An Orlando-based telemarketer selling vacation packages agreed to settle government allegations it made millions of illegal robocalls, including to those on the National Do Not Call Registry, the FTC said in a news release Thursday. The commission voted 4-0 to authorize staff to refer the complaint to DOJ and approve the proposed $1.2 million civil penalty against Lilly Management and Marketing and its owner, Kevin Lawrence, the release said. But the FTC said the defendants will pay only $19,000 due to their inability to pay the full amount, unless they are later found to have misrepresented their financial condition and then they will have to pay the entire penalty. The FTC alleged Lawrence and his firm bought leads, or lists of consumers' phone numbers, from third parties and then used automated dialing machines, "placing millions of calls that played pre-recorded messages." Each call cost less than a cent to make, the release noted. The commission's proposed order "permanently bans" Lawrence and his firm from robocalling consumers and those on the national registry, helping others make such calls or doing business with anyone making such calls. DOJ filed the complaint and proposed order in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, FTC said. A message left on a phone number associated with the telemarketer wasn't returned.

Fewer than half of information technology departments at the 50 top U.S. county governments provide software that monitors, manages and secures their employees' mobile devices, the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers said in a survey released Tuesday. IAITAM said only a quarter of the counties require that such mobile device management software (MDM) be installed across all their government departments. The survey found 43 out of the 50 counties supply mobile devices to employees, but only 20 have MDM software and the remainder either lack such software or didn't respond. Of the 20 that do have MDM software, only nine require it be installed across all departments, two don't and nine didn't answer. In a separate IAITAM survey of 177 companies, trade groups and government agencies, 92 percent of respondents said they supply mobile devices to employees, 72 percent said they have MDM software in place and 70 percent require such software be implemented across all their departments. "Most government agencies and corporations fall down on the job when it comes to Information Technology Asset Management ... in general. But mobile device management, including best-practice policies and application of MDM software, is a real blind spot," said IAITAM CEO Barbara Rembiesa in a statement. The association said last week that San Bernardino County, California, had paid for MDM software, but it was never installed on the device supplied to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of two gunmen identified by the FBI in the Dec. 2 mass shooting. IAITAM said if the MDM software had been installed on Farook's phone, "investigators could have remotely and legally unlocked the phone and thereby circumvented the legal dispute now underway" (see 1603010013).

DoCoMo Pacific wants to put in a new submarine cable system connecting Guam with the Commonwealth of the North Mariana islands of Saipan, Rota and Tinian. In an FCC International Bureau filing Monday, DoCoMo said the Atisa system -- Atisa meaning "to brighten" or "to increase" in the Chamorro language native to Guam and Commonwealth islands -- will be run on a non-common-carrier basis, with its capacity to be used by DoCoMo retail and enterprise customers. It also said it expects to start commercial operation of the Atisa system in Q2 2017, and FCC grant of a cable landing license by December 2016 is "of paramount importance." Atisa will avoid the Tinian Channel where the Mariana-Guam Cable was severed in July, leading to "a nearly-total communications blackout" in the Commonwealth islands, and instead will go directly between Guam and Saipan in deeper water, said DoCoMo, a subsidiary of Japan's NTT DoCoMo.

Attempts to weaken or restrict encryption would have a damaging impact on the overall digital economy, including undermining systems, increasing consumer costs, and diminishing America's global competitiveness, said the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in a report released Monday (see 1603040023). ITIF authors Daniel Castro and Alan McQuinn said the U.S. government should promote better cybersecurity practices around the world, "in part by encouraging continued innovation in encryption." They said the government can rebuild trust in the domestic technology sector through strong data security practices in the U.S. Congress should prohibit NSA from "intentionally weakening encryption standards" and improve transparency of the cryptographic standards-setting process, they said. It should also pass legislation to ban efforts to install back doors into products and services and preempt any similar actions by state governments, plus oppose other governments' initiatives to introduce back doors into products and services or weaken encryption, they wrote. Castro and McQuinn said Congress should set "clear rules for how and when law enforcement can hack into private systems, and how and when law enforcement can compel companies to assist in investigations." And it should provide more resources to law enforcement in investigations and analysis of digital evidence, they said.

Lisa Gelb is moving from the FCC Wireline Bureau to become a deputy chief and chief of staff of the Enforcement Bureau, Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc said in a news release Monday. Gelb’s new responsibilities include ensuring compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, LeBlanc said. Gelb’s “depth of knowledge about communications law, particularly in the areas of wireline telephone and broadband, her understanding of the Commission, her extensive management experience, and her good judgment are invaluable in managing the bureau’s workload,” LeBlanc said. She's a former deputy city attorney in San Francisco who joined the Wireline Bureau in 2004.

