Blackburn, the chair on communications and technology and shes our guest this week on the communicators. Congressman blackburn, whats your reaction to fcc vote . I saw it as ui positive step in the right direction. Very pleased that they took the action and very pleased to have and hes going to do a wonderful job and focused on closing the Digital Divide and expansion of broadband and making certain the internet is an open source and is not going to be under heavy government control. I think those are good steps, good things. Host what else would you like to see done . Guest it would take congress to take legislative following what the fcc does and this is what chairman pi was right step to take. I like seeing that. Host in your subcommittee right now, what are some of the items that youre working on that maybe we havent seen surface . The news . Guest there are two reauthorizations that we are working on, one for ntia and those agencies have not been reauthorized since 90 and 92. Looking at those, reshaping them and making certain that fcc is focused on spectrum and Spectrum Management and media ownership and some of those components, those are right things to do. We are also working on first net and nations Emergency Communications template. Its more than just an Emergency Alert that comes on a Television Screen or a radio blast that you hear, so we have hearings and work there and we are focused on broadband and one of the neat things that we are doing this year, we have different members that are going to lead on different issues bill johnson is going to lead the work on broadband expansion and Leonard Lance is going lead on encryption. Youre going and Mindy Walters is going to work with him. She will work with leonard on the encryption issues. Susan books to enhance 911, first net, those efforts, bill flores is leading our privacy efforts, billy long on media ownership and adam is going to lead the work that we are doing with ntia and looking at u. S. Cyber cons so a lot on our plait right now and individuals that have welldeveloped areas of expertise and a tremendous amount of both institutional and career knowledge and so its going to be nice to have them kind of take the lead on some of those components. Host before we go any further lets bring in lydia into our conversation, shes now with a group called event driven news and covers tech and telecom. Thank you, i would like to turn to new privacy bill, kind of sweeping legislation that would give consumers a lot more control over online data, how its used, how its collected and it would apply to not just isps but online x providers, facebook, google. Correct. At the same time when you introduced it late last week it seem today have caught a number of folks by surprised and colleagues, can you tell us a little bit about the bill and also what drove you to introduce it . Guest absolutely. I welcome the opportunity to because this is something i have worked on since i was vice chairman of commerce manufacturing and trade, a former member. , was chairman of that committee and try today generate interest around privacy and Data Security and i healed some hearings on it, it really didnt get a lot of movement. Fred upton, i took a lead with a Privacy Working Group and peter and i cochaired that in a bipartisan manner and we did a lot bill deeper dive with some of the members on the issues of privacy and Data Security and you may remember last year, we had a Data Security last year that made it out of committee but we never got it to the floor and people are ready to see something come forward from us on the issues of privacy and on Data Security and certainly now we are beginning to have not only states but cities, look at privacy, regulation and theyre doing it because the federal government, because congress has not taken an action and now that the privacy issue will not have two regulators, which is a good thing. We are going to have one and the ftc has historically been the regulator of privacy in both the physical space and the virtual space and we think its important to have one set of rules for the entire ecosystem and one regulator for the entire ecosystem so that consumers know who is in charge and so consumers have that protection. I think our consumers deserve to have a very full tool box of tools that they can use to protect their virtual you, their presence online and this is a way that we can say, all right, lets simplify this and lets put into statute what will the privacy framework be and i think its a great place to start the conversation. Well, to add onto that, your bill would preempt some and local privacy laws, all turn privacy guest to ftc. Thats right. It would require internet company, facebook, 98 of revenue is based on targeted advertising and they would have to get concept. Correct. They view that as fund mntal threat as some of business models, how do you take that into bill . They will probably end up being a better consumer of those services and individuals want to control their privacy and many times ive had so many people say, okay, i dont understand this, how is it that i continue to get all of this spam and i have to go and remove myself from these lists, how is it that all of these popups show up on my in my Search Engine and how is this happening and, of course, it happens from data mining and so to allow consumers to say, okay, im going to choose to give you the right to share certain pieces of my information, im going choose to enhance a base business to consumer relationship to you but im not going to choose to have it shared in other ways and there are things i do not want to share and i think individuals have the right to do that. There have been some folks who view the bill as a messaging bill for some of your constituents back home who are concerned about your role in the Online Privacy cra, others say that perhaps this bill could lead to bipartisan compromise neutrality