The G7 countries have agreed that competition regulators--like the Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission and FCC--need the right tools and insights if they are going to enforce competition policy in the digital age.

That is part of a draft Common Understanding of G7 Competition Authorities on Competition and the Digital Economy released Thursday (July 18) to inform discussions among G7 ministers and Central Bank governors in Chantilly, France, this week.

Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim, who has been publicly pondering the antitrust issues surrounding the rise of Big Tech, participated in drafting the memorandum at a June 5 meeting with other G& representatives.

Related: Senate Dems Want Confirmation of Big Tech Investigations

According to Justice, the Common Understanding "says that “[f]or effective enforcement and policy engagement, it is important that competition authorities have the tools and means to deepen their knowledge of new business models and their impact on competition, for example, through market studies or sector inquiries and by adding in-house capabilities to keep current with issues raised by the digital economy.”

FTC Chairman Joe Simons, for one, has been pitching Congress on giving the FCC more tools and talent to deal with he issues around Big Tech.

“Digital technologies improve our lives in a myriad of ways, but also present challenges for competition authorities,” said Delrahim. “I welcome the opportunity to work closely with our G7 counterparts and other competition agencies to address the important issues arising from the digital economy.”

The G7 comprises Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the U.S. They meet periodically and informaly to talk global economic policy.

The new Congress is reportedly considering repealing the privacy rules that Tom Wheeler’s Federal Communications Commission put in place right before the presidential election. Proponents of the new rules are engaged in a furious public-relations campaign, claiming that consumers’ privacy will be violated left and right if the new rules are repealed. Frightening if true.

When it comes to using your data from Web browsing and app usage, the Federal Trade Commission has been the regulatory cop on the beat. Determined to be relevant in the digital economy, the FCC created its own, radically different set of privacy regulations targeting just Internet service providers. By requiring an ISP’s customers to give permission for their data to be used, the FCC’s new privacy rules subject ISPs to a different and more restrictive set of regulations than their online advertising rivals.

The difference in the rules — “opt-in” rules for ISPs versus “opt-out” rules for edge providers — has significant competitive implications in the online advertising market, which is dominated by Google and Facebook. The reason is that consumers typically elect the default choice out of laziness and respect for the status quo. By making it relatively easier for edge providers to access consumers’ data, the FCC has perversely impaired the ability of ISPs to compete for online advertisers.

Not what you’d expect from an FCC chairman who liked to chant “competition, competition, competition” as his raison d’etre.

Google and its minions are understandably upset Congress might upend this regulatory arbitrage, and they have come out swinging. A Feb. 20 blog post by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in defense of the FCC’s rules begins with a breathtaking subtitle: “Cable and telephone companies are pushing Congress to make it illegal for the federal government to protect online consumer privacy.”

Please. Even if the FCC’s new privacy rules are repealed, there are myriad layers of federal and state protection for consumers. None are mentioned in EFF’s blog.

Where to begin? At the federal level, the FCC has authority under section 222 of the Communications Act to prevent privacy abuses by telephone providers. Section 222 was originally designed to prevent traditional telephone companies from giving their wireless subsidiaries an unfair advantage over unaffiliated wireless companies by sharing customer information with them.

Not content with section 222? Repeal of the FCC’s new privacy rules will not prevent the FCC from establishing a different privacy regime going forward. For example, in the name of regulatory symmetry, the new FCC could replicate the same opt-out standard used by the Federal Trade Commission.

Perhaps anticipating this rejoinder, EFF claims without citation to any case law or precedent that the mechanism being considered by Congress to repeal the FCC’s privacy rules “could possibly bar the FCC from enacting future consumer privacy rules even if they are more industry friendly.” Adding “possibly” after “could” seems redundant, unless there is simply no basis for making such a claim. (I’m anxious to be corrected.)

Moreover, repeal of the FCC’s privacy rules will not prevent Congress from establishing a different privacy regime going forward. To the extent that Congress repeals both the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order and its privacy rules, the FTC would be placed firmly back in control of privacy enforcement for ISPs. Before the FCC’s reclassification of ISPs as common carriers in March 2015 took away the FTC’s authority, the FTC was the primary privacy cop on the beat for ISPs. For example, in 2014, the FTC sanctioned AT&T Mobility for its alleged failure to adequately inform its customers of its data-throttling program.

EFF has argued that a recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision stripped the FTC of its “authority to penalize cable and telephone companies if they deceive their customers, meaning the FCC is the only broadband consumer protection agency.” But Congress could eliminate the FTC’s common-carrier exception, assuming the GOP majority could convince eight Democratic senators to overcome the filibuster rule. This would also return privacy enforcement to the FTC.

