WASHINGTON—As Congress broke for midterm elections, the wireless industry won a few battles, but for the most part failed to get legislation it supported passed.
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It’s not clear how industry felt about anti-pretexting legislation. The bills got bogged down in turf battles notwithstanding two days of hearings into the recent scandal at Hewlett-Packard Co., and died. Pretexting—impersonating someone else to obtain personal records—got the attention of policy-makers at all levels of government earlier this year following media reports that telecom customer call records were for sale on the Internet. Immediately, bills were introduced in Congress to address the issue, and both the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission began taking action to tighten customer-privacy rules. The industry had not liked the version passed by the House Commerce Committee last spring, but when wireless carriers were asked last Friday for their position, witnesses balked.
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The wireless industry hailed passage of the Warning, Alert and Response Network Act as part of the port-security bill. “The Warn Act includes a number of rational provisions that in total, create an effective partnership between the wireless industry and the federal government to provide the most practical means of emergency communications,” said CTIA President Steve Largent. The wireless industry had been afraid of an emergency-alert mandate being imposed by the FCC, said George Reed-Dellinger of Washington Analysis, a Wall Street research firm. “The industry will be able to offer services like the current Amber Alert text message in a cost-efficient manner, and now the statutory protection to offer actual voice messages on a voluntary basis. The bill also provides the carriers some protections against liability and damages from those customers who believe they were not adequately alerted,” said Reed-Dellinger in a note to investors.
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While wireless carriers got liability protection for emergency alert, Voice over Internet Protocol providers were not so lucky. Language to include VoIP liability protection when dealing with enhanced 911 calls was dropped from the port-security bill. Also not included in the port-security bill was a provision for liability protection for telecommunications carriers participating in the warantless-wiretapping program, officially known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program, administered by the National Security Agency.
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On the approved side, Congress included an anti-Internet gambling bill that will prohibit banks and credit-card companies from processing payments to Internet-gambling sites.
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One of the few appropriations bill to be completed before the end of the fiscal year was the one funding homeland security. Congress approved the $34.8 billion bill that includes the creation of a new Office of Emergency Communications inside the Department of Homeland Security to elevate the problem of public-safety interoperability within the Homeland-Security Department. “This bill represents a comprehensive package of carefully crafted national-security improvements,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate Homeland-Security Committee. “I am pleased that Congress is approving many of the recommendations of my committee’s eight-month investigation into the preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina. Whether our next great national trauma is inflicted by terrorists, by accident, or by natural forces, there are many urgent tasks that need to be started sooner rather than later.”
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Dropped from the Homeland-Security Appropriations bill was a mandate that radio-frequency identification tags be used as part of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. “The new language outlines the performance standards for the WHTI system, but does not call for the use of a specific RFID standard. Earlier versions of the bill required the WHTI program to use high-frequency RFID tags, thereby preventing the government from considering other types of RFID or other cutting-edge technologies,” said the Information Technology Association of America.
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Finally, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin will have to wait until November to see if he is confirmed to another five-year term on the commission. His nomination is on hold—a procedure where a senator expresses opposition and a willingness to block the vote should it come up. His term at the agency expired in June, but he can stay until Congress leaves in the fall of 2007.
