Wireless Telecommunications

Mexico’s most prominent human rights lawyers, journalists and anti-corruption activists have been targeted by advanced spyware sold to the Mexican government on the condition that it be used only to investigate criminals and terrorists. The targets include lawyers looking into the mass disappearance of 43 students, a highly respected academic who helped write anti-corruption legislation, two of Mexico’s most influential journalists and an American representing victims of sexual abuse by the police. The spying even swept up family members, including a teenage boy.

Your Wi-Fi router, sitting in the corner of your home accumulating dust and unpatched security flaws, provides an attractive target for hackers. Including, according to a new WikiLeaks release, the CIA.

On June 15, WikiLeaks published a detailed a set of descriptions and documentation for the CIA's router-hacking toolkit. It's the latest drip in the months-long trickle of secret CIA files it's called Vault7, and it hints at how the agency leverages vulnerabilities in common routers sold by companies including D-Link and Linksys. The techniques range from hacking network passwords to rewriting device firmware to remotely monitor the traffic that flows across a target's network. After reading up on them, you may find yourself itching to update your own long-neglected access point.

T-Mobile said the Federal Communications Commission has granted the spectrum licenses it successfully bid on in the broadcast incentive auction, which means it can start planning how to use it. The company has already signaled it would like to start lighting up some of that new mobile wireless broadband spectrum as early as the end of 2017, with testing beginning this summer.

"With the spectrum transfer complete, the real fun begins. Despite the cries from skeptics, T-Mobile has already kicked off deployment activities and will see the first sites ready for testing this summer," the company said. "This timeline—well ahead of expectations—sets the stage for commercial operations later this year. That’s when new 600 MHz smartphones from leading smartphone manufacturers are anticipated to arrive. T-Mobile has been working closely with the FCC and broadcasters and expects more than 1 million square miles of 600 MHz spectrum the Un-carrier owns to be clear and ready for deployment by year end."

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that he intends to appoint Donald Stockdale to serve as chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.

Stockdale is an economist and attorney with extensive FCC and private-sector experience. Stockdale will be working closely with Nese Guendelsberger who, having served as acting bureau chief, will continue to help lead the Bureau as senior deputy bureau chief. Meanwhile, Chairman Pai intends to appoint James Schlichting, who currently serves as senior deputy bureau chief in the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, to the same position in the International Bureau. Stockdale rejoins the Commission from Bates White Economic Consulting where he has been a partner. Prior to that, he worked on telecom regulatory and antitrust issues as a partner at Mayer Brown LLP. Mr. Stockdale first joined the FCC’s then-Common Carrier Bureau (now the Wireline Competition Bureau) in 1994 as an attorney advisor and later as deputy division chief and associate bureau chief for economics. He later served as director of research in the Office of Policy and Planning and finally as deputy bureau chief and chief economist for the Wireline Competition Bureau until he left the agency in 2011. He earned his doctorate in economics and
law degree from Yale University and bachelors degrees from Cambridge University and Yale.

The US Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded $38.5 million to 33 research and development (R&D) projects aimed at advancing broadband communications technologies for first responders. The multiyear grants are intended to help modernize public safety communications and operations by supporting the migration of data, video and voice communications from mobile radio to a nationwide public safety broadband network, as well as accelerating critical technologies related to indoor location tracking and public safety analytics.

The House Communications Subcommittee, chaired by Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), held a hearing examining cybersecurity risks to wireless technologies with a particular focus on wireless networks and mobile devices. Cyber criminals often utilize a number of strategies to launch attacks on wireless technologies. Often times exploiting vulnerabilities within a network to gain unauthorized access to wireless networks or target mobile devices through malware and phishing attacks.

“Mobile connectivity has become essential to our daily lives as a result of advances in technology and consumer demand,” said Chairman Blackburn. “Increasing reliance on wireless devices and networks has provided more avenues for cyber criminals to compromise our security and harm consumers. Hackers are smart and they are adapting. The sophistication and frequency of cyberattacks against mobile devices continues to escalate and we must meet this challenge head on.”

[Commentary] The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear Carpenter v. United States, a case on whether the Fourth Amendment protects historical cell-site records. In this post, I want to focus on a small but potentially important part of the Carpenter litigation: How should an originalist Justice vote in the case?

There are many different flavors of originalism, of course, and originalist arguments often can be used to argue for different outcomes. But in this post I want to discuss one originalist argument that I think is significant. Let’s start with the obvious: The Framers could not have imagined a world of cell-site records. And the original public meaning of the Fourth Amendment is open to a wide range of interpretations at different levels of generality. With that said, the text of the Fourth Amendment does have an important clue about what the Fourth Amendment was originally understood to mean that might be important to the Carpenter case.

[Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School]

The Federal Communications Commission is currently in the midst of efforts to streamline infrastructure siting requirements for telecommunications companies, having recently undertaken a review of how state and local processes affect the speed and cost of deployments. But FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn hinted the FCC’s plan to step in on the state and local levels and apply one cohesive framework for siting could be hampered by its separate attempts to roll back Title II regulation.

Speaking at the Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners conference in Atlanta, Commissioner Clyburn said a reversal of Title II would do more than erase the foundation for net neutrality. It would also undermine the basis for universal service programs and streamlining pole attachment regulations. Without Title II, Commissioner Clyburn noted, broadband providers who do not also provide a cable or legacy voice service will not be able to take advantage of the rights granted to them under section 224 of the Communications Act of 1934. “There is a lot of talk in Washington right now about preempting states and localities in the context of both tower siting and rights-of-way,” Commissioner Clyburn observed. “But they propose to rely on section 253 of the Act to do so. That provision can only be used if the provider is offering a telecommunications service. I am not sure how a 5G deployment with a LTE and VoLTE fallback will qualify as telecommunications service within the meaning of the Act if the majority’s attempt at reclassification goes through.” Commissioner Clyburn indicated she disagreed with the blanket preemption of localities in the management of their rights-of-way, noting that this approach “ignores that some of the most interesting ideas in infrastructure deployment have come out of the states and municipalities.”

This report examines the implications for communities of color of fifth-generation wireless technology (also known as 5G) and Smart City technology. Currently, major mobile network operators, such as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, offer the fourth generation of wireless broadband technology (4G). Over the next four years, these companies will start to offer 5G in select cities. 5G will facilitate the growth of Smart City technologies, which are tools that allow cities and counties to manage public services such as transportation and power grids more efficiently.

We can all agree that what we could do with less is the pull and push between federal, state, and local policymakers. We are in need of and should strive for a new era of cooperative regulation, that recognizes the states as laboratories of democracy, and your federal partners as a uniform guide where and when appropriate. So allow me to take some time this morning, to outline areas where we can work together, and other areas I feel, where states and localities should take the lead when it comes to privacy, universal service, pole attachments, rights-of-way access, and inmate calling.