Alexandra Levine

Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-South bend), who has been a Silicon Valley favorite in the 2020 presidential race, is calling out several tech giants for harming workers. In his new policy plan, Mayor Buttigieg singles out Facebook, Google and Uber for troubling labor practices, and pledges to hold employers accountable under labor laws, strengthen unions and expand protections for gig workers. “The status quo with companies like Facebook and Uber setting the rules and government sitting on the sidelines must change,” the plan says.

Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) talked on the phone with President Donald Trump to outline his views on the Federal Communications Commission’s pending decision on how to get the coveted 5G-ready airwaves known as the C-band into wireless providers’ hands. Sen Kennedy said the conversation was positive. Sen Kennedy also met with FCC staff on spectrum auctioning, as the lawmaker had intended.

"Unfortunately, we are not able to honor your request," Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons tells Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) about the senator's ask that the agency release its 2012 staff report on Google. A chunk of that report was accidentally released back in 2015, revealing that FTC staffers judged that Google had caused "real harm" in the search and online ads markets as part of an investigation that ended with no charges brought against the company.

Sen John Neely Kennedy (R-LA), the top Senate appropriator overseeing Federal Communications Commission funding, will bring in FCC Chairman Ajit Pai for a hearing Oct 17 to grill him about whether the agency will run its own, likely slower, auction of the 5G airwaves known as the C-band or, as Sen Kennedy fears, allow the satellite companies holding the spectrum to conduct a private sale. “They say we’ve got to do a private deal because it’ll be faster,” said Sen Kennedy. “You ever heard of courts? Duh, you don’t think anybody’s going to file suit over this?

Telecommunications and utility groups are urging congressional appropriators to continue investing in rural broadband in fiscal year 2020. “The health and productivity of the people we represent throughout rural America are dependent on access to high-quality broadband,” The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association, the Utilities Technology Council and nearly two dozen other groups wrote in a letter to Senate and House appropriators.

Sen Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has been leading private meetings in Washington with tech industry leaders and civil society groups as part of the Senate Judiciary tech task force inquiry into social media and internet companies.

With Congress inching toward reopening its long-shuttered Office of Technology Assessment, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation to fix what critics say were the office’s flaws back before it was defunded by Newt Gingrich-led Republicans in the 1990s.

The House Commerce Committee's telecom subcommittee will soon move to mark up legislation to improve the government’s mapping of broadband data, which lawmakers have long complained is riddled with errors. And the panel will likely use the Broadband DATA Act, H.R. 4229, from Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa), as the base. “I think the Loebsack bill will be the vehicle it runs through,” Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-PA) said. “But I think we’re going to be taking bits and pieces of the other bills, too.”

Recent revelations about Facebook’s collection of user audio data are fueling talk in Washington (DC) that company CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have misled Congress about the firm’s privacy practices during a Senate hearing in 2018. Zuckerberg at the time dismissed a question about whether the company used “audio obtained from mobile devices to enrich personal information about its users," calling it a “conspiracy theory.” But recent reporting that the company until just recently paid contractors to transcribe some users’ audio is raising eyebrows about his remarks on the Hill.

Trade group TechNet, which counts AT&T and Verizon among members, is sounding the alarm over language in the Senate defense bill, S. 1790, ordering the Defense Department to create a test-bed program for “innovative technologies and techniques to facilitate” spectrum sharing between 5G service providers and incumbent airwaves occupants. Wireless heavyweights view this language as a Pentagon power grab over 5G and are lobbying to strip it from the bill before the House and Senate settle on a consensus version.