The administration’s nominee for Central Intelligence Agency general counsel does not personally believe phone surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment, she told the Senate. The Senate Intelligence Committee held an open hearing Tuesday reviewing the nomination of Caroline Diane Krass, currently principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, to be CIA general counsel. Multiple senators quizzed her on Monday’s Klayman v. Obama district court ruling that National Security Agency phone surveillance likely violates the Fourth Amendment (CD Dec 17 p3). Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, raised the question early on. “I haven’t had a chance to study it carefully,” but the decision reflects the battle over the “appropriate balance” being sought in surveillance law, Krass told him of the ruling. Congress appears poised for “legislative response” and she would follow any laws enacted, she said. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, followed up: “I want to ask your personal opinion of whether or not you agree with the judge’s decision.” Krass did not agree, she said. “I have a different view of the Fourth Amendment,” one in which phone metadata are not protected, Krass said, calling the 1979 Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Maryland “good law.” That case has lent legal backing to the U.S. treatment of metadata. She did say much has changed since then and some of those factors are “worth considering.” In written answers to Senate Intelligence questions submitted before the hearing, Krass said she’s not “personally familiar with the CIA’s Attorney General Approved-procedures” on the collection, retention or dissemination of data on U.S. citizens but would make the question a priority if necessary. At the hearing, Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reiterated an earlier statement. “I welcome a Supreme Court review,” Feinstein said. “It’s been more than 30 years” since Smith v. Maryland, she said, telling the nominee, “I think your position is really most important in this. … You are going to encounter some heat from us in that regard.” It’s hard to exercise oversight if the legality is murky, Feinstein said. King said “secret agencies tend toward abuse” and told Krass to be an advocate for the people of the U.S., not the director of the CIA or director of national intelligence.

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn emphasized channel sharing for participants in the broadcast spectrum incentive auction. “Broadcasters get to participate in the auction, receive auction proceeds, stay on the air and continue to serve their audiences,” she said last week at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board meeting. Stations may choose how to share their 6 MHz of bandwidth and noncommercial stations may channel share with commercial stations, she said. The broadcast TV industry “has been, and should continue to be, an important means of meeting the critical information needs of our nation’s communities,” she said. The auctions will be voluntary and the FCC must make reasonable efforts during the channel repack “to preserve the coverage area and population served of each broadcast television licensee,” she said. “Of course, the forward auction will not be a success unless a sufficient number of broadcast television stations participate.” Clyburn also commended the public broadcasting community for its involvement in the American Graduate Program and the Ready to Learn program.

AT&T said Monday it closed its $4.83 billion deal with Crown Castle International (http://soc.att.com/1hi7zKb). The deal, announced in late October, gave Crown Castle control of more than 9,000 AT&T towers for an average of 28 years. Crown Castle will have the option to buy the towers for $4.2 billion at the end of that period. AT&T also sold the tower company about 600 AT&T towers as part of the deal. AT&T will lease back space on the towers for at least the next 10 years, but has the option to re-up its leases for the next 50 years (CD Oct 22 p5). AT&T said it will use the proceeds from the sale for “general corporate purposes, including opportunistic share repurchases and repayment of commercial paper."

Roll out of devices designed to use the unlicensed spectrum in the unused TV bands known as the TV white spaces may ramp up beginning in 2015, said Microsoft Principal Group Program Manager Amer Hassan at a Microsoft panel on unlicensed spectrum Tuesday. Silicon vendors are already starting to design microchips to take advantage of the spectrum, Hassan said. The TV white spaces will become increasingly important as more devices become available that use Wi-Fi connectivity, said several panelists. The Internet of Things, in which everyday devices such as refrigerators and toothbrushes will share data and applications over the Internet, “will be dominated by unlicensed spectrum,” said Richard Thanki of the University of Southampton Institute of Complex Systems Simulation. Thanki said such technology will also have industrial applications, leading to manufacturing equipment and warehouses that take advantage of wireless connectivity. Since the devices don’t need to exchange huge amounts of data, the TV white spaces are particularly suited to their use, Thanki said. All the panelists said the number of devices that take advantage of the white spaces is on the rise. It’s possible that the incentive auction could reduce the amount of available unlicensed spectrum, said New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Project Director Michael Calabrese. The incentive auction has created “uncertainty” about how much of the white spaces will be left in the wake of the repacking process, Calabrese said.

