House Budget Bill Guts Net Neutrality, Kills FCC Authority -- All Because The FCC Dared To Stand Up To Comcast & AT&T

from the punished-for-doing-your-job dept

We've noted a few times now that ever since the FCC passed net neutrality rules, loyal ISP politicians in the House and Senate have been engaged in a full-court press to punish the agency for daring to stand up to big broadband ISPs. That has involved an endless parade of taxpayer-funded hearings pretending to be about agency transparency and accountability -- but are really just about publicly shaming the agency. It has also involved a laundry list of bills that attempt to thoroughly gut FCC funding and authority under the pretense of saving the country from a power-mad FCC.

This not-so-subtle ballet continued this week, when the House passed a new budget bill that would gut the FCC's 2017 budget by $69 million, stall the FCC's attempt to bring competition to the cable box, and prevent the FCC from enforcing net neutrality violations until the industry's lawsuit is settled. In fact, like previous bills, this new budget bill uses an absurdly broad definition of "rate regulation" to effectively prevent the FCC from doing anything:

"The GOP proposals define rate regulation so broadly that Wheeler says they would prevent the FCC from enforcing key net neutrality provisions and disrupt its process for reviewing mergers. The budget bill again uses a definition of rate regulation that goes far beyond the utility rate-setting traditionally imposed on landline phone providers. The proposal would prevent the FCC from using its net neutrality rules to act against discriminatory data cap policies, among other things."

Note that this latest push comes -- not coincidentally -- as ISPs like AT&T and Comcast have started pushing usage caps harder, and the FCC has started dropping hints that it might just do something about it.

All the while, the pretense continues that this is all just the House's quest to ensure government is fiscally responsible, transparent, and accountable before the "American people." From an announcement by House Appropriations Committee Chair Hal Rogers:

"The job of this bill is two-fold: to make wise investments with taxpayer dollars in the programs and agencies that we need to grow our economy and enforce our laws, and to tightly hold the reins on the over-spending and overreach within federal bureaucracies. This bill makes great strides on all accounts – carefully investing taxpayer dollars in programs that promote opportunity, while keeping these agencies accountable to the American people."

You are, of course, supposed to ignore that Rogers received $25,000 in campaign contributions during the current election cycle from the telecom industry, and that this is all just a giant stage play designed to punish the telecom regulator for actually doing its fucking job.

Filed Under: appropriations, broadband, competition, congress, fcc, funding, net neutrality, set top boxes
Companies: at&t, comcast, verizon

Shameful: House Panel Votes Down Plan To Make Public Domain Congressional Research Public

from the a-total-failure dept

For many, many years, we've complained about the fact that research reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) are kept secret. CRS is basically a really good, non-partisan research organization that tends to do very useful and credible research, when tasked to do so by members of Congress. The results, as works created by the federal government, are in the public domain. But the public never gets access to most of them. The reports are available to members of Congress, of course, but then it's up to the members who have access to them to actually release them to the public... or not. And most don't. Back in 2009, Wikileaks made news by releasing almost 7,000 CRS reports that had previously been secret. Since at least 2011, we've been writing about attempts to release these reports publicly, and nothing has happened.

In fact, Congress seems quite fearful of the public getting its hands on timely, credible, non-partisan and useful research paid for by taxpayers. Because it undermines the partisan fighting and tribalism around certain policy platforms that are built on myths, rather than evidence. For years, Congress has refused to adequately fund the CRS, and has tried to turn the useful researchers within CRS into free lackeys, rather than having them work on useful research.

In 2012, an effort was made to make CRS research available to the public and it went nowhere. And it looks like the same thing has just happened again. The House Appropriations Committee has voted down the bill by a large margin:

At a time when highly informed voters might seem like a good thing, the Appropriations Committee voted down, 18-32, an amendment from Reps. Mike Quigely (D-Ill.) and Scott Rigell (R-Va.) that would have made it easier for the public to access Congressional Research Service reports.

