Morning Consult

Democrats’ Net Neutrality Push Resonates With Base, Poll Shows

Democratic voters are receptive to the party’s efforts to use the network neutrality debate as a way to energize the base heading into the November midterms, according to Morning Consult/Politico polling. The most recent survey — conducted May 17-19 among 1,990 registered voters nationwide — found that 59 percent of Democratic respondents said a candidate’s support for the net neutrality rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015 was somewhat or very important when deciding whom to vote for in the midterms, compared to 51 percent of respondents overall.

Closing the School Broadband Gap

[Commentary] Two-hundred forty-five days. School districts are waiting this long for the Federal Communications Commission to make decisions on the fate of funding to bring fiber connectivity to their classrooms. That’s 65 days longer than the average school year. And for Woodman School in rural Montana, it means another school year that students must be bused to a neighboring district for assessments because high-speed internet access is not an option. No school should have to wait that long to provide basic educational opportunity for its students.

On Pitchforks and Policy

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has a lot on his plate. On top of running a critical independent federal agency, he now must do so under a cloud of hate speech and death threats directed at him and his young children. This behavior is unacceptable in any circumstance, and it is an especially sad irony that it’s being directed at a public servant who has made it his No.

Net Neutrality Repeal Led 2017 Tech Policy, But 2018 Legislative and Legal Fights Loom

Here’s a rundown of promises kept, partially fulfilled and in need of action come 2018:

A promise fulfilled: President Donald Trump followed through on his stated information technology modernization goals by issuing an executive order on May 1 that created the American Technology Council.

Consumer Favorability Ratings for Large ISPs Withstand Net Neutrality Heat

Scorching criticism of internet service providers over their stance on net neutrality for much of 2017 hasn’t hurt their standing with US consumers — though some weren’t that popular to begin with. For Comcast, there was practically nowhere to go but up. Thirty-two percent of respondents had a very or somewhat favorable view of Comcast the day Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced his repeal plans; 26 percent had an unfavorable opinion. By Nov.

Majority of Voters Support Net Neutrality Rules as FCC Tees Up Repeal Vote

As the Federal Communications Commission moves forward with plans to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules, a new Morning Consult/Politico poll shows bipartisan support for keeping the regulations in place. Fifty-two percent of registered voters in a Nov. 21-25 poll said they support the current rules, which stipulate that internet service providers like Comcast Corp., AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.

Changing Antritust Laws May Not Be the Whole Solution for Net Neutrality

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) wants to repeal the current net neutrality rules — even if it takes amending antitrust law. But economist Hal Singer says that’s not the solution. While antitrust law has typically sought to address “concrete harms” like price increases, it hasn’t recognized what he calls “mild forms of discrimination.” That includes an ISP prioritizing one set of internet content over another to promote its own interests to the detriment of its competitors.

Chairman Blackburn Open to Antitrust Enforcement as a Net Neutrality Fix

House Communications and Technology Chairman Marsha Blackbur (R-TN) is open to using federal antitrust laws to fix the long-running debate over net neutrality. “It’s helpful to consider the complete spectrum of law shielding American consumers from anticompetitive behavior,” she said. “It’s clear that internet service providers are not the only potential roadblock standing between a consumer and his or her content of choice,” she said .

The FCC’s Step Forward for Rural Internet Service

[Commentary] When the Federal Communications Commission made its decision two years ago to regulate the internet as a public utility, the harm came to small towns and rural communities almost immediately. Internet companies nationwide slowed or stopped plans to invest in improving and expanding their services due to new legal and compliance costs. For rural America, those regulations presented yet another hurdle to gaining access to modern broadband services that urban areas have enjoyed for years.

Recently, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced his plan to correct that mistake. Pai’s plan has sparked an unusual amount of handwringing by some people with misguided ideas on how to ensure the internet economy continues to thrive.

[Betsy Huber is president of National Grange.]

FCC’s Plan to Reverse Net Neutrality Reignites Legislative Debate

Top GOP lawmakers involved in telecommunications policy are calling on congressional Democrats and Republicans to draft bipartisan legislation that would maintain the principles of an open internet following Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s announcement that the agency will take steps to reverse its 2015 network neutrality rules.

“Consumers want an open internet that doesn’t discriminate on content and protects free speech and consumer privacy,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD), House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR), Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said in a joint statement. “It’s now time for Republicans and Democrats, internet service providers, edge providers, and the internet community as a whole to come together and work toward a legislative solution that benefits consumers and the future of the internet."

Title II Can’t Deliver an Open, Modern Internet for Consumers

[Commentary] The truth is: Our internet was open, dynamic and growing before the Title II disruption, and it will remain so after. Those who say there’s only one true path to net neutrality need to join the rest of us in the real world where heavy-handed, archaic policies have zero shot at being as quick, nimble, smart, adaptive and transformative as the dynamic and transformative technology they seek to manage.

There is near-universal support for enforceable open internet safeguards. There is no such mandate to regulate US internet infrastructure back to the Stone Age. These are two very different debates that must be kept distinct. Title II can’t deliver a modern, thriving and open internet. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s more surgical approach likely can. It’s time to take the clean and clear win.

