NARUC challenged the FCC Lifeline decision to bypass state regulators in setting up a national process for designating providers eligible for new broadband low-income USF support (see 1603310056). "Congress specifies that the FCC simply has no role in the [eligible telecom carrier] designation process unless the State cannot act as a result of State Law," said the state regulatory association in a petition for review Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (NARUC v. FCC, No. 16-1170). It said if upheld on review, the FCC's "flawed view of the power of an Agency vs. the power of Congress to specify the scope of ... agency powers will break new ground transferring yet another substantial swath of authority from Congress to agencies." The NARUC challenge isn't a surprise (see 1604010042).

The industry USF contribution factor for Q3 will stay at 17.9 percent of carrier interstate and international telecom end-user revenue, industry consultant Billy Jack Gregg said in an email update Wednesday. He said the Universal Service Administrative Co. projected industry long-distance telecom revenue for Q3 at $14.56 billion, about $181 million less than in the current quarter. The revenue drop is part of a downward trend that is putting upward pressure on the contribution factor over time, he said, but USF demand for Q3 also is projected to edge down to $2.18 billion, providing an offset.

The FCC will hold a public demo of the new expanded online public inspection file, which will replace the current broadcast public inspection file process, a public notice said. The demo will include the interface that broadcasters and pay-TV companies will use to file documents online, and the new interface that will allow the data in the system to be more searchable. The demo will be at 1 p.m. Monday, June 13, in the Commission Meeting Room.

Changes to the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) should move the FCC into the 21st century, two officials said in a blog post Wednesday. “For most of ECFS's lifetime, a typical proceeding received a small number of comments (ranging from 10 to 500), most filed by communications practitioners,” wrote Alison Cutler, chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, and Chief Information Officer David Bray. But last year’s net neutrality proceeding had nearly 4 million comments from consumers and others, they said. “Today, the public expects to be able to easily submit comments in digital form and to have convenient access to all the other input received by the Commission, and the Commission needs a robust system capable of meeting the public’s expectations.” The FCC will do tutorials on the new ECFS starting Tuesday, they said. “We strongly encourage everyone who uses ECFS to participate in one of these demos to become familiar the new system and its features,” they said. “We will formally announce the final switch-over date two weeks before the transition.” They confirmed the FCC will no longer convert files to a PDF format (see 1605130046): "Filings will be made available to the public in their native formats." Another change is that groups that want to encourage mass filings will now have a process for filing them directly at the agency. Protect Internet Freedom recently accused the FCC of failing to post comments by its members opposing controversial proposed ISP privacy rules (see 1605110058). Agency officials blamed technical issues and the software the group had been using to file comments.

A draft FCC order to promote broadband in remote Alaska served by rate-of-return carriers likely will circulate Friday at the commission, an informed source told us Thursday. It's unclear if the item will be on the tentative agenda for the June 24 meeting due out Friday, the source said. But if the item circulates Friday, Chairman Tom Wheeler could still place it on the meeting's "Sunshine" agenda, which is to be released June 17. Christine O'Connor, executive director of the Alaska Telephone Association, told us she also didn't know if the item would be considered at the meeting, but said she believes the FCC will vote on an "Alaska Plan" by the end of the month. She noted Wheeler and other commissioners told Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, at a hearing in March they would address Alaska rate-of-return remote broadband issues by the end of Q2. "I don't think the second quarter target date will be delayed," she said. The FCC also could consider an undersea cable outage reporting order at its June or July meetings, said another informed source. An FCC spokesman didn't comment.

Commissioner Ajit Pai voted against the Globalstar draft order on circulation. Calling it "giv[ing] a particular company special rights to unlicensed spectrum in the 2.4 GHz band," Pai in a statement Thursday said "this type of preferential access would be a marked departure from our successful and innovative approach to unlicensed spectrum." Globalstar didn't comment. Informed sources told us earlier this week the broadband terrestrial low-power service draft order had only Chairman Tom Wheeler's vote (see 1606010043).

