Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and 10 other Democrats urged the FCC Monday to “issue a guidance … restating its long-held requirements” for combatting “unwanted telemarketing calls.” The Democratic lawmakers “are heartened” the agency “is considering ways to curtail the number of unwanted” robocalls via its March robotext Further NPRM (see 2303160061), but the agency’s “current regulations already prohibit many of the activities that lead to the proliferation of unwanted telemarketing calls.” The FCC’s 2003 rules “for telemarketers to obtain consent for calls to lines subscribed to the Do Not Call Registry” and its 2012 regulations “governing consent to receive telemarketing calls made with an artificial or prerecorded voice or an automated telephone dialing system … clearly set out the types of protections intended by Congress to eliminate unwanted telemarketing calls,” the Democratic senators said in a letter to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “Both of these regulations allow robocalls only if the call recipients sign a written agreement relating to calls from a single seller.” Creating new “inconsistent rules governing the same activity would be problematic,” while “issuing guidance similar to the FTC’s” recent business guidance restating its telemarketer rules would “assist telemarketers and sellers in complying with these requirements,” the lawmakers said: “This guidance should also emphasize that the obligations imposed by” the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act “apply when these agreements are entered into online.”

House China Committee leaders pressed FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel Tuesday for information about the extent to which Chinese equipment manufacturers like Fibocom and Quectel are spying via U.S. IoT-connected devices via connectivity modules. Those “modules have the capacity both to brick the device and to access the data flowing from the device to the web server that runs each device,” House China Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Calif., said in a letter to Rosenworcel. If the Chinese government “can control the module, it may be able to effectively exfiltrate data or shut down the IoT device. This raises particularly grave concerns in the context of critical infrastructure and any type of sensitive data.” The lawmakers specifically cited Fibocom and Quectel because both gearmakers get “extensive state support” from the Chinese government that makes their equipment a surveillance vector. “The FCC has taken important steps to counter the nefarious influence of [Chinese Communist Party]-controlled technology in U.S. telecom networks, including” clamping down on use of gear from Huawei and ZTE on U.S. networks, Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi said: “There are still many U.S. and allied firms that compete with” Chinese “cellular IoT module providers -- such that restricting Quectel and Fibocom’s access to the U.S. market would not undermine U.S. telecommunications networks.” Tackling Chinese IoT modules “is a natural next step for the FCC, in consultation with appropriate national security agencies,” the lawmakers said. They asked Rosenworcel to tell them whether the FCC is “able to track the presence” of IoT modules on U.S. networks and whether the commission is considering addressing that equipment as part of its November order (see 2211230065) to prevent the sale of yet-to-be authorized equipment from Chinese companies in the U.S., among other matters.

Google needs to be more transparent about its new healthcare AI chatbot, said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., in a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai Tuesday. Warner raised concerns about reports of Med-PaLM 2's inaccuracies. The chatbot is designed to answer healthcare questions, summarize documents and organize data. Warner said, according to reports, senior researchers at Google have reservations about whether the technology is ready for public deployment. “I worry that premature deployment of unproven technology could lead to the erosion of trust in our medical professionals and institutions,” he wrote. Google believes AI “has the potential to transform healthcare and medicine" and is "committed to exploring with safety, equity, evidence and privacy at the core,” the company said Tuesday: Med-PaLM 2 will be available to a “select group of healthcare organizations for limited testing, to explore use cases and share feedback.” This group will retain control of the data, the company said. Google disagreed with the characterization that the tool is a chatbot, saying it’s a “fine-tuned version of our large language model PaLM 2, and designed to encode medical knowledge.”

Internet safety advocates need to turn over documents to assist the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the Biden administration’s alleged collusion with social media companies to censor free speech, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Thursday (see 2305080039). Jordan wrote Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) CEO Imran Ahmed requesting documents about the organization’s communication with the government and social media companies on content takedowns. X Corp., formerly known as Twitter, is suing the CCDH over free speech claims (see 2308020038). “Whether directly or indirectly, a government-approved or -facilitated censorship regime is a grave threat to the First Amendment and Americans’ civil liberties,” Jordan wrote. “Accordingly, as part of the Committee’s constitutional oversight obligations, we write to request relevant information and documents.” Ahmed in a statement accused the committee of engaging in a “fishing expedition” in order to show a nonexistent funding link between the CCDH and the government: “I fear all of this is an attempt to hinder, delay and silence our work exposing hate and harmful disinformation online. Regardless, we look forward to releasing new research in the coming days, despite these transparent attempts to hinder our ongoing work.”

X Corp. is taking a “hostile” approach toward social media researchers under the leadership of Elon Musk, which doesn’t bode well for the company’s content moderation practices, House Democrats wrote the company Tuesday. Reps. Lori Trahan, D-Mass.; Sean Casten, D-Ill.; and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., signed the letter. They accused X Corp., formerly known as Twitter, of trying to “threaten and intimidate independent research organizations,” citing the company’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Musk has been responsible for a “series of troubling decisions that appear calculated to harass, silence, and suppress research and accountability into this issue,” they said. The lawsuit followed a CCDH report claiming Twitter failed to act on 99% of “hateful content” posted by Twitter Blue subscribers. Twitter accused CCDH of “actively” trying to suppress “free expression.” Musk has laid off important content moderation teams and reinstated accounts owned by “misogynists and Neo-Nazis,” the lawmakers wrote. X responded Wednesday with an automatic reply, saying, “We'll get back to you soon.”

