The commercial space industry must be allowed to thrive as the nation works to remain out front in space and as government continues to rely heavily on commercial partners, said lawmakers and government officials Wednesday on Capitol Hill at a Future Space Leaders event. “Space has become intertwined with everything we do,” said Douglas Loverro, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy. The nation’s “commercial infrastructure is empowered by satellite communications at large,” he said. “GPS isn’t the only thing that touches you every day.” Cars have satellite radio and people subscribe to satellite TV, he said.

The FCC should avoid specific “prescriptive” regulations and focus on flexibility in new rules on accessibility for user interfaces and video programming guides, said several cable providers and the NCTA. They commented on the commission’s rulemaking on implementing Sections 204 and 205 of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (http://bit.ly/19qAKaI). The deadline for comments on the proposed new rules was Monday. “Overly prescriptive regulations could freeze current technologies and solutions in place, hamper investment, and stymie advancement,” said Comcast. Although consumer groups filing comments in docket 12-108 asked for some specific rules, they also urged flexibility in the language of the rules. “We do not believe that the manner of viewing video programming will be limited to ’television sets’ in the future; nor will the manner of obtaining video content be limited,” said the American Council of the Blind. “The FCC must regulate with the proverbial eye toward the future."

La Rue said corporate responsibility is also important when it comes to surveillance. The U.S. and Europe lead the world in technology and their monitoring creates a bad example, said La Rue. “Corporations have no problem selling their surveillance to foreign governments. We need export licenses to generate some image of control,” he said. Rebecca MacKinnon, New America senior research fellow, identified this trend as the “surveillance industrial complex,” where companies are “developing technologies for government and selling them around the world.” LaRue and MacKinnon said companies do have human rights responsibilities related to the freedom of expression and privacy. “When companies acquiesce to government demands, they are doing everything they can to mitigate harm,” she said.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai offered his vision for the E-rate program Tuesday, which would prioritize next-generation Internet services over standalone voice telephone service. Pai’s plan would let schools know before the academic year starts how much money they have to spend, and would include a “straightforward matching requirement” that sees schools contributing $1 for every $3 they receive. The commission is scheduled to vote on an NPRM aimed at overhauling the E-rate program at its meeting Friday.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sent the White House a letter formally submitting Michael O'Rielly, a top staffer with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, for the open FCC seat, said industry and Capitol Hill officials Tuesday. O'Rielly would replace Robert McDowell, who left the commission in May. The McConnell office has a reputation for not leaking information, but industry and Hill officials said Tuesday they have been told O'Rielly was picked for the recommendation after an extensive search. O'Rielly’s nomination is expected to be paired with that of Tom Wheeler, President Barack Obama’s pick for FCC chairman, for eventual approval in the Senate.

Nineteen groups coordinated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco Tuesday seeking to stop the National Security Agency’s collection of metadata on phone calls made by Americans. The case, First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA (http://bit.ly/1aqheuE), seeks to halt the collection of data and force the government to return the records now in its possession. “The First Amendment protects the freedom to associate and express political views as a group, but the NSA’s mass, untargeted collection of Americans’ phone records violates that right by giving the government a dramatically detailed picture into our associational ties,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn.

As over the top service providers expand their content, they move closer to controlling the programming and how they obtain it, said media and technology executives Tuesday during a Broadband Breakfast Club event in Washington. While there’s more OTT content at reasonable costs, customers still watch content mainly through traditional TV broadcasts, some media executives said.

Broadcasters’ appeal to have their case for an injunction against online TV service Aereo reheard by a full panel of judges was denied Tuesday by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York after a 10-2 vote. The failure of the appeal of denial by a three-judge 2nd Circuit panel of an injunction preventing Aereo from retransmitting TV stations’ content is not unexpected, said several broadcast attorneys and one of the appellants, Fox. The denial likely won’t have much effect on the several remaining court battles involving Aereo and competitor FilmOn, broadcast attorneys told us, though a dissenting opinion from 2nd Circuit Judge Denny Chin could boost future broadcaster appeals. “They can use Chin’s dissent as a roadmap of sorts in formulating their arguments,” said Fletcher Heald’s Harry Cole, who’s not involved in the case. Fox “will now review our options and determine the appropriate course of action, which include seeking a hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court and proceeding to a full trial on the merits of the case,” said the 21st Century Fox subsidiary in a statement.

An online advertising industry Do Not Track (DNT) proposal won’t be considered by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) stakeholders as the DNT working group moves towards its deadline for a “Last Call” document at the end of the month, the group’s co-chair Peter Swire said Tuesday. Last week stakeholders voiced objections to the industry proposal -- which focused on “data hygiene,” or how data should be treated once collected from a user that enabled a DNT mechanism -- and the so-called Editors’ Draft, which Swire introduced as a road to compromise last month. Stakeholders on both the privacy and industry side of the debate told us they were pessimistic that a clear path to consensus exists for the group, but Swire told us he’s committed to attempting to meet the deadline at the end of the month. Including Wednesday’s weekly stakeholder call, the group will “work hard ... to follow the procedures we've announced” to meet that deadline, he told us.

National leadership is failing to spur deployment of faster broadband networks, stakeholders said Tuesday during a Washington event hosted by Google and the Internet Society’s Washington chapter. The discussion focused on how to encourage communities to develop gigabit networks as well as the challenges and shortcomings associated with that. Speakers emphasized the importance of municipalities, and discussed policy flaws on the federal level.