May 2016

Striking Verizon employees may be back to work the week of May 31 after the company and its unions reached an agreement in principle for a four-year contract. About 39,000 Verizon Communications Inc. landline and cable employees in nine Eastern states and Washington (DC) have been on strike since April. They had been working without a contract since August.

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said that the agreement is being written and will be submitted for approval from union members of Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. "I expect that workers will be back on the job next week," Perez said. Details of the contract were not disclosed. CWA President Chris Shelton said in a statement that the agreement is "a victory for working families."

Count Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Patrick Leahy (D-VT) among the fans of the Federal Communications Commission's set-top box proposal but only if it protects multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD, or pay-TV) content and contracts. Ranking Member Leahy sent a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (there were no co-signers), saying he supported the need for competition, though he characterized the proposal as "beginning a discussion of how best to [spur meaningful set-top competition] in today's environment."

Ranking Member Leahy agreed that rules were needed. He said that the "patchwork of state privacy laws and Federal Trade Commission enforcement alone are not adequate" and that consumers want the option of "breaking free" of rental boxes, but he said that should not mean fewer rights for consumers and programmers. While the letter's overall tone was supportive, it also echoed concerns MVPDs have raised about protecting content or denying functions via the forced disaggregation. The senator told FCC chairman Tom Wheeler he thought the "unlock the box" proposal—the FCC's brand for the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on third-party navigation devices—would "put forward meaningful opportunity to increase consumer choice" but also said it needed "important clarifications."

A provision snuck into the still-secret text of the Senate’s annual intelligence authorization would give the FBI the ability to demand individuals’ e-mail data and possibly web-surfing history from their service providers without a warrant and in complete secrecy. If passed, the change would expand the reach of the FBI’s already highly controversial national security letters.

The FBI is currently allowed to get certain types of information with National Security Letters (NSLs) — most commonly, information about the name, address, and call data associated with a phone number or details about a bank account. Since a 2008 Justice Department legal opinion, the FBI has not been allowed to use NSLs to demand “electronic communication transactional records,” such as e-mail subject lines and other metadata, or URLs visited. The spy bill passed the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 24, with the provision in it. The lone no vote came from Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), who wrote in a statement that one of the bill’s provisions “would allow any FBI field office to demand e-mail records without a court order, a major expansion of federal surveillance powers.” Sen Wyden did not disclose exactly what the provision would allow, but his spokesperson suggested it might go beyond e-mail records to things like web-surfing histories and other information about online behavior. “Senator Wyden is concerned it could be read that way,” Keith Chu said. It’s unclear how or when the provision was added, although Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Sen Tom Cotton (R-AR) have both offered bills in the past that would address what the FBI calls a gap and privacy advocates consider a serious threat to civil liberties.

[Commentary] The recent flare-up between Facebook and conservatives will likely soon be forgotten. Facebook handled it brilliantly, comforting its critics through an open dialogue. Still, I wish Facebook had responded to inquiries from conservatives and government officials like Sen John Thune (R-SD), with the words Donald Trump used about the disclosure of his tax forms: “none of your damn business.” I concede that answer would have created a short-term PR nightmare. But in three ways it would have improved the groundwork for our country’s inevitable debate on the government’s role in regulating the political implications of large databases.

[Blair Levin is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institute Metropolitan Policy Project.]