December 2016

The Trump FCC’s Toolkit For Deregulating Media and Telecommunications

Although there are many articles and blog posts discussing likely policy changes in the media and telecommunications space, it is far too early to know exactly when and what will happen at the Federal Communications Commission under the forthcoming Trump Administration. However, it is not too soon to identify the legal mechanisms available to Congress and the FCC to unwind many of the Obama era accomplishments. In light of the Democrats’ loss of the White House and failure to take control of the Senate, public interest advocates will have a very hard time protecting these and earlier regulatory requirements given the breadth of the power conferred by these statutes. From the moment he took office in late 2013, outgoing FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler operated from the premise that his tenure might not extend beyond January 2017. Even though he undertook an ambitious agenda as soon as he arrived, a number of his major initiatives were not completed until the latter part of 2016. As a practical matter, it is reasonably easy for Congressional Republicans and the incoming Republican majority at the FCC to derail at least some of these recently adopted regulations. Here’s how.

Obama administration announces measures to punish Russia for 2016 election interference

The Obama Administration announced sweeping new measures against Russia on Dec 29 in retaliation for what US officials have characterized as interference in 2016’s presidential election, ordering the expulsion of Russian “intelligence operatives” and slapping new sanctions on state agencies and individuals suspected in the hacks of US computer systems. The response, unveiled just weeks before President Barack Obama leaves office, culminates months of internal debate over how to react to Russia’s election-year provocations.

In recent months, the FBI and CIA have concluded that Russia intervened repeatedly in the 2016 election, leaking damaging information in an attempt to undermine the electoral process and help Donald Trump take the White House. Because Dec 29's announcement is an executive action, it can be undone by the next administration. President Obama also ejected 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposed sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services.

President Obama moves to split cyberwarfare command from the NSA

With weeks to go in his tenure, President Barack Obama on Dec 23 moved to end the controversial “dual-hat” arrangement under which the National Security Agency and the nation’s cyberwarfare command are headed by the same military officer. It is unclear whether President-elect Donald Trump will support such a move. A transition official said only that “cybersecurity has been and will be a central focus of the transition effort.”

Pressure had grown on President Obama to make such a move on the grounds that the two jobs are too large for one person to handle, that the two organizations have fundamentally different missions and that US Cyber Command, or Cybercom, needed its own leader to become a full-fledged fighting force. “While the dual-hat arrangement was once appropriate in order to enable a fledgling Cybercom to leverage NSA’s advanced capabilities and expertise, Cybercom has since matured” to the point where it needs its own leader, President Obama said in a statement accompanying his signing of the 2017 defense authorization bill.

FCC Adopts Globalstar Report and Order

Dec 22, the Federal Communications Commission adopted the following item: Terrestrial Use of the 2473-2495 MHz Band for Low-Power Mobile Broadband Networks; Amendments to Rules for the Ancillary Terrestrial Component of Mobile Satellite Service Systems, IB Docket No. 13-213, Report and Order.

House leadership proposes plan to penalize live-streaming lawmakers

Seeking to prevent another live-streaming "viral video moment" from taking place on the floor of the US House of Representatives, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has introduced a rules package that would fine and punish lawmakers for recording photos and video from the floor. Lawmakers would be fined $500 for the first offense and $2,500 for each subsequent violation. The fines would be deducted from members’ paychecks.

The move comes in response to Democratic lawmakers, who in June live-streamed a sit-in on the House floor over gun control legislation. Democrats organized the sit-in to protest Republican lawmakers’ decision not to bring to the floor a gun-control bill, which if passed would have broadened background checks and prevented people on no-fly lists from buying guns.

‘We the People’: Five Years of Online Petitions

In order to understand how citizens used the opportunity to directly seek redress from the White House, and how the administration responded, Pew Research Center conducted a detailed content analysis of “We the People” petitions. The analysis shows that no one type of request dominated the online petition system, with users of the site instead addressing a wide range of topics. The topmost subjects included petitions pertaining to the health care system (8%); disease awareness and related issues (6%); veterans’ and military issues (6%); immigration (5%); requests to honor individuals or create holidays (5%); requests to investigate criminal cases (5%); and animal rights (5%).

In terms of whether these petitions had any impact, the study suggests there were a variety of outcomes: At the most meaningful level, one petition was instrumental in creating a significant piece of legislation: A January 2013 petition regarding the unlocking of cellphones led to a bill that President Barack Obama signed into law in August 2014. The petition called for making it illegal for telephone companies to “lock” their phones by preventing a phone purchased from one telephone carrier to be used on another carrier’s system.

The need for a bipartisan strategy and consensus in the Trump administration’s FCC

While President-elect Donald Trump’s appointee as the next Federal Communications Commission Chairman remains to be announced, one real challenge ahead is how to change course after the widely- publicized track record of polarized decision making and disjointed collaboration under the Wheeler-led Commission. Moving forward, President-elect Trump’s FCC will have the opportunity to designate an agency leader who can achieve bipartisan consensus on critical issues, while still realizing the incoming administration’s policy agenda.

While differences may emerge around network neutrality, media ownership, mergers and acquisitions and other items, the new FCC chairman might consider confronting matters at the outset that are ripe for collaboration and necessary for the next phase of progress. These issues include spectrum policy, infrastructure, digital inclusion, agency process reform, and the inevitable update of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Tribal Broadband: Status of Deployment and Federal Funding Programs

Until recently, data on tribal broadband deployment had been scarce. However, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) have begun to collect and compile data on tribal broadband deployment. The most recent data show that, as of December 31, 2014, approximately 41% of Americans living on tribal lands lacked access to broadband at speeds of 25 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload. This compares unfavorably to 10% of all Americans lacking access to broadband at those speeds. Tribal areas that are the most lacking in broadband service are rural Alaskan villages and rural tribal lands in the lower 48 states.

Currently, the largest overall source of federal funding for telecommunications services is the FCC’s Universal Service Fund programs. As these programs transition towards a broadbandcentric orientation (e.g., the Connect America Fund), the issue for tribal broadband is how this transition will affect broadband funding to tribal lands, and to what extent these programs might be configured towards addressing the relatively low levels of broadband deployment and adoption in tribal lands.

Chairman Wheeler Announces Intergovernmental Advisory Committee Members

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced the members of the FCC’s Intergovernmental Advisory Committee (IAC) for 2017-2019. The IAC provides guidance, expertise, and recommendations to the Commission on a range of telecommunication issues for which local, state, and Tribal governments explicitly or inherently share responsibility or administration with the Commission.

The Most Dangerous People on the Internet in 2016

[Commentary] Not so long ago, the Internet represented a force for subversion, and Wired’s list of the most dangerous people on the internet mostly consisted of rebellious individuals using the online world’s disruptive potential to take on the world’s power structures. But as the internet has entered every facet of our lives, and governments and political figures have learned to exploit it, the most dangerous people on the internet today often are the most powerful people. List includes: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, James Comey, ISIS, Milo Yiannopoulos, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Julian Assange, and Peter Thiel.

Benton

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