A Tuesday House Communications Subcommittee hearing to re-examine proposals to improve rural broadband deployments appears aimed in part at looking at what lawmakers can do in the next Congress given the limited legislative work time left this year, communications sector officials and lobbyists said in interviews. House Communications aimed to revisit the broadband proposals after recent FCC and congressional efforts (see 1807130065). A House Commerce Committee GOP staff memo notes language from several bills House Communications reviewed in January made it into the Repack Airwaves Yielding Better Access for Users of Modern Services (Ray Baum's) Act FCC reauthorization and spectrum legislative package (HR-4986), which President Donald Trump signed into law as part of the $1.3 trillion FY 2018 omnibus spending bill (HR-1625). House Commerce also cleared other broadband legislation recently (see 1803230038 and 1807120063).
The House Commerce Committee unanimously voted to advance five tech and telecom bills Thursday in a markup of bills, including the Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement Act (HR-5709) and the State of Modern Application, Research and Trends of IoT Act (HR-6032). The committee also cleared: the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act (HR-2345), the Advancing Critical Connectivity Expands Service, Small Business Resources, Opportunities, Access and Data Based on Assessed Need and Demand Act (HR-3994) and the Precision Agriculture Connectivity Act (HR-4881). The vast majority of debate during the session focused on a resolution from House Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., on the Department of Health and Human Services' role in tracking and reuniting immigrant children with their parents as part of President Donald Trump's “zero tolerance” illegal immigration policy. HR-2345 and Senate-passed companion S-1015 would direct the FCC to work to designate a new national three-digit dialing code in the style of 911 for a mental health crisis and suicide prevention hotline. An amendment to the bill by Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., would direct that an FCC/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration study on the hotline be sent to the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs committees. HR-3994 would establish the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within NTIA. HR-4881 and Senate companion S-2343 would establish a task force to identify internet connectivity gaps in agricultural areas. An amendment by House Digital Commerce Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, and Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, would add to the task force experts on broadband network data, geospatial analysis and coverage mapping. HR-5709 would increase fines for illegal pirate operations from $10,000 per violation to $100,000 per day per violation, up to a maximum of $2 million. An amendment from House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Mike Doyle, D-Pa., and Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., would require the FCC to conduct annual “enforcement sweeps” and give the agency more authority to penalize violators. It also would direct the creation of a “Pirate Radio Broadcasting Database” listing licensed stations and known pirate radio outlets. HR-6302 would direct a Department of Commerce study on IoT.
President Donald Trump is continuing to select his federal judiciary nominees -- including Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh -- based in part on their views about what the president views as the overly broad legal underpinnings of regulatory agencies' power, including the Chevron and Auer/Seminole Rock doctrines, said White House Counsel Don McGahn Thursday at a Media Institute event. Trump nominated Kavanaugh Monday to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, raising expectations he will seek to rein in Chevron deference to agency expertise and influence the court's rulings on industry First Amendment free-speech rights and net neutrality (see 1807100020). Kavanaugh's meetings on Capitol Hill with senators continued Thursday, including with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.
The FCC is “planning to rebuild and re-engineer” its electronic commenting filing system and has asked the House and Senate Appropriations committees for “the funds necessary,” Chairman Ajit Pai wrote Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa. “We hope they will enable us to make important improvements by approving it soon.” The revamp would come more than a year after the ECFS application programming interface experienced problems during an FCC proceeding on rescinding its 2015 net neutrality rules. The FCC faced pushback over its claim the glitch stemmed from a distributed denial-of-service attack (see 1710130052 and 1806050046). “In addition to being technologically behind the times, the system that this Commission inherited from the prior Administration was designed to make it as easy as possible to file comments,” Pai told Merkley and Toomey. “While facilitating widespread public participation in the rulemaking process is a worthy and important goal, we believe that we can accomplish that goal while at the same time updating our system to minimize the potential for abusive behavior.” Pai said he will make several proposals that reflect the lawmakers' suggestions, including pitching CAPTCHA authentication or similar verification. “We will seek to redesign ECFS to institute appropriate safeguards against abusive conduct,” Pai said. The senators' offices didn't comment Wednesday. The FCC doesn't “have any information regarding whether any 'fake' comments were submitted by foreign governments, nor can we verify the total number of comments that may have originated from bots,” Pai told the senators: More than 7.5 million comments that favored 2015 rules had the same exact sentence and were “associated with only 50,508 unique names and street addresses.” More than 447,000 comments favoring 2015 rules claimed to come from people residing at the same address in Chelyabinsk, Russia, Pai said. Docket 17-108 had 2 million comments that used stolen identities, half a million from Russian email addresses and almost 8 million nearly identical comments from email domains associated with FakeMailGenerator.com (see 1805090076).
