The Department of Justice advocated for the passage of an amendment proposed by the Obama administration that would “add activities like the operation of a botnet to the list of offenses eligible for injunctive relief,” in a blog post Wednesday by DOJ Assistant Attorney General-Criminal Division Leslie Caldwell. Criminals use botnets to steal usernames, passwords and other personal and financial information, or to infect computers with criminal malware to hold computers and computer systems ransom, Caldwell said. The DOJ has used the civil injunction process to thwart these attacks successfully in the past, she said. “If we want security to keep pace with technological innovations by criminals, we need to ensure that we have a variety of effective tools to combat evolving cyber threats,” Caldwell said. Enacting the Obama administration’s proposed amendment, which would add to list of offenses eligible for injunctive relief activities that may not be technically considered fraud or illegal wiretapping -- such as stealing sensitive corporate information, harvesting email account addresses, hacking computers, or executing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks -- would “provide the government with an effective tool to shut down illegal botnets or certain widespread malicious software to better match the ways that criminals are using these technologies,” Caldwell said. Under the administration's proposed update to the criminal code, the legal safeguards that currently apply to civil injunctions such as civilly suing the defendant, the defendants' right to notice and ability to have a hearing before a permanent injunction is issued, and the defendants' ability to move to “quash or modify any injunctions,” would still apply, Caldwell said.

Wireless technologies are a complement to wireline broadband technologies rather than a replacement for them, a report from Vantage Point Solutions said. The study, "Wireless Broadband Not a Viable Substitute for Wireline Broadband," was filed Tuesday with the FCC by NTCA. It looks at various broadband delivery networks and the characteristics of a high-quality broadband connection. The report also found that lack of spectrum, as well as weather and terrain concerns, limit a wireless network's broadband quality.

AT&T will hold its annual stockholder meeting April 24 in Spokane, Washington, the carrier said in an SEC filing Tuesday. The meeting starts at 9 a.m. PDT in the DoubleTree by Hilton Spokane City Center Grand Ballroom.

Gogo urged the FCC to hold an auction for air-to-ground mobile broadband service (AGMBS) spectrum, since the in-flight Wi-Fi provider needs additional spectrum capacity, said an ex parte notice posted Tuesday in docket 13-114. Gogo representatives met with Public Safety Bureau officials March 4 to discuss the proposed 14 GHz AGMBS, it said. Bureau and Gogo officials also discussed the company's efforts to accommodate flight safety, national security and law enforcement concerns that executive branch agencies had with its existing ATG service (see 1502120054). Gogo is willing to satisfy the conditions that the FBI requested be imposed for any AGMBS licensees, it said. In-flight broadband increases flight safety for passengers and crew members, Gogo said. Almost 50 airlines worldwide have introduced or will begin offering in-flight service with terrestrial or satellite systems, it said. A draft FCC order on ATG was taken off circulation, agency officials have said.

A lawsuit challenging the NSA mass surveillance program’s large-scale search and seizure of Internet communications, known as “upstream” surveillance, was filed against that agency and the Department of Justice Tuesday by the Wikipedia creator, the Wikimedia Foundation, the group said in a news release. Upstream surveillance “taps the Internet’s ‘backbone’ to capture communications with ‘non-U.S. persons,’” under the authority of the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (FAA), the release said. “By tapping the backbone of the Internet, the NSA is straining the backbone of democracy,” said Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Lila Tretikov. The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Rutherford Institute are among the nine co-plaintiffs in the Wikimedia Foundation’s lawsuit, which aims to end the mass surveillance program to “protect the rights of our users around the world,” the release said. “Surveillance erodes the original promise of the Internet: an open space for collaboration and experimentation, and a place free from fear,” said Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales. “Privacy is an essential right,” Wales and Tretikov wrote in a New York Times op-ed Tuesday, explaining the suit. “It is a universal right that sustains the freedoms of expression and association,” the Wikimedia Foundation release said. DOJ is reviewing the complaint, a spokeswoman told us. The NSA had no immediate comment.

