Further Reading, Other Developments, and Coming Events (22 July)

First things first, if you would like to receive my Technology Policy Update, email me. You can find some of these Updates from 2019 and 2020 here.

Here are Further Reading, Other Developments, and Coming Events.

Coming Events

• On 22 July, the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee will markup a number of bills and nominations, including:
  • The nomination of Derek Kan to the Office of Management and Budget’s Deputy Director
  • The “Federal Emergency Pandemic Response Act” (S.4204)
  • The “Securing Healthcare and Response Equipment Act of 2020” (S.4210)
  • The “National Response Framework Improvement Act of 2020” (S.4153)
  • The “National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center Pandemic Modeling Act of 2020” (S.4157)
  • The “PPE Supply Chain Transparency Act of 2020” (S.4158)
  • The “REAL ID Act Modernization Act” (S.4133)
  • The “Safeguarding American Innovation Act” (S.3997)
  • The “Information Technology Modernization Centers of Excellence Program Act” (S.4200)
  • The “Telework for U.S. Innovation Act” (S.4318)
  • The “GAO Database Modernization Act” (S.____)
  • The “CFO Vision Act of 2020” (S.3287)
  • The “No Tik Tok on Government Devices Act” (S. 3455)
  • The “Cybersecurity Advisory Committee Authorization Act of 2020” (S. 4024)
• On 23 July, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee’s Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet Subcommittee will hold a hearing on “The State of U.S. Spectrum Policy” with the following witnesses:
  • Mr. Tom Power, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, CTIA
  • Mr. Mark Gibson, Director of Business Development, CommScope
  • Dr. Roslyn Layton, Visiting Researcher, Aalborg University
  • Mr. Michael Calabrese, Director, Wireless Future Project, Open Technology Institute at New America
• On  27 July, the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law Subcommittee will hold its sixth hearing on “Online Platforms and Market Power” titled “Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google” that will reportedly have the heads of the four companies as witnesses.
• On 6 August, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will hold an open meeting to likely consider the following items:
  • C-band Auction Procedures – The Commission will consider a Public Notice that would adopt procedures for the auction of new flexible-use overlay licenses in the 3.7–3.98 GHz band (Auction 107) for 5G, the Internet of Things, and other advanced wireless services. (AU Docket No. 20-25)
  • Radio Duplication Rules – The Commission will consider a Report and Order that would eliminate the radio duplication rule with regard to AM stations and retain the rule for FM stations. (MB Docket Nos. 19-310. 17-105)
  • Common Antenna Siting Rules – The Commission will consider a Report and Order that would eliminate the common antenna siting rules for FM and TV broadcaster applicants and licensees. (MB Docket Nos. 19-282, 17-105)
  • Telecommunications Relay Service – The Commission will consider a Report and Order to repeal certain TRS rules that are no longer needed in light of changes in technology and voice communications services. (CG Docket No. 03-123)
  • Inmate Calling Services – The Commission will consider a Report and Order on Remand and a Fourth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would respond to remands by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and propose to comprehensively reform rates and charges for the inmate calling services within the Commission’s jurisdiction.  (WC Docket No. 12-375)

