The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative seeks comment on Chinese compliance with World Trade Organization commitments, and will convene an Oct. 1 public hearing on the matter. Comments and testimony will be used to compile an annual USTR report on Chinese WTO compliance. The U.S. has claimed victory in a number of recent disputes with China, including the early August WTO appellate body decision to affirm China violated trade rules through its export restraint regime on two rare earth metals. Comments should be submitted on www.regulations.gov under docket number USTR-2014-0015. Comments and requests to participate at the hearing are due Sept. 17, said a USTR notice appearing in Friday’s Federal Register (http://1.usa.gov/1nTxQz3).

The government’s email metadata surveillance program suffered from years of “systemic overcollection,” said a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) decision declassified Monday (http://bit.ly/1oYk1nF). The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified Monday a trove of FISC orders, judicial oversight documents and NSA inspector general audits after a White House review and Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Privacy and Information Center. In its blog post, ODNI said “this Internet communications metadata bulk collection program has been discontinued” since 2011 because of the concerns of both the FISC and NSA.

The government must declassify in full a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) decision on the government’s Patriot Act Section 215-authorized surveillance programs (http://1.usa.gov/1yekcfM), said a Thursday FISC ruling, released Friday in docket Misc. 13-02. The American Civil Liberties Union last summer filed motions to declassify the opinion, the ruling noted. The government has until Aug. 29 to release the Feb. 19, 2013, opinion.

TIA said its TR-42.1 Engineering Committee on Commercial Building Telecommunications Cabling is developing an American National Standards Institute-accredited standard for physical network security for ICT networks that it believes will also address telecom networks’ cybersecurity concerns. The standard, TIA-5017, will cover the security of telecom cables and other physical infrastructure by consolidating existing security measures and new guidelines into one document, TIA said. The standard will also incorporate an integrated security approach that includes recent developments in automated administration management that will help locate unauthorized connections, TIA said.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is trying to learn more about the U.S. government’s collection of communications under Executive Order 12333, filing a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, it said in a blog post Friday (http://bit.ly/1nZWW4Z). The full scope of the programs 12333 authorizes is not known, and EPIC said it hopes its requests to the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the NSA “will shed light on these invasive programs.” The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board recently said it would examine 12333 after issuing reports on Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (CD July 24 p4).

A “weak slate of movies” at Redbox and high World Cup viewership “stunted the typical seasonal lift we get in June when summer vacation begins” and contributed to lower-than-expected Q2 rentals, Outerwall CEO Scott Di Valerio said on a quarterly earnings call Thursday. As a result, Redbox revenue fell 6.9 percent from Q2 a year earlier to $445.5 million, based on lower rental activity, the company said. But Blu-ray “continued to perform well and grew as a percent of Redbox revenue and rentals,” Di Valerio said. Neither Outerwall nor Verizon is pleased with the rate of subscriber growth at the Redbox Instant by Verizon streaming service that launched two years ago, Di Valerio said in Q&A, though neither partner has disclosed subscriber figures publicly. The good news from Outerwall’s standpoint is that “transactional” VoD viewing at Redbox Instant platform is increasing, he said. The bad news is that Outerwall has poured $63 million into the service since 2012 and is obligated contractually to invest millions more, he said: “We're continuing to work with Verizon around our Redbox Instant to see if there’s proper ways from a funding perspective to increase subscribers and continue to grow out the business.” But “if we don’t hit certain subscriber thresholds, then we have some decisions to make in March,” he said. That was a reference to a statement in Outerwall’s 10-Q SEC filing Thursday (http://bit.ly/1ljNqEc) in which it said Redbox “has certain rights to cause Verizon to acquire Redbox’s interest” in Redbox Instant “at fair value.” The filing said “the earliest point we could provide our notice of intent to withdraw is expected to be in March.” Verizon representatives didn’t immediately comment.

After a Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated its judgment favoring Akamai in a patent lawsuit against Limelight Networks. The Federal Circuit referred the case to two panel members and a newly selected judge, it said in an order issued Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/1k4qltX). In June, the Supreme Court ruled against Akamai, saying a company can only claim patent infringement if another company was involved in every step of the infringement (CD Jun 3 p4). The ruling overturned a 2012 appeals court decision “and remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion,” said the Federal Circuit.

The Federal Aviation Administration extended by 60 days to Sept. 23 the comment deadline on its notice of interpretation on the rules for model aircraft, the FAA said in a notice in Friday’s Federal Register (http://1.usa.gov/1khzEam). The FAA wants to crack down on what it calls the increasing recklessness of hobbyists who fly small drones for recreational purposes, and is proposing sweeping enforcement measures that has many in the model aircraft community up in arms (CD July 22 p10). The Academy of Model Aeronautics, which has orchestrated a big comments submission campaign at the FAA, asked for the extension so it could “educate the aeromodeling community, clarify the issues, and respond to questions regarding the impact that the interpretive rule has on various aspects of the modeling activity,” the extension notice said. “The FAA agrees that additional time for the submission of comments would be helpful,” the agency said. By early Sunday, more than 29,300 comments had been filed in docket FAA-2014-0396 on the rule interpretation (http://1.usa.gov/1tr8MVl). The vast majority of comments were critical of the FAA’s effort to impose new restrictions on model aircraft. Observers say the rule interpretation on model aircraft has broad implications for the FAA’s long-awaited rulemaking on commercial operations of small drones because it hasn’t ruled out including hobbyist drones in any future rulemaking.

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council is seeking volunteers for two new task groups supporting the Broadband Working Group, the organization said (http://bit.ly/WqQHvw). The Priority & Quality of Service (QoS) group will review and refresh the 2012 NPSTC Priority and QoS document, and the Local Control group will review and refresh the 2012 NPSTC Local Control document, NPSTC said. The two groups will be a collaboration of input from industry and public safety, according to the council.

Jing Wang, former president-global business operations at Qualcomm, pleaded guilty Monday to insider trading in shares of Qualcomm and Atheros, the Department of Justice said (http://1.usa.gov/1k8IhDX). Wang also pleaded guilty to laundering the proceeds using an offshore shell company, in federal court in San Diego before U.S. District Judge William Hayes. “Not satisfied with his lucrative executive position at Qualcomm, Jing Wang traded on insider information about the company’s acquisitions and earnings to gain an illegal advantage in the financial market,” said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell. Wang also laundered close to $250,000 in insider trading profits “and created a cover-up story to hide his crimes.” The insider trading took place on three separate occasions over a 10-month period in 2010-2011, DOJ said.