FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says he will follow the facts and the law, but will not prejudge a petition being filed by the Trump Administration seeking the FCC's help in regulating social media. He also would not say whether he thought the Sec. 230 exemption from civil liability for third-party postings needed reforming, as the petition seeks. His colleagues were not simmilarly reticent. 

Pai was grilled by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (R-S.D.), and then probed by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), on his view both om whether Sec. 230 reform is warranted, and whether Congress would be the better venue for any change, if necessary. 

Under questioning by Thune, all the commissioners but Pai said they thought Sec. 230 was ripe for reform-the chairman declined to "opine" before he saw the petition, but also said he had not formed an opinion on the issue--and that Congress, not the FCC, was the best place to do that, though Commissioner Brendan Carr suggested the FCC and Justice also had roles. 

Blumenthal said he thought the order was an assault on the credibility and legitimacy of the First Amendment and the FCC, "directing you to do something that you simply do not have the authority to do." 

He said that if Pai cared about his agency, its integrity and its authority, "you will stand up for it and avoid the President's effort to engage you in retailiating against his political rivals and against tech companies who happen to be on the other side of issues from him." 

Pai said he could not "dispel the regulatory overhang" because he had not seen the petition, after which he would follow the facts and the law. 

But when asked by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), all the commissioners agreed Big Tech had a transparency problem, though Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said the key would be for the FCC to see the petition as quickly as possible so it did not become an overhang on the election. 

Related: Starks Tells NTIA to Bring On Petition

Starks has called on the Trump Administration to file the petition sooner than it initially signaled, but also signaled himself he does not think the FCC has the authority to do what the President Wants. 

Cruz said if the FCC could simply provide for more transparency in terms of how speech was being blocked or throttled by edge providers it would "transform" the ability to address what he said was the problem of censorship of conservative speech.

Republicans are continuing to put pressure on Big Tech over concerns conservative speech is being censored. 

That was the allegation behind President Donald Trump's executive order seeking regulations on social media's treatment of third-party content. 

In a letter to Google CEO Sindar Pichai Wednesday (June 17), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, cited Google's "latest actions to censor political speech with which it disagrees." 

The letter came almost a year to the day after Cruz oversaw a hearing entitled "Google and Censorship through Search Engines." 

That was a reference to conservative web site The Federalist and reports that "would no longer be able to generate revenue from any advertisement served by Google Ads - allegedly because of a reader comment that violated Google's advertising policies." 

On Fox & Friends, Federalist publisher Ben Domenech said that under that threat, the site had taken down its comment section temporarily, but said it was coming back.  

"The recent actions of Google to ‘demonetize' a conservative media publisher, The Federalist, raise serious concerns that Google is abusing its monopoly power in an effort to censor political speech with which it disagrees," Cruz wrote.  

He is among the Republicans who is convinced there is systemic bias against conservative speech in Silicon Valley and who have issues with the Sec. 230 civil liability immunity Web sites enjoy for their handling of most third-party posts, either taking them down or leaving them up.  

In the Federalist's Case, Domenech said they don't moderate the comments, pointing out that Google owns YouTube, whose comment section is notoriously free-for-all. 

"This is part of a bigger problem. The culture of free speech in this country is under attack, and Google is helping lead the charge," wrote Cruz. "Whereas Americans once understood that the best response to speech was more speech, some Americans, with the help of some of the most powerful companies on the planet, are now pressing to silence and punish those expressing views that do not align with the prevailing and ever-shifting progressive orthodoxy." 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is self-quarantining after revealing he has come into contact with two people who have tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus. 

He told CBS This Morning Friday (March 13) that he was extending his self-quarantine after learning of the second person, a Spanish government official. The first was at CPAC, the conservative conference in Washington. 

Related: CPAC Attendee Tested Positive For Coronavirus 

Cruz is the only Senator currently quarantined, and he said that was only out of an abundance of caution since he is asymptomatic, and has not been tested.  

"I remain strong and healthy and have no symptoms," said Cruz. "And, based on the medical advice I've-- I've received-- there's very little reason to be concerned. But given the gravity of this health crisis, it is also wise to be prudent." 

Cruz said he had not been tested, adding that his physician told him not to get tested unless he got sick because it is "medically ineffective if you are not sick." He did say the country needed to do a much better job of getting tests out into the field.  

Google got hammered in the Senate Constitution Subcommittee Tuesday (July 16).

