Various unions, communications and otherwise, are pushing Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to take whatever action necessary to use the lame-duck session of Congress to advance to a vote on the long-stalled nomination of Gigi Sohn for the vacant FCC seat.

”Our unions represent millions of workers in telecommunications, tech, and media as well as most sectors of the U.S. workforce,” a group of eight unions wrote to the senators this week, according to a copy of the letter supplied to Multichannel News. “We write to strongly support Gigi Sohn for the role of Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and urge swift action on her nomination.” 

Sohn would give Democrats the majority they earned when Joe Biden was elected president more than two years ago, allowing the FCC to tackle issues like network neutrality and broadband subsidy reform that the current political tie has prevented.

Also: Sen. Cantwell Targeted Over Second Sohn Hearing

“The FCC needs a fully seated commission in order to make critical decisions during a period of increased federal investment in broadband networks and digital equity initiatives,” the unions said.

Currently, Sohn's nomination remains stuck in the Senate Commerce Committee, so it would need a vote by the full Senate to discharge it from the panel, which tied in its vote to discharge the nomination. A tie means the nomination has not been recommended to the full Senate for a vote. Once it is discharged, Schumer would then have to schedule a separate vote on the actual nomination in the full Senate.

While Democrats have the technical majority in the 50-50 Senate due to Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote, Schumer has not advanced the Sohn nomination, likely because not all 50 Democrats were on board.

There was talk that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) might have needed persuading after progressive Democrats hammered her — including paying for a billboard in her home state branding her “corrupt”  — during the net neutrality debate for not voting to repeal the 2017 FCC decision to eliminate the net neutrality rules. Those were rules that Sohn stumped for as an adviser to then-FCC chairman Tom Wheeler.

Joining in the union letter were the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers (AFT); American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); Communications Workers of America (CWA); International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW); National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), representing FCC employees; Service Employees International Union (SEIU); and the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW). ■

Fight for the Future is calling on Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to disclose any "dark money" funds Democrats have received from Big Tech.

As the Senate majority leader, Schumer controls whether a couple of bipartisan Big Tech-regulating bills get a floor vote after being favorably reported out of the Senate Commerce Committee. To date, he has not scheduled a vote and Fight for the Future wrote Schumer saying the funding needed to be out in the open to dispel the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The group, which backs the bills, said disclosure would “help reassure a public that is questioning your hesitation in cracking down on Big Tech despite broad, bipartisan public support for doing so.”

Also: Group Pushes Schumer To Watch John Oliver Big Tech Video

The bills they want Schumer to advance to a floor vote are S. 2992 and S. 2710.

S. 2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, is billed as preventing online favoritism.

Specifically, it would:

• 1. “Prohibit dominant platforms from abusing their gatekeeper power by favoring their own products or services, disadvantaging rivals, or discriminating among businesses that use their platforms in a manner that would materially harm competition on the platform; and  
• a. “Prohibit specific forms of conduct that are harmful to small businesses, entrepreneurs, and consumers, but that do not have any pro-competitive benefit, including: 
• i. “Preventing another business’s product or service from interoperating with the dominant platform or another business;  
• ii. “Requiring a business to buy a dominant platform’s goods or services for preferred placement on its platform;  
• iii. “Misusing a business’s data to compete against them; and iv. “Biasing search results in favor of the dominant firm; and 
• iv. “Biasing search results in favor of the dominant firm.”

Reading like an app net neutrality rule for Apple and Google, S. 2710, the Open Apps Market Act, would prevent a covered company from restricting the use of alternative in-app payment systems; or from favoring their own terms of distribution, pricing or conditions of sale; or penalize developers for using different pricing terms or conditions via another in-app payment system.

It prevents a Google or Apple, for example, from using info derived from a third-party app to compete with that same app.

That bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support (21-1) back in February and was backed by the odd couple pairing of liberal Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and conservative Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn.

In a press conference last month, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and other S. 2992 sponsors and supporters said they need to get a vote ASAP, before the August recess. She pointed out that the leaders of both the House and Senate [the latter would be Schumer] have promised a vote and need to schedule it. Klobuchar pointed out that it has been over a year and there has been no vote on the bill. She also said that Big Tech has spent some $70 million on ads in the past year and employed thousands of lobbyists.

The airwaves and wires (cable) in D.C. have definitely been blanketed with scary ads suggesting the bills could end Amazon Prime's two-day delivery service, among just one of a parade of horribles. ■

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has asked the FBI and Federal Trade Commission to look into the face morphing FaceApp from a company headquartered in Russia, concerned the Russian government might be getting access to users' personal data. 

