If a panel of appellate court judges decides the FCC has no authority to enforce its open Internet order, another federal agency could take its place, several industry officials said in recent interviews. With its expertise in consumer protection and antitrust issues, the FTC is ideally positioned to take over if the net neutrality rules fall, industry and FTC officials have said publicly and in interviews. It’s by no means a common assumption. Many fear that, with its more case-by-case approach to resolving competitive harms, the FTC would be an inadequate protector of an open Internet.
The FCC approved a declaratory ruling Thursday requiring carriers to safeguard most of the customer proprietary network information (CPNI) on mobile phones. Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai had considered a dissent, but managed to work through differences with acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn and was able to vote for the order, with a concurrence. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel also voted to adopt the order, but by getting Pai onboard, Clyburn avoided a dissent during her first meeting as acting chair.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Wednesday he will reintroduce legislation Thursday aimed at reforming and increasing the transparency of the Patriot Act. “From National Security Letters to the latest revelations about the use of the Patriot Act, I remain concerned that we have not yet struck the right balance between the intelligence-gathering needs of the FBI, and the civil liberties and privacy rights of Americans,” Leahy said during an FBI oversight hearing. Leahy said the bill is based on legislation he offered in 2009 and 2011 that would expand public reporting on the use of National Security Letters, require the government to show relevance to an authorized investigation in order to obtain certain records, and amend disclosure rules regarding Section 215 of the Patriot Act, among other provisions. His spokeswoman would not confirm if the provisions of the soon-to-be reintroduced bill differ from the previous text of the legislation.
"This important declaratory ruling will help ensure that private consumer information -- such as the time, duration, and location of calls from a mobile device -- will be protected,” Clyburn said. “Millions of wireless consumers must have confidence that personal information about calls will remain secure even if that information is stored on a mobile device. This ruling makes clear that wireless carriers who direct or cause information to be stored in this way have a responsibility to provide safeguards."
Industry forces battered the tentative principles put forth by the NARUC Telecom Task Force, saying they're out of touch and potentially harmful, while consumer and rural advocates praised the way they elevate the state role. The association of state regulators assembled the task force at its fall meeting (CD Nov 14 p5) and offered up an initial statement of principles for comment, which were due March 8. The comments were posted Friday. The principles outline states’ roles in overseeing consumer protection, public safety and reliability concerns, competition, broadband access, affordability and adoption, interconnection, universal service and regulatory diversity, all in a way that preserves evidence-based decision-making (http://bit.ly/VFfk6k). NARUC President Philip Jones has said the task force’s end goal will be a new version of the association’s 2005 white paper on federalism, to be issued later this year.
The FCC should bear down hard on incumbent providers of special access services, said CLECs and purchasers in response to the long-awaited order seeking data on the state of the special access marketplace (CD Dec 19 p1). ILECs have long abused their monopoly positions at the cost of competitive providers and their customers, and now is the chance for the commission to step in and declare invalid the ILECs’ exclusionary contract provisions, CLECs argued. ILECs defended their contracts, and urged the commission to dismiss CLEC arguments over the relevancy of legacy Time-division multiplexing-based services. In any market analysis, the commission must recognize that consumers are moving away from legacy special access services toward IP-based broadband services, they said. “Dial-up era talking points have no place in today’s gigabit-per-second world,” said CenturyLink.
The House Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee’s next chairman, Lee Terry, R-Neb., said he plans to continue its focus on data security and privacy issues in the coming session of Congress. Terry told us the lack of consumer privacy protections on the Web is a “legitimate issue,” and he plans to hold briefings to discuss the role of Google and other Internet companies in the debate. Having made a name for himself as a strong opponent of FCC net neutrality rules, an advocate for the agency’s reform and supporter of spectrum reallocation, Terry will take over the subcommittee in January.
Some provisions of the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2013, passed on May 18, “could cripple and certainly would delay substantially the overall Export Control Reform initiative,” said Undersecretary of the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Eric Hirschhorn at a meeting of the President’s Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration on Monday. Hirschhorn said he hopes the first ECR rules will be finalized this summer or fall.
Lawmakers said online privacy legislation is needed to support the voluntary consumer privacy proposal touted by the Obama administration Thursday. Their comments came shortly after the White House unveiled its proposal for baseline consumer privacy protections online. The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights is a voluntary code of conduct that aims to protect privacy rights of online consumers while giving them more control over how their information is handled, the White House said.
State and consumer advocates pushed the FCC to adopt tough anti-cramming rules, but industry said that even if problems exist they can be fixed without regulations. Comments came pouring into docket 11-116 Monday and Tuesday.