Ars Technica

Republican Sens are reportedly preparing a legislative move to overturn privacy rules that require Internet service providers to protect their customers' online data. Sen Jeff Flake (R-AZ) confirmed that he plans to introduce a resolution that would roll back the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband privacy rules via the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to eliminate agency rules with a simple majority vote. Sen Flake had a dozen co-sponsors on board as of last week, but he hasn't said when exactly he'll submit the resolution.

In the House, Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said last week she was speaking with colleagues in the Senate "daily" about how to best utilize the CRA to undo broadband privacy. The flurry of action comes shortly after industry lobby groups asked Congress to use the CRA to undo the privacy rules. The rules passed in October require home and mobile ISPs to get opt-in consent from consumers before sharing Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other third parties.

House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and the Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Darin LaHood (R-IL) sent a formal letter to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General, expressing concern that “approximately a dozen career EPA officials” are using the encrypted messaging app Signal to covertly plan strategy and may be running afoul of the Freedom of Information Act. The open source app has gained renewed interest in the wake of the election of President Donald Trump. The congressmen note that the EPA has previously examined employee use of text messages to conduct government business and found that only a minuscule fraction of those messages was retained under FOIA.

Twitter has asked a federal judge to decide what seems like a relatively simple question: is it ok to tell the public that the company received a specific number of national security orders, rather than simply a broad range, during a given period of time? The case began more than two years ago, when Twitter sued the Department of Justice and argued that the federal law that prohibits the company from being more precise is unconstitutional. The government counters that courts should defer to the executive branch with respect to classification and not allow Twitter's request. Lawyers representing the social media giant and the Department of Justice squared off on Feb 14 during a hearing as to whether the judge should immediately rule in the government’s favor on a motion for summary judgment.

AT&T is bringing fiber-to-the-home Internet to five new metro areas this month, boosting its fiber total to 51 metro areas in the US. Milwaukee (WI) has AT&T Fiber now, and later in Feb the service will arrive in Columbia (SC), Jackson (MI), Knoxville (TN), and Shreveport (LA). AT&T Fiber is available to nearly four million homes and businesses (up from three million in November 2016), but there's still a lot of work left to put fiber in additional cities and expand deployment in those where it's already available. "By mid-2019 we plan to reach at least 12.5 million locations across 67 metro areas with our 100 percent fiber network," AT&T said. The company agreed to hit those numbers in exchange for getting its purchase of DirecTV approved in 2015.

The "Virginia Broadband Deployment Act" that would have made it far more difficult for municipalities to offer Internet service has been dramatically watered down after running into heavy opposition. Instead of preventing cities and towns from offering broadband, a new version of the bill passed by the Virginia House this week merely imposes new record-keeping requirements.

The original bill favored by cable lobbyists (and called the "Broadband death star bill" by one opponent) would have prohibited municipal broadband deployments except in very limited circumstances. If it had passed, localities wouldn't have been allowed to offer Internet service if an existing network already provided 10Mbps download and 1Mbps upload speeds to 90 percent of potential customers. The bill also would have made it difficult for localities to offer lower rates than private ISPs. Gov Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) in Jan promised to veto the bill if it was passed by the state legislature. The proposal also drew opposition from local governments, broadband advocacy groups, and companies such as Google and Netflix. The opposition was successful, as House Republicans replaced the bill with another called the "Virginia Wireless Services Act" and approved it Tuesday by a 72-24 vote. It has now gone to the Senate for consideration.

Comcast should stop saying in advertisements that it “delivers the fastest Internet in America” and the “fastest in-home Wi-Fi," according to the advertising industry's self-regulation body. The evidence Comcast uses to substantiate those claims is not sufficient, ruled the National Advertising Review Board (NARB).

Verizon had challenged Comcast's advertising claims, leading to the ruling. Comcast said today that it disagreed with the findings but will comply with the decision. Comcast used crowdsourced speed test data from Ookla to make its claim about Xfinity Internet speeds. "Ookla’s data showed only that Xfinity consumers who took advantage of the free tests offered on the Speedtest.net website subscribed to tiers of service with higher download speeds than Verizon FiOS consumers who took advantage of the tests," today's NARB announcement said. The Ookla data's accuracy wasn't questioned, but it was judged to be "not a good fit for an overall claim that an ISP delivers 'America’s fastest Internet.'"

US Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has informed Congress that the DHS is considering requiring refugees and visa applicants from seven Muslim-majority nations to hand over their social media credentials from Facebook and other sites as part of a security check. "We want to get on their social media, with passwords: What do you do, what do you say?" he told the House Committee on Homeland Security Feb 7.

The Federal Communications Commission's new Republican leadership has decided not to defend FCC inmate calling rules that place a cap on intrastate calling rates. Chairman Ajit Pai and fellow Commissioner Michael O'Rielly repeatedly opposed attempts to cap the phone rates charged to prisoners while Democrats held the FCC's majority.

Republicans argued that the FCC exceeded its authority, and commission attempts to enforce rate caps have been stymied by a series of court decisions. Since the FCC prison rate order was adopted by a 3-2 vote in October 2015, Democrats Jessica Rosenworcel and Chairman Tom Wheeler have left the commission, FCC Deputy General Counsel David Gossett noted. "As a result of these changes in membership, the two Commissioners who dissented from the Order under review—on the grounds that, in specific respects, it exceeds the agency’s lawful authority—now comprise a majority of the Commission," Gossett wrote. Gossett is thus no longer authorized to defend the FCC's previous contention that it "has the authority to cap intrastate rates for inmate calling services" and cannot defend the FCC's assertion that it "lawfully considered industry-wide averages in setting the rate caps contained in the Order," he wrote. Gossett said he will continue to defend other parts of the commission's October 2015 order, which also lowered the price of interstate calls, those that cross state lines. The FCC's decision to stop defending the full order hurts the case for maintaining rate caps on intrastate calls in which both parties are in the same state, but it doesn't completely kill the case. The FCC is ceding 10 minutes of its allotted argument time to attorney Andrew Schwartzman, who is defending the rate caps on behalf of prisoners' rights groups.

In a press conference after the Federal Communications Commission meeting, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was asked several times about network neutrality. While Chairman Pai has repeatedly made it clear that he opposes the current rules and wants to overturn them, he has not said whether the commission will continue to enforce all of the rules while they are still in place. When asked by a reporter if the agency will continue to enforce the rules, Chairman Pai pointed out that he and fellow Republican Commissioner Michael O'Rielly already said they wouldn't punish small Internet service providers for violations of the net neutrality order's "enhanced transparency" rules.

The FCC is finalizing an order that will exempt ISPs with 250,000 or fewer subscribers from those truth-in-billing rules and will not enforce them against the small ISPs while they're still in place. But for now, Pai is not saying whether the commission will continue to enforce the core net neutrality rules that prohibit Internet providers from blocking or throttling traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment.

Comcast said it plans to offer a mobile phone service in 2017 with an emphasis on selling bundles of wireless and cable service. Launching the wireless product is a priority in 2017, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said. Comcast will be able to offer wireless service nationwide because of a reselling agreement with Verizon, but the company is expecting particularly good sales with existing customers in its cable territory.

"We plan to include wireless in our multi-product bundles in a way that is designed to add value to our customers, improve retention, and ultimately benefit lifetime customer economics for us," Roberts said. "Our offering will give customers access to a world-class wireless network, benefiting from our Wi-Fi [hotspots], with the best mobile devices and a simple, transparent experience, all for a great value." The Comcast "triple-play" bundle would thus expand to four major products: home Internet service, cable TV, landline phones, and mobile phones.