For what it's worth, CRS itself has historically opposed this, out of fear that it will put more pressure on its research team, and perhaps even lead them to being more fearful of writing something that is totally accurate, but politically unwelcome. And, some in Congress argue that such fears might bubble up to Congress as well:

But the chairman of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), argued that members needed to be "really, really careful with this." He noted that CRS was an arm of Congress, and he didn't want members to be afraid to ask CRS to prepare reports on controversial issues for fear that their requests would become public.

But, that's meaningless in the context of this bill, which wouldn't apply to the smaller reports done in direct response to questions from Congressional members. It would only apply to the larger reports that CRS creates for every member of Congress.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz similarly made completely bogus claims about this bill, saying that it would slow down the research that CRS does:

"I have serious concerns about changing the role that the Congressional Research Service plays," Wasserman Schulz said, arguing that it would not help members to have CRS go through a "long and arduous approval process."

This is bullshit for a bunch of reasons starting with the fact that the work is paid for by taxpayers and is in the public domain. Wasserman Schulz is showing pretty blatant contempt for the public with this claim. But, also, her claims are not true. Since any CRS document already has the chance of being released to the public, CRS already goes through a careful review process. Dan Schuman from Demand Progress has the details:

In fact, CRS already puts reports through an arduous, multi-stage review process because they know the reports will become publicly available. Thus, equal public access would not change the process at all. She also argued that releasing the reports would change the role of CRS in providing advice to members of Congress at the discretion of the Member. In fact, the general distribution reports that are the focus of the bill have nothing to do with confidential advice to Members.

So, again, it makes you wonder, why is Congress so intent on hiding this taxpayer funded research -- which has a history of being credible, factual and useful -- from the public? Could it be that an informed public is considered a bad thing to many members of Congress?

Filed Under: appropriations committee, congress, congressional research service, copyright, debbie wasserman schultz, public domain, research, tom graves

Why Is Congress Undermining President's Surveillance Oversight Board?

from the not-good dept

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is supposed to be an independent body that makes sure that the intelligence community is not abusing its surveillance powers. It was created to go along with the PATRIOT Act, as a sort of counterbalance, except that it initially had basically no power. In 2007, Congress gave it more power and independence and... both the Bush and Obama administrations responded by... not appointing anyone to the PCLOB. Seriously. The Board sat entirely dormant for five whole years before President Obama finally appointed people in late 2012. Thankfully, that was just in time for the Snowden revelations less than a year later.

The PCLOB then proceeded to write a truly scathing report about the NSA's metadata collection under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, calling it both illegal and unconstitutional. While the PCLOB was less concerned about the NSA's Section 702 program (which includes both PRISM and "upstream" collection from backbone providers) the group has been working for nearly two years on an investigation into Executive Order 12333 -- which is the main program under which the NSA spies on people.

However, as Marcy Wheeler points out, Congress seems to be bending over backwards to try to undermine and undercut the PCLOB. That's especially unfortunate, because at one point there was even a bipartisan effort to give the PCLOB more power, but things seem to have gone the other way instead:

As I reported, during the passage of Intelligence Authorization last year (which ultimately got put through on the Omnibus bill, making it impossible for people to vote against), Congress implemented Intelligence Community wishes by undercutting PCLOB authority in two ways: prohibiting PCLOB from reviewing covert activities, and stripping an oversight role for PCLOB that had been passed in all versions of CISA.

In the 2017 Intelligence Authorization HPSCI passed on April 29, it continued more of the same.

The new changes are subtle, but problematic. The first is that the PCLOB is limited to spending money only on issues for which Congress has directly approved the spending. In other words, if Congress doesn't want the PCLOB investigating a certain area, no problem, it can just make it clear that funding does not cover that area. That kind of voids the PCLOB's supposedly "independent" nature. The second issue is that it requires that the PCLOB warn intelligence community bosses if they're going to investigate a new program. While these changes may not seem like a big deal, they do suggest a clear attempt to undermine the power and authority of the PCLOB. Perhaps that's why the head of the PCLOB, David Medine, resigned early, before his appointment was up, just a few months ago.

At a time when we need a lot more independent oversight of government surveillance powers, it's unfortunate to see Congress apparently pushing for less oversight.