Other Developments

• Acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought was confirmed by the Senate by a 51-45 vote. OMB has been without a Senate-confirmed Director since Mick Mulvaney resigned at the end of March, but he was named acting White House Chief of Staff in January 2019, resulting in Vought serving as the acting OMB head since that time.
• Former Vice President and Democratic candidate for President Joe Biden issued a statement on Russian interference with the 2020 election that laid out his plan to respond and retaliate against these ongoing activities. His very high-level plan is a list of currently used methods of combatting cyber-attacks, much of which he would be able to undertake without Congressional assent. Biden contended “[d]espite the exposure of Russia’s malign activities by the U.S. Intelligence Community, law enforcement agencies, and bipartisan Congressional committees, the Kremlin has not halted its efforts to interfere in our democracy.” Biden said “[i]n spite of President [Donald] Trump’s failure to act, America’s adversaries must not misjudge the resolve of the American people to counter every effort by a foreign power to interfere in our democracy, whether by hacking voting systems and databases, laundering money into our political system, systematically spreading disinformation, or trying to sow doubt about the integrity of our elections.” He vowed:
  • If elected president, I will treat foreign interference in our election as an adversarial act that significantly affects the relationship between the United States and the interfering nation’s government.
  • I will direct the U.S. Intelligence Community to report publicly and in a timely manner on any efforts by foreign governments that have interfered, or attempted to interfere, with U.S. elections.
  • I will direct my administration to leverage all appropriate instruments of national power and make full use of my executive authority to impose substantial and lasting costs on state perpetrators.
  • These costs could include financial-sector sanctions, asset freezes, cyber responses, and the exposure of corruption.
  • A range of other actions could also be taken, depending on the nature of the attack.
  • I will direct our response at a time and in a manner of our choosing.
  • In addition, I will take action where needed to stop attempts to interfere with U.S. elections before they can impact our democratic processes.
  • In particular, I will direct and resource the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of State, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Foreign Interference Task Force to develop plans for disrupting foreign threats to our elections process.
  • This will be done, wherever possible, in coordination with our allies and partners, so that we are isolating the regimes that seek to undermine democracies and civil liberties.
• Top Democrats in Congress have written the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) requesting “a defensive counterintelligence briefing to all Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate regarding foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Mark Warner (D-VA) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray in which they claimed “that Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November.”
• District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine (D) has inserted himself into the struggle raging over the Trump Administration’s remaking of the United States (US) Agency for Global Media (USAGM), in part, by installing Michael Pack as the head of USAGM. He filed suit “to resolve a dispute between two dueling Boards of Directors that has paralyzed the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a District nonprofit…which supports encryption and anti-censorship tools for people living in repressive societies…an independent nonprofit corporation organized and created under District law that receives grant funding from the USAGM” per his press release. Racine claimed:
  • The USAGM CEO does not have authority over OTF’s Board or officers: OTF is an independent D.C. nonprofit corporation, which governs itself under local law and under its own bylaws. While USAGM provides grant funding for OTF’s work, it does not have authority over OTF’s governance. OAG asserts that OTF’s bylaws are clear and that only the organization’s Board of Directors—not USAGM, its leadership, or any other body—has the authority to appoint or remove OTF directors.
  • Dueling Boards have paralyzed OTF: Two Boards are currently claiming authority over OTF, and without clarity as to which Board is properly in place, the organization is effectively leaderless. It is also unable to authorize decisions necessary for carrying out its functions, including decisions to authorize funding partner organizations have already been promised, and decisions related to potential new partnership. The leadership crisis has also left employees of the organization at risk of losing their jobs.
  • The original Board of Directors is the valid Board: OAG asserts that because Pack did not have authority under either District law or OTF’s bylaws to dismiss OTF’s Board of Directors, the Court should recognize OTF’s original Board as valid.
  • Any actions taken on behalf of OTF by Michael Pack or his replacement Board should be voided: Michael Pack did not have authority as USAGM CEO to dismiss or appoint Directors on behalf of OTF. As a result, any actions Pack or the replacement Board have taken on behalf of OTF should be invalidated.
• The Department of Commerce’s (DOC) Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has announced further action against entities from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by adding “to the Entity List 11 Chinese companies implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of the PRC’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, involuntary collection of biometric data, and genetic analyses targeted at Muslim minority groups from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)” according to the agency’s press release. DOC claimed “[t]oday’s action will result in these companies facing new restrictions on access to U.S.-origin items, including commodities and technology…[and] will supplement BIS’s two tranches of Entity List designations in October 2019 and June 2020, actions that together added 37 parties engaged in or enabling PRC’s repression in Xinjiang.”

Further Reading

• “Google Promises Privacy With Virus App but Can Still Collect Location Data” – The New York Times. Google’s version of the contact racing app developed with Apple has a feature the other company does not: it prompts users to turn on the Android device’s location setting. This feature would seem to be contrary to the claims made by Google and Apple that their Bluetooth tracing system does not collect sensitive location data. In fact, the companies refused to request of the governments of the United Kingdom and France, among others, to change settings on their smartphones to allow for centralized information collection on possible COVID-19 transmission. A number of European nations have pressed Google to remove this feature, and a Google spokesperson claimed the Android Bluetooth tracing capability did not use location services, begging the question why the prompt appears.
• “Inside the Federal Trade Commission’s Facebook probe” – Axios. The anonymous sources inside the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cautioning that the agency will not likely pursue an anti-trust action against Facebook before next year may be part of an inner-agency quarrel slowing down the inquiry. Allegedly, the FTC’s Bureau of Competition and its Office of Policy Planning are at odds over the drafting of guidance that will govern the Facebook and other anti-trust investigations. The latter wants to keep the current standards of harm to consumers in terms of price changes, which the former thinks are inapplicable in the provision of free services. How this struggle plays out may well inform the agency’s approach to Facebook and other tech companies.
• “Beware the ‘But China’ Excuses” – The New York Times. This article cautions people from putting too much stock in the claims by the Trump Administration and technology companies that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the seeming threat they say it is. If the PRC is such a threat, the United States might consider investing more in basic research and development (R&D) and in some critical tech sectors to develop and build their products in the US. Also the notion advanced by some tech sector CEOs that breaking up the tech giants will ultimately benefit PRC competitors is scrutinized.
• “DHS Authorizes Domestic Surveillance to Protect Statues and Monuments” – Lawfare. One of my law school professors and a colleague examine a Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) that authorizes intelligence and information collection on those who present threats to monuments, memorials, and statues that seems like a Trojan Horse by which DHS could surveil and mobilize protestors in the streets of American cities. The surveillance cannot be electronic surveillance, but then DHS could ask a sister agency to conduct such activity if needed.
• “Two more cyber-attacks hit Israel’s water system” – ZDNet. It appears Iran has responded to Israel’s cyber attacks that led to a number of problems at facilities in Tehran. This is the latest in an ongoing battle between the two Middle Eastern enemies that may escalate further.

© Michael Kans, Michael Kans Blog and michaelkans.blog, 2019-2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Michael Kans, Michael Kans Blog, and michaelkans.blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.