Wireless Internet

At our meeting on Aug 3, the Commission will vote on a mid-band spectrum Notice of Inquiry. While it provides a great opportunity to point out any frequencies, between 3.7 and 24 GHz, that you think may facilitate wireless broadband services, the main focus is the 3.7 to 4.2 GHz band. Recently, an ad-hoc coalition of equipment manufacturers, wireless providers, and unlicensed users have been discussing ideas on how to open the 3.7 to 4.2 GHz band for licensed mobile services, while protecting or accommodating incumbents. This will provide an excellent opportunity because it is so close to the 3.5 GHz PALs.

Sens Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) introduced the Advancing Innovation and Reinvigorating Widespread Access to Viable Electromagnetic Spectrum (AIRWAVES) Act, which will encourage the federal government to continue to free up spectrum for commercial licensed and unlicensed use and leverage the success of spectrum auctions to help close the urban-rural divide.

First, the legislation establishes a spectrum pipeline that will provide more capacity for wireless providers to improve existing service and expand to new areas. The AIRWAVES Act aims to motivate industry and federal agencies to find ways to better utilize spectrum and avoid a spectrum crunch and lay the groundwork for 5G technologies. Second, this legislation requires 10 percent of all of the proceeds from spectrum auctions in the bill to go directly to wireless broadband infrastructure buildout in unserved and underserved areas throughout rural communities across the country.

When hackers took aim at the internet’s backbone in 2016, impeding access to websites like Twitter and Spotify, they did so by weaponizing the Internet of Things — a catch-all category of web-connected devices that includes fitness trackers and smart thermostats. The resulting denial-of-service attack was limited and short-lived, in the end, but cybersecurity fears about IoT remain prevalent — and a group of lawmakers in Congress is now getting to work to ensure the US government raises its own digital defenses in response. That’s the aim of a new bill out Aug 1 by Sens Mark Warner (D-VA) and Cory Gardner (R-CO).

Their measure — called the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017 — is an attempt to force companies that sell wearables, sensors and other web-connected tools to federal agencies to adhere to some new security standards. For example, lawmakers’ new proposal would put into law a requirement that vendors ensure the small, often screenless devices sold to the US government can be patched with security updates. It also prohibits those tech companies from hard-coding passwords into the firmware of the tools they offer the feds.

A bi-partisan coalition of 43 Congressional Reps is asking the Federal Communications Commission to reserve at least three TV white space channels in the 600 MHz band to support rural broadband deployments. “We believe that the television white spaces (TVWS) have strong potential to revolutionize broadband internet accessibility in rural areas,” wrote the coalition in a letter to the FCC. The coalition was led by Rep Kevin Cramer (R-ND) but also included some Democratic representatives, including Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA).

The three channels referenced would include the duplex gap between 652-663 MHz, Channel 37 (608-614 MHz) and an additional vacant channel in the post-auction broadcast TV band (54-608 MHz), the letter stated. The channels would be reserved for unlicensed use. If the idea of reserving three channels below 700 MHz for rural broadband sounds familiar, it may be because that’s what Microsoft has asked for to support the company’s plan to spur the deployment of TV white spaces technology to unserved rural areas. The 600 MHz band initially was licensed to television broadcasters but a portion of that band will now be repurposed for wireless use. A recent auction gave broadcasters the option of voluntarily relinquishing spectrum and sharing the auction proceeds with the government.

[Commentary] Microsoft recently made a Very Serious Announcement about deploying unused television airwaves to solve the digital divide in America. News outlets ate it up. Here's what's really going on: Microsoft is aiming to be the soup-to-nuts provider of Internet of Things devices, software, and consulting services to zillions of local and national governments around the world.

Microsoft doesn't want to have to rely on existing mobile data carriers to execute those plans. Why? Because the carriers will want a pound of flesh—a percentage—in exchange for shipping data generated by Microsoft devices from Point A to Point B. These costs can become very substantial over zillions of devices in zillions of cities. The carriers have power because, in many places, they are the only ones allowed to use airwave frequencies—spectrum—under licenses from local governments for which they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars. To eliminate that bottleneck, it will be good to have
unlicensed spectrum available everywhere, and cheap chipsets and devices available that can opportunistically take advantage of that spectrum.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.]

