Agenda

A letter from almost five dozen members of Congress, including from both parties, calls on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai not to move off the FCC's current timeline for repacking TV stations after the incentive auction and freeing up spectrum for wireless broadband. "We write to urge you to ensure the 600 MHz spectrum...is cleared no later than July 3, 2020, as currently scheduled" they wrote Oct 16. They said clearing the band of broadcasters as quickly as possible was a critical component of deploying high-speed broadband, including to rural areas, a particular concern of the FCC's, as well as many of the letter signatories, including Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA).

They said freeing up that spectrum and connecting homes across the country to broadband is not just about jobs or economic growth, but is a necessity in a connected world. They praised Pai's work to date to boost broadband deployment in underserved communities and said they supported a "robust" waiver process for stations who need flexibility in making their channel moves, and want stakeholders to work together to find creative solutions. But the bottom line is: Wrap it up by that 2020 date.

At the start of this decade, the Arab Spring blossomed with the help of social media. That is the sort of story the tech industry loves to tell about itself: It is bringing freedom, enlightenment and a better future for all mankind. Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, proclaimed that this was exactly why his social network existed. In a 2012 manifesto for investors, he said Facebook was a tool to create “a more honest and transparent dialogue around government.” The result, he said, would be “better solutions to some of the biggest problems of our time.”

Now tech companies are under fire for creating problems instead of solving them. At the top of the list is Russian interference in last year’s presidential election. Social media might have originally promised liberation, but it proved an even more useful tool for stoking anger. The manipulation was so efficient and so lacking in transparency that the companies themselves barely noticed it was happening. The election is far from the only area of concern. Tech companies have accrued a tremendous amount of power and influence. Amazon determines how people shop, Google how they acquire knowledge, Facebook how they communicate. All of them are making decisions about who gets a digital megaphone and who should be unplugged from the web. Their amount of concentrated authority resembles the divine right of kings, and is sparking a backlash that is still gathering force.

The House Communications Subcommittee plans to hold a Federal Communication Commission oversight hearing Oct 25. Democratic members of the committee on Oct. 12 called for a hearing at which the commissioners would pledge not to target news outlets over their coverage of the Administration—as President Donald Trump has urged—but a source said it was a routing hearing that had been in the works for several weeks as they tried to work out availabilities. The subcommittee postponed an earlier FCC oversight hearing, and this week referred a bill reauthorizing the agency and to the full committee with work still to do on it. Invites have gone out to all the commissioners and they have until noon Oct 13 to respond.

The government's top watchdog has agreed to investigate the reported cyberattack that targeted the Federal Communications Commission earlier in 2017 while the agency was preparing to roll back net neutrality regulations. A spokesman for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed it has accepted a request from two Democratic lawmakers to probe the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that the FCC said disrupted its electronic comment filing system in May. The spokesman said that the probe, which was first reported by Politico, is “now in the queue, but the work won’t get underway for several months.” The investigation will also examine the FCC’s broader cybersecurity efforts.

The House Communications Subcommittee on Oct 11 marked up a bipartisan discussion draft of legislation reauthorizing the Federal Communications Commission and made short work of it, voting unanimously to refer the draft to the full House Commerce Committee and taking less than a half hour to do it. It will be the first reauthorization of the agency in more than 25 years. Reauthorization is a chance to legislate various changes in how the FCC does business, including process reforms and, in one particular instance broadcasters are following closely, how it repacks TV stations post-auction.

One reason for the smooth sailing is that some amendments will not be introduced until the full committee mark-up and the various provisions already in the draft include bills backed by Democratic Reps, including boosting public safety, wireless coverage data collection, cybersecurity, and bipartisan FCC process reform language that has twice passed the House. Rep Anna Eshoo's (D-CA) FCC Collaboration Act is also included, which would allow more than two commissioners to meet outside of public meetings so long as certain sunshine criteria are met. "I don’t know how many [times] I have introduced that in," Rep Eshoo said. "Maybe this is the magic year for that." Citing some of those provisions, Full Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) said in his opening statement that the draft was "a good first start," but added, "We still have critical work to do before I can support reporting this bill out of the full committee." Rep Mike Doyle (D-PA) said the bill was a good-faith, bipartisan effort by the majority, but also said it needed improving. That mark-up is likely to be longer and more contentious.

CenturyLink is making a final push to get the Federal Communications Commission to approve its pending acquisition of Level 3 Communications, with hopes of closing it in October 2017. The FCC is the only regulator that has yet to sign off on the purchase. To date, CenturyLink and Level 3’s proposed merger has gotten approvals from 19 states. It has also gained pre-closing notice filings in 14 other states. At this point, CenturyLink and Level only need the final sign off from the California Public Utilities Commission, which is expected to approve the acquisition during a meeting in Oct.

[Commentary] Congress is about to make a major decision about privacy protection, civil liberties and national security. The 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, including its most controversial provision, Section 702, is set to expire on Dec. 31. The two of us — both members of the panel that President Barack Obama appointed in 2013 to review the government’s foreign intelligence programs in the wake of Edward Snowden’s disclosures — agree that FISA Section 702 should be reauthorized but with a significant reform.

The government should no longer be permitted to search the data collected under Section 702 without a warrant when seeking information about US citizens and legal permanent residents. There is, however, one aspect of the way the 702 program has evolved that we believe needs to change: the FBI’s practice of searching the data for information on Americans without first obtaining a warrant. Americans are entitled to full protection of their privacy. They should not lose that protection merely because the government has information in a foreign intelligence database that it legally acquired. Importantly, the government collected that information by using a standard that could not be legally be employed to target an American anywhere in the world.

[Geoffrey Stone is a law professor at the University of Chicago. Michael Morell was the deputy director of the CIA from 2010 to 2013 and twice served as acting director.]

The House Intelligence Committee is asking officials from Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet’s Google to testify publicly as part of its Russia probe on Nov. 1, the same day as a planned Senate Intelligence hearing. That would set up a marathon day for the social media companies, which are facing increasing scrutiny over the role their platforms played in Russia’s efforts to meddle in the U.S. election. The House panel previously said it was looking at sometime in October to bring technology companies in for a hearing.

In addition to the elimination of the main studio rule, another media item is proposed for consideration at the Federal Communications Commission’s October 24 meeting. A draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) was released earlier this week proposing two changes in FCC requirements – neither change, in and of itself, offering any fundamental modifications of significant regulation, but both showing that this Commission is looking to eliminate bothersome burdens on broadcasters where those burdens are unnecessary in today’s media world or where they do not serve any real regulatory purpose. One change proposes to limit the requirement for TV stations to file Ancillary and Supplementary Revenue Reports to those stations that actually have such revenue, and the other proposing to eliminate the obligation of broadcasters to publish local public notice of significant application filings in a local newspaper.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is seeking to impose a significant new restraint on law enforcement’s access to data gathered by the National Security Agency under a powerful authority that enables collection of foreign intelligence on U.S. soil. The measure, contained in a bill unveiled Oct 4 by the House Judiciary Committee, is likely to set up a clash with the Trump administration in the coming weeks as the legal power is set to expire at the end of 2017. The administration wants the bill to be renewed without change — and permanently. At the same time, civil liberties groups are arguing for stronger limits. The law in question is often referred to as Section 702, a portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amended in 2008. Its renewal is the intelligence community’s highest legislative priority this year.