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Network neutrality advocates are feeling emboldened by the outcry over the GOP’s repeal of internet privacy regulations, viewing it as an opportunity to harness grassroots support for their cause. “I think for Republicans and the ISPs who pushed them into this, this is a short-term victory,” said Matt Wood, policy director of the advocacy group Free Press. “But as they won this battle, they might have hurt their chances in the war, because they have reawakened people ... to how it really isn’t a partisan issue.”

“I suspect that net neutrality repeal is right around the corner, and I think that anger is going to continue to spin,” said Gigi Sohn, who was a counselor to former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler and who had a hand in crafting the privacy rules. Sohn said that she sees parallels in the battles over net neutrality and broadband privacy, arguing that they’re both arguments about how much control telecom companies should have over users’ online experiences. She argued that eliminating the rules could lead to a greater public awareness about what Congress and even the FCC are doing about net neutrality. “It’s priming the pump of an enormous wave of grassroots activity on net neutrality,” Sohn said. “We’re not going to start on square one, we’re going to start on square 10.”

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation that would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before searching the digital devices of Americans trying to reenter the United States. The practice of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents asking for passwords to search the digital devices of Americans seeking entry into the United States has attracted significant media attention and raised concerns among privacy advocates in recent months. Sens Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced legislation that cites the 2004 Supreme Court case Riley v. California, in which the court ruled that law enforcement needed a warrant to search an electronic device in the case of an individual’s arrest.

The bill, a version of which Reps Jared Polis (D-CO) and Blake Farenthold (R-TX) introduced in the House, states that the principles of the Supreme Court decision extend to searches of Americans’ digital devices at the border. The legislation, called the Protecting Data at the Border Act, also states that Americans must be made aware of their rights before they agree to give up passwords, social media account names or other digital account information or to hand over their devices to law enforcement.

The Trump Administration has quietly issued new policy guidance that would make it harder for companies to use the H-1B visa program to bring foreign computer programmers into the US. A policy memo from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services changes the way the agency will process visa applications for computer programming positions, making companies jump through extra hoops to fill those jobs with foreign workers.

"Based on the current version of the Handbook, the fact that a person may be employed as a computer programmer and may use information technology skills and knowledge to help an enterprise achieve its goals in the course of his or her job is not sufficient to establish the position as a specialty occupation," the memo reads.

[Commentary] Consumer privacy has been the biggest loser from network neutrality proponents’ politicization of privacy. Congress was right to rescind the Title II broadband privacy order passed by the Federal Communications Commission in October. The order took a nonpartisan public policy issue substantively unrelated to net neutrality, consumer privacy, and unnecessarily turning it into a partisan issue. Essentially, the House and Senate’s rescissions of the unimplemented rules restored the privacy status quo. It also creates the opportunity to free consumer privacy interests from the unproductive clutches of the Title II net neutrality or nothing, hyper-politicization of communications issues, going forward.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and Chairman of NetCompetition, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests]

Democratic Sens are pushing President Donald Trump to reject legislation that would repeal the Obama-era Federal Communications Commission's broadband privacy rules. Forty-six Democrats sent a letter to President Trump on March 30 to veto the bill, which passed Congress along a pair of party-line votes. The White House said that the president would sign the bill, but Democrats warn that getting rid of the Obama-era rules would negatively impact privacy.

"This legislation will seriously undermine the privacy protections of the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe that their private information should be just that — private — and not for sale without their knowledge," the senators wrote. The letter was signed by all Senate Democrats with the exception of Sens Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Mark Warner (D-VA).

Reps Michael Capuano (D-MA) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) launched a petition to block congressional action that would get rid of consumer broadband privacy protections. The petition — hosted on Whitehouse.gov — asks the government not to “let Internet providers spy and sell our online data” and to “please keep the FCC's Privacy Rules” in place. “Other laws block the FTC from enacting any rules on ISPs,” the lawmakers' petition reads. “Consumers would have no privacy rules. We want better privacy protections like the FCC rules, not more loopholes.”

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai put more pressure on the Lifeline affordable internet program, announcing that he would allow states to decide which companies are certified to participate. The announcement comes after Chairman Pai's decision earlier in 2017 to cut nine providers from the Lifeline program, which elicited criticism from groups that supported the measures.

In his new statement, Chairman Pai said that he would not defend federal certification for the Lifeline program — which subsidizes internet access for low income households — out of respect for states' own legal jurisdictions. “But as we implement the Lifeline program — as with any program we administer — we must follow the law,” Chairman Pai’s statement read. "And the law here is clear: Congress gave state governments, not the FCC, the primary responsibility for approving which companies can participate in the Lifeline program under Section 214 of the Communications Act.” Twelve states are challenging the legality of FCC’s orders regarding Lifeline. Chairman Pai said that it would be a “waste of judicial and administrative resources to defend the FCC’s unlawful action in court,” noting the “FCC will soon begin a proceeding to eliminate the new federal designation process.” Chairman Pai also said that he believed that the FCC should not approve the pending Lifeline Broadband Provider applications for broadband companies seeking to be part of the Lifeline program.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is calling on a group of leading internet service providers to announce whether they support a GOP bill that would eliminate privacy protections. Minority Leader Pelosi came out against the measure and sent letters to AT&T, Century Link, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Frontier, Optimum, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and Windstream asking for their positions on it. “Americans learned last week that agents of Russian intelligence hacked into e-mail accounts to obtain secrets on American companies, government officials and more,” Pelosi wrote. “This resolution would not only end the requirement you take reasonable measures to protect consumers’ sensitive information, but prevents the FCC from enacting a similar requirement and leaves no other agency capable of protecting consumers.”

Rep Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to take "swift action" on a known cellphone security flaw. “It is clear that industry self-regulation isn’t working when it comes to telecommunications cybersecurity,” Sen Wyden and Rep Lieu wrote in a letter they cosigned, on March 28.

At issue is Signaling System 7 (SS7), which allows cellphone networks to communicate with one another - among other purposes, letting cellphones roam from one network to another. In 2014, German security researcher Karsten Nohl determined that there was a bug in SS7 that could allow an attacker to record phone calls, place calls from other accounts, and create other mischief. The relatively obscure phone protocol, though, now has the attention of Congressional lawmakers.

President Donald Trump attacked The New York Times, days after he called one of the paper’s reporters to give an exclusive interview on the decision to pull his healthcare plan from the House floor. “The failing @NYTimes would do much better if they were honest!” President Trump tweeted on both his personal and official White House accounts.

The tweet linked to a piece by New York Post columnist John Crudele, in which he said he canceled his Times subscription “because I felt the paper had become ethically challenged in its coverage of the presidential election.” Crudele ripped the paper’s coverage of the federal investigation into whether Trump associates helped Russia meddle in the 2016 election and Trump’s wiretapping claims.