Free Press released what it’s calling the 2016 Internet Voter Guide about the presidential election. “The Internet Voter Guide shows that some presidential candidates care more about their campaigns’ digital operations than about the digital rights and needs of Americans across the country,” said Free Press President Craig Aaron. The guide includes a chart comparing the positions for Democratic and Republican presidential contenders on issues such as net neutrality, encryption policy and affordability. The guide underscores some established partisan divides on telecom policy. “All three Republican contenders have come out against the FCC’s open Internet rules,” Free Press said of the platforms on net neutrality. “Both Democratic candidates have advocated for enforcing strong Net Neutrality rules.” Industry consolidation was an issue where Democrats staked out opposition, Free Press said: “Only a few candidates have declared any position on runaway media consolidation, which has led to skyrocketing costs for consumers as competition for services has dwindled. Both Democratic candidates have fought industry consolidation.” Free Press said no candidate of either party has backed “strong pro-consumer encryption measures.”

The court order forcing Apple to help the FBI unlock an iPhone 5C used by a gunman in the California mass shooting in December applies only to that phone and "does not compel [the company] to unlock other iPhones or to give the government a universal 'master key' or 'back door,'" argued DOJ lawyers in a 35-page filing Thursday countering Apple's motion to dismiss the case (see 1603020061). The lawyers said the All Writs Act (AWA), which the government is applying in the court order, isn't "dusty and forgotten" as Apple has described it, but "vital" to the U.S. legal system and "regularly invoked." They said the Supreme Court rejected similar policy arguments in 1977's U.S. vs. New York Telephone that Apple now raises: "that the AWA could not be read so broadly; that it was for Congress to decide whether to provide such authority; and that relying on the AWA was a dangerous step down a slippery slope ending in arbitrary police powers." DOJ lawyers said "fears have proved unfounded" in the 40 years since that decision. The order instructs Apple to create "a narrow, targeted piece of software" for just that one iPhone within the company's own secure headquarters, the lawyers said (see 1603010013). Justice said the device is owned by the County of San Bernardino, which is where the shooting took place, and was used by "now-dead terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, who also consented to its being searched as part of his employment agreement with the County. In short, the Order invades no one's privacy and raises no Fourth Amendment concerns."

After 50 “glorious years,” Moore’s law is “running out of steam,” said a paper published Friday in The Economist. Moore’s law, which holds that computing power doubles every two years with no uptick in cost, has resulted in a modern smartphone that today packs more computing punch than a supercomputer did two decades ago, the paper said. “But after half a century of blistering progress, the end is now in sight.” Fifty years of Moore's law “have made computers cheap, powerful and tiny, but the exponential increase in computing power has been slowing for some time,” it said. “With transistors getting ever smaller, each successive shrinking is bringing fewer benefits while costs are rising dramatically.” The “twilight” of Moore’s law “will bring change, disorder and plenty of creative destruction,” it said. “An industry that used to rely on steady improvements in a handful of devices will splinter. Software firms may begin to dabble in hardware; hardware makers will have to tailor their offerings more closely to their customers’ increasingly diverse needs.”

The FCC handed down a $1.6 million fine to Florida-based telecom provider NetOne for instances of cramming -- the practice of billing consumers for unauthorized services or features -- the commission said in a news release Wednesday. The Enforcement Bureau reviewed more than 100 consumer complaints against NetOne, which detailed instances of the company charging consumers "late fees" after they had canceled service, and refusing to close customer accounts until the unauthorized fees were paid, said the release. The FCC said NetOne "continued to engage in cramming despite repeated warnings" from the commission, which issued a notice of apparent liability to NetOne in the case in July 2014. NetOne didn't comment.

AT&T said the FCC should approve its request to discontinue certain operator services despite concerns expressed by a few consumers and two local public safety officials in Washington state. "None of the comments filed demonstrate that the public convenience and necessity will be impaired as a result of AT&T’s discontinuance of these services," the telco said in reply comments posted Tuesday in docket 16-13. AT&T said it was seeking to discontinue operator-assisted "collect calling, person-to-person calling, billed to third party, busy line verification, busy line interrupt and international directory assistance." The 13 comments filed in response "were concerned with the continued availability of busy line verification/interrupt (BLV/I), collect calling and international directory assistance," said the telco, which said it wrote all the commenters to explain "its reasons for discontinuing these services, and provided information on the alternative services, resources or applications that are available." AT&T acknowledged there didn't appear to be a legacy TDM-based voice replacement for the BLV/I service, which eight commenters said was of particular concern for emergency personnel, but it said "the market indicates that there is no need for a replacement service." New products and services "have rendered BLV/I services unnecessary and obsolete" because customers are using modern technologies that notify them when someone is trying to call them or a line is in use, the telco said. The company plans to discontinue the services to retail customers after March 18 and to wholesale customers June 4, it said in its application (see 1601070023).