ConnectED is “a tipping point” that could “turn a negative cycle into a positive cycle” on education, said National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling Wednesday at an event co-sponsored by CEA and the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation. If broadband is expanded to 99 percent of schools within the next five years -- which the program seeks to do -- it allows cities and states to do bulk purchases for both electronic devices and educational content, Sperling said. “If an entire state was bidding for educational devices, you bet they would get lower prices,” Sperling said. Private companies “would start asking” how they can penetrate that market with lower-priced devices, he said.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., filed a class action lawsuit Wednesday seeking an end to the NSA’s phone surveillance practices. He filed his complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on behalf of himself and FreedomWorks and naming President Barack Obama, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Keith Alexander and FBI Director James Comey as defendants in the complaint (http://bit.ly/NCOOYF). He asked for “declaratory and injunctive relief” on the surveillance, asking the court to find the practices unconstitutional -- violating the Fourth Amendment search and seizure prohibitions -- and to prevent the government from continuing the practices. The complaint questions the effectiveness of the surveillance and judged the bulk collection of phone metadata to be revealing. The government would have to purge all its stored metadata, if Paul’s requests were granted. Paul’s lead counsel is Ken Cuccinelli, former Republican attorney general of Virginia. Paul held a courthouse press conference with Cuccinelli and FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe on Wednesday. “I expect this case to go all the way to the Supreme Court and I predict the American people will win,” Paul said in a statement (http://bit.ly/1kCutjz). The three wrote a joint op-ed for CNN this week (http://cnn.it/1ntUVsA). More than 5,500 people had signed on to an Internet petition supporting the lawsuit as of Wednesday afternoon, according to a FreedomWorks website (http://bit.ly/1dkIiiD).

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is glad the NSA head job is still combined with the head of the Cyber Command. That’s important from “an optic standpoint,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday. The reasons for keeping it together are “quite compelling” and “still germane,” Clapper said. President Barack Obama was under pressure to split the position last year to allow a civilian head of the NSA but ultimately chose to keep the position unified. “The president came to that conclusion on his own,” Clapper said.

NARUC staff approved five telecom-related resolutions Sunday. One offered by Vermont Commissioner John Burke asks the FCC to expand the USF contribution base, “so that all communications services, including services such as broadband that are required to be offered in order to receive federal support, contribute to USF.” Another by Commissioner Sally Talberg, of Michigan, supports efforts by the FCC to allow a variety of service providers to apply for rural broadband experiments. The resolution also urged the FCC to ensure the funds for the experiments not only be aimed at ensuring broadband service for rural areas, but also that broadband networks deployed in rural areas remain sustainable. A third resolution, by Nebraska Commissioners Tim Schram and Anne Boyle, asked the FCC to clarify that rules on 911 accuracy apply both indoors and outdoors. A resolution by Commissioner Philip Jones of Washington state expressed support and encouragement to the National Association of Public Affairs Networks to establish C-SPAN-like networks in all 50 states. Another resolution by South Dakota Commissioner Chris Nelson thanked Jim McConnaughey for his public service. He retired last month as NTIA chief economist.

Expanding access to unlicensed spectrum “does not actually seem to be a priority” at the FCC, groups affiliated with the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition told FCC commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Ajit Pai in separate meetings Wednesday. Representatives from Common Cause, New America Foundation and Public Knowledge told O'Rielly and Pai that despite positive statements from the FCC on unlicensed spectrum, continued uncertainty and “lack of actual action on any pro-unlicensed item makes it increasingly harder for investors, entrepreneurs and developers to believe that the FCC is serious” about the issue, the groups said in an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1eO57LK). The groups also expressed concerns about the implications the Progeny order (CD June 7 p3) will have on unlicensed use of the 900 MHz band. The groups also urged the FCC to adopt a band plan and rules for the incentive auction that ensure at least 24 megahertz of unlicensed spectrum is available in every market nationwide. That minimum is “necessary to promote and sustain markets of national scope and scale for unlicensed chips, devices and services,” the groups said.

The FCC goes live in Maryland this week with a new database for Lifeline, intended to ease some concerns over waste and fraud. The database, which includes social services and LexisNexis records, will allow phone companies to check to make sure no others in a household are receiving Lifeline when someone applies for the discounted phone service, said Telecommunications Access Policy Division Chief Kim Scardino at the NARUC Winter Committee meeting Saturday. The database will be rolled out next week in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Washington states, with the rest of the nation to follow, she said. She said the program will also allow screeners to tell if someone signed up for the service through another carrier, or used up his or her minutes and is trying to sign up through a new carrier. She said that over the past 2-1/2 years, the FCC has manually scrubbed Lifeline’s rolls, saving $250 million. But Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable General Counsel Paul Abbott said 98 percent of those scrubbed in the state were removed because they didn’t respond to attempts to reach them to resolve questions. “I don’t know if there was waste or abuse involved,” he said on a panel about Lifeline data collection. Stephen Athanson, regulatory counsel for TracFone Wireless, expressed concern LexisNexis doesn’t include all people, which may lead to some people being disqualified without further verification of their address. Members of Congress have attacked Lifeline, citing the program’s rising cost due to wireless company participation and other alleged shortfalls.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will hold a March 12 meeting at the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington to discuss upcoming guidelines on driver distraction from portable and aftermarket devices. The meeting will bring together “vehicle manufacturers and suppliers, portable and aftermarket device manufacturers, portable and aftermarket device operating system providers, cellular service providers, industry associations, ‘app’ developers, researchers, and consumer groups to discuss technical issues regarding the agency’s development of Phase 2 Driver Distraction Guidelines,” said NHTSA in a notice to appear in Wednesday’s Federal Register (http://1.usa.gov/1cq5MPd). Written comments are due May 12. NHTSA’s “Phase 1 Driver Distraction Guidelines,” released in April, applied to in-vehicle original equipment electronics. The Senate Commerce Committee held a daylong summit Thursday on distracted driving, where Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., challenged industry to resolve problems of distracted driving before the Senate takes a try at it (CD Feb 7 p5).

Representatives of civil society groups such as the Center for Digital Democracy, American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Privacy Information Center will attend a Monday meeting on big data with Counselor to the President John Podesta, said an organization attending the meeting. Podesta is leading the administration’s big data review to determine whether the current U.S. policy framework addresses the challenges and privacy concerns raised by the proliferation of commercial data collection (CD Jan 24 p9). President Barack Obama directed Podesta to launch the study during his speech on changes to the government’s surveillance programs (CD Jan 21 p1). Podesta said he expects the working group to deliver its findings within the next two and a half months.

Surveillance changes are under way. President Barack Obama recently said that “absent a true emergency, the telephony metadata can only be queried after a judicial finding that there is a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the selection term is associated with an approved international terrorist organization,” said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in a statement Thursday night (http://bit.ly/1iBEtWh). “The President also directed that the query results must be limited to metadata within two hops of the selection term instead of three.” The Justice Department filed a motion with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to amend its Jan. 3 primary order on phone surveillance, which was granted on Thursday. The government is working to declassify these documents by Feb. 17, Clapper said.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a request for information last week asking about how to potentially move the storage of phone metadata from government hands to elsewhere. Responses are due Wednesday. ODNI is looking into “whether existing commercially available capabilities can provide for a new approach to the government’s telephony metadata bulk collection program under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, without the government holding the metadata,” it said in the request (http://1.usa.gov/1caC9RC). Responses may shape the government’s next steps, it said.