legislation down the line, what is your objective with this bill and how far are you going to work to see it enacted . I am working diligently on the bill. I am hopeful this is going to be bipartisan and look forward to that. Host representative blackburn, last week we had terrell on the program, democratic representative on the federal trade commission. She spoke about this issue about rules of the road and privacy regulation. Here is what she had to say. There are a couple of areas that im particularly concerned about. First the fact that right now because of congressional action on broadband privacy we dont have any federal agency with jurisdiction over the privacy practices of broadband providers, very concerned about that. I think its a huge gap and i would like to see Congress Step in and give the fts jurisdiction very clearly which they could do by passing legislation. Host does your bill address what she spoke about . It certainly does. One regulator and one set of rules for the entire ecosystem. Host how does it tie into Net Neutrality as lydia indicated . Net neutrality, theres areas where you will see agreement, you have to step back into the wheelerled fcc, when they reclassified broadband from title one and Information Service to title two, a tale Telecommunication Service and title two is all about rate regulation, we all knew that they were going to try to change privacy and have two different sets of rules, one for the isps that would come from the fcc and the other for providers and the balance of the ecosystem and that would come from the ftc and when people log onto conduct their Business Life or personal transactional life online, they dont look at it as different components of the system, they look at it as one system, that is is why the action for the privacy cra was important to do. That was a knew rule that had not been implemented, the privacy that individuals enjoyed is the same today as it was last week, last month, last year. Nothing changed. What the action we took was cra is to preserve the status quo. As the conversation moves from removing the broadband services, Internet Services providers from title 2 back to title 1, it is important for us to take the action and be sure that we do have a privacy regulator that covers the entire ecosystem. Have you spoken or had any interest from anyone in the white house or the executive branch in your legislation . Guest theyve had a few things on their plate this week. Fair. Guest the president will return from his trip and others are focused on health care. As we move forward with broadband expansion and the infrastructure bill, it will give me the opportunity to talk with them and to seek support with what we are doing with privacy. Host with some of the issues that youre working on, is there somebody in the white house, administration, a point person for you . Very individuals that are working in that regard in the white house and you have individuals that have worked with us at committee that are now working in the administration. You also have technology at the white house which im sure will weigh in at the appropriate time. Host what do you think the council that the president has formed . Guest i think its an excellent idea. I hope they do something with creators because many individuals who produce content that is used online and needs copyright protection. My hope as you look at tech, you also look at creation and copyright. Host there seems to be a disconnect between silicon and the Republican Party specially where their money went, have you had a chance to visit out there with some of the folks that work out there . Guest i talk to individuals that work out there on a fairly regular basis and i think that its fair to say that some of them look at what we do in dc and say, Congress Never keeps up and Technology Evolves so quickly and latest computer design is about 18 months and you dont have time to get a bill through and you cant keep up, so there are a couple of good lessons from that. Number one, we know that sometimes they would rather just deal with the bureaucracy because they think they can get faster action just by going to a federal agency rather than waiting on congress to take action and theres a lesson in that for us and that we can no longer legislate to a technology, what we have to do is to look at end youth and utilization and functionalities and look a little bit more on what this is going to be used for. As you put out spectrum and broadband deployment, as you find ways to pack down the usage in that spectrum and in that band and deliver News Services and be creative, innovative in that space, it is going to require us to maybe change the way we look at technology and telecommunication legislation. You mentioned a couple of points, spectrum and broadband infrastructure. A bill pending in the senate, whats your interest in the bill . I think we will take it up and look at it and then use that as a starting point. Im looking forward to the senate. I know they have worked on it for a couple of years and chairman thune would like to move that along. We are always in the house and even if theyre sending it to us or theyre finishing it so it can go to congress or the president s desk. Its widely believed that broad wand would be a component of that. For you, you have responsibility for leading some of the Telecom Policy in congress. What are your priorities, what are your musthaves for that . There are a couple of musthaves and first of all, we want to focus on unserved areas because we have many areas in the country that still do not have access to highspeed internet. That means that we need to do something Due Diligence with the fcc and we will start to getting the maps cleaned up, the National Broadband map have not been cleaned up since 2014. You were to look at a map for tennessee, you would think that 95 of the state has access to high speed internet. In reality, that