Fight for the Future and 39 other groups urged the Senate Thursday to confirm FCC nominee Gigi Sohn “before the end of March,” saying “there are several things that the FCC could do to protect the safety and rights of people seeking, providing, and facilitating abortion care. But they can’t do any of them until the commission is fully staffed” with a 3-2 Democratic majority. Sohn, whom President Joe Biden renominated in January, is to testify at a Tuesday Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing (see 2302080043). It will be her third appearance before the panel, after the Senate stalled on confirming her in 2021 and 2022. “The Biden administration’s priorities, including restoring net neutrality and enacting privacy rules, have stalled for over two years,” the pro-Sohn groups said. “In that time, telecom giants and Big Tech have only scaled up their collection and retention of an astonishingly unnecessary amount of customer data, including the locations and search histories of individual people.” The Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson last year, which overturned the existing Roe v. Wade finding of a constitutional right to abortion, means the U.S.’ “lack of constitutional privacy protections now enables the mass-scale tracking and criminalization of those seeking abortion healthcare,” the groups said: “Location data from cell phones can be used as evidence to prosecute those who travel out of state to get an abortion.” The FCC’s current 2-2 split “enables a data free-for-all on our mobile devices,” the groups said. “At a time when core privacy rights are being challenged and in some cases decimated, a kneecapped FCC is the last problem we should have.”

Congress should pass legislation barring social media companies from collecting data on children and teens, banning targeted advertising for children and establishing tighter restrictions on personal data collection, President Joe Biden said Tuesday during his State of the Union address. Social media companies should be held accountable for the “experiment they are running on our children for profit,” he said. Biden urged Congress to pass legislation to “strengthen antitrust enforcement and prevent big online platforms from giving their own products an unfair advantage.” The first step in protecting children’s privacy is to pass comprehensive legislation that sets a national privacy standard, said House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.: “If President Biden truly wants to promote Big Tech transparency and accountability, protect our kids, and strengthen privacy protections for Americans, he should join Energy and Commerce's bipartisan efforts to enact comprehensive data privacy legislation.” Ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said he's ready to work across the aisle on privacy negotiations. Biden urged Congress to pass a Junk Fee Prevention Act that will “make cable, internet and cellphone companies stop charging you up to $200 or more when you decide to switch to another provider. We’ll cap service fees on tickets to concerts and sporting events and make companies disclose all fees upfront.” Biden touted Congress’ success in enacting the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included $65 billion for connectivity, and the Chips and Science Act. “America used to make nearly 40% of the world’s chips,” but “in the last few decades, we lost our edge and we’re down to producing only 10%,” he said. “We all saw what happened during the pandemic when chip factories overseas shut down.” Car “prices went up,” as “did everything from refrigerators to cellphones,” Biden said: “We can never let that happen again.”

The House Innovation Subcommittee passed several TikTok data security bills and others Tuesday (see 2302070067). HR-750, HR-742, HR-784 and HR-813 passed by voice vote. HR-752 passed 19-0.

Documents show Facebook knew as early as 2018 that hundreds of thousands of developers across China, Russia, North Korea and Iran had access to user data that could potentially be used in espionage, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., and ranking member Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wrote Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday. The documents were released as part of ongoing litigation against Meta on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, they said. According to newly released documents, Facebook told Congress in 2018 that it gave access to application programming interfaces to device-makers in China, including Huawei, OPPO and TCL: “In the wake of those disclosures, Facebook met repeatedly with the staffs of both senators and the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss access to this data and what controls Facebook was putting in place to protect user data in the future.” Internal documentation shows access extended to some 90,000 developers in China, 42,000 developers in Russia and thousands of developers in Iran and North Korea. “We have grave concerns about the extent to which this access could have enabled foreign intelligence service activity, ranging from foreign malign influence to targeting and counter-intelligence activity,” they wrote. Meta said in a statement Tuesday: "These documents are an artifact from a different product at a different time. Many years ago, we made substantive changes to our platform, shutting down developers’ access to key types of data on Facebook while reviewing and approving all apps that request access to sensitive information."

The LGBTQ Victory Institute led a letter Monday with the Human Rights Campaign and 20 other groups urging Senate leaders to discount recent "homophobic tropes and attacks" against FCC nominee Gigi Sohn and her family, and instead "expeditiously" advance her long-stalled confirmation process. President Joe Biden renominated Sohn in January (see 2301030060) after the Senate didn't confirm her in 2021 or 2022. Sohn's supporters in recent days have pushed back against recent reports about her role as an Electronic Frontier Foundation in influencing some of the group's decisions related to sex worker policy issues that they see as veiled attacks on her sexual orientation (see 2301300025). Those reports criticize her "not on the basis of qualifications or substance, but because she is openly LGBTQ+," LGBTQ Victory Institute and the other groups wrote Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and their GOP counterparts. "Homophobic and sexist fearmongering should have no place in the consideration of Gigi’s qualifications. It’s morally corrupt and antithetical to the high virtue" of the Senate. The Biden administration "made clear earlier this year that they are in full support of Gigi’s historic nomination when they nominated her for a third time," the groups said. Sohn "is the right leader for this role given her extensive qualifications, superior leadership qualities, and deep technical background."