Mattel’s Wi-Fi-connected Hello Barbie doll shows the limits of privacy, said Meg Leta Jones, assistant professor at Georgetown University, at a Microsoft discussion Wednesday. “Barbie doesn’t have a screen, there’s nothing to click on,” Jones said: There is no way to see what the privacy policy is. If you ask the doll, she refers a user to a separate booklet, Jones said. “Who would have that booklet?” The Hello Barbie doll Jones brought with her belongs to a friend, she said. The doll is part of the “internet of other peoples’ things,” Jones said. But Jones said this raises the question of how much information someone could get from the doll if it falls into someone else’s hands. Everything said to Hello Barbie theoretically can be shared with other uses, Jones said. “Hello Barbie cannot keep a secret, no matter what she tells you,” she said. “The bigger question for this room is whether that’s a problem, whether it’s a privacy problem and what do we do about those types of problems.” States are taking a lead role in privacy cases, said Danielle Citron, a University of Maryland Law School professor. State attorneys general brought some of the first privacy cases, she said. State AGs since the 1990s have been “establishing norms that federal agencies have built upon and sharpening norms that are set by the feds,” she said. Early actions were based on the legal theory that “it’s an unfair and deceptive practice not to have a privacy policy,” Citron said. “At the time the FTC was arguing … self-regulation is just fine.”

The standard the Supreme Court laid out in its 1998 Burlington Industries v. Ellerth decision was the wrong one to apply to Sharon Stewart's workplace retaliation claim against the FCC, Stewart argued in a reply brief (in Pacer) Tuesday in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court rejected the Ellerth standard as it applies to retaliation claims in its Burlington Northern & Santa Fe v. White decision in 2006 "and sustaining it here would fly in the face of nearly five decades of precedent," the plaintiff said, arguing the court should revise an April order (in Pacer) on the FCC's motion to dismiss so as to deny the government's motion to dismiss one of the counts of her complaint. While White made clear reassignment of job duties isn't automatically actionable, court precedent has held that whether a reassignment is adverse is for a jury to decide, not for a court ruling on a motion to dismiss, Stewart said. Stewart sued the FCC in 2015, alleging she was penalized after complaining of a hostile work environment in the Office of Communications Business Opportunities, including being moved from her job preparing Section 610 reports. The FCC didn't comment Wednesday.

Along with updated comments on Wi-Fi and dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) systems designed to curb auto crashes sharing within the 5.9 GHz band, the FCC is seeking submittal of prototype unlicensed interference-avoidance devices for testing and comments on its proposed plan for evaluating electromagnetic compatibility of unlicensed devices and DSRC, the agency said in a record refresh public notice Wednesday. The PN was expected (see 1605260059). Comments in docket 13-49 will be due 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, with reply comments due 15 days after that. In a statement, Commissioner Ajit Pai said that after laying dormant for two years, a variety of lawmakers and his fellow commissioners, Jessica Rosenworcel and Michael O'Rielly, "[got] this proceeding moving again." Pai also said DSRC is intended to promote safety via vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure purposes, but the commercial applications and radar technologies that could employ the spectrum didn't exist at allocation: "My hope is that we make a smart decision quickly -- both in this spectrum band and in the lower, 120 MHz of the 5 GHz band -- to allow this spectrum to directly benefit consumers." And in a joint statement, Rosenworcel and O'Rielly said the notice "puts in place a framework to demonstrate that unlicensed use in the 5.9 GHz band is possible without causing harmful interference to incumbent licensees," particularly DSRC. They also said the July 30 deadline for the submission of testing equipment and the commitment to complete testing by Jan. 15 were aimed at providing "much-needed certainty for the unlicensed community and car manufacturers."

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said he appreciated the "responsiveness" of Universal Service Administrative Co. CEO Chris Henderson, who wrote three times in May to answer an April 18 letter from Pai seeking USAC help in fighting waste, fraud and abuse in the Lifeline USF program (see 1604180074). Pai said Henderson's responses confirmed that Total Call Mobile "was not alone" in "apparently overriding third-party identity verification (TPIV) safeguards"; apparent duplicate and ineligible enrollments drew an FCC-proposed $51 million fine against the company (see 1604080032). "Three of the companies identified by Total Call Mobile's agents indiscriminately overrode the TPIV safeguards between October 2014 and February 2015," Pai said in a Tuesday letter to Henderson that blacked out the companies' names. "The aggregate numbers for just these five months of enrollment are staggering. Roughly one third of the 2.5 million Lifeline subscribers enrolled by wireless resellers, or 821,482 subscribers, were enrolled using TPIV override," Pai said. Even without Total Call Mobile included, 11 other wireless resellers were responsible for 616,937 enrollments, he said: "That's outrageous." Pai commended USAC for changing the TPIV override process in February 2015, but said he remains concerned "that existing safeguards still may let unscrupulous carriers exploit the program." He said USAC staff still doesn't review "any document that verifies a person's identity" before a TPIV override is authorized. "Integrity of the process relies on the integrity of the carriers -- the only ones who know if a subscriber's identify is legitimate," he said. Pai asked Henderson for more information on 13 wireless resellers that USAC said frequently engaged in overriding and that weren't identified in his April 18 letter, and to answer various questions about USAC processes and policies.