Conservative privacy advocates urged Congress not to automatically reauthorize the controversial USA Patriot Act Section 215, telling congressional aides during an R Street Institute event Wednesday to urge their bosses to conduct a thorough debate on the provision that authorized controversial NSA bulk collection of phone metadata. The phone metadata collection program was one of the major NSA surveillance initiatives disclosed through former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks to the media beginning in June 2013. Without reauthorization, Section 215 and other key provisions of the Patriot Act are to sunset June 1, with May 21 widely seen as the last working day Congress can act on reauthorization, given the Memorial Day recess. The debate over Section 215 reauthorization is set to reignite when Congress returns from recess next week, while other legislators are pushing for more wholesale NSA surveillance reforms.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau said Monday it reached a $16 million settlement with CenturyLink and a $1.4 million settlement with Intrado Communications over the companies’ roles in the April 2014 multistate 911 outage. The FCC found in October that the outage, which affected seven states and resulted in more than 6,600 emergency calls not reaching public safety answering points (PSAPs), stemmed from a software error at an Intrado 911 call processing center in Englewood, Colorado (see 1410170057). The bureau said it calculated the fines against CenturyLink and Intrado based on the number of PSAPs served by the companies.
NTIA said it is immediately suspending its early build funding for the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System Authority’s (LA-RICS) construction of a public safety LTE cell tower network in the city, after recent votes by the L.A. City Council and L.A. County Board to halt construction of portions of the network. The Council voted 12-0 Wednesday on its motion halting construction of LA-RICS project towers at city police stations and fire stations. The County Board vote March 24 halted LA-RICS construction at county fire stations. The city and county councils’ votes to halt the project make it “clear that LA-RICS faces substantial challenges in fulfilling the project's goals by the statutory deadline of September 30, 2015,” an NTIA spokeswoman said Friday.
The Texas House’s State Affairs Committee is considering legislation that would buck a recent national trend of states pre-empting regulation of VoIP services by requiring partial Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) oversight of those services. A revised version of the bill, HB-2650, would give PUCT oversight of consumer complaints against VoIP providers and require those providers to either cap the length of subscribers’ contracts at 180 days or allow them to opt out of their contract without penalties after the 180-day mark. The bill has encountered opposition from industry, which lobbied for recent bills in other states to pre-empt regulation of VoIP. State Rep. Ed Thompson, HB-2650’s Republican sponsor, told us he believes it’s unlikely the bill will make it out of the State Affairs Committee but he wants to draw attention to the issue and find ways to improve VoIP providers’ self-regulation of consumer issues.
President Barack Obama issued an executive order Wednesday authorizing the attorney general and secretaries of State and Treasury to impose sanctions on foreign-based individuals and entities that launch malicious cyberattacks against networks owned by the U.S. government or U.S. companies. Cyberattacks that could result in sanctions would need to significantly disrupt a network’s availability, affect the provision of a critical infrastructure sector company’s services or cause the theft of U.S. economic resources, assets or personal information, the executive order said.
The FCC is aware “our story is not done” on its municipal broadband pre-emption order, given Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery’s legal challenge to the order, said Daniel Kahn, Wireline Bureau Deputy Competition Policy Division Chief, during a commission webinar Monday. Slatery, a Republican, sued the FCC March 20 in the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals over the order, which pre-empted municipal broadband restrictions in North Carolina and Tennessee at the respective requests of Wilson, North Carolina, and the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga (see 1503240059). North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is considering whether to join Slatery’s lawsuit, a spokeswoman said. The FCC webinar also addressed the commission’s new NPRM on implementation of Section 111 of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA) Reauthorization and implementation of the FCC’s net neutrality order.
Release of the FCC net neutrality order brought limited clarity to how the rules and the commission’s accompanying reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service will affect state telecom regulation, state telecom lawyers and observers said in interviews last week. That lack of clarity largely stems from continued uncertainty about whether the net neutrality rules -- and particularly Title II reclassification -- will survive legal scrutiny, lawyers said. Alamo Broadband and USTelecom filed lawsuits Monday seeking reviews of the net neutrality order at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, respectively (see 1503230066). The order faces continued scrutiny on Capitol Hill (see 1503200048).
State and local 911 stakeholders urged the FCC in filings on the commission’s 911 governance NPRM (docket 14-193) to not usurp state and local jurisdiction on 911 issues in its pursuit of revised rules that will curb 911 outages like the April 2014 multistate event. The FCC’s rulemaking proposal followed that widespread outage, which the FCC later determined was caused by a software error at an Intrado 911 call processing center in Englewood, Colorado (see 1410170057). Carriers and public safety groups urged the FCC to consider a consensus proposal from the groups that would curb 911 outages without requiring the implementation of new rules (see 1503240049).
The Supreme Court denied certiorari Monday to the Illinois Public Telecommunications Association (IPTA), the Independent Payphone Association of New York (IPANY) and the Payphone Association of Ohio (PAO). They collectively appealed the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s June 2014 ruling in IPTA v. FCC. The Supreme Court’s decision lets stand the D.C. Circuit’s ruling that the FCC 2013 decision not to overturn state utility regulators’ decisions nor grant payphone service providers refunds from AT&T and Verizon was reasonable and within FCC discretion. The groups had asked the D.C. Circuit to only mandate that the telcos pay the refunds or force the telcos to send funds received from long-distance carriers to the U.S. Treasury (see 1406160029). U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and commission attorneys urged the Supreme Court on Feb. 11 to deny certiorari on the case, because the D.C. Circuit “correctly upheld the FCC’s determination that state authorities were better positioned than the federal agency to decide the applicability of the filed-rate doctrine in individual refund disputes” (see 1502190013). The IPANY is “greatly disappointed” that the Supreme Court denied certiorari since the case was fundamentally about FCC refusal to enforce existing Bell system commitments and commission rules for dial-around compensation, said association attorney Keith Roland of the Herzog Law Firm. PAO “knew it was an uphill climb” to get a Supreme Court hearing for the case, but the group wanted to ensure it pursued the case to its conclusion from its beginnings 18 years ago, said attorney Donald Evans of Fletcher Heald, representing that organization. Attorneys for IPTA and the FCC didn’t comment.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery sued the FCC over the order pre-empting portions of North Carolina and Tennessee state laws that restrict municipalities’ ability to deploy government-owned broadband networks. The FCC voted 3-2 Feb. 26 to issue the order, which specifically pre-empts the state laws for the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina (see 1502260030). Slatery, a Republican, had been expected to sue the FCC over the order. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is expected to sue the agency. It hadn’t received any challenge from North Carolina, said an agency spokesman Tuesday. The FCC is “confident that our decision to pre-empt laws in two states that prevented community broadband providers from meeting the needs and demands of local consumers will withstand judicial scrutiny,” he said.