June 2011

Of all the dull chores of politics, tabulating field results is typically among the dullest: After a day of knocking on doors and calling strangers, volunteers report their totals to junior staffers, who email the numbers to midlevel staffers, who forward them to more senior staffers, whose deputies enter them into typo-ridden spreadsheets, printed out in the wee hours of the morning for campaign managers and field chiefs. That, at least, is the way it’s typically done and the way they were doing it in the Savannah, Ga., field office of the 2008 Obama campaign, a long-shot outpost in a state on the margins of the year’s battle. While Obama lost Georgia, a software program devised by three staffers in that office has since changed the mechanics of Democratic campaigns. The company they started, the NationalField, has evolved to host an internal social network for political campaigns and is branching outside the political market.

A top Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity official told lawmakers that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) would likely be among the private sector firms that would be subject to federal oversight under the White House's proposed cybersecurity legislation.

At a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing, DHS acting deputy under secretary Greg Schaffer acknowledged that under the White House's plan, ISPs would likely be among the private firms deemed critical infrastructure and therefore subject to federal security standards. Schaffer emphasized that the administration's legislative proposal doesn't explicitly lay out which industries would be deemed critical and core critical infrastructure, but witnesses at Tuesday's hearing mentioned transportation, financial services, utilities and healthcare providers as among those sectors that could be included. Subpanel chairman Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) noted that ISPs are in a unique position to know when consumers' computers are under attack or have been enslaved by malicious botnets. He suggested ISPs should take action against infected devices in the event consumers are not aware of the breach.

House Communications Subcommittee Democrats say the Republicans are off base with their proposed Federal Communications Commission reform bill, arguing that it is "inconsistent" with the reasoning behind the Administrative Procedures Act and could undermine the commission, not help, it by imposing requirements that could reduce regulatory flexibility or merger conditions restrictions that could lead the FCC to deny mergers it might otherwise approve.

Among the bill provisions they take issue with -- which is most of them -- are the bill's requirement that each notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) be preceded by a notice of inquiry (NOI), saying that in the fast-moving communications sector, that could, in some instances, add unnecessary delay to the process. The Dems also say that including specific proposed rule language in each NPRM would be too strict a requirement, and that requiring rules to be a "logical outgrowth" of that specific language might then require a new NPRM whenever comments identified a "better way of tackling the problem" that the FCC had proposed. As for the Republican's proposal that the FCC identify the market failure or actual consumer harm being addressed for every rule it imposes "may be contrary to the FCC's statutory mandate to serve the public interest." For instance, they argue, rules ensuring effective 9-1-1 service might put a burden on networks that was not directly related to a market failure.

This letter provides guidance to the Universal Service Administrative Company on the process it should follow in identifying and resolving duplicative Lifeline claims found through in-depth data validations (IDVs) conducted in specific states or at any other time USAC becomes aware of duplicative claims for Lifeline support.