Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., introduced the Prioritizing Online Threats Enforcement Act (HR-2602), which would compel the Department of Justice to enforce laws prohibiting online violence against women and to ensure protections for victims of severe online threats, said a Clark news release Wednesday. Clark’s legislation would also give the DOJ and FBI additional resources and create a “mandate to investigate and enforce the existing federal laws regarding threats,” it said. Of the some 2.5 million cyberstalking cases in the U.S. between 2010 and 2013, federal prosecutors pursued 10 cases, the release said. Clark’s bill was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, which a staffer told us receives “thousands of bills” each Congress and “will review this legislation in time.”
The Democratic senators from Oregon worry about possible closure of the FCC Enforcement Bureau field office in Vancouver, Washington, that oversees Oregon, but FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler defended the agency’s proposal in a May 29 response, released last week. That office “is vital to the television and radio broadcasters in our state,” Sens. Jeffrey Merkley and Ron Wyden told FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in an April 24 letter. “We worry that a field office as far away as San Francisco would not prioritize our constituents, and have a significant delay in response time to broadcasters in the Pacific Northwest.” They wanted the agency to, “at very least, facilitate public input on the proposed field office closures as this process progresses” and ask the FCC to consider the needs of local broadcasters before closing that field office and “look to find an alternative solution.” Wheeler said closing the field office makes sense. The field office overseeing Oregon “has relatively little radiofrequency complaint resolution activity” and costs “approximately $276,000 each year to maintain,” Wheeler said, costing $15,000 in taxpayer funds per complaint. The House Communications Subcommittee plans a hearing on the proposed closures Thursday.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., successfully slipped an amendment into the House Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies appropriations bill last week that would “prohibit the use of funds to operate or disseminate a cell-site simulator or IMSI [international mobile subscriber identity] catcher in the United States except pursuant to a court order that identifies an individual, account, address, or personal device,” its text said. The House adopted Issa’s amendment by voice vote, and the House approved the appropriations bill 242-183. “It becomes necessary because selective spying by using these devices, commonly called Stingray or cell site simulators or IMSI catchers, has become a reality,” Issa said on the House floor. “These sophisticated affordable mobile devices in fact spoof or convince your phone that they are a valid cell tower and allow for the gathering of communications content, including texts and emails.” Federal dollars may be used to do this “without a warrant,” he warned. “This is a narrowly crafted amendment. It in no way stops the use of these devices when a federal court has ordered and allowed the use, either the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court or a common warrant issued by a judge.” Congressional scrutiny of Stingray devices has risen in the last year, and the FCC has also investigated the issue.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., is preparing his draft FCC reauthorization legislation, he told us Thursday. “It’s in the works,” Thune said. “I don’t know we’re ready to drop it yet.” He said the idea of introducing it in the next day or two “might be a little ambitious.” The FCC has not been formally reauthorized since 1990, and Thune has said he anticipates FCC reauthorization moving forward by late summer or fall. “Yeah, it’s going to be largely things that most people I think agree on -- transparency, budget, process issues,” Thune said, stressing the draft would contain items that could garner bipartisan support. One telecom industry lobbyist told us that a reauthorization draft already seems well under development, with staffers tying up loose ends. The reauthorization draft is poised to be generally uncontroversial, the industry lobbyist said. Thune first mentioned his desire to reauthorize the FCC early this year (see 1502030039).
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., introduced legislation Thursday forbidding the FCC from regulating broadband rates. “While [FCC] Chairman [Tom] Wheeler has stated that the FCC does not intend to regulate broadband internet access rates under his leadership, future Commissions still have the authority to insert their own mandates on rates,” Kinzinger said in a statement. “If we are to ensure that the government is not setting the rates we pay to use the internet, we must once and for all take that option off the table. Given no objection from Chairman Wheeler to such legislation, I have introduced the No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act.” The two-page bill text includes a straightforward prohibition. The legislation has 17 GOP co-sponsors, including Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. Kinzinger's spokeswoman told us in April that Kinzinger was weighing legislation that would codify forbearance that was part of the net neutrality order's reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service.
