Consumer Watchdog asked NASA Inspector General Paul Martin to end a special deal with Google to test unmanned drones over private land. That agency's decision to grant the company a waiver to test drones gives Google an unfair advantage over competitors, and the benefits to taxpayers are unclear, said a CW letter Tuesday to Martin. “NASA should suspend this special arrangement with Google immediately ... pending an explanation about how this technology benefits taxpayers and the federal government itself,” Consumer Advocate Liza Tucker wrote. This isn't the first time Google has abused taxpayer dollars to advance commercial technology, Tucker said. In its letter to Martin, Consumer Watchdog asked the NASA official to also investigate whether a special relationship between Google and NASA officials led to the “unusual arrangement,” which was kept secret until Google recently filed for a Federal Aviation Administration waiver to operate unmanned aircraft. Google and NASA have tested drones over private land in the U.S. throughout the past year, said a CW news release. Its letter said other U.S. companies like Amazon have been testing drones at sites outside the U.S., including Canada, due to “frustration with gaining U.S. permission to test its technology.” In the next six months, Google and NASA want to test in Merced, California, to see if cellphone signals can be used to control and land drones, it said. NASA and Google didn’t comment.

The Wi-Fi interference problems that will come with nonstandard LTE-U can be headed off if the FCC acts now to set up effective means of sharing, NCTA said in an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 15-105. Rick Chessen, NCTA senior vice president-law and regulatory policy, was among those who met with a variety of commissioner and Office of Engineering and Technology staff in a pair of meetings to discuss routes to "effective coexistence" between LTE-U and Wi-Fi. The problem with LTE-U is its unconstrained "duty cycling" sharing, which has LTE-U carriers deciding when to transmit, even if it's atop Wi-Fi and other unlicensed users, NCTA said. However, "Wi-Fi-like sharing" would allow for coexistence, NCTA said, saying the FCC should demand better LTE-U testing and analysis. LTE-U Forum testing has used too few devices in its tests, not properly simulating a more real-world crowded environment, and has overestimated the amount of available spectrum, NCTA said. LTE-U backers like Qualcomm have said acceptance of the technology is rising, and it disagrees with NCTA that the commission should start a review of LTE-U and license assisted access (see 1507010052). The company had no immediate comment Thursday.

The Department of Transportation needs to create a smartphone app, Democratic staffers said in a committee report on airline fees released Thursday. “Due to the increasing prevalence of mobile devices, Committee minority staff recommends that the Department also develop a smartphone ‘app’ that would allow consumers to easily file complaints from mobile devices.”

Section 603 of the Senate Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2016 (S-1705) requiring an electronic communication service or a remote computing service to report suspected terrorist activities to authorities is “fatally flawed” and should be removed from the legislation, CEA President Gary Shapiro told Senate leadership in a Thursday letter. The bill was introduced July 7 by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. “While well intended, this provision will impose impossible to meet requirements on a range of America’s technology companies,” Shapiro said. “The real world impact of the requirements in this section could devastate the U.S. technology industry,” he said. “Internet platforms could be burdened with reporting content that, in many cases, their employees, including lawyers, cannot accurately categorize or understand.” The requirements would be “impossible to follow given that social networks may receive up to 500 million postings per day,” he said. Content that’s “potentially subject to the reporting requirement is written in a wide range of languages that service providers subject to this law are unlikely to be equipped to have the resources to understand,” he said. “The burden of reviewing and interpreting hundreds of millions of postings in scores of different languages would cripple most companies.” Section 603 also “appears to cover any company with a blog, internet operation, or active bulletin board,” he said. “The number of companies impacted goes far beyond the intent of the provision. In short, this is an ill-conceived but potentially far-reaching, chilling and debilitating proposal for American technology companies.” The Internet Association, Internet Infrastructure Coalition and Reform Government Surveillance also wrote a letter to Senate leadership about concerns they have over the provision. “All of our members want to eliminate terrorist activity on their platforms, and they work tirelessly to ensure that Internet platforms are being used legally,” IA CEO Michael Beckerman said. “Requiring Internet companies to provide law enforcement enormous quantities of data will not make us safer and would make it more difficult for law enforcement to find real threats.” If the provision were to be adopted, there is a risk it would serve as a “global template for other countries to impose reporting requirements for activities those jurisdictions deem unlawful,” the groups' letter said. “This would be particularly problematic with countries that regulate speech, including political speech, and with authoritarian regimes that would demand that Internet companies police their citizens’ activities.” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., put a hold on the bill, citing concerns with the provision (see 1507280048). Earlier this week, a coalition of digital right groups and trade associations wrote to Senate leadership urging the provision be removed (see 1508040049). Burr's representatives didn't comment.

