The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) structure, policies and procedures are consistent with standards in the Inspector General Act of 1978, but there are areas for improvement, said the GAO Wednesday. It recommended that the DHS OIG establish additional automated and supervisory controls to protect the identities of DHS employees who file complaints, having found that existing procedures involve manual recording and are thus subject to “human error.” GAO recommended the OIG develop a policy for obtaining legal advice from counsel, having found that OIG doesn’t have such a policy in place. Twenty-eight reports dealt with IT management, while two dealt with infrastructure protection, GAO said (http://1.usa.gov/1ruR8RV). OIG told GAO it’s revising its online complaint forms to protect employee confidentiality.

The Telecommunications Industry Association praised the Senate Commerce Committee for its unanimous clearance of the E-Label Act (S-2583) Wednesday (CD Sept 18 p8). “The bill will enhance the ability of ICT [information and communications technology] manufacturers to innovate and compete while increasing access to device information for consumers,” TIA President Grant Seiffert said in a statement Thursday (http://bit.ly/ZsgDbH). “The current FCC requirement for manufacturers to either etch or print mandatory regulatory markings on the exterior of devices unnecessarily increases costs, limits design options and ineffectively conveys important information to consumers.” The House passed companion legislation earlier this year.

Sony Electronics in Park Ridge, New Jersey, and its Tokyo parent are jointly patenting technology for a TV, set-top box or DVR that suppresses broadcast or recorded TV commercials and claims to do so much more effectively than current systems. Sony’s system, described in U.S. application 2014/0064705 filed in November 2013, names Brant Candelore of San Diego as the inventor. “Most every business entity advertises to promote products or services, and often pays significant sums of money on such activities to broadcasters and service providers,” said the patent. But consumers “are generally less entertained by advertising,” it said. “To most, an advertisement is an unwanted pause in a program with generally increased volume, and therefore, a significant inconvenience.” Current ad suppression systems, which mute the sound, change the channel or turn the TV off during a commercial are “laborious and prone to error given that a user must guess as to when the commercial break will end,” said Sony. “Despite the ability to fast-forward through commercials, users must still deal with undershoot and overshoot problems.” Thus, despite the advantages of time-shifting over viewing in real-time, “commercial suppression in recorded content is still a manual and laborious task that is prone to error, thereby exacerbating the annoyance and inconvenience brought by commercials in the first place,” it said. Instead, the patented system relies on downloading and storing a library of templates of known commercials, the Sony document said. Downloading is automatic and ongoing, by Internet connection, and the templates contain both audio and video information on the ad’s content and duration, it said. The program being watched is continually compared with the stored templates, and when a match is found, the sound is automatically muted or playback fast-forwarded and the screen blanked until the template signals the end of the ad and switches the set back to normal viewing mode. Attempts to reach inventor Candelore were unsuccessful. Sony representatives didn’t immediately comment.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) reauthorized the government’s telephony metadata collection program, said a joint statement Friday from the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The authorization had been set to expire Friday. Congress has attempted to move forward with bills to curb or eliminate the surveillance program -- authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act -- but a House-passed bill (HR-3361) is stalled in the Senate (CD May 23 p9). “Given that legislation has not yet been enacted, and given the importance of maintaining the capabilities of the Section 215 telephony metadata program, the government has sought a 90-day reauthorization of the existing program,” the two agencies said. The program’s authorization now expires Dec. 5.

The FCC could address concerns about “fast lanes” by prohibiting non-user directed paid prioritization through Communications Act Section 706, Jim Cicconi, AT&T senior executive vice president-external and legislative affairs, and Bob Quinn, senior vice president-federal regulatory, told FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s Chief of Staff Ruth Milkman and General Counsel Jonathan Sallet Thursday, said an ex parte notice filed in docket 14-28 Friday. Arrangements between ISPs and edge providers for other services would be subject to a multifactor test under a “commercial reasonableness” standard, AT&T said. ISPs “would be able to engage in individualized negotiations with edge providers for a host of services, while prohibiting the precise practice that has raised ‘fast lane’ concerns,” it said. The telco said it believes the framework would stand up in court.

The FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) is to meet Sept. 24, the commission said in a notice in Monday’s Federal Register. CSRIC’s working groups are to present updates on emergency warning systems, 911 location accuracy, distributed denial-of-service attacks and cybersecurity best practices (http://bit.ly/1urGZ9c). The meeting is to begin at 1 p.m. in the Commission Meeting Room.

A new standard that allows higher density and lower-cost ethernet connectivity is available from IEEE. The IEEE 802.3bj standard is intended to support connectivity that also is more energy-efficient for rapidly growing ethernet applications like data centers and blade servers, said the IEEE Standards Association Wednesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1rHrYLw). It’s an amendment to the IEEE 802.3 standard, it said. The features are “critical enhancements to the standard that are intended to both optimize and expand Ethernet’s options for physical connectivity,” it said.

After eight years of legal wrangling, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) obtained two legal analysis memos on the “warrantless wiretapping” surveillance program done during the Bush administration, said an EPIC Monday blog post (http://bit.ly/1BnGK13). EPIC received the memos through a lawsuit after the government refused to provide them through a Freedom of Information Act request. The warrantless wiretapping program was part of a broader program, the now-discontinued “Stellar Wind,” that also included collection of emails, phone records and data, EPIC said. The two memos, one from May 2004 (http://bit.ly/1CKlXGN) and another from July 2004 (http://bit.ly/1nGyCki), describe how Stellar Wind related to Executive Order 12333, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Authorization for Use of Military Force following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “The President has the inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs to conduct warrantless surveillance of enemy forces for intelligence purposes to detect and disrupt armed attacks on the United States,” said the May memo. “Congress does not have the power to restrict the President’s exercise of that authority.” It did say, though, that “electronic surveillance under STELLAR WIND must still comply with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.” But the memo concluded that the program’s content collection activities “come within an exception to the Warrant Clause and satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for reasonableness,” and that “meta data collection does not implicate the Fourth Amendment.” The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board issued a report earlier this year, arguing that the current telephony metadata collection program was potentially illegal and unconstitutional. That report came days after President Barack Obama revealed plans to increase surveillance program oversight and transparency (CD Jan 24 p5).

At least 60 percent of the more than 1 million net neutrality comments to the FCC were form letters written by organized campaigns, the Sunlight Foundation said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1oAFcYA) Tuesday about a study it did of the submissions. The form letters, while a majority of the comments, composed a smaller percentage of filings than in other high-profile dockets, including those of the State Department on the Keystone pipeline and the IRS on campaign contributions by social welfare organizations, in which the foundation said more than 75 percent of submissions were form letters. Among other key findings, the study found less than 1 percent of the FCC comments were clearly opposed to net neutrality, at least 200 were written by law firms, and about two-thirds opposed the idea of paid prioritization. Those statements of opposition included many individual comments, but also form letter campaigns organized by Battle for the Net, CREDO Action, Daily Kos, Free Press and the Nation, the study said.

The FCC Wireline Bureau and Office of Strategic Planning released an update Friday offering a better way to evaluate data on whether areas are eligible for Connect America Fund Phase II support. The update allows interested parties to download geospatial files for a selected census tract or county, the FCC said (http://bit.ly/1n4IDaK). “The downloaded file is specifically for use with desktop mapping software to display eligible census blocks, which should help users investigate potential areas for rural broadband experiments and assist parties participating in the Phase II challenge process.”