base.

President-elect Donald Trump named former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani as an informal adviser on cybersecurity. Giuliani, who heads a cybersecurity consulting firm Giuliani Partners, will serve as an adviser on finding solutions to cyber-incursions in the private sector and to advise the government on possible responses.

Giuliani, an early Trump supporter, was a top candidate for secretary of state in the Trump administration but was passed over for former ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson. “This is a rapidly evolving field both as to intrusions and solutions and it is critically important to get timely information from all sources,” the transition team said. “Mr. Giuliani was asked to initiate this process because of his long and very successful government career in law enforcement and his now sixteen years of work providing security solutions in the private sector.” According to the transition, Trump will solicit “anecdotal information” from private-sector executives on the challenges and solutions to cybersecurity challenges.

Top AT&T executives swept into Trump Tower Jan 12 for a discussion with President-elect Donald Trump's team that could include the telecommunication giant's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson and Senior Executive Vice President Robert Quinn arrived at about 9:15 am — and headed upstairs without telling reporters why they were there. But with AT&T's massive merger still pending — and with Trump having publicly opposed the deal — it would be a surprise if the acquisition were not brought up in Stephenson and Quinn's meeting. That is bolstered by the fact that Quinn serves as AT&T's top official in Washington and is charged with handling regulatory affairs. To complete the purchase, AT&T must persuade the federal government that the deal would not harm competition.

For years, companies like Facebook and Google have captivated audiences with the prospect of someday beaming Internet access down to earth from drones or satellites flying high above the ground. The dream held particular promise for developing countries where it's often expensive to build cellular towers or lay down physical Internet cabling. Now, though, Google's parent company, Alphabet, is scaling back its ambitions for Internet by drone. It has disbanded the team that had been developing the technology, according to the company. Dozens of employees in the group, known as Titan, have been reassigned to work on other projects. They include Project Wing, Alphabet's effort to develop a drone delivery service, and Project Loon, which seeks to deliver Internet around the world via floating balloons. That project is still going strong, Alphabet says.

WikiLeaks wants to start building a list of verified Twitter users that would include highly sensitive and personal information about their families, their finances and their housing situations. “We are thinking of making an online database with all 'verified' twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships,” WikiLeaks tweeted Jan 6.

The disclosure organization, run by Julian Assange, says the information would be used for an artificial-intelligence program. But Twitter users immediately fired back, saying WikiLeaks would use the list to take political vengeance against those who criticize it. Twitter “verifies” certain users, such as world leaders, nonprofit organizations and news outlets, with a blue check mark beside their names so that other users of the service can be confident about the posters' identities. Asked by journalist Kevin Collier why it needed to build a database of dossiers, WikiLeaks replied that the database would be used as a “metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs.” But the proposal faced a sharp and swift backlash as technologists, journalists and security researchers slammed the idea as a “sinister” and dangerous abuse of power and privacy.

AT&T is trying to ease its way out of scrutiny by the Federal Communications Commission over the wireless and TV giant's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. Telecommunication regulators shouldn't need to analyze the deal because it will be beyond their jurisdiction, AT&T signaled in a filing Jan 5 to the Securities and Exchange Commission. By potentially eliminating a layer of oversight, the claim could accelerate the merger's approval in Washington, where federal antitrust officials are also expected to review the proposed purchase.

AT&T, which became the nation's largest pay-TV provider when it acquired DirecTV in 2016, is gunning for Time Warner's massive library of content and intellectual property, which it hopes to distribute and sell advertising against. In its SEC filing, AT&T said it has concluded that no licenses will be transferred. (In addition, Time Warner could seek to spin off its FCC licenses so that they are not a part of the deal, analysts have said.)