[Jonathan Spalter is president and CEO of USTelecom]

House Intel Chairman: Trump Team Was Surveilled During Transition

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said he’s received dozens of reports showing that communications from President Donald Trump’s transition team — and possibly Trump himself — were intercepted during the transition period between Election Day and Inauguration Day. “I want to be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia or the investigation of Russian activities or the Trump team,” Chairman Nunes said.

He said his panel will “thoroughly investigate” the surveillance and dissemination of that information. While the reports show surveillance of Trump officials unrelated to the Russia investigation, Chairman Nunes said it doesn’t mean those surveillance orders don’t exist. He declined to disclose his sources for the surveillance reports. The announcement comes two days after Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee that he had seen no information that supports President Trump’s allegations that Trump Tower was wiretapped in 2016 under orders from President Barack Obama.

FCC Chairman Pai Is Weakening the Nation’s Cybersecurity

[Commentary] President Donald Trump has promised aggressive cybersecurity policy. In a dangerous departure from the president, the Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has taken actions to eliminate its role in addressing cybersecurity.

Chairman Ajit Pai stopped an order addressing known flaws exploited by low-end attackers to “hi-jack” the Emergency Alert System. He pulled cybersecurity considerations out of the new internet protocol-based TV broadcast proposal avoiding public discussion of this backdoor vector to Wi-Fi and broadband connected devices. He halted the cybersecurity provisions in the FCC’s Broadband Privacy order and opposed inclusion of cybersecurity in communications outage reporting. He rescinded a notice of inquiry generating early public dialog regarding cybersecurity risk reduction for next-generation wireless networks and pulled from public view a study by FCC economists highlighting the growing gap between communications sector corporate cybersecurity investment and that needed to properly protect society.

The greatest concern, however, will come from benign neglect, as the chairman asserts cybersecurity risk is somebody else’s problem.

[Rear Admiral (Ret.) David Simpson served as chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau from November 2013 through January 2017.]

Thune Open to Moving New Broadband Infrastructure Spending Through FCC

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune said he’s open to funneling a potential tranche of broadband infrastructure funding through the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund. “I think the USF could be a way to figure out how we channel and move money in the right direction — get the most lead on the targets, so to speak, to get results,” Thune said following a hearing on how to best allocate funds under a possible infrastructure bill.

On Feb 28, President Donald Trump said he would ask Congress for a $1 trillion infrastructure package, but he did not mention broadband investment. Chairman Thune said that while he believes broadband will ultimately be included in the White House package, “it’s hard to say exactly what their plan might entail.”

Surveillance Battle in House Focuses on Number of US Citizens Affected

The House Judiciary Committee began the process of examining potential changes to a foreign intelligence-gathering program, with the panel’s top Democrat saying a key concern is how many American citizens are targeted by the law. Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI) gave varying levels of support to reforming Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law that allows for the surveillance of foreigners reasonably believed to be outside of the United States, while forbidding intelligence officials from surveilling Americans. Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Goodlatte said that while the intelligence community has labeled Section 702 as the “most important tool in battling terrorism,” it has been criticized as an “overly broad” program that collects U.S. citizens’ communications “without sufficient legal process.” “We must ensure that our protection doesn’t come at the expense of cherished liberty,” Goodlatte said, adding that strong national security tools and civil liberties “can and must coexist.”

The issue of how many U.S. citizens get their communications collected under the law, known as “incidental” collection, is central to the debate as the intelligence agencies seek a reauthorization of the statute in Congress. Conyers said committee members “require that estimate” and they won’t “simply take the government’s word on the size of so-called ‘incidental’ collection.”

FTC Chair Says Privacy Shield Is Safe, Despite Immigration Order

Acting Federal Trade Commission Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen said that President Donald Trump’s immigration order will not in any way affect the FTC’s enforcement of the Privacy Shield, a commercial data-transfer agreement negotiated by the United States and the European Union. “We will continue to enforce the Privacy Shield protections, and we hope we will move ahead as planned,” the Republican FTC chief said. “In my opinion, nothing has changed.”

Data protection officials across the EU are reportedly worried that the White House immigration order — or its potential follow-ups — could undermine the 2016 EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, a hard-won agreement safeguarding EU residents’ personal data that is collected and stored by US companies. The pact allows for the free flow of consumer information between US and EU borders, and its weakening could negatively affect economic ties.

FCC Receives 106 Complaints on Madonna’s Speech at Women’s March

Madonna stirred up controversy in Jan when she took the stage to address a massive crowd at the Women’s March on Washington in a speech featuring three F-bombs and musings of “blowing up the White House.” The networks that aired that speech, namely CNN and MSNBC, received a lot of flak for the pop star’s words: The Federal Communications Commission received 106 complaints from viewers nationwide about Madonna’s speech. The complaints primarily targeted the networks’ failure to implement a delay to censor potential vulgar language when they picked up Madonna’s Jan 21 speech, which came one day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Seventy-four of the complaints mentioned CNN, while 21 complaints targeted MSNBC’s failure to bleep Madonna’s swearing. One complaint from Missouri questioned why CBS aired the speech and five mentioned C-SPAN.