House Communications Subcommittee members focused as much during a hearing on how to shape privacy legislation to reflect changes in access to customer proprietary network information as they did on trading barbs over the Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval effort that last year abolished ISP privacy rules (see 1806110054). The hearing had been aimed at the CPNI issue, with a trio of witnesses offering legislative recommendations in written testimony (see 1807030041, 1807090015 and 1807100063).
Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, Technology & Democracy Project-Discovery Institute Director Hance Haney and Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology Deputy Director Laura Moy are expected to offer their visions at Wednesday's House Communications Subcommittee hearing on how Congress should shape privacy legislation to adapt to how technology updates since the 1996 Telecom Act changed access to customer proprietary network information. Congress should “examine a modernized and harmonized privacy framework that is technology neutral and which focuses on the sensitivity of the data versus the type of entity holding the data,” McDowell, Hudson Institute senior fellow, says in written testimony. Haney called for privacy legislation that strives for “technological and competitive neutrality,” with protections “calibrated according to the sensitivity of the information at issue in recognition of the fact that there are transaction costs associated with consumer consent systems.” Regulation should “reflect the practical reality that it is difficult to make predictions about how the market will evolve and at what pace,” Haney says. Moy likewise said there shouldn't be a “one-size-fits-all approach” to privacy in any legislation, making recommendations for changing enforcement authority of any federal agency charged with protection data privacy and security, including the FCC and FTC. New legislation “should not eliminate existing protections,” she said. “Americans are asking for more protections for their private information.” The hearing is set to begin at 10:15 a.m. in 2322 Rayburn (see 1807030041 and 1807090015).
Senate confirmation votes for FCC nominee Geoffrey Starks and Commissioner Brendan Carr's second term were delayed amid a push for a more comprehensive nominations package, but both are likely to get to the floor before the start of the abbreviated August recess, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., told us Monday night. Thune confirmed our previous reporting that Senate leaders scuttled a bid to confirm Carr and Starks before the weeklong July 4 recess (see 1806280059). “I think it's a function right now of trying to get a package we can clear and get the Democrats to sign off on, too,” he said. “I think it will come together pretty quickly,” but the timing is uncertain, as Thune is trying to add in other Senate Commerce-cleared nominees into the mix.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, see their recently introduced Streamlining the Rapid Evolution and Modernization of Leading-edge Infrastructure Necessary to Enhance (Streamline) Small Cell Deployment Act (S-3157) as a top committee priority for the July work period (see 1806290063). But local and state governments' ongoing opposition to S-3157 remains a significant hurdle to advancing it beyond Senate Commerce, some lobbyists told us. Capitol Hill's dwindling legislative calendar also could stifle the bill's prospects before the next Congress convenes in January, lobbyists said.
The Senate is likely to revisit timing of confirmation votes on FCC nominee Geoffrey Starks and Commissioner Brendan Carr’s second term during the coming July work period, after last-minute behind-the-scenes politicking led the chamber’s leaders Thursday to scrap approving the nominees under unanimous consent, Capitol Hill officials and communications sector lobbyists told us. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., had seen positive signs Thursday that the chamber would be able to clear Carr and Starks that day, in his bid to fast-track the confirmation process for the nominees (see 1806120047 and 1806280059).
Prospects for the Senate this week to confirm FCC nominee Geoffrey Starks and Commissioner Brendan Carr to a second full term via unanimous consent remained unclear into Thursday evening. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters "hotline" surveys of the Democratic and GOP caucuses on the two nominees "sounded positive, but I haven't heard the final disposition of that. So we'll know soon." The committee advanced Starks' nomination Wednesday on a voice vote, after which Thune told reporters he and other leaders were aiming to bring him and Carr up if there were no objections (see 1806270065). Thune has been aiming to fast-track the nominees (see 1806200055). CenturyLink, the Competitive Carriers Association, ITTA and Wireless Infrastructure Association sought swift Senate confirmation for Starks. He would succeed former Commissioner Mignon Clyburn (see 1806070041). Starks would have a term ending in 2022, while Carr's additional five-year term would end in 2023. The Senate last year confirmed Carr to an abbreviated term ending this year (see 1708030060).