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Monday sought comment on a petition by Mammoth Mountain Ski Area asking for additional clarity on Telephone Consumer Protection Act prohibitions requiring prior express written consent for all autodialed or prerecorded telemarketing calls to wireless numbers and residential lines. The bureau asked for comments by April 6, replies by April 24. Mammoth Mountain Ski Area sought a ruling from the FCC on a 2012 order under the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act, said a petition for expedited declaratory ruling or forbearance. A class-action lawsuit filed in October against Mammoth alleged that the California ski resort area violated the TCPA when it made autodialed calls advertising season passes to its past customers, the filing said. Prior to the 2012 ruling, it was legal for a business to use prerecorded messages to call phone numbers for commercial purposes as long as it had prior express consent. The ski area said that because it had phone numbers legally prior to the 2012 order, it should be able to legally make prerecorded calls to those numbers. Mammoth said it's "improper for the FCC's rules to retroactively impair these vested rights." If Mammoth is found liable for violating the TCPA, it said it could face penalties of tens of millions of dollars.

President Barack Obama launched his TechHire initiative Monday, focusing on increasing technology industry jobs throughout the U.S. More than 20 communities have joined the effort, and the administration has committed $100 million in investment for training and job connection work through H-1B grants from the Department of Labor, the White House said in a fact sheet. “What TechHire is going to do is to help local leaders connect the job openings to the training programs to the jobs,” Obama told the National League of Cities Monday. “And if you’re not already involved in this, you’ve got to get involved, because your community needs this just like everybody else does.”

APCO, the National Emergency Number Association, USTelecom and others jointly asked the FCC to extend the deadline for filing comments on its Nov. 21 911 governance NPRM. “The Notice raises a large number of jurisdictional, governance, and legal authority questions with implications to every aspect of 9-1-1 service,” the group said. “Given the scope and complexity of the issues raised in the notice, the Joint Petitioners believe that an extension of the comment filing deadlines would be in the public interest.” Comments should be due no earlier than March 23, replies no earlier than April 21, the filing said. Comments are currently due Monday, replies April 7. The filing was posted Friday in docket 13-75.

NTIA opened a public comment period on the commercial and private use of unmanned aircraft (see 1503040035) said a Federal Register notice Thursday. President Barack Obama directed NTIA to develop best practices for unmanned aircraft privacy issues in a Feb. 15 memorandum on the same subject, it said. Comments are due April 20, the notice said.

NTIA released plans Wednesday for a multistakeholder meeting to address privacy, transparency, and accountability issues for the commercial and private use of unmanned aircraft systems, commonly referred to as drones. In a presidential memorandum dated Feb. 15, the White House asked NTIA to hold a multistakeholder meeting with industry, civil society, technical experts, academics and other stakeholders, on privacy concerns "while ensuring the United States maintains its leadership and promotes innovation in this growing industry,” said NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling. Consumer groups have expressed concern with the multistakeholder approach (see 1502170038), and argue the process doesn’t work because consumer advocates are largely outnumbered by industry lobbyists. This announcement “shows how out of touch the White House and Commerce Department are on data issues,” said Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeff Chester: “Allowing industry lobbyist dominated meetings, where consumer groups are vastly out numbered and there is no representation from civil rights organizations and many others, to determine the privacy rules of the air is irresponsible.” In a column for The Christian Science Monitor Wednesday, former White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Nicole Wong cast doubt on whether a multistakeholder policy development process works. “We have learned from previous multistakeholder privacy convenings (for example, the Do-Not-Track working group trying to standardize cookie settings for more than three years), that it is difficult to develop practical, enforceable and adopted codes unless all parties come to the table committed to reach agreement,” Wong said. “There is no future in which less data is collected and used.” People can't “continue to argue for leaving the safekeeping of our data to the discretion of private actors. Individuals, companies and governments want clarity and consistency,” she said. The FCC and FTC should be responsible for developing a plan to ensure diverse and independent perspectives to protect privacy are developed, Chester said. The first public meeting on drones will be held within 90 days from Wednesday’s publication of the request for comment. Comments on the RFC are due to NTIA 45 days from when it's in the Federal Register.