Apple has officially been granted Federal Communications Commission approval for an experimental license to test 5G data technology — specifically in the short-range millimeter wave spectrum in the 28GHz and 39GHz bands. The FCC portioned off those chunks of spectrum last summer for companies to begin testing 5G technology, so it makes sense that Apple would want to start exploring 5G, especially given that it’s a major player in the world of mobile data due to the sheer weight of the iPhone in the market.

Cheap phones are coming at the price of your privacy, security analysts discovered.

At $60, the Blu R1 HD is the top-selling phone on Amazon. In November 2016, researchers caught it secretly sending private data to China. Shanghai Adups Technology, the group behind the spying software on the Blu R1 HD, called it a mistake. But analysts at Kryptowire found the software provider is still making the same "mistake" on other phones. At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, researchers from Kryptowire, a security firm, revealed that Adups' software is still sending a device's data to the company's server in Shanghai without alerting people. But now, it's being more secretive about it. "They replaced them with nicer versions," Ryan Johnson, a research engineer and co-founder at Kryptowire, said. "I have captured the network traffic of them using the command and control channel when they did it."

Communities are increasingly deploying IoT devices generally with a goal of improving livability, management, service delivery, or competitiveness. GAO was asked to examine federal support for IoT and the use of IoT in communities. This report describes: (1) the kinds of efforts that selected federal agencies have undertaken to support IoT in communities and (2) how selected communities are using federal funds to deploy IoT projects.

GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from 11 federal agencies identified as having a key role in supporting IoT in communities, including agencies that support research or community IoT efforts or that have direct authority over IoT issues. GAO interviewed a non-generalizeable sample of representatives from multiple stakeholder groups in four communities, selected to include a range of community sizes and locations and communities with projects that used federal support. GAO also reviewed relevant literature since 2013 and discussed federal efforts and community challenges with 11 stakeholders from academia and the private sector, selected to reflect a range of perspectives on IoT issues. GAO requested comments on a draft of this product from 11 federal agencies. Five agencies provided technical comments, which GAO incorporated as appropriate. Six agencies did not provide comments.

The Federal Trade Commission announced that a mobile app developed by a New Hampshire software developer was awarded the top prize in the agency’s competition seeking tools to help consumers protect the security of their Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The FTC launched the contest in January to challenge innovators to develop a tool that would help address security vulnerabilities of IoT devices.

With the assistance of an expert panel of five judges, the FTC awarded Steve Castle the $25,000 top prize for his proposal for a mobile app, “IoT Watchdog.” As a software developer, Castle said he was motivated to enter the contest to distill his network security knowledge and experience into a tool that can help users easily determine if their devices are out of date or if their networks are insecure. The mobile app he proposed seeks to help users manage the IoT devices in their home. It would enable users with limited technical expertise to scan their home Wi-Fi and Bluetooth networks to identify and inventory connected devices. It would flag devices with out-of-date software and other common vulnerabilities and provide instructions on how to update each device’s software and fix other vulnerabilities.

Where smart technologies are concerned, the expectation of privacy extends only from the consumer to machine. Once the machine communicates with an outside server – even where data is sent to a server controlled by the product's manufacturer – privacy is violated. Currently, law enforcement can obtain a search warrant compelling a third party to turn over data recorded by the smart device if the company can control or access the information.

The Supreme Court has yet to consider a case that specifically addresses whether, in an era of modern technology where we regularly choose to give personal data to third parties, a person should have an expectation of privacy in the information. As the law stands, once information is voluntarily disclosed to a third party, he does not. One case currently pending at the Supreme Court may tee up the issue of the Third Party Doctrine in the digital age, but until the Court takes on such a case, this premise holds true. It seems the one thing technologists and lawyers alike agree on is that the "right" to privacy could be overcome by technology very soon. The danger is that the new standard will become: You have the right to remain silent, but your smart home does not.