According to Appfigures, it is the top-ranked iOS App Store app. 

The app takes photos and makes the subjects appear older (see photos below) or younger or changes men to women, women to men, or the unhip to the hip. 

It also may be harvesting more data than users know, said Schumer. 

"In order to operate the application, users must provide the company full and irrevocable access to their personal photos and data," said Schumer. "In practice, providing this level of access to a user's data could mean that any photos taken with the application could be used publicly or privately in the future without a user's consent," he said. 

Schumer said it would be "deeply troubling if the sensitive personal information of U.S. citizens was provided to a hostile foreign power actively engaged in cyber hostilities against the United States." 

He wants the FBI to mitigate the risk of the app's aggregation data, and for the FTC to investigate whether there are "adequate" privacy safeguards for American users of the app, including government personnel and members of the military. If not, it wants the FTC to issue a warning to that effect. 

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), said the internet is a necessity and the government may not be able to let providers charge whatever they want for the use of what is an essential service, like a utility or road.

That came in his floor argument for a Congressional Review Act resolution that would nullify the FCC's reclassification of ISPs out from under the Title II, utlility-style regulatory regime that allows for rate regulation, either before or after the fact.

Related: Sen. Thune Backs Prohibiting Paid Prioritization

FCC chair Tom Wheeler made forbearing from rate regulation one of the elements of the 2015 Open Internet Order, but Schumer talked, in the context of not allowing paid prioritization at least, about internet access as an essential good whose price the government may need to insure is kept within reach of "average folks," though he did not say what specific mechanisms should be used to insure affordability.

Democrats generally argue that broadband access is about price as well as available plant, But Schumer's evocation of it in the context of returning to a Title II regime set off some alarm bells with those who have argued that Title II was a potential path to rate regulation and it would not be hard to un-forbear from rate regs if a new FCC or Congress wanted to do so.

That was the concern that led Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly to label Wheeler's approach "fauxbearance."

Related: Rate Regulation By Any Other Name

"Public schools, rural Americans, communities of color or anyone in a remote area or without substantial resources could be at a significant disadvantage if the ISPs start charging more for decent internet," Schumer said.

"You know, people say, well, let a private company do whatever it wants, let them charge whatever they want," he continued. "But in certain goods which are essential we don't do that. Utilities, highways. The same thing now applies to the internet. It's a necessity and we have to have protections for average folks, for small businesses, for working families."

He said that concern is behind Democrats' effort to restore the old rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization.

His vision is of an internet "free and open like our highways, accessible and affordable to every American, regardless of your ability to pay."

There are already programs to subsidize broadband to low income residents, including billions of dollars in Universal Service funds, billions of dollars already spent on stimulus fund broadband buildout efforts, and ISP programs to get affordable broadband to families with school-age children, he said.

But Democrats and Republicans agree that more needs to be done to close the digital divide and get more folks online, both by reaching more homes and making it more affordable to the underprivileged and more attractive to those who have yet to go online for reasons other than availability or price.

Schumer signaled he is not looking to hand out free internet, but that there was a public interest in making sure that good service was affordable. 

"It's not that you don't pay, it's that if you're a little guy or gal you shouldn't pay a lot more than the big shots," he said. "We don't do that on highways, we don't do that with utilities and we shouldn't do it with the internet, another modern 21st century highway that is a necessity." 

Schumer urged his listeners to "call, write, or visit" their senator or House member. "Your wallets and well-being, in ways far more significant than most things we do here, depend on it," he said. 

“Tom Wheeler always claimed that the Title II public utility regulatory regime was not put in place to regulate the rates of ISPs," said Free State President Randolph May in response to Shcumer's floor speech. "This was not entirely true even then, for example, witness his investigation of zero-rated or free data plans. No surprise after all, because the regulation of rates is at the very core of Title II. You need go no further than Sections 201 and 202! But now Senator Schumer has let the cat out of the bag in a display, at least, of unusual candor. He is arguing for reimposing Title II regulation explicitly on the basis that it can be used to regulate ISPs’ rates to end user customers."This should certainly help clarify the ongoing ‘net neutrality’ debate — on the one side you have those who make no bones about wanting to regulate Internet providers like Ma Bell was regulated. On the other you have those, like me, who want to employ light touch regulation appropriate for service providers in a dynamic, increasingly competitive market. The future is with my side."