Filed Under: congress, oversight, pclob, surveillance

House Of Representatives Tech Team Blocks All Google Appspot Apps Because Of A Single Trojan

from the well-that's...-something dept

We started receiving reports of this last week, but I wanted to track down some details. You may have seen a few other reports, noting that the tech team at the House of Representatives recently started blocking YahooMail because of a big phishing attempt targeted at Congress. On April 30th, the House's "Technology Service Desk" sent around an email stating:

In the past 48 hours, the House Information Security Office has seen an increase of attacks on the House Network using third party, web-based mail applications such as YahooMail, Gmail, etc. The attacks are focused on putting “ransomware” on users’ computers. When a user clicks on the link in the attack e-mail, the malware encrypts all files on that computer, including shared files, making them unusable until a “ransom” is paid. The recent attacks have focused on using .js files attached as zip files to e-mail that appear to come from known senders. The primary focus appears to be through YahooMail at this time.

The House Information Security Office is taking a number of steps to address this specific attack. As part of that effort, we will be blocking access to YahooMail on the House Network until further notice. We are making every effort to put other mitigating protections in place so that we can restore full access as soon as possible.

Please do your part to help us address this recent attack and protect the House Network going forward by following proper cyber practices at all times. Phishing e-mails can look very legitimate and appear to come from known senders. Be very careful about clicking on attachments or links in e-mails, particularly when you are using non-House e-mail systems.

Obviously, it's worth being careful and concerned about this kind of thing. Those encrypted ransomware attacks have become quite popular lately, and you can imagine why some would think it would be fun to target Congress specifically. Still, blocking all of YahooMail seems... like overkill? Yes, obviously, warn everyone to be careful, and highlight the details and what to watch out for. Perhaps institute some other kinds of protections. But a blanket ban on YahooMail just seems odd.

But... that's not all. Because a few days after that happened, the same tech staff also started blocking all of appspot.com. That's where a ton of apps actually live for things like Google's App Engine. Once again, this seemed like total overkill, so I reached out to people at the House to find out what was going on, and was given the following statement:

We began blocking appspot.com on May 3 in response to indicators that appspot.com as potentially still hosting a remote access Trojan named BLT that has been there since June 2015.

Now, this is kind of interesting for a variety of reasons. The Trojan.BLT has been "associated with a major APT [Advanced Persistent Threat] campaign." Furthermore, there has been some speculation connecting it to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack that was exposed last year, based on a timely warning from the FBI about "cyber actors" using a series of exploits -- including BLT -- to gain access to personally identifiable information from the government. As the FBI noted:

Trojan.BLT- a RAT that is executed from its export CreateInstance, the mutex HFRM_ is created and a process instance of cmd.exe is launched to execute the command “ipconfig/all” to collect the victim system’s MAC address. Trojan.BLT will test network connectivity by establishing a connection with a legitimate website. This malware is capable of bypassing dyndns categorization by using a proxy through Google AppProxy’s hosted on appspot domains.

Trojan.BLT will validate the connection by checking the HTTP header “Service:IIS”. Trojan.BLT will then conduct further C2 activity.

So, yes, as I was told, Trojan.BLT was first discovered making use of Google's appspot domains last June -- so it's a little unclear why there's suddenly a renewed focus on it, and why it's cause to shut down access to appspot entirely -- especially since it appears that there are tools that can detect this particular trojan.

So, on the one hand, you can understand why the House's IT staff has pulled out the nuclear option in both these cases, first banning YahooMail and then banning access to basically all of Google's hosted 3rd party apps. Ransomware or an OPM-level hack on Congress would be a massive black eye for the House's tech staff. So it must feel a lot safer to just block entirely. Of course, it's also not that likely to be effective. Ted Henderson, the creator of a social network solely for Congressional staffers called Cloakroom, and who first alerted me and many other reporters to this, was pretty clearly frustrated by this move, which obviously cut off the vast majority of his userbase from actually being able to use the app. But, he's already found a workaround (which I know because I once did an AMA on the platform and still receive notifications from the app). All users received a notification on their phones to turn off their WiFi and use their cellular connections if they wished to use Cloakroom while on Capitol Hill.

