With help from John Hendel and Leah Nylen

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Quick Fix

— Ruh-roh! The House antitrust package that survived a brutal overnight markup is still not ready for the floor, according to the House’s No. 2 Democrat.

— In the House: Lawmakers will hold hearings today that look at secrecy orders used in probes of government leaks (à la Apple and the Trump DOJ), as well as legislation to shore up the nation’s wireless networks.

— Beep boop: Today marks a major robocall deadline in the FCC’s fight against spam calls.

WELCOME TO WEDNESDAY! MORNING TECH IS HALFWAY TO THE LONG WEEKEND. I’m your host, Benjamin Din. Today I learned one of my editors owns pet chickens — which is cool, yet kinda terrifying to me. To each their own!

Got a news tip? Got the scoop on the big announcement from THE ROCK and JEFF BEZOS? Email [email protected]. Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [email protected]. Anything else? Team info below. And don't forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.

Tech of the Town

ANTITRUST BILLS HIT A SNAG — If you thought the bipartisan antitrust package was going to zoom out of the House, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters Tuesday to think otherwise.

“Right now, [the bills] are not ready for the floor, and I don’t want to make a prediction as to when they’re going to be ready,” the Maryland Democrat said, calling for a package “that is constructive, not destructive.” He added that “a lot of discussion” needs to occur before he will schedule the bills for floor time, citing the intraparty dissension among Democrats that arose during the marathon House Judiciary markup.

— Context: Hoyer, as House Majority Leader, sets the floor schedule. His comments aren’t completely unexpected — they reflect moderate Democrats’ and California lawmakers’ desires to see changes to the bill — but as he’s Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lieutenant, his statements carry a lot of weight.

— Also interesting: Hoyer said discussions about the bills will involve Senate input “and what the leadership in the Senate believes it can pass.” The realities of the upper chamber, where Democrats have a razor-thin majority but most bills need 60 votes to pass, complicate prospects for the package as it’s now written.

TECH TALKS ON THE HILL — Ahead of their July Fourth recess, House lawmakers will hold two hearings this morning on topics of interest to tech watchers: how to respond to secrecy orders when law enforcement requests data and how to secure wireless networks (read: from China’s growing telecom threat).

— First up: The House Judiciary Committee will hear testimony from legal experts on how lawmakers can combat prosecutorial excesses. In recent weeks, the Trump-era DOJ has come under criticism for seizing records from companies like Apple about House Democrats, Intelligence Committee staffers and former Trump White House counsel Don McGahn — then using nondisclosure orders to block those same companies from notifying affected users.

Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, says in his written testimony that law enforcement overuses such secrecy orders when they go after Americans’ data. “Without legislative reform, abuses will continue to occur — and they will continue to occur out of sight,” he says.

— And then: Lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce communications and technology subcommittee will hold a hearing on nine mostly bipartisan tech and telecom bills. (MT ran down what’s in those bills on Monday.) Top of mind for lawmakers: the growing threat from China and its hardware giants Huawei and ZTE. Expect to hear a lot on network security, 5G, 6G and open RAN.

“We do not want the Chinese Communist Party setting the standards for 5G and 6G,” ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) will say, according to prepared remarks shared with MT. “America must be at the forefront.”

— The Finnish perspective: The U.S. push for open RAN, which would lessen American dependence on Chinese hardware, would also hit Finland’s Nokia. Finnish trade minister Ville Skinnari told John on Tuesday that the country was interested in exploring the technology, but stressed the need “to study it carefully.” Skinnari is in Washington this week, where he will meet with lawmakers, as well as U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and FCC acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, to talk up partnerships with the U.S. on tech R&D.

THE FCC’S ROBOCALL DEADLINE — Today marks the FCC’s deadline for most large voice service providers to implement STIR/SHAKEN — a push for widespread adoption of caller ID authentication standards to combat the deluge of robocalls. (The deadline for providers with fewer than 100,000 subscribers was pushed back to 2023, although the agency is considering shortening the extension by a year.)

— Status check: As of late Tuesday afternoon, 10 of the 14 biggest voice service providers had filed, according to the FCC, although they have until midnight to get those filings in. (FCC estimates there are about 55 large providers in total.)

More broadly, the FCC has received 2,147 robocall mitigation filings, with 290 providers certifying complete implementation, 588 stating partial work and 1,269 indicating zero progress. Those numbers are more encouraging than they look, according to an FCC report on call-blocking tools released Tuesday. As the deadline approached, more providers registered with the policy administrator, a sign that providers are adopting quickly, even with the extension for smaller providers.

— A Rosenworcel fave: Rosenworcel has made combating robocalls and caller ID spoofing a top priority for her agency, and the issue has been on the agenda for the last two open commission meetings. Implementing STIR/SHAKEN is just one of a variety of tools the FCC has used in recent months, including fines and cease-and-desist orders.

And the problem has worsened during the Covid pandemic. Caller ID and spam-blocking app Truecaller released a report Tuesday that found 59.4 million Americans lost money due to a scam call in the past year, totaling a whopping $29.8 billion.