Give Chairman Pai a Chance to Break the Net Neutrality Logjam

[Commentary] At some point Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is going to have to dance with the elephant in the room: network neutrality. In truth, this fight is much more about the legal authority the FCC claims for regulating broadband, and its long-term implications, than it is about the open internet.

On the one hand, we could return to the prior regulatory structure established under former President Bill Clinton, with the FCC relying on light-touch rules, voluntary codes of conduct, and antitrust-like enforcement to oversee a by-and-large competitive market of different technologies innovating to offer similar services. On the other, we can continue in the direction former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler laid out toward a heavily regulated utility service. The problem is net neutrality is more religious war than policy discussion, and, with accusations of “alternative facts” already flying, it’s unlikely the gulf between the two sides is closed any time soon. We need some way to break this logjam; I hope Pai is up to the task.

[Doug Brake is a telecommunications policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation]

Sen Hatch Rolls Out Tech Agenda, Warns Industry Against ‘Provoking’ Trump

Sen Orrin Hatch (R-UT) introduced a sweeping tech-focused agenda that aims to bolster the H-1B visa program, prevent forum-shopping by patent trolls and improve data privacy both at home and abroad. In a speech on Capitol Hill, the Utah Republican addressed the tech community’s concerns about President Donald Trump potentially issuing an executive order that could weaken the H-1B visa program, which many tech employers say they rely on to fill high-skilled positions. Sen Hatch, who’s chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, said it was important for tech leaders to do their part in persuading Trump not to weaken the foreign-worker program, and that includes “not provoking the White House unnecessarily.” He reiterated his close relationship with Trump, and stressed his ability to act as a “bridge” between Silicon Valley and the administration when it comes to the H-1B program and other industry issues. “I know he trusts me,” Sen Hatch said, referring to President Trump. “Then again, I’m not sure he trusts anybody … but I think he does trust me. He knows I’m not going to go around what he’d like to do.”

A Measured Lifeline Reboot

[Commentary] It is disappointing that a recent order from the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Bureau to reconsider the eligibility for participation of just nine of the more than 900 companies currently participating in the Lifeline program has sparked such a maelstrom of misinformation and motive-questioning.

Notably, the FCC did not cut funding for the Lifeline program, nor did it attempt to unwind the more than 30-year commitment to ensuring American consumers have access to baseline communications. The FCC simply announced it was putting on hold the eligibility of less than 1 percent of the companies currently participating in the program while it takes steps to ensure the program’s integrity. Ensuring digital opportunity for everyone includes affordable broadband options for low-income consumers. But companies that game the system threaten its effectiveness and, ultimately, its existence. Bottom line? Closing the digital divide and maintaining the integrity of the Lifeline program are hardly objectives that should be at odds. It is imperative that our government leaders take clear and firm action to protect low-income Americans who need financial help to get and stay connected — and weed out entities that are siphoning resources away from those who need broadband’s many opportunities most.

[Diane Smith is a board advisor to Mobile Future]

Sen Thune Not Waiting for FCC to Act Before Drafting Net Neutrality Bill

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) is pushing forward with plans to draft legislation that would codify network neutrality principles into law, even if the Federal Communications Commission hasn’t taken action to roll back the agency’s 2015 Open Internet order. “Sen Thune is open to immediately working with his colleagues on legislation if there is a serious readiness on the other side of the aisle to come to the table,” said Commerce Committee spokesman Frederick Hill. “To date, Democrats haven’t been quite ready to sit down.” At the same time, Hill added that action from the FCC action could lead to “new engagement” from Democrats in a legislative effort, and Chairman Thune is “all for that.” The remarks follow recent comments from House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who said that she wanted to the let the FCC make the first move on net neutrality before legislating.

FBI’s Top Lawyer Urges Congressional Action on Encryption

James Baker, the top lawyer at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, recommended that Congress take a more active role in legislating on US law enforcement’s limited access to encrypted data tied to a criminal investigation. “We don’t want this debate driven by some kind of catastrophe down the road,” Baker said. Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, appeared at an event to discuss a new encryption report issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The American people, through their elected representatives, have to make a value determination” regarding encryption, he said. “The world is moving forward, and doing nothing is an action, and will result in a particular state of affairs.” “I’m not sure that a commission is going to be able to come up with a kind of granular solution, [a] highly technical solution, promptly, that we can put in place to deal with this,” Baker said.

Rep Goodlatte: Electronic Privacy, Foreign Intelligence on Judiciary Agenda

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said the panel’s top tech priorities consist of updating a 1986 electronic privacy law and reauthorizing a provision in the foreign intelligence statute that allows US spies to intercept communications abroad.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was authored long before the widespread use of email and social media, doesn’t require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before inspecting emails stored for more than 180 days. That standard is based on a 1980s understanding of electronic messaging that assumed anything stored for that period of time has been abandoned. “This law is outdated and contains insufficient privacy protections for Americans’ email communications in today’s digital age,” Goodlatte said. Rep Kevin Yoder (R-KS) introduced a measure in Dec that would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before investigating an individual’s online communications that have been stored in excess of 180 days or kept in a cloud storage service.