The General Services Administration (GSA) could have saved hundreds of millions of dollars if it had been better able to manage a telecom transition, the GAO said in a report released Monday (http://1.usa.gov/19NtNEy). It focused on the Networx transition -- a series of contracts signed in 2007 and covering transport, Internet Protocol, wireless and management and application services -- and said the savings could have been $329 million if the transition had happened on time. “The extent to which GSA is documenting and applying lessons learned in preparation for the next telecommunications transition varies,” the GAO report said. “GSA has fully or partially satisfied five of six key practices necessary for a robust lessons learned process.” But it “has not fully shared these lessons with its customer agencies or prioritized them to ensure that resources are applied to areas with the greatest return on investment,” said the GAO. The GSA needs to share and prioritize lessons from this transition, it said. “GSA plans to finalize its next telecommunications acquisition strategy in December 2013 and begin the next transition when it awards new contracts in February 2017,” the GAO said. “Fully addressing key lessons learned practices should help GSA and agencies."

Members of an international coalition of about 250 academics co-signed a letter released Friday urging governments to curb their “unprecedented level of surveillance” (http://bit.ly/1atMQ11). “This has to stop,” the letter says, citing the surveillance methods revealed through Edward Snowden’s leaked documents. “The right to privacy is a fundamental right. It is protected by international treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights,” the letter said. Without giving specific policy prescriptions, “the signatories of this declaration call upon nation states to take action. ... Intelligence agencies must be subjected to transparency and accountability,” it said.

Recent court opinions on National Security Agency phone surveillance indicate that understanding of the Fourth Amendment may need to change, argued Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. She pointed to two federal court decisions from December, one calling phone metadata bulk collection likely to be in violation of the Fourth Amendment and another upholding the practice. She favored the reasoning of the former and examined the broader legal context. “A consensus seems to be emerging that the Fourth Amendment must evolve along with technology and government surveillance capabilities, and that it is the job of the lower courts to investigate and to rule accordingly,” she wrote in a Just Security blog post Tuesday (http://bit.ly/KmNnv5). “If lower courts slavishly follow the closest analogous Supreme Court case on hand, rather than seriously consider whether facts, policies and practices on the ground have changed, higher courts will not benefit from the best fact-finding and the best legal reasoning incubated in the lower federal courts.” She predicted courts will ultimately find the Fourth Amendment prohibits such bulk surveillance, which she called an “unprecedented power” of the government.

Puerto Rico Telephone Co., which operates as Claro, wants to discontinue its PhoneMax interconnected VoIP services Jan. 31, the FCC said Tuesday. Claro said it will continue to offer alternative voice services, including traditional wireline and wireless services. Other telcos in Puerto Rico offer comparable VoIP services as well, the FCC said. The commission is seeking comment on Claro’s proposal through Jan. 15.