Companies or a third party, not the government, should store phone metadata of U.S. citizens the government wants to surveil, recommended a key executive branch-appointed panel in a report released Wednesday, one among 46 recommendations that proposed sweeping changes to U.S. surveillance law. Proposals ranged from creating a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) public advocate to limiting phone searches. The White House unveiled the advice of its five-member surveillance review group in an unplanned move to quash speculation on the report’s contents, said Press Secretary Jay Carney. The release comes as more than 50 organizations pressed Congress not to pass legislation that would preserve the government’s bulk metadata surveillance program.

A fatal Metro-North Railroad crash in New York City this month renewed public awareness about implementation of the positive train control safety system, but PTC stakeholders told us they don’t believe the crash will ultimately change the dynamics of the technology’s implementation at the FCC and other agencies. The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which required railroads to implement PTC communications systems, gives nearly all responsibility for implementing PTC to the Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration, said an FCC official. But the FCC has been facilitating the deployment of some PTC technologies because they involve spectrum, said an official there.

In a proposal to eliminate the sports blackout rules, the FCC seeks comment on whether the rules are needed to give the public access to telecasts and the effect that a repeal of the rules would have on consumers. The rulemaking notice was released Wednesday, after circulating among commissioners in draft form last month (CD Nov 4 p3). If the record in the proceeding confirms that the sports blackout rules are no longer necessary “to ensure the overall availability to the public of sports telecasts, we propose to repeal these rules,” said a Media Bureau NPRM unanimously approved by the commission (http://fcc.us/1bQ7VC2). The rules prevent multichannel video programming distributors from carrying games that are blacked out by sports leagues on TV stations in markets where the games haven’t sold out.

The U.S. must give “clear political signals” that it distinguishes between allies and adversaries, and agree on a code of conduct that guarantees that no U.S. espionage targets EU institutions and facilities, said European Parliament member (MEP) Claude Moraes, of the Socialists and Democrats and the U.K. He presented his draft report Wednesday on the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee’s extensive probe into U.S. National Security Agency spying and its impact on European fundamental rights.

The FCC shouldn’t eliminate the UHF discount without also examining the possibility of increasing or eliminating the 39 percent broadcast ownership cap, and the commission may not have the authority to change the discount at all, said 21st Century Fox, Univision, Sinclair and other major broadcasters in comments filed Monday in docket 13-236. The broadcasters were responding to an FCC rulemaking notice seeking comment on eliminating the discount (CD Aug. 14 p1), possibly grandfathering existing and pending ownership combinations, and a proposed VHF discount. Though most broadcaster comments characterized the NPRM as a backdoor method of changing the ownership cap, Free Press, the Competitive Carrier Association and broadcaster Block defended the measure. “Eliminating that discount doesn’t change the cap; it merely changes the calculation under the cap because the equation was unequivocally wrong,” said Free Press.

Frontier will acquire AT&T’s wireline residential and business services in Connecticut, said the telcos Tuesday. Frontier will pay $2 billion in cash for the wireline business and statewide fiber network, as well as for AT&T’s U-verse video in the state as well as some satellite-TV customers there. The deal will get a U.S. antitrust, FCC and Connecticut review, said the companies and analysts. State officials said they would examine the proposed deal carefully for harm to consumers.

The debate over legislation targeting so-called abusive patent litigation officially shifted to the Senate Tuesday, as patent stakeholders testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) and other bills that would address aspects of the issue. Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said S-1720 takes “significant steps to address the problem of patent trolls and misuse of the patent system,” but is also “balanced and targeted to preserve the rights of legitimate patent holders whose inventions help drive our economy.” Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said it’s important the Senate address patent litigation because it’s a threat to the U.S. patent system, in particular noting the effects of “deceptively evasive demand letters.”

A FirstNet special committee examining allegations of misconduct on the part of members of the group’s board has effectively been dissolved, special committee Chairman Wellington Webb said Tuesday at the FirstNet board meeting in Boulder, Colo. The board also took further steps toward the launch of the network, including the selection of a headquarters site in Reston, Va., and the signing of agreements for early network deployments in Colorado and New Jersey.

The impending end of the USF quantile regression analysis, disclosed by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler while being questioned at Thursday’s House Communications Subcommittee hearing, came as a shock to industry members who had long been urging QRA’s elimination. Wheeler told Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., he had asked the bureau to draft an order “to eliminate the QRA and return to the high-cost loop support model” (CD Dec 13 p4). There’s no word from the Wireline Bureau about what the replacement will look like, but many industry officials we interviewed were hoping for a predictable model based on plant depreciation.

NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program didn’t properly evaluate grant proposals on their cost effectiveness, said Gregory Rosston, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research deputy director, at a Broadband Breakfast webinar Tuesday. He co-wrote a Technology Policy Institute paper on “The Broadband Stimulus: A Rural Boondoggle and Missed Opportunity” with Scott Wallsten, TPI vice president-research. Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition Executive Director John Windhausen said in response Tuesday, as he had before (CD Nov 20 p22), that November’s report shows a lack of understanding of the purpose of the BTOP grants to serve unserved and underserved areas and community anchor institutions.