FCC’s O’Rielly: Congress should ‘expect abuse’ as it rewrites communications laws

Federal Communications Commissioner Mike O’Rielly warned that Congress should anticipate abuse as it looks to update the law governing the communications industry.

“Expect [that] people are going to misinterpret and abuse your provision and then work backwards,” he said.

Commissioner O’Rielly, the newest of the two Republicans on the FCC, suggested that the members and staff working on the Communications Act rewrite “leave out extraneous provisions.” He noted the political benefits of including “benign” provisions but warned, “those are the ones that often come back to haunt you,” because they are most easily misinterpreted by a “misguided court or activist agency.”