The Senate Commerce Committee scheduled a hearing for 10 a.m. Wednesday in 253 Russell on “on-going efforts to implement train control technology.” FCC Wireless Bureau Associate Bureau Chief Charles Mathias will testify, as will Amtrak Chief Operations Officer DJ Stadtler and Robert Lauby, chief safety officer at the Department of Transportation Federal Railroad Administration. The committee said more witnesses may be added. Witnesses will “discuss the capabilities and limitations of train control technologies (including positive train control systems); the current status of the deployment and functionality of positive train control systems; and current challenges with on-going efforts to install, test, and certify positive train control systems by the December 31, 2015, statutory deadline,” Commerce said in its notice. The bipartisan leaders of Commerce have introduced legislation that would delay that deadline by five years, which has prompted some objections from Senate Democrats, who would prefer less of a postponement. Positive train control also came up Tuesday during a House Transportation Committee hearing on last month's deadly Amtrak accident in Philadelphia. Amtrak has “also committed to finish implementation of Positive Train Control on the Northeast Corridor by December of this year,” Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said in his opening statement. “Positive train control would have prevented the May 12 accident,” National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Christopher Hart testified.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler modified his plan to close Enforcement Bureau field offices, he told House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., in a May 20 letter the FCC released Thursday. “At this stage, we have circulated the reorganization recommendations to all FCC Commissioners in the form of a proposed rule change,” Wheeler said. “Over the past few weeks, I have received constructive feedback from my colleagues. Based on this feedback, I am modifying the proposal to maintain a field presence in Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Alaska to ensure a rapid FCC response to natural disasters outside the continental United States.” Wheeler had announced earlier this year a plan to close 16 of 24 field offices. Consultation with other commissioners will continue, Wheeler said. He said the FCC will notify the relevant appropriators on Capitol Hill and that management staffers are ready to brief any lawmaker offices interested. The field office reorganization is “long overdue,” Wheeler said. Walden is planning a subcommittee hearing on this issue next week (see 1506020055). In a separate letter to House lawmakers, FCC senior legal adviser John Williams gave House Republicans a 253-page PowerPoint assessment that consultants gave the FCC about the field offices, though Williams' letter and not the PowerPoint presentation itself was made public.
Several industry stakeholders pressed the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee on the Wi-Fi Innovation Act (S-424). “This legislation directs the FCC to explore making the upper part of the 5 GHz frequency band available for unlicensed use, paving the way for Wi-Fi at gigabit speeds using the latest Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac,” said a letter dated Wednesday, signed by the American Library Association, the Competitive Carriers Association, CompTIA, CCIA, Engine, Free Press, NCTA, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association. “Making this spectrum available for use by Wi-Fi and other unlicensed technologies would spur innovation, add value to the U.S. economy and help fulfill our nation’s goals of ubiquitous, affordable broadband access. … We urge the Committee to move quickly to bring this bipartisan bill with widespread support to the floor, and urge Congress to pass it.” Much of the upper 5 GHz is devoted to intelligent transportation technology.
House Commerce Committee lawmakers have begun meeting with stakeholders about the 5.9 GHz spectrum band, one senior Republican said this week. Senior committee Republicans and Democrats united to hold the first of what they intend to be ongoing meetings with the Department of Transportation, the FCC and NTIA recently, and a committee staffer told us last week they planned to meet with stakeholders for the band (see 1505270044). The 5.9 GHz issue is subject to debate on whether the spectrum, held in large part for intelligent transportation technology, can be shared for unlicensed use. “We’re moving forward on trying to make more spectrum available,” Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., told reporters this week. “We’ve got a working group working on 5.9 gig. And we’ve met with some of the auto companies and all on some of their issues. So we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
The IRS will keep its Get Transcript application disabled until the federal agency can further strengthen the application’s cybersecurity following the IRS’ detection in late May of the application that compromised the tax return information for about 104,000 taxpayers, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Tuesday during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. The data breach managed to bypass the IRS’ multistep authentication process for using the Get Transcript application, indicating that the “parties” behind the breach received information from “sources outside the IRS,” Koskinen said. The IRS shuttered the Get Transcript application on May 21, he said. The Senate Finance Committee also held a hearing Tuesday on the data breach, during which Koskinen said the breach resulted in the filing of 13,000 fraudulent tax returns that claimed a total of $39 million in refunds. More than one-third of the more than 90,000 other taxpayers whose information became compromised during the breach had filed their returns before the breach, while IRS measures halted the filing of about 23,000 other fraudulent returns. The remaining 33,000 taxpayers affected by the breach weren’t obligated to file returns with the IRS, Koskinen said. The data breach may have focused more on using taxpayers’ information “to file fraudulent tax returns next year,” he said. Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he believes the IRS data breach constitutes an incident beyond “your standard cyberattack” and that it raises questions about the cybersecurity of other federal agencies’ networks that will require additional hearings. Senate Homeland Security ranking member Tom Carper, D-Del., said the IRS data breach is a symptom of the larger “epidemic” of recent data breaches that have affected companies like Anthem, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Target. The IRS breach in particular shows that federal agencies “must do more to stay ahead of the curve,” Carper said.