June 2014

France to Push Telecoms Mergers to Stop Bouygues Job Cuts

France will use all means to help the country’s phone companies merge, a day after Bouygues SA said separate talks to combine with two rivals failed to result in a deal, according to Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg. Bouygues Telecom, the nation’s third-largest carrier, said yesterday it plans to cut 17 percent of its workforce after inconclusive talks over a linkup with Orange SA, the No. 1 provider, and Iliad SA, operator of the Free brand. French carriers should agree on a transaction that could help ease price wars and make such job cuts unnecessary, Montebourg said.

Op-ed

Making Rights Real

Warrantless cellphone location tracking is illegal, US circuit court rules

A US Appellate Court has ruled that police must obtain a warrant before collecting cellphone location data, finding that acquiring records of what cell towers a phone connected to and when it was connected to them constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.

This ruling, from the 11th Circuit, is in opposition to a ruling made nearly a year ago by a separate appellate court. While this ruling won't overturn that one because of their separate jurisdictions, it adds critical precedent to a privacy question that's still far from decided across the country.

In its reasoning, the court notes that while the Fourth Amendment has traditionally been applied to property rights, it's gradually expanded to protect much more, including communications. "In the 20th century, a second view gradually developed," the court writes, "that is, that the Fourth Amendment guarantee protects the privacy rights of the people without respect to whether the alleged 'search' constituted a trespass against property rights."

In particular, the court cites a Supreme Court ruling that found that tracking a person using a GPS unit installed in their car requires a warrant. Even though the location data of a cell site can only place the person holding the phone within a certain range, the court feels that that range is still quite detailed. In the case at hand, cell site data was used to place the defendant near the location of several robberies.

Communications and Technology Subcommittee Discusses Media Ownership in the 21st Century

The Communications and Technology Subcommittee, chaired by Rep Greg Walden (R-OR), held a hearing to assess the state of media ownership, and the rules that govern it, in the digital age.

Members discussed the Federal Communications Commission’s inaction on the statutorily required 2010 quadrennial review of the media ownership rules, and the commission’s decision to forge ahead with new rules on joint sales agreements (JSAs) and other media ownership changes without the completed quadrennial review.

“Our laws need to reflect the reality of the world we live in today, not the world of the Ford administration,” said Chairman Walden. “As Americans’ habits have changed, so too should the way we look at local media. We live in a competitive landscape where increasingly we cherry-pick articles; we scroll through feeds and aggregators; we have multiple national news programming options, and we DVR almost everything to time-shift the programming we love. It’s a different world, why don’t our media laws reflect these changes?"

David Bank, Managing Director of Global Media Equity Research at RBC Capital Markets, added, “Much is made of the fact that the current regulatory framework for media ownership dates back to 1975. The current regulatory framework was constructed in a media ecosystem that basically didn’t include the Internet. While it may have contemplated a broad PC based Internet consumption environment, it certainly didn’t contemplate a mobile application based ecosystem.”

Eric Cantor was a friend of the NSA. The guy who beat him hates it.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's stunning defeat in the Virginia primaries had pundits and policy wonks signing the death certificate for immigration reform. But Cantor's loss -- and David Brat's win -- promises to add even more momentum to a different high-profile issue before Congress: National Security Agency surveillance.

Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, has wildly different views on the NSA from his erstwhile opponent. Where Cantor voted against a landmark proposal to rein in the NSA -- a measure that wound up getting defeated but by a much narrower margin than expected -- Brat has argued that the government has abused its powers and "spun out of control." He's called for an end to the NSA's bulk collection of phone records and greater protections for e-mail.

Brat deftly navigates the political waters surrounding the NSA where other Republicans have made confusingly contradictory statements. Brat believes former NSA contractor Edward Snowden should stand trial for breaking the law -- but also appreciates the value of what Snowden did, which for a majority of Americans puts him on the right side of the issue.

Poll: Many want email privacy overhaul

A poll sponsored by civil liberties organizations shows that many people in the country want to update the law that allows the government to search emails without a warrant.

According to the survey from Vox Populi Polling, more than 80 percent of people in six states and the greater Los Angeles area wanted to overhaul the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which allows warrantless searches of emails that are older than 180 days. Additionally, between 64 and 72 percent of people in those areas thought that online privacy is becoming increasingly important. And in four states, more than 70 percent of voters said they would be more likely to support a candidate looking to update the law.

“There is a rare, overwhelming and incredibly diverse consensus among voters that ECPA needs to be updated,” Brent Seaborn, a Vox Populi Polling partner, said. “These levels of support are nearly unheard of in politics today... All candidates should note that this issue carries power whether they are involved in general election races or primary campaigns.”

Your Personality Type, Defined by the Internet

In some ways, the Internet has become a game of “type and be typed.” Now you can play it at home, too. Companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter look at the queries, observations, updates and enthusiasms we write on their services, then they try to figure out what ads might have the most persuasive effect on us.

A start-up called Five posted a tool that gives a sense of what the big web companies might see when they look at us. Using a link to Facebook posts, Five analyzes the language in which we write, and determines our relative affiliation to five personality attributes: openness, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. It then shows comparisons with famous people (based on their public writings and statements), as well as your Facebook friends.

Commission Opens Docket For Proposed Transfer Of Control Of DirecTV To AT&T

On May 18, 2014, AT&T and DIRECTV announced an agreement pursuant to which AT&T seeks to acquire DIRECTV in a stock-and-cash transaction. As part of the transaction, AT&T also plans to divest its interest in América Móvil, a telecommunications company headquartered in Mexico.

Applications seeking Commission consent to the assignment or transfer of control of the licenses and authorizations held by DIRECTV are expected.

The purpose of this public notice is to announce the opening of a docket, MB Docket No. 14-90, and to establish the ex parte status of discussions related to the proposed transaction. When the applications have been accepted for filing, we will issue a separate public notice announcing that fact and setting forth a pleading schedule.

FCC Report To Congress

This report is submitted in accordance with the requirements of the Open-Market Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications Act (the ORBIT Act) which has an objective of ensuring that intergovernmental satellite bodies INTELSAT and Inmarsat are privatized in a pro-competitive manner.

To this end, the Act requires the submission of annual reports to Congress as noted below. The Commission has undertaken a number of proceedings required by or related to the ORBIT Act. The Commission will continue to implement and enforce the requirements of the ORBIT Act.

On the whole, we believe that US policy goals regarding the promotion of a fully competitive global market for satellite communications services are being met in accordance with the ORBIT Act. The Commission will continue to inform Congress of the actions it takes to implement the requirements of the ORBIT Act and the impact of those actions in its next annual report

Rep Walden: No hearings for Comcast, AT&T mergers

Despite calls from Democrats, the top House Republican on telecom issues isn’t planning to hold hearings on the proposed multi-billion dollar deals to combine giants in the telecom industry.

“It’s not really our intent to hold individual hearings on every merger,” Rep Greg Walden (R-OR), chairman of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, said. “You’ve got these agencies that have the ability to do an independent look,” including the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice, he said.

Democrats on the committee called on Rep Walden and the Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) to hold hearings on the recently-announced $45 billion deal to combine Comcast and Time Warner Cable as well as the $49 billion deal to merge AT&T and DirecTV. Rep Walden said he receives these requests regularly, but his subcommittee is “trying to focus on the bigger policy issues.”

Rep Walden noted that other committees, including the House Judiciary Committee, are holding hearings on the proposed mergers. He said he does have concerns that the FCC will use the hearings to achieve its regulatory goals, such as net neutrality, without going through agency process.

Benton

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