And, of course, this shows the futility of just blocking all access to an entire ecosystem like Appspot. It's not going to stop people. It's just going to frustrate people and send them looking for other paths to get that info, which may actually be more dangerous. Instead, it seems worth asking why the House IT staff isn't focused on providing better protection against the actual threat, rather than just trying to bury access to massive platforms, just because lurking somewhere on those platforms there may be something harmful.

Remember, too, that the people in the House are the same ones legislating technology issues today, and they're getting a very warped idea of how technology works thanks to the House's tech desk. A small potential problem that could be avoided with some basic precautions? Shut down the whole damn thing. This seems like exactly the wrong lesson that our elected officials and their staffers should be learning right now about technology. Protecting their computers and devices is obviously important, but it seems like the House is resorting to overkill, and hopefully this does not lead out of touch Representatives to assume that similar overkill solutions -- such as entire site blocking -- are sensible for American citizens. The House Of Representatives is blocking all apps using Google%u2019s appspot.com

Filed Under: appspot, congress, cybersecurity, google appengine, house of representatives, ransomware, trojans, yahoomail
Companies: google, yahoo

SEC And Chuck Grassley Still Trying To Stop Email Privacy Act That Got UNANIMOUS Support In The House

from the because-fuck-the-4th-amendment,-that's-why dept

Hey, remember last week, when lots of folks were super excited about the US House of Representatives unanimously voting in favor of the Email Privacy Act? They voted 419 to 0. That kinda thing doesn't happen all that often. I mean, sure it happens when condemning ISIS, but they couldn't even make it when trying to put sanctions on North Korea. Basically, something needs to be really, really screwed up to get a unanimous vote in the House. And the Email Privacy Act, which goes a long way (though not far enough) towards fixing ECPA (the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986) that makes it way too easy for the government to snoop on your electronic communications, actually got that unanimous vote.

So it should be moving forward and well on its path to becoming law, right? Right?!? Well... about that. You see, as we'd mentioned in the past, the SEC has been the main voice of opposition to the Email Privacy Act, since it (along with the IRS), kinda like the fact that they can snoop through emails without a warrant. Never mind that it's probably unconstitutional, it makes their jobs so much easier. And, really, isn't that the important thing?

Apparently, Senator Chuck Grassley thinks so. And, hey, bad luck for, well, everyone, because Grassley just happens to be the guy in charge of moving the bill forward on the Senate side. And he's not having any of it right now, claiming that there are "concerns" about the bill:

“Members of this committee on both sides of the aisle have expressed concerns about the details of this reform, and whether it’s balanced to reflect issues raised by law enforcement,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Thursday.

Concerns? It didn't seem like anyone in the House was concerned about it because (I should remind you) it passed unanimously. And that's because it's really only making fairly common sense changes to the law to require a warrant (as required by the 4th Amendment) to snoop on emails.

And just what "law enforcement" issues have been raised? Sounds like it's our friends at the SEC yet again:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is still fighting a House-passed bill to require law enforcement to get a warrant before obtaining messages from email providers. “[The Email Privacy Act] would create a dangerous digital shelter for fraudsters,” SEC Enforcement Director Andrew Ceresney said in a statement to POLITICO. “The privacy interests the bill addresses can be fully achieved without blocking civil law enforcement agencies like the SEC from obtaining the evidence it needs to protect investors.”

No. Actually, it doesn't create a "digital shelter for fraudsters." That's SEC Enforcement Director Andrew Ceresney lying through his teeth. It just means that the 4th Amendment needs to be obeyed when obtaining emails that are hosted on cloud providers. Just like a warrant is needed to obtain someone's personal papers. It's not creating a digital shelter. It's harmonizing the rules for digital content so they match the rules for physical documents and communications. And, in doing so, protecting the privacy and the very concept of the 4th Amendment.

Either way, all that momentum in the House may be for nothing if the SEC and Grassley get their way.

Filed Under: chuck grassley, congress, ecpa, ecpa reform, email, email privacy act, house, irs, privacy, sec, senate

Congress Scolds The FCC For Making The Cable Set Top Box Market More Competitive

from the pretending-to-care dept

Congress is simply fed up with the FCC's pesky new habit of standing up to giant cable and broadband companies. Congress was outraged when the FCC announced it wanted to stop states from letting large ISPs write horrible, protectionist state laws. Congress was outraged when the FCC announced it wanted to pass actual, functioning net neutrality rules. Congress was even outraged when the FCC decided to raise the standard definition of broadband to 25 Mbps, since it only served to highlight a lack of competition for next-generation broadband service.