NAB offered to accept FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s statement that duplex gap impairments would affect no more than six markets, the association said in a filing posted Monday in docket 12-268. NAB said the commission should be limited to six markets with one TV station each affected, and that none of the six should be among the top-25 markets nationwide. The FCC also shouldn't add any new TV impairments in the wireless band after the clearing target is reached, NAB said. “If a volunteering station elects to drop out of the auction and cannot be repacked in the broadcast portion of the band, the Commission must buy that station at its last accepted price.”

NCTA again Friday pushed back against claims from Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., this time in an unsigned blog post. It initially issued a statement Thursday after a news release from the two senators decrying the state of the retail set-top box marketplace and what they judged high costs consumers have to pay (see 1507300057). “Regrettably, however, their claims misread the STELAR [Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization] statute, the impact of changes that were supported on a bipartisan basis, and the state of the video device marketplace,” NCTA said Friday. “It’s simply not accurate to say that ‘cable companies will no longer be required to make their services compatible with outside set-top boxes, like TiVo for example, bought directly by consumers in the retail marketplace,’ thereby ‘doom[ing] consumers to being captive to cable company rental fees forever.’ In fact, the STELAR provision at issue -- the sunset of the FCC's much-maligned ‘integration ban’ rule -- does not affect the market for retail devices.” NCTA promised further updates on the issue: “In future blog posts, we’ll highlight what the cable industry is doing to provide consumers more options for viewing TV content on retail devices.”

In a regulatory and legal battle with GPS companies, LightSquared now is highlighting the decline of the GPS and Personal Navigation Device (PND) industry. Company senior adviser Reed Hundt met with FCC front-office Office of Strategic Planning & Policy Analysis, Wireless, General Counsel, Office of Engineering & Technology and International Bureau staff to discuss GPS market data, the company said in an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 12-340. "Consumers today are overwhelmingly using smartphones for general location and navigation use cases," meaning PND sales are dropping and the installed base is expected by 2020 to be half of what it is today, the company said. Meanwhile, GPS units used in high-precision agriculture and construction make up a small portion of the overall installed base, and companies increasingly are turning to other options such as internal measure units and real-time kinetics, LightSquared said. Garmin dominates the PND market, while John Deere and Trimble are the major players in the use of GPS for high-precision agriculture and construction, and LightSquared's plans for a ground-and-satellite-based LTE broadband network have been opposed by the three over concerns of interference with the Global Navigation Satellite Service bandwidth used by the GPS companies (see 1507010018). Regardless of whether LightSquared is able to reach a settlement with the GPS companies, "the nation cannot afford to risk interference that could debilitate the reception and/or accuracy of GPS signals used for public safety operations," National Public Safety Telecommunications Council Chairman Ralph Haller said in a letter to the FCC posted Wednesday.

Reps. Doug Collins, R-Ga., and Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., introduced legislation Wednesday that would allow American companies whose trade secrets are stolen by foreign entities to sue in federal court, a news release said. The Defend Trade Secrets Protection Act would provide to American companies that are victims of foreign espionage the same redress that rights owners of other forms of intellectual property currently enjoy under U.S. law, it said.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Md., wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch Wednesday asking her to clarify the Justice Department’s recent update guidance to federal prosecutors and investigators. The letter asks DOJ to explain its policies on geolocation after the Supreme Court’s recent decision that officers must secure a warrant before searching data on cellphones and a 2012 ruling that said a warrant must be obtained before placing a GPS device on a person’s private property, the letter aid. “Please be prepared to discuss the Department’s position on whether geolocation of cellular phone users constitutes content or metadata and the Department’s position on whether a warrant is required to collect real-time geolocation information,” the letter said. They asked Lynch to respond to its questions by providing a briefing to committee staff by Aug. 7, it said.

The House Commerce Committee passed the E-Warranty Act Wednesday. The legislation would allow manufacturers to provide warranty information electronically instead of in paper form. The Senate Commerce Committee passed its version of the bipartisan legislation earlier this year (see 1505200042).