U.S. government surveillance work “needs and deserves the trust and credibility of the American people,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., during a Thursday address at Harvard University’s Law School. The Judiciary Committee member last week introduced two bills to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) process (CD Aug 2 p5). His FISA Court Reform Act would create an adversarial role in the court process to appeal FISC decisions and, when called upon by the court, argue against the federal government’s requests for expanded surveillance powers. Blumenthal’s FISA Judge Selection Reform Act would raise the number of FISC judges to 13 and create a selection process by which each judge is nominated by the corresponding federal circuit’s chief judge.

Public interest groups said Congress and the FCC should protect consumers from being affected by retransmission consent disputes, amid the current blackout of CBS programming on Time Warner Cable’s lineup. Blackouts result from broken markets, antiquated laws and regulatory neglect, said Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Project. CBS stations have a public obligation to make broadcasts freely available, but “they're demanding payment from cable providers, playing one off of the other and it’s leading to an increasing number of blackout situations that leaves consumers held hostage,” he said Thursday during a teleconference organized by American Television Alliance. ATVA members include the foundation and Time Warner Cable.

The larger ILECs sparred with smaller companies and associations in reply comments before the FCC this week on the proper classification of Internet Protocol interconnection agreements and how they should factor into any potential technology transition trials. AT&T argued against the need for IP interconnection trials, as did the joint filing from Verizon and Verizon Wireless. Verizon advocated for commercial negotiations of IP interconnection agreements, in contrast to the strong advocacy for the Communications Act Sections 251 and 252 oversight that the CLECs of Comptel backed in their reply comments posted Wednesday (CD Aug 8 p10), as did many other parties in comments posted Thursday.

Groups that support an FCC order that would effectively lower prison phone rates made a last pitch Thursday that the FCC move forward on the order. Commissioner Ajit Pai indicated Wednesday that unless changes were made to the order he would feel compelled to dissent (CD Aug 8 p1). FCC sources said Thursday it appears unlikely there will be a deal with Pai before the Friday meeting. The order effectively caps interstate calling rates at 10-30 cents per minute while teeing up limits for intrastate calls in a further NPRM (CD Aug 2 p4).

Commissioner Ajit Pai plans to dissent on an order on prison calling rate reform teed up for Friday’s FCC meeting, a Pai spokesman said Wednesday. Prison calling pricing has been a top issue for acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn (CD Aug 2 p4). But Clyburn conceded last month that addressing high charges for prison calls is not an easy issue (CD July 11 p1). If Pai does dissent, it would mark the first major order under Clyburn in which the now three-member commission was unable to reach at least some consensus.

The city councils of Champaign and Urbana, Ill., voted unanimously this week to privatize Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband consortium to make UC2B a nonprofit entity to expand its mission to become a local telecom company. UC2B was funded by NTIA as part of the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) in 2010, with additional funds from Illinois, the University of Illinois and the cities of Champaign and Urbana, for about $29 million total, said Teri Legner, Champaign economic development manager, at a study session for both city councils on July 30. The UC2B program is one of the few BTOP grantees that provides middle-mile and last-mile connections to “underserved areas of community,” she said. By making the program private, UC2B hopes to move from serving 10 percent of its community to serving 100 percent, said Mike Smeltzer, the principal instigator of the NTIA grant application, in an interview.

A study on the impact of newspaper-broadcast cross ownership on minority and female media owners by the Minority & Media Telecommunications Council may be based on outdated and inaccurate information, said Free Press in filings submitted to the FCC Tuesday in response to a Media Bureau request for comment on the study (http://bit.ly/176c9oM). Using information on the study’s participants submitted to the commission by MMTC under a protective order to secure survey respondents’ identities (CD July 29 p11), Free Press found that MMTC may have “erroneously identified certain stations as female and/or minority owned” and could have had business relationships with some of the respondents. The council’s reply comment on its study included a footnote (http://bit.ly/1cw6bUg) that said Free Press’s new allegations are “false and frankly outrageous” and “have no merit.” MMTC had no further comment Wednesday.

The FCC Media Bureau is circulating a report and order aimed at streamlining policies and rules on tower construction near AM stations, agency officials told us. The item stems from a further NPRM and second report and order from 2008, they said. The item is designed to streamline the commission’s existing rules to make tower build out and changes easier to complete, an agency official said.

There are overlapping Internet policy goals of Amazon and The Washington Post, soon to share a common investor in the former’s CEO Jeff Bezos, who agreed to buy the newspaper and related assets Monday for $250 million. Though Bezos is buying the paper with his own money and has said he will mainly leave the editorial operations to the experts (CD Aug 7 p4), the policy debates on efforts to reform the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and to pass online sales tax legislation are of interest to both the online retailer and the paper, industry experts told us.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) decision to overturn an International Trade Commission ruling this weekend surprised the patent litigation community, members of which told us the decision could have substantial implications for cases on standard essential patents (SEPs) at the ITC. But lawyers told us the case was unlikely to have a major impact on the bulk of the ITC’s caseload, or on its larger role in patent litigation. They said the ban would likewise not impact two connected patent disputes between Apple and Samsung that are set to advance Friday. Industry analysts told us the USTR decision would create more uncertainty in the industry, but wouldn’t overwhelmingly affect any one company’s business model.