The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board will seek to define privacy at a Nov. 12 event in Washington, it said Wednesday. The public meeting will include discussions “with industry representatives, academics, technologists, government personnel, and members of the advocacy community,” the PCLOB notice said (http://1.usa.gov/1rqFBOZ). “While the Board will address the definition of privacy in the context of government counterterrorism programs, it is also interested in what conceptual interests are involved in the protection of privacy, how the impact of technology has affected privacy, what privacy interests have been identified by government privacy officials, what lessons have been learned in the private sector, and what the best way is for government to address privacy concerns.” Stakeholders can submit comments on the topic, PCLOB said. It will be 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Washington Marriott Georgetown Hotel. The event is expected to include four panels, but panelists haven't been announced.

A series of defendants agreed to pay nearly $10 million in a settlement with the FTC for allegedly using text messages to lure customers into a "robocalling" scam. Many customers received illegal robocalls, phony "free" merchandise offers "and unauthorized charges crammed on their mobile phone bills," the FTC said Wednesday in a news release (http://1.usa.gov/1t5fylY). The first set of defendants is required to pay $7.8 million, and the second set must pay $1.4 million, it said. Another set of defendants must pay $100,000 plus proceeds from the sale of certain assets, after an $8 million judgment was suspended "due to the defendants' inability to pay," FTC said. The defendants are banned from illegally telemarketing consumers through robocalling, it said. The commission also dropped charges against two defendants in the cases.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence updated its surveillance assessment and recent shifts in practices, in an 11-page report (http://1.usa.gov/1t2TKqU) released Friday. It included four principles on collection of surveillance intelligence -- that such activities should be guided by statute or executive order, that they should incorporate privacy and civil liberties concerns, that collection of foreign private commercial and trade information should happen only in the name of security concerns and that such activities should be “tailored as feasible.” There should be limits on the use of data collected in bulk, it said. The report provided details of progress in response to President Barack Obama’s ambitions on surveillance overhaul, as outlined in January. “In the coming months, we will continue to work to complete this review,” ODNI said in an accompanying blog post (http://1.usa.gov/ZD7tZl).

A report by NTIA shows that broadband adoption has progressed faster than any other communications technology, but efforts to increase adoption aren’t complete. The data in the report released last week (see 1410160046) shows home adoption is still growing “despite the fact that the remainder of non-adopting households are some of the most difficult to reach,” NCTA said in a news release (http://bit.ly/10enCWs). Data also shows that relevance is a difficult and “entrenched” problem “that requires creative solutions targeted at the diverse communities that are affected,” it said, referring to the finding that 48 percent of non-Internet households claimed not to have an interest in home broadband. While the report acknowledges expense as a reason for non-adoption, it "fails to unpack the variety of hardware, software, and service components that together make up the expense of adopting broadband.” Without data on these expense elements, some may wrongly attribute the totality of such costs solely to ISPs, “when in reality such expenses can be related to several factors,” it said.

The FCC International Bureau formally terminated docket 04-398, following up on a 2004 notice of inquiry seeking data and analysis on the effect of foreign mobile termination rates on U.S. customers. “With the passage of time, this Notice and the record in this proceeding have become outdated,” the bureau said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1v9IzNy). The FCC also recently revised reporting requirements “to track more effectively the different settlement rates for fixed and mobile networks,” the bureau said.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study lends credence to the view that Netflix “allowed congestion to increase until it affected its performance” in order to “gain bargaining leverage” with Comcast, wrote Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology Executive Director Fred Campbell in an op-ed (http://bit.ly/1scg0xN) in the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman Wednesday. Campbell cited an MIT and Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis study (http://bit.ly/1oGQoJG) that said Netflix forced its traffic “through clogged delivery routes, when less congested channels were available.” Netflix was not immediately available for comment.

Privacy advocates and the government faced off in oral argument Wednesday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. The case, Under Seal v. Eric Holder, Jr., was on the National Security Letter authority that the FBI uses in the course of government surveillance. Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl argued to limit the authority -- he “will urge a federal appeals court today to uphold a groundbreaking ruling that the National Security Letter (NSL) provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional,” an EFF media advisory said (http://bit.ly/1rXAxFb). EFF initially predicted that audio from the oral argument would be streamed live, but it was not. EFF was told audio would be available later, it said. The judges were Sandra Ikuta, Mary Murguia and N.R. Smith.

The NSA listed several safeguards to prevent improper surveillance of individuals, in an NSA Director of Civil Liberties and Privacy Office report released Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/1oO6I6v). NSA employees whose training is incomplete or outdated aren’t allowed to use targeted surveillance systems and such surveillance must fall under the requirements in the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, it said. An NSA senior analyst or supervisor must review all targeting requests before they take place, it said. Senior officers must review data recovered by such targeting to verify that the data contains “foreign intelligence on foreign targets,” said the report. If an individual is mistakenly targeted, those involved in the surveillance must end operations; if the mistaken individual is a U.S. citizen, all collected data must be removed from NSA systems, it said. Initial collection and related decisions are “auditable,” it said.

NTIA will seek comment on the current and potential availability of communications services in the Arctic region, in a notice scheduled for Friday’s Federal Register (http://bit.ly/1xFRTeo). Comments are due 30 days after the publication. The NTIA efforts follow a January implementation plan from the White House seeking an assessment of “current and potential availability of telecommunications services in the Arctic region, including local and long-distance terrestrial, commercial mobile cellular, public safety services, emergency services, navigational safety and satellite voice, and broadband channel availability by the end of 2014.” NTIA also seeks comment on investment in the region and management of Arctic spectrum.

The FCC has been using “sandbox thinking,” used in the technology sector to test out ideas in practice, but the agency needs to do more, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told the Democracy Symposium Tuesday, according to prepared remarks posted by the agency (http://bit.ly/1mMLv0X). Citing broadcast channel-sharing in Los Angeles and AT&T’s IP trials, she said that “this sandbox thinking is yielding dividends -- at the FCC and in the communications sector. But we need to expand it.” Rosenworcel said that “if we need our regulatory state to be more agile and more innovative, why not take a page from technology itself?"