House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, declared their “strong opposition” Monday to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s “Learning Without Limits” proposal to allow E-rate program money to pay for Wi-Fi on school buses and for hot spots (see 2306260029). The GOP leaders urged Rosenworcel and the other three FCC commissioners to “get E-rate’s house in order before seeking new ways to spend consumers’ hard-earned money,” citing “deep-seated problems” with the program they believe is “full of waste, fraud, and abuse.” Cruz asked the GAO in May to investigate the FCC's administration of USF programs (see 2305110066). “Not only does” Rosenworcel’s proposal “violate federal law, but it would also duplicate programs across the federal government, directly contradicting FCC commissioners’ repeated commitments to streamlining federal broadband funding,” Cruz and Rodgers said in letters to the FCC chairwoman and Commissioners Brendan Carr, Nathan Simington and Geoffrey Starks. The lawmakers argued Communications Act Section 254 confines the FCC’s E-rate authority “to classrooms and libraries” and doesn’t extend to “off-campus use of eligible” services. “Expanding E-Rate to fund equipment like Wi-Fi hotspots would break with the statute and longstanding precedent” that USF “dollars, which fund the E-Rate program, may only be used to fund services and not consumer devices,” Cruz and Rodgers said. Attempting to transform E-rate “into a consumer broadband subsidy program” means the FCC “would duplicate other taxpayer-funded programs,” including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act-mandated $14.2 billion affordable connectivity program. E-rate “is not directly funded by Congress and lacks congressionally mandated safeguards,” the Republicans said: There’s also “no telling how much USF fees could increase to pay for” such a “dramatic” expansion of E-rate. They asked all four commissioners to respond by Aug. 14. The FCC didn’t comment.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., reintroduced legislation Thursday that would ban law enforcement and intelligence agencies from buying consumer data from brokers without a warrant (see 2307240039). The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act is co-sponsored by Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; Mike Lee, R-Utah; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc.; Patty Murray, D-Wash.; and Jon Tester, D-Mont. The House Judiciary Committee passed companion legislation earlier this month (see 2307190049).

House Judiciary Committee staff is trying to “intimidate and harass” FTC career staff, FTC Chair Lina Khan wrote in a Wednesday letter to Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. An FTC spokesperson drew attention to the letter in a series of tweets Thursday. The committee launched a campaign over the past month to intimidate and harass nearly 25 career staffers at the agency, despite the agency “actively and extensively” cooperating with Jordan’s staff on dozens of requests for documents, briefings and testimony, said Khan. She testified before the committee last week (see 2307130059). The FTC claims Jordan’s staff demanded to “interrogate” agency staff and obstruct the agency's enforcement efforts. Only once in the agency’s 109-year history has a career civil servant ever been deposed by a congressional committee, the agency noted: House Judiciary sought to depose 23 employees. The FTC is ready to respond to legitimate oversight queries, but “efforts to intimidate or harass career civil servants as a response to policy disagreements with senior leadership raises grave concerns,” said Khan. A Judiciary spokesperson said Thursday it's “clear” the FTC is “afraid of robust congressional oversight and answering for [Khan's] radical policies and toxic work environment." The oversight requests are “no different than what we ask of other agencies under our jurisdiction -- you have to wonder why Chair Khan is scared of transparency. And the FTC is so unprofessional that we first learned about her inaccurate and misleading letter from the media rather than the agency itself," the committee said.

The Senate had its third AI briefing Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced (see 2307170054). Attendees were briefed by Rick Stevens, associate laboratory director-Department of Energy's Argonne National Lab; National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan; and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Information Innovation Office Director Kathleen Fisher. Google, Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI announced the formation of an industry coalition Wednesday that will share technical evaluations and develop a “public library of solutions” to support industry best practices in AI. Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI, and Google invested in Anthropic (see 2307250063). The Frontier Model Forum will focus on “ensuring safe and responsible development of frontier AI models,” Microsoft said.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency doesn’t “censor” free speech, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. He disputed findings from a July 4 decision from U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty for Western Louisiana in Monroe (see 2307120065). Doughty blocked federal officials from contacting social media companies about online content requests and identified CISA, DOJ and the FBI as agencies that collaborated with social media platforms to supposedly censor online speech. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., repeatedly pressed Mayorkas about how DHS defines disinformation. The government can’t be trusted to determine what’s false, said Johnson, calling Mayorkas the “most dishonest witness” to ever testify before the committee. CISA doesn’t make any effort to remove online content, said Mayorkas: The agency identifies the “tactics” that enemy states use to spread disinformation. Committee members largely focused on border issues during the DHS oversight hearing.