A House bill asks for better disclosure from the intelligence community. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., introduced HR-3779 Monday, and it was referred to the House Intelligence Committee. His co-sponsor is Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a backer of surveillance law updates. Both are members of the Intelligence Committee. The bill text is not yet posted online, and neither the office of Himes nor Schiff was able to provide it to us Tuesday. The bill’s long title said the legislation would “require the Director of National Intelligence to annually submit reports on violations of law or executive order by personnel of the intelligence community, and for other purposes.” Members of Congress have debated intelligence community violations in their examination of surveillance law this session.

The Telehealth Modernization Act was introduced Tuesday by Reps. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, to “provide principles that states can look to for guidance when developing new policies that govern telehealth,” said a joint news release from the members. The release did not say to which committee the bill, which has yet to be given a number, will be referred. Johnson and Matsui serve on the House Commerce Committee, which oversees healthcare and technology issues, the release said. “The Telehealth Modernization Act will create a nationwide telehealth definition to provide clarity regarding the scope of healthcare services that can be safely delivered via telehealth,” said Matsui. “Having worked in the IT industry for over 30 years, I know first-hand the benefits associated with technological innovation,” Johnson said. He cofounded Johnson-Schley Management Group, an information technology consulting company, and helped form J2 Business Solutions, where he provided IT support as a defense contractor to the U.S. military. “In rural districts such as my own, telehealth can increase access to quality care and lower costs,” he said. All 50 states have varying telehealth regulations, the release said. “Telehealth is a central component for creating a technology enabled healthcare system that will increase access to care and lower costs,” said Joel White, executive director of the Health IT Now Coalition, in the release. White supports the bill.

A total of 189.2 million Americans watched 47.1 billion online content videos in November, said comScore Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1cz5XHe). Views of video ads totaled 26.8 billion, said the report. Google Sites were the top “online video content property” with 163.5 million unique viewers, driven primarily by YouTube, the report said. AOL ranked second with 73 million viewers, followed by Facebook (66.2 million), News Distribution Network (51 million) and Yahoo (45.8 million), said the report.

The House bill known as the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act is a “promising vehicle for comprehensive free market reform,” Free State Foundation Adjunct Senior Fellow Seth Cooper said in a Tuesday blog post (http://bit.ly/19b9fp1). HR-3720 would “finally eliminate outdated legacy video regulations that rest on an early 1990s snapshot picture of the video market” and “repeal retrans consent regulations and allow negotiations for carriage of TV broadcast stations to take place in a deregulated and truly free market context,” Cooper said, calling it the “proper direction for reform.” The bill was introduced last week by Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., to a variety of reactions as to its strength and prospects for next year (CD Dec 16 p10). NAB opposes the bill.

The correctional institutions seeking a stay of the FCC’s inmate calling service provider rules lack standing to do so, the attorney for Martha Wright told Wireline Bureau officials Thursday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1fzibnc). “They are merely third-party beneficiaries of the unjust, unreasonable and unfair rates,” wrote the attorney for the Washington, D.C., grandmother who originally petitioned the commission for lower prison phone rates. The request for stay filed by CenturyLink should be denied because the ILEC “failed to provide any new basis for granting the Stay that was not addressed” in the order, the Wright attorney said. The petition for stay filed by Pay Tel should be dismissed because its main argument -- that it would not qualify for safe harbor rates -- “is not sufficient basis for overturning [the] three-tiered structure adopted by the FCC,” the attorney said.

Infoblox completed USGv6 certification, becoming the first network control vendor to pass USGv6 compliance, it said in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1fhEhKc). USGv6 is a standards and testing infrastructure designed to aid the U.S. government’s implementation of IPv6 (http://bit.ly/1fhEhKc). “Infoblox is responding to the global shortage of IPv4 addresses with the industry’s most advanced, interoperable solutions supporting IPv6,” said Cricket Liu, the company’s chief infrastructure officer. Infoblox used the University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Laboratory for compliance testing, it said.