Mattel’s Wi-Fi-connected Hello Barbie doll shows the limits of privacy, said Meg Leta Jones, assistant professor at Georgetown University, at a Microsoft discussion Wednesday. “Barbie doesn’t have a screen, there’s nothing to click on,” Jones said: There is no way to see what the privacy policy is. If you ask the doll, she refers a user to a separate booklet, Jones said. “Who would have that booklet?” The Hello Barbie doll Jones brought with her belongs to a friend, she said. The doll is part of the “internet of other peoples’ things,” Jones said. But Jones said this raises the question of how much information someone could get from the doll if it falls into someone else’s hands. Everything said to Hello Barbie theoretically can be shared with other uses, Jones said. “Hello Barbie cannot keep a secret, no matter what she tells you,” she said. “The bigger question for this room is whether that’s a problem, whether it’s a privacy problem and what do we do about those types of problems.” States are taking a lead role in privacy cases, said Danielle Citron, a University of Maryland Law School professor. State attorneys general brought some of the first privacy cases, she said. State AGs since the 1990s have been “establishing norms that federal agencies have built upon and sharpening norms that are set by the feds,” she said. Early actions were based on the legal theory that “it’s an unfair and deceptive practice not to have a privacy policy,” Citron said. “At the time the FTC was arguing … self-regulation is just fine.”

The standard the Supreme Court laid out in its 1998 Burlington Industries v. Ellerth decision was the wrong one to apply to Sharon Stewart's workplace retaliation claim against the FCC, Stewart argued in a reply brief (in Pacer) Tuesday in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court rejected the Ellerth standard as it applies to retaliation claims in its Burlington Northern & Santa Fe v. White decision in 2006 "and sustaining it here would fly in the face of nearly five decades of precedent," the plaintiff said, arguing the court should revise an April order (in Pacer) on the FCC's motion to dismiss so as to deny the government's motion to dismiss one of the counts of her complaint. While White made clear reassignment of job duties isn't automatically actionable, court precedent has held that whether a reassignment is adverse is for a jury to decide, not for a court ruling on a motion to dismiss, Stewart said. Stewart sued the FCC in 2015, alleging she was penalized after complaining of a hostile work environment in the Office of Communications Business Opportunities, including being moved from her job preparing Section 610 reports. The FCC didn't comment Wednesday.

Along with updated comments on Wi-Fi and dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) systems designed to curb auto crashes sharing within the 5.9 GHz band, the FCC is seeking submittal of prototype unlicensed interference-avoidance devices for testing and comments on its proposed plan for evaluating electromagnetic compatibility of unlicensed devices and DSRC, the agency said in a record refresh public notice Wednesday. The PN was expected (see 1605260059). Comments in docket 13-49 will be due 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, with reply comments due 15 days after that. In a statement, Commissioner Ajit Pai said that after laying dormant for two years, a variety of lawmakers and his fellow commissioners, Jessica Rosenworcel and Michael O'Rielly, "[got] this proceeding moving again." Pai also said DSRC is intended to promote safety via vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure purposes, but the commercial applications and radar technologies that could employ the spectrum didn't exist at allocation: "My hope is that we make a smart decision quickly -- both in this spectrum band and in the lower, 120 MHz of the 5 GHz band -- to allow this spectrum to directly benefit consumers." And in a joint statement, Rosenworcel and O'Rielly said the notice "puts in place a framework to demonstrate that unlicensed use in the 5.9 GHz band is possible without causing harmful interference to incumbent licensees," particularly DSRC. They also said the July 30 deadline for the submission of testing equipment and the commitment to complete testing by Jan. 15 were aimed at providing "much-needed certainty for the unlicensed community and car manufacturers."

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said he appreciated the "responsiveness" of Universal Service Administrative Co. CEO Chris Henderson, who wrote three times in May to answer an April 18 letter from Pai seeking USAC help in fighting waste, fraud and abuse in the Lifeline USF program (see 1604180074). Pai said Henderson's responses confirmed that Total Call Mobile "was not alone" in "apparently overriding third-party identity verification (TPIV) safeguards"; apparent duplicate and ineligible enrollments drew an FCC-proposed $51 million fine against the company (see 1604080032). "Three of the companies identified by Total Call Mobile's agents indiscriminately overrode the TPIV safeguards between October 2014 and February 2015," Pai said in a Tuesday letter to Henderson that blacked out the companies' names. "The aggregate numbers for just these five months of enrollment are staggering. Roughly one third of the 2.5 million Lifeline subscribers enrolled by wireless resellers, or 821,482 subscribers, were enrolled using TPIV override," Pai said. Even without Total Call Mobile included, 11 other wireless resellers were responsible for 616,937 enrollments, he said: "That's outrageous." Pai commended USAC for changing the TPIV override process in February 2015, but said he remains concerned "that existing safeguards still may let unscrupulous carriers exploit the program." He said USAC staff still doesn't review "any document that verifies a person's identity" before a TPIV override is authorized. "Integrity of the process relies on the integrity of the carriers -- the only ones who know if a subscriber's identify is legitimate," he said. Pai asked Henderson for more information on 13 wireless resellers that USAC said frequently engaged in overriding and that weren't identified in his April 18 letter, and to answer various questions about USAC processes and policies.

