Gov performance

Federal Communications Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks say that the FCC has not been forthcoming about its investigation into the sale of consumers' real-time cell phone location data by AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile. It appears the investigation has not been prioritized by the agency. Around a year after the inquiry was opened, there have been no public updates, and the two commissioners said they have little knowledge on what's actually being investigated. "So far it appears that the FCC is more interested in protecting the privacy of its investigation than

The report condemns the Federal Communications Commission for failing to adequately respond to the September 2017 hurricanes, which knocked out 95 percent of all cell sites, 97 percent of radio stations and all local television stations. The report calls out the agency’s failure to hold wired and wireless carriers to account for neglecting to build resilient networks or respond in a timely or sufficient fashion to restore communications to the islands’ residents.

In written testimomny before the Senate Committee On Appropriations' Subcommittee On Financial Services And General Government, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai outlined the commission's priorities for the next year:

Striking back at The New York Times Company, the Federal Communications Commission is urging a judge to rule that the agency need not disclose information about net neutrality commenters because doing so would compromise their privacy. “If the FCC is compelled to disclose an individual’s IP address, operating system and version, browser platform and version, and language settings, and that information is linked to the individual’s publicly-available name and postal address, that disclosure would result in clearly unwarranted invasions of personal privacy,” the FCC argues in papers filed wit

The US justice system is under attack as part of a long-term Russian effort to undermine the appeal of democracy and weaken the West. Via multi-platform disinformation opera­tions, Kremlin-backed operatives work to exacerbate existent divisions within populations and increase overall mistrust and paranoia against democratic institutions. In the process, justice systems are portrayed as corrupt, inept, and hypocritical. This report describes the nature of this threat and proposes measures for countering it.

The Consumer Federation of America joined a lawsuit challenging the decision of the Federal Communication Commission to extend the allocation of costs between federal and state jurisdictions that was adopted in 2000 for another six years. The consumer pocketbook impact of the misallocation of costs is huge, totaling $150-$250 billion ($200-$300 per household per year) over the next six years.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Inspector General has issued an advisory to alert Lifeline carriers, beneficiaries, and the public to a number of fraudulent enrollment practices found pervasive across the IG’s ongoing investigations targeting Lifeline carriers and the carriers’ sales agents. Many of these enrollment practices rely on identity fraud and the manipulation of personal information, including enrollee names, to evade the program’s safeguards. The advisory describes simple tricks used by fraudsters to create phantom enrollments.

The White House moved to exert greater control over the federal regulatory process by imposing additional scrutiny over independent government agencies when they establish new policies, guidelines or rules that affect large swaths of the economy.

The paper builds on a working group report that led to the creation of the Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA), which was formally established in Dec 2018. The Working Paper concludes that organizational consolidation of economists into a single unit, much like the arrangement of the new OEA, can provide more independent and higher quality economic analysis within regulatory agencies.

Communications technologies power one-sixth of the nation’s economy—and every American needs access to these technologies to have a fair shot at 21st century success. That is why the budget request from the Administration before you today is so striking. It asks for less than the $339,000,000 the agency is set to spend in the current fiscal year and is almost $4,000,000 less than the budget level authorized by Congress.