Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, whose last job at the social media company was working on the counterespionage team, may have opened up a new front in Congress’s war on the social platform.

That came during a hearing in the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security, where she was testifying on children's online safety and the alleged lack of it when it came to Facebook.

She was explaining that among the things she looked at was China’s tracking and surveillance using the platform and Iran’s tracking of other state actors. She said Facebook’s “consistent” understaffing of their counterespionage information operations and counterterrorism was a national security threat.

She said she was already speaking with “other parts of Congress” about it.

That got the immediate attention of Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), a member of the Armed Services Committee, who asked whether she was saying that whether Facebook knew it or not it was being used by the country's adversaries “to push and promote their interests at the expense of America’s.”

Haugen said that Facebook was “very aware” that it was happening and the fact that Congress does not get a report from the company on how many people are working on the issue internally is "unacceptable." She told the committee she had “strong national security concerns” about how Facebook operates.

Subcommittee chairman Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told Haugen, “you may have just opened an area for another hearing.” He said “we may want to discuss this issue,” at least informally and possibly for another hearing, which Sullivan definitely supported.

House Energy & Commerce Committee chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) said he plans an Oct. 6 hearing on strengthening communications networks, given consumers’ reliance on them for health care, work, news, entertainment and connecting with loved ones.

Accessibility and affordability of those networks are a priority of the committee, as is cybersecurity.

Also Read: House E&C Extends Suspect Tech Ban to Non-Subsidized Nets

“Next week, we will consider several bills designed to advance that mission,” Pallone and Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), the Technology Subcommittee chairman, said in a joint statement. “We look forward to considering these bills and working together on common-sense policies that enable these networks to meet consumers’ needs, now and into the future.”

One way Congress has been promoting future-proof networks is to disallow technology that represents a threat to national security to remain in U.S. networks, primarily by directing the FCC to deny broadband subsidy funding to suppliers of suspect technology.

Another is to emphasize that competition and affordability should be part of the definition of universal access to broadband networks, both wired and wireless.

The FCC has told a federal appeals court that Huawei is wrong on all counts in its challenge to the commission's decision to exclude suspect tech in general from its Universal Service Fund subsidies and, tentatively, Huawei in particular. 

Even if the FCC had not moved to exclude technology deemed a national security threat from the USF dollars, the Congress seconded that with legislation that required it. 

The FCC filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Huawei's appeal of the FCC decision, saying the court can make its decision based on those briefs but that it is ready to go to court for oral argument if it has to. It said the Huawei petition should be denied. 

And while the FCC lays out its argument against Huawei's position, it said the court doesn't even have jurisdiction over the Huawei petition because that petition is not "ripe," in part because the decision to exclude Huawei--and ZTE--tech from the USF funds is tentative, so not a final FCC action, so not ripe for a challenge.  

The FCC voted unanimously not to allow USF fund money to go to carriers using tech from companies that threaten the integrity of networks or supply chains, then tentatively concluded that included Chinese telecoms Huawei and ZTE. The commission told the court that it reasonably concluded that networks with security vulnerabilities that could allow for foreign surveillance "were not 'quality' networks capable of furthering the goal of universal service." 

As to Huawei's assertion that the FCC does not have the authority to make national security judgments, the FCC said they are meritless given its congressionally delegated expertise in evaluating supply chains and networks, including for national security issues.  

While Huawei said the national security call has to be made by the President, the FCC said that separation of powers is demonstrably false, pointing out that part of the FCC's charter was national defense and promoting safety of life and property. 

As to Huawei's challenge to its designation as suspect tech in need of exclusion, the FCC said that was premature since it has not made a final designation (though it will almost certainly be to exclude it). 

"Carriers may still use USF funding for Huawei products or services unless and until the Commission makes a final designation decision—at which point, Huawei can seek judicial review," said the FCC, but added: "In any event, the Commission considered ample evidence that Huawei posed a potential threat to America’s communications networks, including information it received from members of Congress and Executive agencies with national security expertise." 

Verizon says it received just under 140,000 "demands" for U.S. customer information from U.S. law enforcement officials in the second half of 2015, on par with previous half-year totals. Of those, it said it rejected almost 5% for various reasons.

Separately, the company received something under 500 national security demands from the FBI--it is only allowed to report a general range (0-499 in this case). It also received some number of demands from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, but can't report those ranges for six months.

"While we have a legal obligation to provide customer information to law enforcement in response to lawful demands, we take seriously our duty to provide such information only when authorized by law," Verizon said in releasing its latest report, the third year since telecoms were allowed to reveal aggregate totals of requests in various categories.

The company said there are numerous reasons for denying the requests, from believing them legally invalid, from getting requests for info actually held by another provider, to requests for info it does not have (not longer retained, for example).

The total was 139,568 demands, which broke down into 65,633 subpoenas, 33, 813 court orders, 14,248 warrants and 25,844 emergency requests

The issue of government data collection has been a hot-button subject in Washington in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks and most recently as Congress has worked on cybersecurity legislation and the U.S. works on coming up with a new safe harbor regime for European data stored in this country.

Given that the U.S. makes demands on a host of companies here and abroad, Verizon points out that their numbers provide an incomplete picture and called on the U.S. government to itself make public the total number of demands from telecom, Internet and other companies."

We therefore, again, call on all governments to make public the number of demands they make for customer information "from telecom, Internet and other companies.

The transparency report figures include wireline services--phone, Internet or television--and Wireless service. It does not include, which Verizon bought June 2015.