October 2015

AT&T recently joined a coalition of high tech companies and wireless operators designed to help educate consumers and policymakers about the benefits of using unlicensed spectrum to enhance speed, service quality and coverage for consumers. Two new unlicensed technologies -- LTE-U and LTE-LAA -- are being developed to harness the availability of unlicensed spectrum to complement LTE technologies deployed in licensed bands in ways that will directly benefit US wireless customers.

AT&T believes that any new technologies should play fair and any legitimate coexistence concerns should be addressed. AT&T has recently announced its plans to test LTE-U and is fully engaged in the standardization effort behind LTE-LAA. Wi-Fi-centric concerns about either technology should be fully understood and tested to ensure fair use sharing. We’d like to see testing conducted by a cross-section of unlicensed stakeholders so any co-existence concerns can be fully vetted. But the answer to any co-existence challenges, should they exist, will not be found in the heavy-handed regulatory response that some seem to be encouraging. Unlicensed bands have long served as the playground for disruption and innovation in new wireless technologies. A light-touch regulatory framework has served that purpose well to the benefit of US wireless consumers. There’s no reason that should change now.

[Commentary] “Content Blockers a Boon for Privacy” ran the headline from GigOm in a recent Daily Dashboard, but is it as simple as that? Having dug a little deeper into the announcement that Apple was opening up iOS9 to content blocking apps, I quickly uncovered that apps such as Blockr that were advertised as "privacy protectors" were also offering to block the “annoying cookie warnings” required by European Union laws under the e-Privacy Directive. This capability has been available for a while through ad blocker extensions but it seemed ironic that an app marketed as a privacy management tool would seek to remove the privacy protections required in EU law. As we know in the privacy profession, privacy best practices and laws are built on the pillars of Transparency, Notice and Choice. It now appears that some ad blockers, acting under a banner of privacy, are achieving exactly the opposite by removing consumer visibility into the tracking that’s taking place and consumers’ ability to chose which cookies and trackers they want to accept.

[As Global Communications Director at TRUSTe]

The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would authorize the Secret Service to train state and local law enforcement officials on combating cybercrime. The Strengthening State and Local Cyber Crime Fighting Act, from Rep John Ratcliffe (R-TX), is an attempt to close the gap between federal and local cybercrime-fighting capabilities. Rep Ratcliffe called his offering a “much-needed bill that will help law enforcement fight back against increasingly sophisticated cyber crimes.” “It is imperative that we equip them to address these challenges in an effort to protect the most vulnerable from being exploited,” added Rep Ratcliffe, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies.

Specifically, the measure would direct the National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI) -- part of the Secret Service -- to educate local law officers, prosecutors and judges on all aspects of computer crime, from conducting computer and mobile device examinations to investigating cyberattacks. The NCFI has already trained personnel from more than 500 different law enforcement agencies, but Rep Ratcliffe said his bill would give it the proper oversight and accountability.