— Also on Tuesday: GSMA, a global trade group representing mobile network operators, announced a trial in partnership with Mobileum for an international fraud deterrent system that targets robocalls.

Competition Corner

DOJ WANTS GOOGLERS’ PERFORMANCE REVIEWS — The Justice Department had an unusual request for Judge Amit Mehta on Tuesday in its antitrust suit against Google: Make the company hand over employees’ performance reviews.

Google’s employees tend to be circumspect in emails and documents, DOJ lawyer Kenneth Dintzer said, but they are much more candid in their self-evaluations. Prosecutors asked Google to turn over roughly 120 performance reviews, a request the search giant opposed because of their “sensitive nature,” Google lawyer John Schmidtlein said.

To prepare, Mehta said he read a few of the reviews in question, and said they included details about how a person’s work increased Google’s market share or antitrust risk. He agreed to allow DOJ to see performance reviews for any employees who will be deposed in the case.

Broadband Land

UP CLOSE ON EMERGENCY BROADBAND BENEFIT DATA — Rosenworcel announced on Tuesday that the FCC is releasing more granular data about who’s enrolled in the agency’s $3.2 billion Emergency Broadband Benefit program, which is intended to help consumers struggling with their monthly internet bills. The new data includes “figures at the three-digit ZIP code level,” she said at an Open Technology Institute webinar. The agency will also hold listening sessions on how to better promote and implement the benefit program.

— More than 3 million internet users have enrolled since mid-May, according to the latest data, with more than 300,000 households signing up in the most recent week, but more than $3.1 billion of the appropriated funds is still up for grabs. Law360 has a look at initial consumer gripes about setting up the benefit.

FIRST IN MT: CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PAN $40B BROADBAND BILL — Representatives from interests groups including Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Americans for Tax Reform and the Competitive Enterprise Institute are calling on senators to reject the BRIDGE Act, S. 2071 (117), introduced by Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Angus King (I-Maine). The bill would provide a $40 billion boost to expand broadband access. "Any lawmaker who values limited government and the free market should stand up against this proposal," the groups write in a letter today.

Transitions

Cris Turner is joining Google as VP of government affairs and public policy for consumer products. He was most recently VP and head of global government and public affairs at Micron and is a Dell alum. ... Sarah Personette will be chief customer officer at Twitter. She is currently VP of global client solutions and is a Facebook and Northwestern alum. Top sales exec Matt Derella will leave the company.
… Maria Kirby has joined Disney as VP of government affairs, Axios reports. She was most recently senior policy counsel at Apple and is an FCC alum.

Microsoft is planning to grow its legal and corporate affairs team by 20 percent this coming fiscal year amid a surge in global tech regulation, according to Axios. But first, some immediate changes: General counsel Dev Stahlkopf is leaving to be chief legal officer at Cisco. Two Microsoft lawyers, Hossein Nowbar and Lisa Tanzi, will be general counsel. … Google Cloud is partnering with Ericsson to develop 5G and edge cloud solutions for communications service providers.

SPOTTED at Niki Christoff’s inaugural event for Christoff & Co. with women in tech at The Line Hotel on Tuesday night: Virginia Boney (Amazon), Danielle Burr (Uber), Anna Mason (Rise of the Rest), Margaret Nagle (Wing), Tiffany Moore (CTA), Susan Hendrick (Ripple), Heather West (Facebook), Stephanie Gunter (Google), Megan Capiak (Christoff & Co.), Michelle Russo (Chamber of Commerce), Megan Brown, Gail Levine and Juleanna Glover.

Silicon Valley Must-Reads

Hot antitrust law summer: Once relegated to a sleepy corner of the legal world, antitrust lawyers are now a hot commodity, NYT reports.

Blurred lines: “Online activism is spilling into the streets of Southern California, sparking a post-Trump movement,” via WaPo.

Pretty please? Amazon is using its leverage over certain suppliers to request the right to purchase shares of the companies at potentially steep discounts, WSJ reports.

Response requested: Following news reports of Lyft and Uber drivers installing tablets that use artificial intelligence to deliver targeted ads, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) are demanding answers from the companies.

Quick Downloads

Parler trick: “Conservative social media app frenzy dies down after Capitol riots,” Axios reports.

Netroots organizing: The Ohio GOP wanted to ban municipal broadband. Residents said no, via Ars Technica.

Plot twist: “John McAfee’s Death Complicates U.S. Efforts to Seize His Assets,” per Bloomberg.

Map it out: Does your state have a dedicated broadband office, task force, agency or fund? Pew is tracking how states are seeking to improve internet access.

Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([email protected]), Heidi Vogt ([email protected]), John Hendel ([email protected]), Cristiano Lima ([email protected]), Alexandra S. Levine ([email protected]), Leah Nylen ([email protected]), Emily Birnbaum ([email protected]), and Benjamin Din ([email protected]). Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [email protected]. And don't forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.

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