It should have come as no surprise since the title of the hearing was “Google and Censorship Through Search Engines," one of at least three hearings targeting edge providers Tuesday, and was presided over by chairman Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who has consistently alleged that Google (including YouTube), and other edge providers, are biased against conservatives, including by characterizing their content as hate speech. 

Cruz said that one thing was certain: Congress never intended big tech companies to control speech using Sec. 230 of the Communications Act, which gives tech companies liability protection from third-party content. 

He said Americans are now subject to overt censorship and covert manipulation, so it is time to re-think that Sec. 230 liability carve-out. He said unless Big Tech can provide "clear and compelling evidence" that it is not playing "Big Brother" with its vast powers, there is no reason they should have a special Sec. 230 subsidy. 

He said the heart of the problem was lack of transparency and that Big Tech can no longer "hide behind its algorithms."

Ranking member Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) echoed her longstanding criticism that there was no evidence of conservative bias and that such claims were baseless. She said given that only three months the subcommittee held a hearing on allegations of anticonservative bias, where Republicans claimed a vast conspiracy to silence conservative voice, it felt like Groundhog Day. 

Hirono said study after study have debunked the claims, finding no evidence that Google biases results against conservatives. But, she said, edge provider fears of being tarred as biased has instead made tech companies hesitant to deal with racist and harassing content.

Karan Bhatia, VP of government affairs and public policy for Google, was definitive about how it operates. "[L]et me be clear: Google is not politically biased," she testified. "Indeed, we go to extraordinary lengths to build our products and enforce our policies in an analytically objective, apolitical way.... At any particular moment, in response to any particular search, some of that information may be unsatisfying to one group or another. Our job — which we take very seriously — is to deliver to users the most relevant and authoritative information out there. And studies have shown that we do just that."

But Hirono had what she called some real problems with Big Tech. One of those is the fact that despite repeated efforts by her father, Andy, to have them removed, videos of the murder of WDBJ Roanoke reporter Allison Parker and her colleague Adam Ward remain available on YouTube almost four years after the tragedy.  

She pointed out to Bhatia that Andy Parker had not only sent letters to Google but met with the company and "begged" that the videos come down. She asked why a father should have to monitor and flag to have video of his daughter's murder taken down. 

Bhatia expressed his "deepest sympathy" for what Parker had gone through, though it was not clear whether he meant the underlying tragedy or the attempt to get it off YouTube. He conceded they had engaged with Parker over time, but that there were different sets of video. He said one set was hoax videos asserting the murder hadn't happened. He said those have been taken down (Andy Parker, who was a witness on the committee's second panel, could be seen shaking his head vigorously in the background as Bhatia talked. Bhatia said the second set are a variety of videos that could include news footage and, there, there is the question of copyright and whether some of the videos are owned by Parker. But where there are news videos, YouTube would generally tend to leave them up even if they are disturbing, perhaps labeling consistent with its policies.

When asked by Hirono, he said they had taken down the videos they could legally take down. 

Asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) about President Trump's "treason" comment related to Peter Thiel's allegation about the company, Bhatia said there had been no infiltration of the company by China intelligence. Blumenthal appeared satisfied. 

But Blumenthal said the hourglass had run out on Big Tech on issues like antitrust and privacy and hoped Google was thinking about profound change, which would be necessary.

He also suggested it might have run  out on the overly broad Sec. 230.

During his testimony before the committee, Andy Parker said the pain of his daughter's death was amplified by the first person video the killer posted on YouTube. Parker has been advocating for gun control, and said that people who say the "alleged" murder was just a conspiracy to get their guns, have posted portions of that video online as part of "hate-filled" diatribes aimed at his family and Allison's former boyfriend.

He said he implored Google to take down the video and conspiratorial content and their response was that he should flag the content. "They wanted me to watch my daughter's murder and explain to a robot why it should be removed." 

He said he will never look at the video "for obvious reasons." 

Parker said that while they profess a desire to help, "in reality they do nothing." 

Parker said on May 1 he had a video conference with Google about specific content and attempts to have it removed, Google said they were "really trying." Then silence until the morning of the hearing, when he said he finally got an email from Google. Parker said that thanks to Sec. 230 Google has no incentive to take the harassing content down.

He said Congress should scrap the section and hold Google responsible for the conspiratorial content it allows on the platform. 