Now, not too surprisingly, Congress is just pissed that the FCC wants to try and bring some competition to the cable set top box space.

The FCC recently announced that it plans to craft rules requiring that cable operators deliver their existing content (at the same price and with the same copy protection) to third-party hardware without the need for a clunky CableCARD. The cable industry has been having an incredible, epic hissy fit over the announcement, not only because it would endanger $21 billion in captive annual revenue from set top box rental fees, but it would drive consumers to hardware delivering a wider variety of legacy TV alternatives than ever before.

Part of the cable industry's ingenious plan to stop the FCC has involved funding an ocean of misleading editorials that try to claim the FCC's plan will somehow boost piracy, hurt privacy, "steal the future," and even harm ethnic diversity. Spend a few minutes perusing the news wires and you'll find hundreds of such editorials, all penned by a wide variety of cable industry-tied consultants, think tankers, and others, suddenly pretending to be objective analysts just really worried about the welfare of consumers. It is too much, as usual, for news outlets to bother highlighting any financial conflicts of interest these authors might have.

In addition to pummeling the press with a parade of misleading editorials, the other wing of the cable industry's brilliant strategy to stop the FCC involves convincing loyal Congressional allies -- whose approval ratings are about on part with the cable industry -- to whine like petulant children.

A new letter from sixty Congressmen and women (pdf) reads as if it was written by a cable industry lobbyist (because it probably was), deriding the FCC for daring to interrupt the cable industry's glorious history of innovation with a pesky quest for better, cheaper, consumer-facing hardware:

"The Federal Communications Commission's recently proposed rules on the Competitive Availability of Navigation Devices, if adopted, will jeopardize the incredible evolution of video distribution services enabled by generally reasonable regulation. Imposing new, onerous regulations on pay-TV providers would produce very few benefits for consumers, while potentially harming the viability of these providers. The particular obligations being considered by the FCC are all the more troubling because they would mandate compliance with technical standards that do not yet exist, injecting even greater uncertainty into the marketplace.

How horrible! Except it's not true. The FCC's proposal as it currently stands (pdf) says that cable providers can use any technology they see fit, and any copy protection they'd like, to ensure their content can be delivered to third-party hardware under the FCC's rules. In fact, Comcast recently demonstrated how non-onerous it was by offering its content via apps on Samsung and Roku devices. Again, the FCC's proposal isn't difficult or onerous, but it does put a giant crack in the side of the cable industry's walled garden, of which clunky, outdated, closed cable boxes are a cornerstone.

Knowing how hated cable providers generally are, the Senators (including traditional telecom allies like Marsha Blackburn and Bob Latta) try to insist they're solely worried about the impact the FCC's plan will have on small cable providers. But not before penning some additional, gushing adoration of the incredible quality the cable industry provides:

"Consumers today enjoy unprecedented access to some of the highest-quality television programming ever produced, which they can watch anytime, anywhere, on a wide variety of devices. Given this proliferation of consumer choice, it is concerning the Commission continues to consider a proposal that will place significant technical and competitive burdens on pay-TV providers operating in an increasingly competitive environment, particularly small providers who serve as the communications backbone of their communities.

That's very sweet, but many of those smaller cable operators are getting out of the cable industry anyway. Many have noted that as smaller companies, they lack the scale and by proxy leverage to negotiate deals that could make offering TV sustainable in the face of unrelenting broadcaster price hikes. As such, many say they're planning to exit the TV business anyway and focus on broadband and other services. The CEO of one such smaller cable company, Cable ONE, this week wrote a missive calling the pay TV Industry a tragedy of the commons, one that ends horribly in the face of real disruption.

I personally still think it makes more sense for the FCC to focus its regulatory calories on broadband competition, net neutrality and zero rating -- and let the old cable box die organically in the face of streaming alternatives. But given the relatively glacial pace of cord cutting and continued, entrenched power of companies like Comcast, I can also understand the FCC's logic in wanting to accelerate that process so it doesn't take the lion's share of the next decade.

