December 2014

The Obama White House has once again called for Cuba to release 65-year-old Alan Gross, a US citizen who is being described in widely-distributed press reports as an "American government contractor." But on the fifth anniversary of Gross's imprisonment on a 15-year sentence, it's worth remembering the nature of the crimes against Cuba's "independence or territorial integrity” with which Gross has been charged.

Gross, working with the US Agency for International Development, distributed equipment intended to get Jewish Cubans online, including laptops, Wi-Fi routers and satellite phones. Those devices look to Cuban authorities to be the tools of subversion.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), one of the Senate’s biggest critics of the National Security Agency’s contentious spying programs, wants President Barack Obama to make drastic reforms himself, after a congressional plan was blocked on the Senate floor.

A day before a key NSA program comes out for court renewal, Chairman Leahy called for President Obama to take action into his own hands. “The President can end the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records once and for all by not seeking reauthorization of this program by the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] Court, and once again, I urge him to do just that,” Chairman Leahy said. “Doing so would not be a substitute for comprehensive surveillance reform legislation -- but it would be an important first step.”

The US Justice Department is creating a unit within the criminal division to advise on electronic surveillance in cyber investigations and work with the private sector to prevent online crime.

The new unit, housed within the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property section, will work with law enforcement, the private sector, and Congress, said Leslie Caldwell, head of the department’s criminal division. “It is important that we address cyber threats on multiple fronts, with both a robust enforcement strategy as well as a broad prevention strategy,” Caldwell said.

This is the seventeenth report in a series prepared by federal and state staff members for the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service. This report is generally based on information available to us as of September 2014.

Section 1 provides an update on industry revenues, universal service program funding requirements, and contribution factors. Sections 2 through 5 provide the latest data on the low-income, high-cost, schools and libraries, and rural health care support mechanisms. Section 6 presents recent Census data on voice telephony subscribership from the Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey as well as data on telephone penetration by income by state. It also includes data on residential Internet subscribership. Section 7 includes updated Consumer Price Index data. An Appendix provides additional information regarding the high-cost program, updating the Universal Service Implementation Report released in March 2014.