European Leaders Talk Telecom, Technology with U.S. Officials

The visitors included 7 MEPs from the U.K., Germany and Hungary, plus a cadre from the European Internet Foundation (EIF), counterpart to the U.S. Congressional Internet Caucus (CIC), which hosted the visit. They met first with FTC Chmn. Deborah Majoras and Comr. Jon Leibowitz Mon. to talk about recent security breaches and proposed fixes. Most European countries haven’t seen the high-profile ID theft cases and lapses in public and private sector databases experienced of late in the U.S., officials said. Conservative MEP Malcolm Harbour said the overseas data broker industry simply isn’t as big as that in the U.S.; European entities holding personally identifiable data on citizens must register with the govt. “There are no pressing calls for legislation in the way we understand there are here,” he said.

“Traditions around data protection are rather different -- not to say that we're complacent about it,” Harbour said. In fact, following the U.S. turmoil, European directives on the topic are getting more attention, he said. One issue that needs scrutiny is inconsistency among national regulatory and enforcement structures, Harbour noted, saying new EU member states lag noticeably. Liberal Democrat MEP Bill Dunn said since the European Parliament lacks jurisdiction over a unified govt., “it’s still 25 quite separate nationalities.”

Another reason data security dilemmas aren’t as prevalent in European countries is that English, not Greek or Lithuanian for example, is “the world’s language,” Dunn said. Thieves and scammers typically target rich Western countries, not those that are “less well off,” he said.

After meeting House Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chmn. Stearns (R-Fla.), the group asked for a copy of his data protection bill, now in draft, EIF Co-Chmn. Erica Mann added. If EP leaders deem it necessary, she said, politicians will “make sure we find an approach that will follow more closely with the European policies. If it’s something we need to pick up, we'll do this when we get back to Brussels.”

Then the MEP/CIC delegation moved on to the FCC to talk telecom and VoIP. Issues linked to VoIP providers’ universal service obligations are only beginning to emerge in Europe, officials said. Telecom stakeholders are pushing the European Commission to revise a 1998 universal service directive that requires EU countries to make sure everyone has access to a fixed-line phone. That debate probably will peak next year when the commission starts a review of the EU Framework for Electronic Communications.

The FCC is eyeing ways to calculate Universal Service Fund contributions, but European regulators aren’t yet talking about alternatives by which their carriers can fulfill such obligations. “The market is driving that forward,” Harbour noted. Europe has a single, technology- neutral framework for voice telephony - a model that “has seemed to be able to deal with that in a reasonably satisfactory way,” he said.

McCarthy was perhaps the harshest critic of U.S. handling of universal service, saying: “Sometimes in regulation you shouldn’t have to have an incident to mandate service.” The complexity American regulators face results from the “unstable framework that exists here,” she added: “I don’t really understand how you could have different rules for the same services -- it’s same service so fundamentally we got rid of that [controversy] with our technology neutral model… Here is a chance for the U.S. to look at what we're trying to do… Here you have a bit of a mixed bag [and] issues fall between the stools.”

MEPs also spoke with FCC staffers about the lengthening list of telecom mergers, trying to understand the U.S. govt. approach to weighing potential dominance in markets, barriers to entry and competition issues, McCarthy said. The European lawmakers, who recently passed a comprehensive telecom package, admitted the balance between states’ rights and FCC jurisdiction creates a complex regulatory equation, wondering aloud whether some emerging telecom quandaries wouldn’t be handled best under the legacy regulatory structure.

Of a UN report on Internet governance released Mon. (WID July 19 p1), MEPs said their main goal is ensuring Web stability and security, regardless of some govt. calls for an international body to oversee the Internet. They predicted a heated debate on Internet governance at the Nov. World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, noting substantial “good will and effort from the U.S. side” preceding the event. Some countries will look to the EU to play “honest broker” to get greater recognition from the global Internet governance community, officials said. “The prevailing view across the European Union is that we want to sustain ICANN as being an independent and international driver,” Harbour said, noting a willingness to engage a wider range of stakeholders: “What we don’t want to see is the Internet fragmented into a series of closed loops with single points of entry whereby the larger nations could have control over a single gateway.” The Internet’s “pluralist nature” must be preserved, he added.

The group also met with Commerce Dept. representatives on RFID and data retention, and with Justice Dept. computer crime experts and cybersecurity advocates on Capitol Hill. U.S. policy-makers, led by Internet Caucus Advisory Committee Co-Chmn. Goodlatte (R- Va.) and Boucher (D-Va.), plan a similar annual trip to Brussels in Feb.