That said, while it's nice that Latta, Blackburn and friends are just so damn worried about consumers and small cable companies, there's simply no debating the fact that the cable industry's opposition to the FCC's plan is rooted in just one thing: fear. Fear of losing control of monopoly power. Fear of losing $21 billion in annual captive revenue. Fear of third-party set tops that present consumers with actual choice instead of the expensive illusion of choice. And while it's sweet to yell "how high" when the cable industry demands they jump, it's not clear who Congress and the cable industry actually think they're fooling when they pretend -- after thirty years of abysmal service -- to actually give a flying damn about consumer welfare.

Filed Under: competition, congress, fcc, set top box

House Votes Unanimously In Favor Of Requiring A Warrant To Search Emails

from the yay! dept

The push to reform ECPA -- the Electronic Communications Privacy Act -- have been going on basically as long as this site has been in existence (i.e. nearly 20 years). There are lots of problems with ECPA, but the big one that everyone points to is that it considers any communication that's on a server more than 180 days to be "abandoned" and accessible without a warrant. That perhaps made some amount of sense back in 1986 when the law was written, because everything was client-server and you downloaded your email off the server. But in an age of cloud computing and webmail it makes no sense at all. Still, the IRS and the SEC really, really liked the ability to use ECPA to snoop on people's emails.

In the past few years, Congress has kept supporting reform, but it always dies when some part of the administration complains and tries to block it. And yet, each time it enters Congress, it gets more and more sponsors. And, finally, the full House has voted to pass the Email Privacy Act. It was no surprise that it passed. The bill had an astounding 315 cosponsors. Seriously: Still, it's impressive that the bill ended up passing unanimously, 419 votes to 0 (and 14 missing votes). On an issue like this, that's surprising. You figured there would be some Congressional rep from somewhere arguing that this would let terrorists and child predators off the hook or something.

The bill is certainly not perfect, and could be improved, but it's nice to see the House get the basics right. Now, we wait and see what happens in the Senate... Will the Senate ignore a unanimous House and let this bill just die, or will it finally do the right thing and protect email privacy?

Filed Under: 4th amendment, congress, ecpa, ecpa reform, email, house, kevin yoder, privacy, warrant

White House Threatens To Veto Bill Attempting To Gut Net Neutrality, Defang FCC

from the sing-for-your-supper dept

As we just noted, the House has been pushing yet another bill that attempts to punish the FCC for its uncharacteristic new habit of actually standing up to giant ISPs. The "No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act" (pdf) professes to be a bill focused on curtailing government run amok; with a particular eye on preventing the FCC from being able to regulate broadband rates (not-coincidentally just as ISPs begin heavily pursuing usage caps). But the bill uses a unique definition of "rate regulation" to, in reality, ban the FCC from doing, well, pretty much anything.

Given that in the last year-and-a-half the FCC has passed neutrality laws, finally stood up for municipal broadband, raised the definition of broadband to 25 Mbps (to emphasize competitive shortcomings), and is now pondering both new broadband privacy rules and opening the captive cable set top box market to competition, you can kind of see why the bill was a priority for both large ISPs and their Congressional allies. Stopping this new, uncharacteristically pro-consumer and pro-competition FCC has become a priority.

Bills like this one do a great job riling up those upset about numerous, other instances of actual government overreach -- especially folks that don't understand the broken telecom market or the nuances of net neutrality, or that the FCC under Tom Wheeler has actually been doing some non-idiotic things for arguably the first time in twenty years. But such bills are empty showmanship in that they require a President's signature to pass.

And according to a new statement of administration policy by the White House (pdf), that's simply not happening:

"H.R. 2666 is overly broad and extends far beyond codifying the FCC's forbearance from applying provisions of the Communications Act related to tariffs, rate approval, or other forms of utility regulation. Even as amended, H.R. 2666 would restrict the FCC's ability to take enforcement actions to protect consumers on issues where the FCC has received numerous consumer complaints. The bill also would hamstring the FCC's public interest authority to review transactions....If the President were presented with H.R. 2666, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill."

