Hill, The

Congressional Republicans are moving against the Federal Communications Commission's broadband privacy rules. In recent days, lawmakers in both the House and Senate have offered legislation to roll back the Obama-era measures, with bills from Sen Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Both bills aim to kill the rules using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Republicans to block rules with only a simple majority in both chambers.

The FCC's privacy rules were approved under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat, in October, and bar internet service providers from collecting "sensitive" consumer data like browsing information and app usage data without their customers' express consent. But Congress has only 60 legislative days after the regulations were approved to roll them back using the CRA. That timeline means Sen Flake and Chairman Blackburn have until mid-May to get their measures through Congress. So far, things are moving in the right direction for opponents of the privacy rules.

President Donald Trump slammed the media for being “rude” to his representatives. "It is amazing how rude much of the media is to my very hard working representatives," he tweeted. "Be nice, you will do much better!"

[Commentary] A cost-effective subsidy program should provide funds first where they will yield the largest bang for the buck and last where they yield the smallest. In this case, the government would define the network services it believes everyone should have (hopefully based on a careful analysis of both supply and demand information) and geographic areas it wants covered, and ask companies to say the size of the subsidy they would need to build out in those areas. A group of 71 economists signed a letter in 2009 encouraging this type of approach. It would then be possible to make an objective choice about which projects receive subsidies and which do not.

We should take this opportunity to rethink universal service and implement new ways of promoting coverage where it does not exist so that it benefits consumers, not just rural Internet service providers.

[Scott Wallsten is president and senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute]

The leaders of the House Oversight Committee raised concerns that President Donald Trump may be violating federal law by deleting his tweets. In a letter addressed to White House counsel Donald McGahn, committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) expressed concern over the White House’s digital record-keeping practices. “Many of the messages sent from [Trump’s] Twitter account are likely to be presidential records and therefore must be preserved,” the two wrote. “It has been reported, however, that president Trump has deleted tweets, and if those tweets were not archived it could pose a violation of the Presidential Records Act.” Reps Chaffetz and Cummings also noted their unease with encrypted apps White House staffers have been using, which the lawmakers believe may pose a risk to record keeping and transparency.

Federal Communications Chairman Chairman Ajit Pai said his agency is investigating an issue that left some AT&T customers unable to call 911. Both Chairman Pai and AT&T tweeted that the problem has since been resolved. “We're receiving reports of widespread AT&T 911 call outages,” Chairman Pai wrote on Twitter just before 10 pm March 8. “@FCC public safety staff are investigating. I'll post more info once available.”

China asked the US government to stop spying on and hacking other countries, after WikiLeaks revealed data showing that the CIA can hack a range of devices, including some manufactured in China. Software companies quickly tried to detect security weak points following the WikiLeak news, with some calling for more details about what the US intelligence community was doing.

Cisco routers, which are widely used to provide wireless internet, were listed as a target in the WikiLeaks data. Cisco, a California-based company, markets its routers as providing “strong security and services to enterprise, service providers, and industrial networks.” Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE also are on the list. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang asked the US to stop hacking China. "We urge the US side to stop listening in, monitoring, stealing secrets and internet hacking against China and other countries," Geng said.

A USA Today/Suffolk University poll reports that registered voters, by a 2-1 margin, want President Trump to cut down on his tweeting. Fifty-nine percent of the 1,000 surveyed say Trump "should stop tweeting so much,” and 28 percent agree with the statement "his tweets are a good way to communicate directly with Americans."

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll taken just before Trump took office on Jan. 17 showed 69 percent of those polled agreeing with the statement that "in an instant, messages can have unintended major implications without careful review.” Just 26 percent said the tweeting "allows a president to directly communicate to people immediately."

Sens Ed Markey (D-MA) and Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a bill aimed at cracking down on robocalls from government contractors. The bill, dubbed the Help Americans Never Get Unwanted Phone Calls (HANGUP) Act, would remove loopholes that exempt government contractors and federal debt collectors from robocall regulation, the lawmakers said.

“When Congress passed the [Telephone Consumer Protection Act], the goal was clear: consumers should not be subject to unwanted robocalls and robotexts on their phones,” Sen Markey said. “But recent carveouts by Congress and the FCC allow government contractors to robocall and robotext consumers without their affirmative express consent," he added, referring to the Federal Communications Commission. Sen Lee characterized the legislation as "a check on Congressional entitlement and bureaucratic overreach." "If independent and private businesses are not allowed to harass consumers with unwanted robocalls and texts, government and government contractors should be held to that same standard," Sen Lee said.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that there is a “big difference” between WikiLeaks publishing Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked e-mails and the site's recent release of classified CIA information. During the presidential campaign, President Donald Trump praised WikiLeaks and urged the group to continue publishing Podesta’s hacked e-mails, which US intelligence agencies believe were obtained by Russian-backed hackers. Spicer was asked if President Trump is still a fan of WikiLeaks, a day after the group published a massive trove of documents pertaining to the CIA’s hacking programs. “There is a big difference between disclosing John Podesta’s Gmail accounts and the back-and-forth about his undermining of Hillary Clinton and his thoughts on her on a personal level, and of leaking classified information,” Spicer said.

Sen Jeff Flake (R-AZ) introduced a measure that would reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s privacy rules for internet service providers. The resolution would kill the FCC’s ‘Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services’ regulation through the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to reject certain recently passed regulations by majority vote.

The FCC rules limit broadband providers from accessing and collecting personal customer information, including web browsing data and app usage history. The regulation, approved by the agency in October, was opposed by internet service providers who said it prevented them from using their customers' data for profit as most internet companies do. Sen Flake's resolution has 21 Republican co-sponsors, including Sens John Barrasso (R-WY), Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV).