The federal government shutdown didn’t drastically alter the substance of the fall agenda for most technology-focused advocates and lobbyists, said a dozen policy watchers in interviews last week. They were split over whether the next few months would be a promising time for technology-related legislative action on Capitol Hill. Several said a battered Congress could look to address issues such as patent reform or immigration as a way to demonstrate that the legislature could compromise. Others said the weeks of dealmaking had exhausted political capital on both sides, and that passing any legislation would be difficult.

The FCC started what is expected to be a long process of digging out Thursday, opening its doors for the first time since Oct. 1. The FCC put out a notice early in the day saying all filing deadlines were suspended, other than Network Outage Reporting System filings, through Monday (http://fcc.us/19THOiF). ECFS is back, but one lawyer told us he had been unable to make a filing. The commissioner offices have started to talk about such issues as rescheduling the October FCC meeting and other meetings as well as agency filings delayed by the closure, agency officials told us. Some communications lawyers said FCC staffers have been reaching out to ask about urgent issues for the FCC to address now that the agency is open.

As the FCC looks to make changes to support the AM band, long-term solutions must be tackled, said engineering and wireless consultants. A draft rulemaking that is circulating at the FCC includes relaxing rules on FM translators, which can help the AM band, said the broadcast engineering consultants and an attorney. They said the commission must take action on AM revitalization at a faster pace.

The Senate advanced FCC Republican nominee Michael O'Rielly out of the Commerce Committee Wednesday evening. But a block prevented the Senate from approving O'Rielly and FCC chairman nominee Tom Wheeler by unanimous consent, as some observers predicted possible. After 16 days of a government shutdown, the Senate has now taken a recess for the next week. Congress has begun rescheduling postponed events, and surveillance review remains a key priority in coming weeks, privacy advocates told us.

CTIA members are playing an active role in developing a federal cybersecurity framework, and mobile cybersecurity is a “top priority” for the wireless industry, CTIA President Steve Largent said at the opening of the group’s MobileCON conference Wednesday. The wireless industry wants to support the framework, under development by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, but can only do so if it gives the industry the ability to share information about cyberthreats and prevention techniques and also addresses liability protections, Largent said.

Many federal agencies have more work left to do to make good on administration goals of being forthcoming in responding to Freedom of Information Act requests and being transparent with the public and communicative with media, said experts in interviews Thursday. They said leaks of information on National Security Agency activities and other surveillance operations appear to have had the biggest effect on transparency by spurring an administration clampdown on NSA and other security agencies’ dealings with reporters. Accessibility of experts at non-national security agencies specializing in science, including the Food and Drug Administration, NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also has been curtailed under this administration, said the experts. They said regulatory agencies including the FCC, FTC and SEC generally do better at making experts available and responding to FOIA requests, though there’s room for improvement there, too.

The EU-U.S. Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) should be suspended, terminated or replaced by a different agreement because of allegations the National Security Agency accessed personal banking data held in the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) database in Europe, said European Parliament members (MEPs) in dueling motions for resolutions filed Wednesday. The resolutions split along the same party lines as last week’s debate in the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee (CD Oct 11 p7). They will be voted on next week, MEP Claude Moraes, of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and U.K., told us Thursday. However, he said, lawmakers genuinely don’t know which version will be adopted; and whichever is approved will be “merely symbolic” because Parliament lacks the power to take action on the TFTP. Meanwhile, Parliament’s probe of U.S. spying comes to Washington this month.

With the FCC about to transition to a new chairman and all proceedings on hold for the government shutdown, it’s hard to know if cable industry efforts to free up unlicensed spectrum for Wi-Fi will be successful, said several communications attorneys and industry observers in interviews. Cable needs unlicensed spectrum to bridge the gap between consumer demand for mobile broadband and the available wireless spectrum, said New America Foundation Wireless Future Project Director Michael Calabrese in a report sponsored by Time Warner Cable released last week (CD Oct 10 p14). “There’s no possible way the industry can meet consumer demand for movable data at affordable prices using only licensed spectrum,” he told us. “We need to have a second path.”

Lawyers and other communications industry officials hope acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn and the rest of the commission will provide information quickly on what happens next, as soon as the partial government shutdown ends and the agency and the rest of federal Washington gets back to work. Industry officials we spoke with Wednesday expressed the same emotions, relief combined with anxiety as both the House and Senate move forward on votes on a bipartisan Senate agreement to end the shutdown. Another fight could loom because the agreement would fund the government only through Jan. 15.

Telemarketers and their clients are bracing for a wave of litigation now that the new Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules have taken effect. The rules, which went live Wednesday, require consumers to give their express consent to receive certain telemarketing calls or text messages. The result, some say, will be class action lawsuits seeking hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of dollars in damages.