The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court, issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Regulatory Bulletin.
TELECOM
National Security
AT&T has released its first Transparency Report providing specific information about the number and types of government demands for data to which it responded in 2013. AT&T said it will be issuing reports on a semi-annual basis.
AT&T said it received between 2,000 – 2,999 National Security Letters in 2013, involving between 4,000 – 4,999 customer accounts. In the first six months of 2013, it received demands under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act involving between 0 – 999 customer accounts. AT&T also disclosed it received a total of 301,816 US Criminal and Civil Litigation demands (Federal, State, and Local; Criminal and Civil) of which 248,343 were subpoenas, 36,788 were court orders, and 16,685 were search warrants. Of the search warrants, 5,690 were for stored content.
AT&T said it provided information in response to 37,389 location demands, 93,304 emergency requests, and 22 international demands. It provided partial or no data to 17,463 demands in connection with criminal and civil litigation. See TMI’s Blog “New Reporting Methods for National Security Orders Announced,” posted 1/31/14.
FCC
The FCC announced the effective date of its 911 reliability rules. A covered 911 service provider’s obligation to take reasonable measures to provide reliable 911 service with respect to 911 circuit diversity, central office backup power, and diverse network monitoring took effect on February 18, 2014, except for information collection requirements subject to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval. The rule sections that require OMB approval are the ones addressing: annual and initial reliability certifications, including tagging Critical 911 Circuits; record retention; and outage notifications to public safety answering points (PSAPs). These rules will not take effect until the associated information collection is approved by OMB. The FCC said it would publish a notice in the Federal Register announcing the effective dates of those requirements once established.
The FCC said that the OMB approval process is not intended to suggest or require any change in Covered 911 Service Providers’ current activities conducted in the normal course of business or to relieve providers of the other requirements of the 911 Reliability Order. Covered providers are entities that provide capabilities to route 911 calls and associated data such as ALI and ANI to the appropriate PSAP; entities that merely provide the capability for customers to originate 911 calls where another service provider delivers those calls and associated number or location information to the appropriate PSAP are not covered providers. TMI Regulatory Bulletin Service subscribers see FCC Bulletins dated January 2, 2014, and February 11, 2014.