Ajit Pai's critics should demand an end to the "ugly personal attacks" on the FCC chairman and his family over the net neutrality reversal, blogged Free State Foundation President Randolph May Thursday. "It's no secret that I support the Commission's Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIF Order)," he wrote. "I understand there are arguments on both sides. ... But it should go without saying that it's one thing to advocate your views passionately and another altogether to engage in personal attacks like those against Chairman Pai that, even now, continue unabated. Those government officials, whether currently at the FCC or in Congress, who are leading efforts, through whatever avenues, to overturn the FCC’s RIF Order bear a special responsibility to speak out forcefully and unequivocally against the personal attacks."

The FCC modified its schedule of Freedom of Information Act processing fees, which are based on the government service (GS) grade level of the employees (at "Step 5") who handle the requests. The new hourly fees run from $15.70 for GS-1s up to $87.84 for GS-15s, said a public notice Thursday. The copy charge is 10 cents per page and computer disk charge is $5.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich thanked the Google Project Zero team in an open letter Thursday for “creating the opportunity for the industry to address these new issues in a coordinated fashion,” referring to chip-based security vulnerabilities revealed last week that were initially largely attributed to Intel (see 1801030053). Jann Horn, of the Google Project Zero team, blogged last week that the team had reported the issue to Intel, AMD and ARM in June, saying: “We have discovered that CPU data cache timing can be abused to efficiently leak information out of mis-speculated execution, leading to (at worst) arbitrary virtual memory read vulnerabilities across local security boundaries in various contexts.” Variants of the issue are “known to affect many modern processors, including certain processors by Intel, AMD and ARM. For a few Intel and AMD CPU models, we have exploits that work against real software. We reported this issue to Intel, AMD and ARM on 2017-06-01,” Horn said. Intel said last week the software analysis methods -- which, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to “improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices” -- were not unique to Intel. “Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices -- with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems -- are susceptible to these exploits,” it said, adding it was working with AMD, ARM and other operating system vendors on an industry-wide approach to resolve the issue. In his Thursday letter, Krzanich thanked Google Project Zero “for practicing responsible disclosure, creating the opportunity for the industry to address these new issues in a coordinated fashion.” Krzanich outlined Intel’s pledge for “customer-first urgency,” saying that by Jan. 15 it will have issued updates for “at least 90 percent of Intel CPUs introduced in the past five years, with updates for the remainder of these CPUs available by the end of January.” Updates for older products will be handled by priority set by customers, he said. Krzanich also promised “transparent and timely communications” and “ongoing security assistance.” To accelerate security across the industry, Krzanich committed Intel will “publicly identify significant security vulnerabilities following rules of responsible disclosure and, further, we commit to working with the industry to share hardware innovations that will accelerate industry-level progress in dealing with side-channel attacks.” Intel will add funding for academic and independent research into potential security threats, he said. Google further detailed in an update Thursday how it protected Google Cloud products against "speculative execution vulnerabilities," and ensured Google Cloud customers saw minimal impact to performance.

The FCC solicited nominations for its Intergovernmental Advisory Committee, whose membership was recently doubled from 15 to 30 local, state and tribal government officials (see 1712200063). The FCC seeks to fill 18 seats, including three additional vacancies to replace Florida Public Service Commissioner Ronald Brisé, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and Edwin Lee, mayor of the city and county of San Francisco; Brisé and Reed leave office this month and Lee "unfortunately passed away in December," said a public notice Thursday. Applications are due within 60 days.

An FCC plan to create an Office of Economics and Analytics received endorsements from Tech Policy Institute Senior Fellow Thomas Lenard and American Enterprise Institute Visiting Fellow Roslyn Layton. Wayne Leighton, chief of the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, and his team "produced an excellent report" on creating an OEA that's "everything Chairman [Ajit] Pai could have hoped for," blogged Lenard Thursday. "The report contains a thoughtful and carefully researched analysis of how to better incorporate economics into the agency’s policy making, drawing on lessons from other agencies and adapting them to the needs and culture of the FCC," Lenard wrote. "Among its most important recommendations, the report proposes that the 'OEA should produce a separate, non-public memorandum on economic issues to accompany documents circulated to the Commission.' The commissioners will undoubtedly not always accept the recommendations of the economists, but their analysis, whether or not it supports the Commission’s ultimate position, should be available to the commissioners unfiltered." Pai's OEA draft order on the Jan. 30 tentative agenda is his "most important accomplishment for those who believe that policy should be informed by the best available evidence," wrote Layton, whose Forbes opinion piece was titled: "Making Government Work Again: New Office to Strengthen Role of Data at FCC."

The FCC Enforcement Bureau’s Office of the Field Director created an email address for the public to use when responding to an enforcement action from one of the bureau field offices, the bureau said in a public notice Wednesday. The new address, field@fcc.gov, is intended to streamline the operation of the field offices, the PN said. “New enforcement actions will instruct recipients to send responses to field@fcc.gov rather than to email addresses that are associated with the Bureau’s three Regions,” the PN said.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s three fellow commissioners released statements Tuesday and Wednesday congratulating him on his renomination to the agency. Carr and Chairman Ajit Pai also released statements on the renomination (see 1801090044). Fellow Republican Mike O’Rielly extended “congratulations and appreciation to the President” for Carr’s renomination, praising Carr’s leadership on infrastructure deployment. Carr “has deep knowledge of the legal and policy issues facing the communications sector,” said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. “I wish him all the best in the confirmation process.” Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said she shares Carr’s commitment “to growing our economy and building smart infrastructure so that all Americans are connected.” Rosenworcel said she looks forward to working with Carr “on these critical issues.”

The FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee will meet Jan. 23 and 24, starting at 9 a.m. both days, in the commission meeting room. At the group's fourth meeting, "the BDAC will consider reports and recommendations from its working groups, which include Model Code for Municipalities, Model Code for States, Competitive Access to Broadband Infrastructure, Removing State and Local Regulatory Barriers, and Streamlining Federal Siting," said a public notice Wednesday in docket 17-83. "In addition, the BDAC will continue its discussions on how to accelerate the deployment of broadband by reducing and/or removing regulatory barriers to infrastructure investment. This agenda may be modified at the discretion of the BDAC Chair and the Designated Federal Officer."

The FCC Incentive Auction Task Force and Wireless Bureau approved the long-form applications for 600 MHz licenses bought in the broadcast incentive auction, said a public notice Tuesday. Licensees of the 75 new licenses included Spectrum Financial Partners, with 23 licenses, and Tstar 600, with 12. The agency approved the first grants of licenses bought in the auction in June (see 1706140048).

Commissioner Brendan Carr was renominated to a second term on the FCC Tuesday (see 1801080062) by President Donald Trump. “If reconfirmed, I look forward to many more years of working with my colleagues at the FCC on policies that will create jobs, spur investment, and grow the economy for the benefit of all Americans,” Carr said in a statement thanking Trump. Chairman Ajit Pai praised Carr for leading FCC efforts to expedite wireless infrastructure deployment and called him a “distinguished public servant who has hit the ground running during his first months as a Commissioner.” Carr has “demonstrated great interest in tackling and overcoming difficult infrastructure deployment issues during his tenure on the commission,” NTCA said in a release. Carr's current term expires in June (see 1801040058).