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) says blocking the U.S. handoff of oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which deals with domain names, to a multistakeholder model is "shocking" and an attempt to "restrict the freedom of the Internet."

Fellow senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has major issues with the transition, has backed a bill to block it absent congressional approval and is holding a hearing on the issue Wednesday (Sept. 14) in the Senate Judiciary Committee's Oversight Subcommittee--Cruz is chairman of the subcommittee.

In advance of the hearing, Schatz released a statement saying that Cruz's effort to "delay or stop" the transition -- the U.S. contract is set to expire at the end of this month --"flies in the face of the U.S. business and tech communities, our international partners and those who created the Internet, who all are united in supporting concluding this transition in order to preserve the Internet as we know it – an open and global platform for free speech, innovation and commerce."

Tech companies and ISPs generally support the transition so long as that does not mean ceding control to countries like China or Russia, which the Obama Administration says isn't going to happen.

While Cruz has suggested Congress has to sign off on the transition, the Government Accountability Office said this week that that was not the case.

National Telecommunications and Information Administration chief Larry Strickling has a message for Sen. Ted Cruz: "Do not give a gift to Russia and other authoritarian nations by blocking this transition."

That was is according to his prepared testimony for a hearing Wednesday (Sept. 14) in the Senate Judiciary Oversight Subcommittee--Cruz is chairman.

NTIA's contract expires at the end of this month as the Obama Administration transitions oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which deals with domain names, from the U.S. to a multistakeholder model.

Cruz has been trying to delay the transition and argues Congress needs to sign off first, arguing that the hand-off could mean handing power over the Internet to countries like Russia and China.

Strickling says it is "extreme and wrong" to claim the transition would be a giveaway to China or Russia, saying the contract is too limited to be a tool for protecting Internet freedom, while "failing to follow through on the transition or unilaterally extending the contract will only embolden authoritarian regimes to intensify their advocacy for government-led or intergovernmental management of the Internet via the United Nations."

"No one has set forth even a plausible scenario as to how that could happen, and the fact is it simply will not happen as a result of completing the transition," he plans to tell Cruz and the subcommittee. He says the suggestion that the handoff is a giveaway is one of the "misperceptions and outright misrepresentations" being circulated by its opponents.

Strickling's bottom line message: "The best and most effective way to preserve Internet freedom is to depend on the community of stakeholders who own and operate, transact business and exchange information over the myriad of networks that comprise the Internet."

He said the handoff plan meets the four key must-haves and that it wil

• "support and enhance the multistakeholder model of Internet governance;

• "maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS;

• "meet the needs and expectations of the global customers and partners of the IANA services; and

• "maintain the openness of the Internet."

Tech and cable companies have been generally supportive of the hand-off so long as it delivers on those.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has posted a YouTube video explaining why internet service providers should not be regulated under Title II.

In the video, of a speech on the issue in Austin, Tex., last week, Cruz says that smart phones should be outside of Title II, and uses black rotary phone and cell phone to illustrate the difference between calcified public utility regulations and the innovation start-ups and entrepreneurs.

He said the simple message is: "Don't mess with the Internet."

Cruz, who told the crowd his parents were computer programmers back in the 1950s and 1960s, the era of key punches and cards and vacuum tubes, said it is now a whole different world and that the President's call for regulating ISPs under decades- old Title II was the worst thing that could happen. "The government shouldn't be picking winners and losers," he said. He argued that it was regulation that favored "the big guys with armies of lobbyists," rather than the startups and innovators.

Cruz is also the former chair of the Internet Task Force at the Federal Trade Commission, he pointed out.

"The worst thing you want is for five unelected bureaucrats in Washington to take charge of regulating the Internet as a public utility," he said.

Cruz also said 'net freedom is a speech issue and an empowerment issue and an entrepreneurship issue, and that that freedom depends on not "messing with the Internet" by imposing the "plague" of excessive regulation. He said that includes no Internet sales tax--there is a bill that could be voted on in the lame duck session, the Mainstreet Fairness Act  that would impose a sales tax on 'net transactions by eliminating the requirement that a business be connected by brick and mortar with a taxing jurisdiction.

He also argued for the U.S. not handing domain name registering over to international stakeholders.

The FCC is currently considering numerous approaches to restoring network neutrality rules, including using Sec. 706 authority to promote broadband deployment, Title II authority to regulate monopoly markets--treating ISPs as so-called "terminating monopolies" of Internet access--or some combination of the two.