The FCC needs oversight, and Congress is on the job

[Commentary] Congress, which currently has an approval rating of 11 percent, has historically been the most maligned branch of the American federal government. It may be that Americans don’t think Congress is doing its job. But while Americans may mistake the (very public) debates among senators and representatives for discord, it is also a natural and important part of the democratic process. The recent House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing on Federal Communications Commission oversight was a great example of Article 1 (the section of the Constitution which defines the legislative branch) in action, and, importantly, it revealed a number of contentious issues within the FCC. Here are just three:

The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau has “gone off the rails”: A retroactive fine totaling $100 million, actions against Lyft and First National Bank, a war on Wi-Fi, and a process to review startups’ business plans are only a sample of the activities of an Enforcement Bureau which has “gone off the rails” according to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai.

The FCC/FTC battle over authority on privacy issues: As a result of the FCC’s decision to classify broadband under Title II of the Communications Act, the regulation of online privacy has been moved from the FTC to the FCC. While this may appear to be a minor bureaucratic reassignment, it weakens protections for America’s consumers, deprives them of the FTC’s 20 years of expertise on the privacy beat, and divests consumers of the ability to get remuneration when actors are charged with wrongdoing.

The FCC’s pre-emption of state laws on municipal broadband: The Constitution guarantees states some autonomy, and accordingly, many states have voted to protect public money from being abused in ill-funded municipal broadband projects. The FCC’s gambit in the name of using public money to create broadband “competition,” where private providers can never get the favorable conditions government providers enjoy, was yet another example of the FCC acting on its own accord, something that Congressional oversight needs to rein in. Wisely, the Department of Justice has declined to support the FCC in an effort that may well prove unlawful.

[Roslyn Layton studies Internet economics at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies (CMI) at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark]