President Barack Obama issued an executive order Wednesday authorizing the attorney general and secretaries of State and Treasury to impose sanctions on foreign-based individuals and entities that launch malicious cyberattacks against networks owned by the U.S. government or U.S. companies. Cyberattacks that could result in sanctions would need to significantly disrupt a network’s availability, affect the provision of a critical infrastructure sector company’s services or cause the theft of U.S. economic resources, assets or personal information, the executive order said.
Jimm Phillips
Jimm Phillips, Associate Editor, covers telecommunications policymaking in Congress for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications News in 2012 after stints at the Washington Post and the American Independent News Network. Phillips is a Maryland native who graduated from American University. You can follow him on Twitter: @JLPhillipsDC
The FCC is aware “our story is not done” on its municipal broadband pre-emption order, given Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery’s legal challenge to the order, said Daniel Kahn, Wireline Bureau Deputy Competition Policy Division Chief, during a commission webinar Monday. Slatery, a Republican, sued the FCC March 20 in the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals over the order, which pre-empted municipal broadband restrictions in North Carolina and Tennessee at the respective requests of Wilson, North Carolina, and the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga (see 1503240059). North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is considering whether to join Slatery’s lawsuit, a spokeswoman said. The FCC webinar also addressed the commission’s new NPRM on implementation of Section 111 of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA) Reauthorization and implementation of the FCC’s net neutrality order.
Release of the FCC net neutrality order brought limited clarity to how the rules and the commission’s accompanying reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service will affect state telecom regulation, state telecom lawyers and observers said in interviews last week. That lack of clarity largely stems from continued uncertainty about whether the net neutrality rules -- and particularly Title II reclassification -- will survive legal scrutiny, lawyers said. Alamo Broadband and USTelecom filed lawsuits Monday seeking reviews of the net neutrality order at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, respectively (see 1503230066). The order faces continued scrutiny on Capitol Hill (see 1503200048).
State and local 911 stakeholders urged the FCC in filings on the commission’s 911 governance NPRM (docket 14-193) to not usurp state and local jurisdiction on 911 issues in its pursuit of revised rules that will curb 911 outages like the April 2014 multistate event. The FCC’s rulemaking proposal followed that widespread outage, which the FCC later determined was caused by a software error at an Intrado 911 call processing center in Englewood, Colorado (see 1410170057). Carriers and public safety groups urged the FCC to consider a consensus proposal from the groups that would curb 911 outages without requiring the implementation of new rules (see 1503240049).
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery sued the FCC over the order pre-empting portions of North Carolina and Tennessee state laws that restrict municipalities’ ability to deploy government-owned broadband networks. The FCC voted 3-2 Feb. 26 to issue the order, which specifically pre-empts the state laws for the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina (see 1502260030). Slatery, a Republican, had been expected to sue the FCC over the order. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is expected to sue the agency. It hadn’t received any challenge from North Carolina, said an agency spokesman Tuesday. The FCC is “confident that our decision to pre-empt laws in two states that prevented community broadband providers from meeting the needs and demands of local consumers will withstand judicial scrutiny,” he said.
The Supreme Court denied certiorari Monday to the Illinois Public Telecommunications Association (IPTA), the Independent Payphone Association of New York (IPANY) and the Payphone Association of Ohio (PAO). They collectively appealed the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s June 2014 ruling in IPTA v. FCC. The Supreme Court’s decision lets stand the D.C. Circuit’s ruling that the FCC 2013 decision not to overturn state utility regulators’ decisions nor grant payphone service providers refunds from AT&T and Verizon was reasonable and within FCC discretion. The groups had asked the D.C. Circuit to only mandate that the telcos pay the refunds or force the telcos to send funds received from long-distance carriers to the U.S. Treasury (see 1406160029). U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and commission attorneys urged the Supreme Court on Feb. 11 to deny certiorari on the case, because the D.C. Circuit “correctly upheld the FCC’s determination that state authorities were better positioned than the federal agency to decide the applicability of the filed-rate doctrine in individual refund disputes” (see 1502190013). The IPANY is “greatly disappointed” that the Supreme Court denied certiorari since the case was fundamentally about FCC refusal to enforce existing Bell system commitments and commission rules for dial-around compensation, said association attorney Keith Roland of the Herzog Law Firm. PAO “knew it was an uphill climb” to get a Supreme Court hearing for the case, but the group wanted to ensure it pursued the case to its conclusion from its beginnings 18 years ago, said attorney Donald Evans of Fletcher Heald, representing that organization. Attorneys for IPTA and the FCC didn’t comment.
Tennessee’s HB-1303 and SB-1134 -- legislation that would partially ease restrictions in the state’s municipal broadband law -- are set for markups Tuesday in the state House Business and Utilities Subcommittee and the state Senate Commerce Committee. The legislation would ease restrictions by allowing a municipality that operates an electric utility to provide utility services, including broadband, outside its electric service area (see 1502270048). The restriction on operating utility services outside a municipality’s current electric service area was a main focus of the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga’s pre-emption petition to the FCC, which the FCC granted Feb. 26 (see 1502260030). Both markups are to begin at 1:30 p.m. CDT.
The communications sector and federal agencies plan to begin developing a pilot program over the next month to further develop and test metrics for the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council’s report on sector cybersecurity risk management, said industry executives and government officials Thursday. The CSRIC report, adopted Wednesday, was meant to adapt the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework for communications sector use (see 1503180056). The report continued to draw praise Thursday, with industry executives and federal officials saying during a USTelecom event that the report represented a turning point for communications sector cybersecurity.
The Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) unanimously voted Wednesday to approve Working Group 4’s report on recommendations on communications sector cybersecurity risk management, which was meant to adapt the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework. Working Group 4 released its report almost a year after CSRIC formed the working group as part of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s push for the agency to increase its focus on cybersecurity as a public safety issue (see report in the March 21, 2014, issue). Wheeler said Wednesday, at what he called CSRIC IV’s “graduation ceremony,” that Working Group 4’s report would be “crucial to where we as an agency and we as industries and government have got to go” on addressing cybersecurity risk management. Wheeler continued to emphasize what he sees as the importance of the private sector leading on cybersecurity but noted that the FCC will continue to coordinate and play an oversight role. CSRIC also adopted Working Group 3’s report on expanded security best practices for Emergency Alert System stakeholders and Working Group 7’s report on updates to the prioritization of earlier CSRIC best practices.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau said it reached a $3.4 million settlement with Verizon, ending the commission’s investigation into the telco’s role in an April 2014 multi-state 911 outage. Verizon is the 911 service provider in 11 counties in northern California, nine of which were affected by that April outage. The bureau separately issued an order Wednesday fining Oklahoma telco Hinton Telephone $100,000 following an Enforcement Bureau investigation that showed the telco failed to direct 911 calls to local public safety answering points (PSAPs).