There remains only a few ways to defang the FCC and/or truly gut net neutrality.

ISPs could get Congress to pass a new law that enshrines net neutrality rules that are weaker than what the FCC has proposed, though Senators John Thune and Representative Fred Upton tried this and it went nowhere. ISPs could also still win the ongoing lawsuit against the FCC, which would gut some or all of the rules (a ruling is expected shortly). Or ISPs could work to elect a President who opposes net neutrality and will set about making sure the FCC returns to its more traditional role of being a toothless, gutless, shell of a regulator dedicated to protecting the telecom status quo.

The House, of course, knows their options are limited, and that bills like this -- and the constant parade of taxpayer-funded FCC "fact finding" hearings -- don't actually accomplish anything. They do, however, rile up the uninformed, and do a fine job reminding giant telecom companies that Congress is ready and willing to dance on command for continued telecom campaign contributions.

Filed Under: congress, enforcement, fcc, net neutrality, veto, white house

As ISPs Push Harder On Usage Caps, House Pushes Bill Preventing The FCC From Doing Anything About It

from the stripping-the-fcc-of-its-power-to-protect-consumers dept

In recent weeks, we've noted how ISPs are now moving beyond broadband usage caps and overage fees, and have begun charging users a $30-$35 premium if they want to avoid usage caps entirely. While the industry often dresses this up as everything from "improved flexibility and choice" to something necessary for the sake of fairness, it is, quite simply, an aggressive rate hike on uncompetitive markets. Users are being socked with dramatic new limits and fees -- simply because most have no real competitors to flee to.

Entirely uncoincidentally, the House is now pushing for new legislation that would hamstring the FCC's ability to regulate broadband rates. The "No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act" (pdf) is set to be debated this week in Congress, and would, according to a press release by the Energy and Commerce Committee, prevent the FCC from regulating rates charged for broadband Internet, "just as the administration promised when they reclassified access to the Internet as a utility under Title II of the Communications Act."

Except according to a Medium post by attorney Harold Feld, the bill tries to use a special definition of "rate regulation" to ban the FCC from, well, doing much of anything:

"H.R. 2666’s language would protect broadband providers from any “review” or “enforcement” of their prices, and prevent the FCC from even “declaring” — let alone addressing — any broadband prices or fees as even “unreasonable.” To make this even more clear, the bill prohibits the FCC from reviewing any prices, fees, or overages “regardless of any other provision of law.” That goes way beyond the FCC’s traditional rate setting authority. “Any other provision of law” includes the FCC’s mandate to promote competition and its consumer protection authority."

So basically, the House, at the behest of large ISPs, is looking to further neuter the FCC. Not only so it can't protect consumers from usage caps and price gouging, but to try and derail the FCC's plan to expand consumer broadband privacy protections, or say, open up the cable set top box to additional competition.

It should probably be reiterated that while the FCC says it does have the authority to regulate some rates under Title II and its net neutrality rules (preventing "paid prioritization," for example), the agency so far has shown no interest in really doing so. Whether it's a $300 million national broadband map that fails to show broadband prices (at industry behest), to the agency's continued blind eye to hidden fees, usage caps and zero rating, the FCC has made it abundantly clear that it finds a large amount of the broadband industry's current price gouging just "creative experimentation."

But while the FCC hasn't done much about broadband prices directly, it has tried to shore up competition in the market so prices drop organically, including support for municipal broadband. Between this, the agency's push for privacy rules, and net neutrality, the House has made it abundantly clear it plans to punish the FCC for standing up to giant ISPs like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. As such, if it isn't a series of pointless, FCC "fact finding" hearings, it's yet another bill like this one that aims to tie the FCC's arms securely behind its back.

As it stands, there remain just two serious ways to roll back net neutrality and the FCC's decision to reclassify ISPs as common carriers under Title II: win the election and gut the FCC and its decision, or win the ongoing lawsuits against the FCC (a ruling on that front is expected soon). The House likely knows this, but is apparently keen to try and earn its telecom campaign contributions by putting on one hell of a taxpayer-funded show.

Filed Under: congress, consumer protection, fcc, fees, isps, rate regulations, regulation, scams