Moving beyond federal protections, several states add yet another layer of protection against potential privacy abuses by ISPs. For example, Nevada and Minnesota require ISPs to keep private certain information concerning their customers, unless the customer gives permission to disclose it. And under California law, non-financial businesses, including ISPs, are required to disclose to customers, in writing or by email, the types of personal information sold to a third party for direct marketing purposes.

If and when the FCC’s new privacy rules are overruled, the statute that empowers the agency to police privacy abuses by ISPs will still apply. And nothing prevents the FCC from designing a different (and more symmetric) regulatory standard.

Repeal of the FCC’s new rules will simply restore the regulatory environment that existed for more than 18 months between its reclassification decision and its privacy rules. Given the myriad layers of protections and regulatory options, the notion that repeal would leave the ISPs without any privacy regulator is patently false.

Hal J. Singer is a principal at Economists Incorporated and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and has served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business.

Samsung Electronics is committing $1.2 billion to U.S. research and project support for Internet of Things ventures during the next four years, seeking to accelerate development of IoT projects ranging from smart cities and consumer services to industrial and healthcare initiatives.  

At a Washington symposium on Tuesday (June 21), Samsung vice chairman/CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon also unveiled the "National IoT Strategy Dialogue," a consortium of technology companies that will address the upcoming Department of Commerce IoT proceeding and the pending "Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things" (DIGIT) Act in Congress. Intel is the initial co-founder, and the Information Technology Industry Council will manage the "Strategy Dialogue" advocacy group, which will seek additional members from the technology and communications sectors.

At the Samsung-sponsored “Internet of Things – Transforming the Future” conferenceKwon urged that IoT advocates put a priority on "technologies that connect each other." He urged that organizations should “start talking and thinking differently about IoT,” recommending greater concentration on "a human-centered approach, embracing the life-changing possibilities of the technology."

At the well-attended event, government and technology leaders offered a variety of perspectives on the evolving IoT infrastructure, which many expect will find its first major acceptance in enterprise and industrial applications, including "smart city" ventures -- a topic that many cable operators, along with other telecom providers -- are exploring.  

Speakers also examined IoT initiatives that will affect aging, education, agriculture, autonomous vehicles and other proposed application. But they also acknowledged that the coming years will generate IoT ventures that are as-of-yet unimaginable.

Alan Davidson, director of Digital Economy and senior advisor to Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, confirmed that an IoT policy "green paper" will be posted by autumn.

"We've seen something  that is a confluence of both technical capabilities and business imperatives and demand ... that will be qualitatively different," said Davison, who was formerly a top Google lobbyist in Washington. "We're very excited about what's going to happen [in] industrial IoT," he added, emphasizing that the "policy issues are a little less fraught" than in consumer applications. He added that he expects internal Commerce Department units will adopt IoT technologies quickly for uses in census, weather and other services, citing IoT's "ubiquity of connectivity."

Like many other speakers, Davidson emphasized the privacy and security hurdles in IoT.

"A lot of the bedrocks of our privacy approach are challenged in this area," he said, citing as an example "devices where people cannot click on a privacy notice. We'll have to be clever and innovative on how we give consumers notice and how we use data."  

Davidson also said that policy will look at "field upgradability."

"Do consumers even know that this is something that have to do?" he asked rhetorically. "It is challenging the traditional notions. We've asked a lot about [security]... We're keenly interested in these issues. It will be a big part of a paper we'll  put out in the fall."

Issa Challenges Spectrum Issues in IoT Rollout

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) focused on the wireless appetite of the growing IoT ecosystem and warned that current spectrum policy is not prepared for the onslaught.

"For the IoT to do what the Internet did, government has to recognize it's outgrown them," said Issa, a co-founder of the Congressional Internet Caucus and  chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet.

"Government has been selling spectrum as a way of doing business and promoting business," he said. "We take billions of dollars from companies and we say we're doing them a favor ... when what we're really doing is balancing the budget on a hidden tax. Worse than a tax, it's a one-time sale."

"The Internet is available to all of us because we did not sell the spectrum of the Internet," Issa said. Citing unlicensed spectrum availability, Issa proposed that "every other bit of spectrum in a non-interferenced [sic] process ... needs to be opened up.

"Government needs to say that no spectrum is off-limits as long as it does not interfere with existing ... obligations. When those run out ... government [should] create almost unlimited unlicensed space. ...  That's the future of the IoT," Issa said.

"Those of us who care about the IoT going beyond anything described here ...  need to realize that infinite bandwidth available everywhere and monetized by self-interest  rather than by exclusive license is the future of the IoT," he emphasized. "Everybody pays their own way by creating/innovating a new product... that opens a greater connectivity to other products."