Apple and Google should remove TikTok from “their app stores immediately given its unacceptable risk to U.S. national security,” Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., wrote Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai Thursday. The Chinese-owned app is unlike other social media platforms because China requires parent company ByteDance to “support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work,” Bennet said. “No company subject to CCP dictates should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people or curate content to nearly a third of our population.” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr made the same request in June (see 2207150064). The company said in a statement that Bennet's letter “relies almost exclusively on misleading reporting.” The letter also “ignores the considerable investment we have made through Project Texas -- a plan negotiated with our country's top national security experts -- to provide additional assurances to our community about their data security and the integrity of the TikTok platform." Apple and Google didn’t comment.

FCC nominee Gigi Sohn's re-selection "has not been withdrawn," despite a Wednesday Fox News report to the contrary, a White House spokesperson told us Thursday. Fox News cited a Senate aide who said the Biden administration pulled Sohn after Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., agreed to GOP requests for a third confirmation hearing. Fox News reported Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., is seeking the hearing but misidentified him as still being Commerce ranking member. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is now Commerce ranking member, while Wicker shifted at the start of this Congress to become lead Armed Services Committee Republican. A Commerce spokesperson also denied the report's claims. Cantwell has been eyeing a February hearing date, while panel Republicans are asking her to delay it until March (see 2301260068). Fight for the Future Director Evan Greer and National Digital Inclusion Alliance Communications Director Yvette Scorse want Cantwell and other Democratic leaders to “speak out immediately and make it clear that they will stand strong against” recent reports about Sohn’s role as an Electronic Frontier Foundation board member (see 2301300025) that they see as “weaponized homophobia” against the nominee, who would be the first openly LGBTQ commissioner if confirmed.

A bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers reintroduced legislation Thursday that would require radio stations to pay performance royalties for radio airplay to owners of sound recordings (see 2212120049). Introduced by Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein, both D-Calif.; and Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; and Reps. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the American Music Fairness Act requires “terrestrial radio broadcasters to pay royalties to American music creators when they play their songs.” It allows small and local stations that have less than $1.5 million annual revenue and whose parent companies have less than $10 million annual revenue overall to play unlimited music for less than $500 annually. SoundExchange, musicFIRST, the Recording Academy, the Recording Industry Association of America and the American Federation of Musicians endorsed the bill. NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt said in a statement: "Local radio stations and performers have built a strong, mutually beneficial partnership that has endured for over a century. This partnership provides enormous value for new and established performers, local broadcast stations and the tens of millions of radio listeners that rely on our uniquely free service. Unfortunately, AMFA would destroy that relationship with a new government-imposed performance fee that is simply untenable for local radio."

The Senate Commerce Committee said Wednesday it's delaying its planned Thursday organizational meeting (see 2301300025) until Feb. 9, citing continued chamber delays in passing an organizing resolution. Senate Republicans approved their committee ranking members, including Commerce leader Ted Cruz of Texas. The GOP also approved its membership rosters, including adding three Republicans to Commerce: Ted Budd of North Carolina, Eric Schmitt of Missouri and J.D. Vance of Ohio. Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida left the panel. Former Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., left the committee when he retired at the end of last Congress. The Commerce executive session will still be in 253 Russell at a to-be-determined time.

CTIA and other communications sector groups urged lawmakers Wednesday to appropriate $3.08 billion needed to fully fund the FCC's Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (see 2207150067). The leaders of the House and Senate Commerce committees tried and failed in December to attach the funding to the FY 2023 omnibus spending bill as part of an aborted deal on spectrum policy legislation (see 2212200077). “The success of this Congressionally mandated national security imperative depends on fully and immediately funding the Program,” the groups said in a letter to House Innovation Subcommittee Chairman Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., and other leaders. “Carriers cannot complete the job without full funding. Failure to fully fund the Program means that untrusted equipment is still in service today, including some near military bases, airports, and other areas of strategic importance.” Providers “urgently want to complete the transition to secure and trusted networks” but “have been largely prohibited from servicing or upgrading their networks for years, increasing chances for network degradation or even failure, and leaving their communities behind as technology evolves to 5G and beyond.” Others signing the letter: the Competitive Carriers Association, Information Technology Industry Council, NATE, NTCA, Rural Broadband Association, Rural Wireless Association, Telecommunications Industry Association, Wireless Infrastructure Association and WTA.