Don’t renew the program of bulk collection of telephony metadata, said 27 privacy advocates, civil liberties groups and accountability organizations in a letter sent Tuesday to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder (http://bit.ly/1r1GHCL). “The Section 215 Bulk Telephony Metadata Program is unconstitutional and violates the plain text of Section 215 and the purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ('FISA').” The current order for Section 215 collection expires Friday, said the letter. “The program is not effective. It should end.” Shortly after Obama ordered limitations and enhanced oversight of the government’s surveillance programs, including Section 215 (CD Jan 21 p1), the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board called for an end to the program altogether (CD Jan 24 p5). The program “has been misused,” the letter said. Such misuse includes analysts’ conducting “manual searches in violation of court orders” and the NSA’s disseminating “call records without proper minimization and retained records beyond the applicable retention rules,” said the groups. They included the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology, Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Government Accountability Project, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Project on Government Oversight.

Customs and Border Protection is “grappling” with figuring out whether the “proper placement” for Section 337 Tariff Act patent exclusion order enforcement should remain at headquarters or within the Centers of Excellence and Expertise (CEEs), said Therese Randazzo, CBP director of intellectual property rights policy and programs. CEEs, separated by industry, process imports for participants in that CBP program. There’s still work to be done before the agency decides if the enforcement could be better handled at the CEEs, though one CEE has already started to handle such enforcement, she said Friday at the American Conference Institute’s Import Compliance and Enforcement forum. “The enforcement of ‘337 orders still rests with headquarters, with the exception of enforcement orders that are in the electronics sector,” said Randazzo. “The electronics Center for Excellence and Expertise is in fact doing enforcement of those orders, but all the rest are actually in my office.” CBP is tasked with stopping imports named in Section 337 exclusion orders, which the International Trade Commission issues to block imports of infringing products when it finds intellectual property rights violations.

The U.S. leads Europe in many broadband metrics, contrary to reports that the European model of service-based competition “outperforms the facilities-based competition in the U.S.,” University of Pennsylvania law professor Christopher Yoo told FCC Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly in separate meetings June 6, said an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 14-28 (http://bit.ly/1i5zKRl). Yoo discussed his recent paper finding that a far higher percentage of U.S. households were served by 25 Mbps Internet networks compared with European households. The U.S. approach of promoting facilities-based competition has been more effective in ensuring speedy Internet than the European approach of service-based competition and unbundling, Yoo said. The U.S. approach promotes broadband investment, while the European approach has the opposite effect, Yoo said, citing figures of $562 worth of broadband investment per U.S. household versus $244 per European household. Yoo released his study earlier this month, and it was funded by Broadband for America, which represents ISPs and other high-technology companies (CD June 5 p3).

The FCC Wireline Bureau said Friday that the cost of funding the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015, is expected to be $7.16 million, necessitating a contribution factor of 0.0000365. The size of the fund was determined by Welch, the FCC’s NANP billing and collection agent. That estimate means a Canadian contribution of $102,967, a Caribbean contribution of $21,432 and a U.S. contribution of $6.72 million, the bureau said in a public notice Friday (http://bit.ly/1kTFfSk). If the FCC takes no action on the proposed fund size estimate and contribution factor within the 14-day period after release of the notice, “the fund size estimate and the contribution factor are considered approved by the Commission and become effective” FY 2014, the bureau said. Total expenditures were $6.4 million for FY 2013 and $6.2 million for FY 2012. The contribution factor is an assessment on carriers’ revenues for services to end-users.

CenturyLink said Thursday it will close its 160-employee business customer care center in Seattle in September, as it shifts the work to centers in Bismark, North Dakota, and Minneapolis.

The Patent and Trademark Office plans to open its Denver satellite office June 30, it said Friday. PTO plans to soon begin hiring patent trial judges and patent examiners for the office, in the Bryon G. Rogers Federal Building. PTO previously opened a satellite office in Detroit and plans to open additional offices in Dallas and San Jose in 2015 (http://1.usa.gov/1tXDENJ).

TDS Telecom has selected Actiontec Electronics as the Customer Premise Equipment supplier for its new Gigabit Ethernet service. The service, which will offer 1 Gbps downstream and 400 Mbps upstream, will use Actiontec’s T2200H Universal Broadband Gateway, Actiontec said Wednesday. The telco selected the T2200H because “it delivered the fastest throughput of all the devices TDS tested in trials,” Actiontec said (http://bit.ly/1k4gXV4).

CEA-2047, which enables consumer electronics to communicate their energy use to computers, tablets and smartphones running smart-energy apps and third-party energy management services, was approved as a CEA standard, said the association in a news release (http://bit.ly/TvcMYI). CEA-2047 “recognizes that a manufacturer knows how much energy a device will use during operation based on its design,” CEA said Tuesday. “This information can be programmed into the device and used to calculate its energy usage over time, without adding complex metering circuitry. An energy management system or a smart-energy app can then gather the information over the network and present it to consumers on their TVs, PCs, or mobile devices.” The CEA-2047 release was announced at CEA’s Technology and Standards Spring Forum, which opened Monday in Seattle for a five-day run.

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) touted HR-4646, the Regulatory Improvement Act of 2014, in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1nd2xVX), flagging an event that day with institute officials and Reps. Patrick Murphy, D-Fla., and Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C. Murphy introduced the bill May 9 and it has 20 co-sponsors, 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats. It was referred to the House Oversight Committee. The bill would create an independent body to assess and potentially nix any regulations deemed unnecessary. Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., introduced companion legislation in the Senate, S-1390. PPI economists Michael Mandel and Diana Carew developed the ideas for the regulatory review body, the institute said.

Security firm Chertoff Group said Thursday it entered a “strategic alliance” with public relations firm Edelman to offer integrated communications and security consulting services to companies. “Our goal is to help clients prevent a crisis from arising in the first place while taking the necessary steps that should an event occur, they are able to act promptly, communicate clearly with accurate information, and maintain the trust of their stakeholders,” said Chertoff Group CEO Chad Sweet in a news release (http://bit.ly/1vakwxw). Chertoff’s chairman and co-founder is Michael Chertoff, former homeland security secretary.