Striking Verizon workers planned to return to work Wednesday, since Verizon and union leaders signed a tentative agreement Friday to end a more than six-week East Coast strike (see 1605270050). In a news release Monday, the Communications Workers of America said the proposed four-year contract provides 10.9 percent in raises over four years with compounded interest, including 3 percent upon ratification and 2.5 percent on each anniversary of the contract. In the mid-Atlantic, it includes a $1,250 signing bonus; in the Northeast, a $1,000 signing bonus plus a $250 healthcare reimbursement account, it said. The deal gives workers a minimum $700 in profit sharing in each of the next four years, and rather than reduce pensions as the telco proposed, the agreement provides three 1 percent increases to pensions, it said. About 70 Verizon Wireless retail employees in Brooklyn, New York, and Everett, Massachusetts, will get their first-ever contract, the CWA said. All call centers that had been threatened with closure in the mid-Atlantic region will remain open; three of five threatened call centers in upstate New York will remain open, with the six workers affected in the other centers to be offered new Verizon jobs locally, it said. Verizon will add 1,300 call center jobs, including 850 in the mid-Atlantic and 450 in the Northeast, CWA said. Verizon agreed to reverse several major contracting initiatives, resulting in a 25 percent increase in the number of unionized crews doing pole work in New York state, CWA said. The proposed contract also preserves existing language on job security, transfer and seniority protections for retirement incentives, the union said. Verizon withdrew proposals on forced interstate transfers, CWA said. Verizon agreed to end a performance supervisory program in New York City that workers didn’t like, and the parties will work with an outside consultant to develop a nonpunitive program, the union said. The company agreed to withdraw proposed cuts in accident and disability benefits, CWA said. Verizon said the company will save money and avoid additional costs through healthcare plan design changes, adopting Medicare Advantage plans for retirees, maintaining limits on post-retirement healthcare costs, and freezing the mortality table for lump sum pensions using the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade rate. The agreement lets Verizon provide special buyout incentives to employees, the company said. Verizon is also likely to save money by the act of ending the strike, analysts have said, since the company had to deploy thousands to fill in for the union workers, including contractors and its own managers. The unions will submit the agreement to members for a ratification vote; if approved, the contract will run through Aug. 3, 2019, Verizon said. The strike hurt Verizon financially and its end is welcome, said Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche. “While there likely will be some impact on Q2 financials related to the strike … the savings that should result from this Strike outweigh the near term distractions,” she wrote investors Tuesday.

Circulation items that get converted to meeting items on the FCC's monthly meeting agenda should be announced three weeks before the meeting, and converted items that don't reflect the views of staff and of the chairman's office should be revised and recirculated as official meeting items no later than that three-week-out "white copy date," Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said in a blog post Tuesday suggesting an overhaul of the agency's circulation items process. Circulation items generally are less controversial and less time sensitive, meaning they often circulate among commissioners for months without getting votes, O'Rielly said. He said any item that has circulated for six months should be taken out of circulation automatically because it "is often stale and likely would require more work to reflect the current state of the record." O'Rielly said an item circulating that long with only one or two votes typically doesn't have widespread commissioner support and is unlikely to get enough to trigger must-vote procedures. Either the chairman's office should work with staff and commissioners to retool the pulled items so as to find consensus or the yanked items should be put on the open meeting agenda, he said, likening it to how the Senate handles nominations. Currently at the FCC, he said, long-circulated items get added to meetings even when they clearly lack support and there has been little work to modify them. He said that adding them to the meeting as a placeholder "for some yet-to-be drafted consensus document that will hopefully emerge in the short time before the meeting" means commissioners themselves often are having meetings with outside parties on the proposals without even knowing "what is actually on the table." Current FCC procedures allow for notably small windows of notice to the publication and consideration by commissioners, O'Rielly said, saying items on circulation as of that white copy date can be added to the monthly agenda one week before the meeting, during the Sunshine period when outside parties are blocked from contacting the FCC to weigh in. O'Rielly said any draft "that needs significant rewrites" during the white copy period should be pulled for consideration later, and nothing should be added to the agenda a week before the meeting "absent extraordinary circumstances." The office of Chairman Tom Wheeler is reviewing O'Rielly's blog post, emailed a commission spokesman. "The chairman welcomes constructive ideas on process from all commissioners.” The blog was the latest in a series of agency process changes O'Rielly has advocated in blog posts (see 1602240070 and 1501160041).