is not even close. And our state house and state senate using a Service Called tasser in the state did a great survey and much more accurate. So lets work with the fcc and then get these maps in shape and then the second thing is we need to define what is going to be the acceptable speed, what are we trying to move to, is it 15 down, 3 up, 25 down, 3 up, what do you need to be your target . And then as we set that framework in place, then youre ready to move to do grants and classer that flow from the different entities. You have about 10 billion a year that are there through the fcc and through rus to go into and going into broadband expansion. The infrastructure bill will give us another opportunity. Then we say how do you best expand those dollars and it maybe partnerships with public entities, your local and state governments and then they pull down money, leverage those dollars to pull down federal dollars and all of a sudden youre getting, 3 to 1, 5 to 1 benefit from the dollars that youve pulled down and, you know, you may want to some of those entities may wanting to out and do publicprivate partnerships and begin to look at ways to utilize broadband. Its important too to note that what we are going to do is Technology Neutral because Different Things are going to work for different areas and some places itll be wire line, fiber, wireless and some spots fixed wireless and others and satellite and i have a county in my district thats looking at a couple of different areas of their county to have a fibbinged fixed wireless project because it works for them and they have gone without highspeed internet and they dont have enough people per square mile to get Adoption Rate high enough to get a fiber line project, how do we make this work. They are working with a private company to find a way to increase the access. Host congresswoman, what are your views for municipal broadband . If a community decides they want to do and invest in it, they certainly have the right to do that. I didnt like the way the fcc approached it with trying to pick winners and losers by giving some areas grants. I had a little bit of a problem with their approach on it and i think also you have to i like that local control and theres a problem when someone gets federal grants and then wants to go outside of their footprint and that would put another city or county being behold to another city, things of that nature. So i think that you have to be a little bit careful there. Weve had some municipal systems that went out with something that didnt have the dollars necessary for upgrades and maintenance and that is causing problems. The private sector seems to be more prepared for handling that. The fcc in the last administration took action in your own state in North Carolina to sort of preempt the state preemption, i mean, how does what you just said square with fcc action. I did. Can you delineate your view when you have a state and a state regulatory registrationy agency, they want to have unfold in their state, they have the right, they have the right to do that and i dont think that the fcc should be saying no and trying to micro manage the delivery of expansion of broad band. You will get to some of the reorganization and thats a good thing as you get to reauthorization, every once in a while looking at what you are and how you organize yourself and your workload is constructive, that is how you make the appropriate type adjustments and reforms and thats what the American People are wanting to see more efficiencies and greater transparency, greater access. Host marsha blackburn, share on communications and technology, lydia covers telecom and tech for event driven news. Well, the howrnts called for votes and chairman blackburn had to leave just a few minutes early but we kept lydia just to kind of put a period on our conversation that we had with her. Lydia, the committee, subcommittee that shes chairing, are they pursuing a lot of different avenues right now when it comes to tech policy . I certainly think the congresswoman described activity in terms of individual members looking at some really important issues, cybersecurity, privacy, in terms of what legislation, she mentioned the ntia and fcc reauthorization bills an those are important, i think, for both the agencies and the industry but beyond that, i dont know how much legislation we are going to see when all of congress right now is focused on health care, taxation, maybe the next big thing would be the infrastructure package we discussed which, again, may include some broadband provisions that are very important to the telecom sector. After that, i think what Everyone Wants to know is what happens with Net Neutrality, will there be legislation, wont there be legislation, will democrats move on it, they say they wont with congresswoman blackburn privacy bill, would that add more pressure to the situation, perhaps, we will see. She indicated that maybe nothing might happen until the fcc acts on those rules. So those are all things to watch. Host how significant is this reauthorization of the fcc, the first time she said since the 90s . Right, that will depend on whats in the legislation. She also seem today say that it could include some restructuring of the agency, the white house budget request came out yesterday with details from the fcc and looks like they are propose to go shed at least 100 fulltime employees so what that might mean if that is approved by congress, would it mean reduction in the agencys activity, might she the rest of congress reauthorize the fcc to really focus on Spectrum Management, certain other things but not regulate in the broadband space, you know, that could change the mission of the agency quite a bit if that happened. Will they have the full staff to do it, will they have the staff to review mergers. Sinclairtribune merger and so it could be a very busy agency, reauthorization bill could hav