March 2019

House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chair Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) wrote to the Federal Trade Commission asking how it would use additional resources to protect consumer privacy and increase data security enforcement activity. The Committee leaders asked how the FTC would deploy resources under three different scenarios – if it received an additional $50, $75 or $100 million for consumer protection and privacy. Chairmen Pallone and Schakowsky requested responses from the FTC to a series of questions by April 3, 2019, including:

AT&T and Comcast said that they can authenticate calls made between the two different phone providers' networks, a potential industry first and the latest in the long-running battle against spam calls. AT&T and Comcast have successfully completed a real-world call authentication test using the STIR/SHAKEN protocols across landline networks. The STIR/SHAKEN protocols were developed by industry groups ATIS and SIP Forum to tackle the issue of phone spamming and robocalls. The protocols use digital certificates to ensure the incoming phone number is coming from the proper device.

The Federal Communications Commission admitted in court that its Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) does not track where comments submitted to the system originate. The filing is part of a lawsuit the FCC is facing from The New York Times. The New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed and Gizmodo have been investigating claims about fake/mass-generated comments since 2017, when the FCC began collecting public comments on its proposed repeal of the Title II designation for broadband.