The ICANN board adopted revisions to bylaws meant to implement aspects of ICANN's Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition plan and a related set of changes to the nonprofit's accountability mechanisms. The board also adopted ICANN's IANA functions service level agreement with the regional Internet registries and a supplemental memorandum of understanding with the Internet Engineering Task Force, ICANN said Friday. The revised bylaws generally track with draft revisions that ICANN released for comment last month (see 1604220061) but make some additional revisions in response to concerns raised in comments (see 1605230059). New revisions included removing a portion of the bylaws that grandfathers agreements between ICANN and five entities that aren’t set to take effect until Oct. 1 -- the Address Supporting Organization, Internet Engineering Task Force, Number Resource Organization, Root Zone Management System and Post-Transition IANA. Most commenters raised concerns about the inclusion of the agreements because they hadn't been finalized, ICANN said. ICANN planned to have transmitted the revised bylaws to NTIA after our deadline Friday. NTIA had required revisions to ICANN's bylaws before the agency could complete its review of ICANN's IANA transition-related bylaws. That review is expected to be completed by mid-June. “This is an important milestone for ICANN and the community,” ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker said in a blog post. “As we await the release of NTIA’s report, we continue to prepare for implementation of the transition proposals.”

The FCC Public Reporting System for displaying incentive auction results to the public went online Friday, as expected (see 1605240047). “Because the PRS will chronicle the course of both the reverse and forward auctions, the amount and nature of the information displayed will increase and evolve as the auctions progress,” said the public notice announcing the website. The PRS will display limited information about auction results, the wireless spectrum on offer, and the progress toward completing a final stage for the incentive auction, the PN said. A user guide to the PRS is available on the FCC's auction website. The auction is set to begin May 31.

The FCC offers no real defense of treating in-kind, cable-related obligations as franchise fees, said Montgomery and Anne Arundel counties, Maryland, and Dubuque, Iowa, in a reply brief (in Pacer) Thursday in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The municipalities said the FCC argues that in-kind services always have been subject to a 5 percent franchise fee cap. The municipal interests are appealing a 2007 FCC order that extended to incumbent cable operators many limits put on new entrants and a 2015 order clarifying that franchising regulations don't apply to state laws on cable TV or to state-level franchising authorities (see 1605020030). The agency's own counsel said in-kind services weren't always capped, contend petitioners and supporting interveners Boston; Houston; Larchmont and Mamaroneck town/village, New York; Mount Hood (Oregon) Cable Regulatory Commission; and Texas Coalition of Cities for Utility Issues in the new joint filing. They said the FCC justification for pre-empting most-favored-nation (MFN) clauses doesn't rebut their contention that one-way pre-emption goes against Cable Act goals. "The agency claims it did not wish to interfere with existing contracts, but as it had already done so by preempting the agreements upon which MFN clauses inherently depend in [the 2007 order], its justification fails and cannot be reconciled with its decision to treat the validity of other contractual clauses on a case-by-case basis," they said. They said the FCC concession that local franchising authorities can require institutional networks (I-Nets) not used to provide cable services shows LFA authority isn't limited to providing cable services over cable systems. And they said the FCC continues to be unclear on whether it believes state licensing franchises are pre-empted by the 2015 order: "This Court should rule that any U.S. District Court presented with an attempt to apply any of the Orders ... dismiss the case where there is a state-level franchising regime." The FCC didn't comment Friday.

USTelecom backed NCTA's request for an FCC extension of comment deadlines in a business data service (BDS) rulemaking, and agreed with the cable group's questioning of commission motives (see 1605130039). "Similar to our own requests for additional time to address the complex and important issues in this proceeding, NCTA’s Motion reflects valid concerns with compressed pleading cycles that seem designed primarily to meet an arbitrary deadline for completing the next phase by the end of the year," said USTelecom's filing Thursday in docket 05-25. "We agree with NCTA that this lends credence to the suggestion that the outcome of this proceeding is predetermined." USTelecom said it and others also need more time to do an independent review of a consultant's white paper that was commissioned by the FCC and attached to a Further NPRM. "Although we are grateful for the FCC’s prompt response to USTelecom’s request for access to additional information used for the analyses in the White Paper, we have since learned that not all of the requested information was provided," the group said. "Our consultants have explained that without the same access to the underlying raw data, they will not be able to replicate the results in the White Paper. Specifically, due to the FCC’s masking of bandwidth for connections of over 1 Gbps, they lack the bandwidth information used in some of the White Paper’s regression specifications. These specifications cannot be replicated. Additionally, they lack the 'proprietary Tom-Tom' data relied upon for certain controls at the ZIP Code level. They do not have adequate information to identify what Tom-Tom data were used or whether these data can be obtained at a reasonable cost." USTelecom also said a comment extension is justified by recent cable company modifications to data they previously submitted. Sprint and other ILEC critics oppose NCTA's request for extending the initial June 28 comment deadline by at least 45 days and a July 26 reply comment deadline by at least 30 days (see 1605180028 and 1605200061).