The Senate Commerce Committee approved the Advancing Critical Connectivity Expands Service, Small Business Resources, Opportunities, Access, and Data Based on Assessed Need and Demand (ACCESS BROADBAND) Act (S. 1046), as well as two-other communications-related bills. The bill creates the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, the White House's chief communications policy adviser. The office will track the construction, use and access to broadband infrastructure built with federal subsidies. Those include USDA-funded rural deployment programs and the FCC's Universal Service Fund.  

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai pushed back hard against suggestions by fellow-FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel that he was playing "hide the ball" with the way the FCC issues its request for comment on the remand of some of its net neutrality dereg order. Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA), citing a 2010 law requiring federal agencies to communicate in "plain language" the public can understand, pointed to the headline on the FCC's request for comment on a federal court's directive to better address the FCC net neutrality deregulation on public safety, the regulation of pole attachments, and its Lifeline broadband/phone subsidy program. That headline: "WCB6 Comment on Discreet Issues Arising from Mozilla Decision." Rep Bishop said the headline didn't seem to be plain language and he didn't have any idea what the FCC was requesting comment on, while Commissioner Rosenworcel called it "hiding the ball" from the American public. 

Chairman Pai countered that the language came from career staffers. He said "one could always take a shot from the peanut gallery along those lines," apparently putting Commissioner Rosenworcel rather than Rep Bishop in that gallery. He suggested that the headline was something that had been delegated. He said when you have the responsibility of running an agency, when responding to a remand on particular, discreet issues, "I rely not on political judgments but on the judgment of our career staff in the office of general counsel and the Wireline Competition Bureau." He said it had been drafted to respond to those particular issues that was what they had approved and he wasn't going to second guess them. 

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking to qualify for federal subsidies to provide broadband service to rural areas, over the objections of competitors who say its satellite-based technology is unproven. The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has convinced the Federal Communications Commission to propose a policy change that would improve its chances of winning federal funds to expand internet service in far-flung parts of the US, records show. In meetings with FCC staff, representatives of SpaceX said it should qualify for the money alongside companies that already provide broadband in remote areas through fiber-optic cable, according to a lobbying disclosure filed by SpaceX with the FCC. The FCC has yet to decide whether the company will be awarded funding. 

Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and other large hospitals across the country are quickly expanding the use of telemedicine to safely screen and treat patients for coronavirus, and to try to contain the spread of infection while offering remote services. While the notion of seeing a doctor via your computer or cellphone is hardly new, telemedicine has yet to take off widely in the United States. Health insurance plans do typically offer people the option of talking to a nurse or doctor online as an alternative to heading to an emergency room or urgent care center, but most people don’t make use of it. Now doctors, hospital networks and clinics are rethinking how the technology can be used, to keep the worried well calm and away from clinical care while steering the most at risk to the proper treatment.

As a former teacher, education and its long-reaching benefits are dear to my heart. While joining Deputy Under Secretary Donald “DJ” LaVoy at Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia (KY) to announce over $55.3 million in ReConnect funding, I thought of the impact this funding would have on the education of our fellow Kentuckians. While it is true that rural communities stand to benefit from broadband expansion in a number of ways, its ability to help close the very real digital divide between rural and urban America is a shining promise to the future for all Americans.

Online or distance education at accredited higher learning institutions is gaining ground across the country as well, and I can’t help but think a large part of that growth is rural students who can get degrees and certifications without leaving the communities where they’ve been raised. But they need true broadband to take advantage of those education opportunities. Nearly one quarter of the rural population across the country still lacks access to broadband service, but thanks to the four latest ReConnect projects in Kentucky, we are driving that number down in rural Kentucky. As broadband spreads in rural communities, so too does education, opportunity and prosperity, and when rural America prospers, so too does the rest of America.

[Hilda Legg, Kentucky State Director, USDA Rural Development]

The US House of Representatives approved legislation that would institute some reforms of the government’s surveillance authority while also imposing new requirements on the way the FBI obtains wiretapping warrants in national security investigations following criticism of its monitoring of a Trump campaign adviser in 2016. The bill also permanently bans a controversial but dormant program that allowed the government to obtain Americans’ phone records in terrorism investigations.

The bipartisan bill — an attempt to satisfy Republican lawmakers angry at the FBI’s handling of its Trump campaign investigation and Democratic lawmakers seeking broader surveillance reform — passed on a 278-to-136 vote just two days before lawmakers leave town. Democratic Reps wanted surveillance reforms to enhance privacy, and President Donald Trump’s Republican Reps wanted measures to curb what they saw as abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the 1978 law governing surveillance used in terrorism and espionage investigations. The result — packaged in legislation to reauthorize what is known as the USA Freedom Act, which in turn amends FISA — assuaged moderates, but disappointed libertarians on the right and privacy advocates on the left. The legislation now moves to the GOP-controlled Senate, where passage is expected the week of March 9. 

From an office in London's diamond district, Ben Scott has his eyes set on Big Tech. The former tech policy aide to Hillary Clinton has spent the last three years leapfrogging between elections from Germany to Canada looking for ways to counter the rise of online misinformation and halt the growing dominance of social media giants. Now, the 42-year-old, who worked with Clinton when she was Secretary of State and during her failed 2016 presidential bid, is reentering the fight with a new lobbying shop called Reset. It aims take on the power of Silicon Valley companies just as officials from Brussels to Ottawa look to rewrite the rules for the digital world. With up to $10 million in annual funding from philanthropic organization Luminate and the Sandler Foundation — a US-based donor that also supports the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union and media outlet ProPublica — Reset hopes to level the playing field between Big Tech and lawmakers. It will help officials gain access to data, and insider knowledge, that so far have been largely shielded from public view.