California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed two bills Thursday designed to bring broadband connectivity to 98 percent of the state by 2015 through the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), after extensive revisions in August. Senate Bill 740 expands eligibility requirements to wireless ISPs and local governments and adds $90 million in funds from telecom ratepayer intrastate surcharges in 2015-2020. Assembly Bill 1299 authorizes the California Public Utilities Commission to use up to $5 million from the CASF to connect public housing units to broadband and support adoption programs.

The partial federal government shutdown, in its fourth day Friday, is raising varying levels of anxiety among members of the communications bar. The shutdown’s effects rippled through the Washington area last week, giving most federal workers an unexpected, possibly unpaid, vacation, and raising some fundamental questions for those whose business is dealing with the government. Further adding to problems lawyers face, the FCC unexpectedly took almost all filings and other documents offline for the duration of the shutdown, a much more draconian response than many federal agencies (CD Oct 3 p2).

TOKYO -- Demand for the Apple iPhone 5S at NTT Docomo is outstripping supply, positioning it to be one of the service’s top-selling smartphones, two weeks after the carrier began selling it, spokesman Takuya Ori told us at the company’s headquarters.

If Congress doesn’t address information sharing to further U.S. cybersecurity, “we will do more harm to the next generation’s ability to make it in the world” than if “we fail to do any other thing,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., Thursday at a cybersecurity panel sponsored by The Washington Post. He said cyberattacks are the “largest threat” the country faces. “We have worked ourselves into a frenzy” over these cryptography revelations, he said, referencing the classified information made public by Edward Snowden this summer. “We are raping the next generation’s possibility for economic prosperity.”

The FCC needs better data “hard and fast” to create policy that would increase the number of minority-owned broadcast stations, said acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn at the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters conference. Of several FCC commissioners and bureau personnel who had been scheduled to speak at the event, she was the only one to show up, due to the government shutdown. A panel meant to consist of FCC bureau chiefs instead was staffed by a broadcast attorney and officials from NAB and the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council, and a “Dialogue with Commissioners” event Friday that was planned to include commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel will be reformatted, NABOB said. Clyburn and conference panelists briefed attendees on several proposals at the FCC and in Congress that might address the difficulties of minority broadcasters, but she said the FCC’s collection of data is a prerequisite for changes. “A complete picture of the media landscape is necessary to entertain … any major policy adjustment in the short term,” she said.

With the Telecommunications Industry Association set to hold its annual meeting in the Washington, D.C., area, next week, TIA President Grant Seiffert told us he hopes the partial government shutdown will be brief. After gathering in Dallas for two years, TIA members will convene in suburban Maryland for the three-day conference starting Monday at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center (http://bit.ly/1dYd0fs). But the government shutdown is widely expected to continue through next week.

Public attention to uneven application of Web content policies may help bring about change so conservative religious and political views aren’t blocked on the likes of Apple, Facebook and Google, said experts who read a National Religious Broadcasters report (CD Oct 3 p4) on what NRB called censorship. Those opposing what they contend are unfair applications of policies against hate and other speech may need to better publicize those cases and stop using social media that block their views, said some panelists at an NRB event Thursday and experts in follow-up interviews. They said ISPs may not be engaging in such blocking because they face less liability for illegal content than do websites, plus such filtering is much less technically feasible for broadband providers than for sites.

The week’s government shutdown has yet to disrupt the day-to-day business of lobbying in any profound way, but industry officials are cautiously watching its effects on Congress, several lobbyists told us. Accessibility to Capitol Hill offices is limited for some, and short-term agendas are up in the air as congressional hearings and other events frequently end up postponed (CD Oct 2 p6), they said. None had any sense for how long the uncertainty would last.

Blocked access to the FCC’s website and databases due to the government shutdown is already having an effect on low-power FM hopefuls, LPFM advocates and attorneys said. A canceled webinar that was scheduled earlier this week and a lack of tools that are otherwise available on the agency website are raising concerns among some applicants as they try to polish their applications, they said.

Intelligence officials have experimented with collecting location data of U.S. citizens as part of their surveillance programs, they said Wednesday. They defended these surveillance programs again in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which pressed them for details about rare privacy violations, both intentional and unintentional, and the damaging effects of the ongoing government shutdown. Senators remained split on the best ways to change surveillance law, with two key Democrats expressing sharply different views on what legislation should look like.