Lauren Frayer

[Commentary] Well, that was a disappointment. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, who has set himself up as a champion of the First Amendment, failed to stand up for TV news at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing. Sen Tom Udall (D-NM) asked him if he agreed with President Trump's tweet that CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC are "the enemy of the American people." Chairman Pai evaded the question. First, he said, he didn't "want to wade into the larger political debates" and, then, when pressed, said weakly that everybody is entitled to First Amendment protections. Pai's answer should have been simple: "No, Senator, I don't." He did not have to elaborate. Not only would that have assured us that Pai is a thinking man and the free press advocate we believe him to be, it would also have assured us that the Pai FCC will be independent of the White House. Chairman Pai also refused to disclose what was discussed in his meetings with President Trump before his elevation to chairman in January and his re-nomination to another term this week.

Tech policy has undergone a huge change under President Donald Trump, but it doesn’t seem that a lot of the changes are getting much attention, considering everything else the administration is doing.

In a normal news cycle, the rollback of Obama-era tech policies would get a lot more attention. But make no mistake, the changes coming in privacy, network neutrality and potentially many more tech regulations will be profound. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, promised the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” and right away we’ve begun to see that happen. Under the new president we have a new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, possibly a different standard for antitrust review on big mergers, and maybe lots of money for infrastructure that might seep into the tech economy. Here’s the biggest tech policy changes we’re expecting under President Trump.

[Commentary] The Trump administration’s determination to roll back regulations protecting the environment, voting rights and financial services consumers has been drawing most of the public’s attention. But a stunningly swift and thorough deregulatory campaign is happening elsewhere in Washington: at the Federal Communications Commission.

Under its new chairman, the Republican former telecommunications industry attorney Ajit Pai, the FCC has cancelled, suspended or stayed a whole checklist of consumer-friendly regulations affecting broadband services, telecommunications, video content and customer privacy rights. Consumer advocates say the consequences may include higher rates for Internet service, less privacy for customers going online and a narrower choice of content. In what may be his most far-reaching act, Pai announced Feb. 27 that the FCC would take a hands-off approach to the AT&T-Time Warner merger, an $85-billion deal between a content distributor and content producer that could remake both industries. That leaves jurisdiction over the merger to the Department of Justice, which is unlikely to block it. President Trump has said he opposes the merger, but he also held a closed-door meeting with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson just before the inauguration, so whether he will intervene to block the deal remains unknown.

Imagine a world where Comcast slows video streaming from Fox News’s website to a pixelated crawl while boosting Rachel Maddow—who happens to star on Comcast-owned MSNBC. What if Verizon, which owns the liberal Huffington Post, charged you more to visit right-wing Breitbart. Or maybe Google Fiber bans access to the alt-right social network Gab.

Today, it’s illegal to impose tiered pricing on any internet content, thanks to the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rules. But if Republicans have their way, those rules will soon disappear, leaving companies like Comcast and Verizon free to block, throttle, or charge a toll to access your favorite websites and apps. Republicans may find trying to unwind net neutrality less popular than they think. Americans tend to see internet access as an extension of their First Amendment freedoms—they can say and see what they want online. If they have to start paying more for one kind of political speech over another, they likely won’t stay neutral at all.

Sen Cory Booker (D-NJ) may not generate the same attention as our current tweeter-in-chief, but he embraces social media just as much. When serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Sen Booker gained a reputation for regularly interacting with constituents on Twitter. And today, as a US senator, he continues to post across a variety of media. Booker's been doing Facebook videos from his office at nearly a weekly clip since early December, and so far the senator finds the platform unparalleled when it comes to generating a response.

"At times, I see [Facebook videos] as more valuable than a speech on the senate floor," Sen Booker told a capacity crowd during his keynote at the 2017 South By Southwest conference. "These are videos I put up for an audience to explain policy. In the senate, there are maybe 14 people watching me on C-SPAN, plus my mom makes 15. But my last Facebook video got something like one million views."

Ostensibly, Booker's speech served as the kick-off for the interactive portion of SXSW. But he often took the opportunity to touch on what he viewed as pressing political issues of the day: everything from the dangers of Attorney General Jeff Sessions for a criminal justice system that's overly reliant on incarceration to the broken US food system (where tax dollars fund ads for food, fund campaigns telling you not to eat those foods, and then fund health resources to combat problems caused in the first place by government-supported foods). No matter the topic, Sen Booker kept coming back to an overarching message about the need for love at this time of great division.

When he did talk about tech, Booker spoke of innovation as a double-edged sword.

In an age of partisan media, the lines between “partisan” and “media” can sometimes blur. Case in point: The pool reporter covering Vice President Mike Pence on March 9 — that is, the reporter who supplied details about Pence’s daily activities as proxy for the rest of the press corps — was an employee of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. In other words, the news that reporters received about the vice president came from a journalist employed by an organization with a vested interest in the direction of White House and federal policy.

The development is unusual; the reporter, Fred Lucas, is the first member of his organization to take on pool reporting duties, which are typically handled on a rotating basis by mainstream news organizations. Lucas writes for the Daily Signal, a news and commentary site started nearly three years ago by Heritage, one of Washington’s leading policy shops. The Signal covers issues that are a focus of Heritage’s conservative agenda, such as an Obamacare repeal, tax policy and illegal immigration. While there were no objections to Lucas’s pool reports on Vice President Pence, some journalists suggested the presence of the Signal as a member of the pool crossed a symbolic line, into greater legitimacy for the partisan press.

Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee pressed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to answer pointed questions about his views on the news media and ability to be an independent regulator over the industry. The letter, led by ranking member Bill Nelson (D-FL) and signed by the panel’s 13 Democrats, comes in the wake of Pai’s refusal to answer questions from Sens. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) during the panel’s FCC oversight hearing. Pai’s recent renomination to another 5-year term by the president is now pending before the Commerce Committee. The senators wrote:

We ask you to respond directly, fully, and individually to the questions below, which will inform our ongoing consideration of your renomination for an additional five-year term on the FCC.

1. Do you believe the media is the “enemy” of the American people?
2. Can you assure us that you will exercise your authority as chairman of the FCC to regulate the media in an impartial manner?
3. Will you commit to us that the FCC will not act in a manner that violates the First Amendment and stifles or penalizes free speech by electronic media, directly or indirectly, even if requested by the administration?
4. Did you commit to the administration, as a condition for your elevation or renomination as chairman of the FCC, to take any action against a specific media entity or generally against broadcast entities, cable network owners or other media outlets?
5. Will you commit to us that you will exercise your authority as chairman of the FCC in a manner that fully respects the absolute independence of the agency from the executive branch?
6. Finally, will you commit to inform us and the public of any attempt by the White House or by any executive branch official to influence your decision-making or direct you to take or not take any action with respect to media interests within your jurisdiction, including the license renewal applications for broadcasters (whether or not such contacts fall under the ex parte rules or other legal or ethical rules applicable to the FCC)?

Please provide your responses no later than 5 p.m. on Friday, March 17, 2017.

Many in the media are already writing the epitaph for net neutrality in the Trump era. And it’s true that with every new press release and statement out of the Federal Communications Commission (and they’re coming fast and furious) it’s become pretty clear that new chairman Ajit Pai is aligning the agency with Donald Trump’s business-friendly and less consumer-friendly agenda. But six weeks into the new administration, it seems less and less likely that Chairman Pai has it in mind to completely kill the network neutrality principles.

Apparently, Chairman Pai is more likely to scale back the effects of the order, rather than pushing the commission to withdraw it or asking Congress to pass legislation that overrides it, two commission insiders who insisted on anonymity told Fast Company. Chairman Pai may “soften” the order by allowing broadband carriers some kinds of web traffic prioritization or throttling under clearly defined conditions, one source said. For example, if a broadband customer is paying for 100 megabit-per-second broadband service, the provider might be allowed to prioritize some kinds of bandwidth-sensitive traffic (like video) in order to meet the speed promise. There are other ways to “lighten” Wheeler’s order. Regulatory agencies like the FCC can write new rules, and they can decide how vigorously to enforce existing ones. The FCC under Chairman Pai might do a little of both.

[Commentary] President Donald Trump has promised aggressive cybersecurity policy. In a dangerous departure from the president, the Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has taken actions to eliminate its role in addressing cybersecurity.

Chairman Ajit Pai stopped an order addressing known flaws exploited by low-end attackers to “hi-jack” the Emergency Alert System. He pulled cybersecurity considerations out of the new internet protocol-based TV broadcast proposal avoiding public discussion of this backdoor vector to Wi-Fi and broadband connected devices. He halted the cybersecurity provisions in the FCC’s Broadband Privacy order and opposed inclusion of cybersecurity in communications outage reporting. He rescinded a notice of inquiry generating early public dialog regarding cybersecurity risk reduction for next-generation wireless networks and pulled from public view a study by FCC economists highlighting the growing gap between communications sector corporate cybersecurity investment and that needed to properly protect society.

The greatest concern, however, will come from benign neglect, as the chairman asserts cybersecurity risk is somebody else’s problem.

[Rear Admiral (Ret.) David Simpson served as chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau from November 2013 through January 2017.]

Frontier Communications is looking to leverage some Connect America Fund (CAF) options to get additional funding in its quest to bring faster internet speeds to rural areas within its footprint.

The provider identified 515 census blocks in a filing for CAF Phase I Round 2 incremental support, focusing on locations it initially couldn't reach during CAF I that can't access even a minimum 3 Mbps connection. Frontier may also be able to get CAF II funding rather than CAF I incremental support to build to these areas, the provider noted in its filing. Joining fellow telephone companies Consolidated and Windstream, Frontier accepted $283 million annually in CAF II support from the FCC to deploy broadband to more than 650,000 high-cost rural locations throughout its current 28-state service area. The service provider noted that the locations it is targeting with the CAF II funds are those that are only served by Frontier and not a competitor.