Overnight Tech: Groups clash over net neutrality ad campaign | Tech groups voice support for tax reform | China cracks down on WhatsApp

WH SHOWS SUPPORT FOR NET NEUTRALITY REPEAL: The White House on Tuesday offered support for the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) proposal to roll back the Obama-era net neutrality internet rules.

“We support the FCC chair’s efforts to review and consider rolling back these rules and believe that the best way to get fair rules for everyone is for Congress to take action and create regulatory and economic certainty,” deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

Her comments come a day after the agency closed its comment period on Republican Chairman Ajit Pai’s “Restoring Internet Order” plan to undo the rules, which prevent broadband providers from blocking or slowing content.

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Pai would target a Title II provision in the 2015 rules that gave the FCC the authority to regulate broadband providers by reclassifying them as common carriers.

Broadband industry officials and Republicans say the Title II move was heavy-handed and subjected the industry to excessive regulations.

“The previous administration went about this the wrong way by imposing rules on [internet service providers] ISPs through the FCC’s Title II rulemaking power,” said Sanders said Tuesday.

Read more here.

 

Please send your tips, comments and last-minute net neutrality comments to Ali Breland (abreland@digital-staging.thehill.com) and Harper Neidig (hneidig@digital-staging.thehill.com) and follow us on Twitter: @alibreland, @hneidig and @HilliconValley. We’re also on Signal. Email or DM us for our numbers.

 

THE HILL SITS DOWN WITH ITI’S DEAN GARFIELD: Dean Garfield’s favorite technology is the airplane. “What’s great about innovation is that it works and you don’t have to think about it,” says the president of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a trade group representing major technology companies such as Google, Oracle and Facebook.

“We take airplanes all the time,” Garfield explains. “We’ve gotten to the point where we don’t think about the fact that we’re flying in a tube 30,000 feet in the air and it works seamlessly 99.9 percent of the time. It captures both the dynamism but the normalcy of technological innovation.”

As president of the ITI, Garfield’s job is to make sure that tech’s interests are represented in government to allow that kind of dynamic but normal innovation to continue.

Read more here.

 

FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE TARGETS LAWMAKERS ON NET NEUTRALITY: A pro-net neutrality group plans to put up billboards around the U.S. attacking lawmakers who support the repeal of the Federal Communications Commission’s Obama-era rules.

Fight for the Future said Tuesday that it will crowdfund the campaign and has already raised $50,000. The billboards will begin going up in the coming weeks, it added.

“Internet users are pissed off and paying attention,” Evan Greer, the group’s campaign director, said in a statement. “Any lawmaker that stands idly by and allows the FCC to gut these basic free speech protections that people from across the political spectrum overwhelmingly support will be seen as an enemy of the Internet and an enemy of free speech.”

Read more here.

 

…BUT A KEY TECH GROUP ISN’T HAPPY: The Internet Association, a trade group representing internet companies, lashed out at a pro-net neutrality group on Tuesday for initially saying that they planned to go after Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) with billboard attack ads.

Fight for the Future announced on Tuesday that it planned to launch a billboard campaign targeting lawmakers who have spoken in favor of the Federal Communications Commission’s effort to repeal its net neutrality rules.

Evan Greer, the group’s spokeswoman, sent a list of lawmakers to The Hill that would be targeted by the billboard. Scalise, who is currently recovering from a gunshot wound inflicted during an attack on lawmakers last month, was included on that list.

Greer has since clarified that the Louisiana Republican’s name was mistakenly added and that the group has no plans to launch ads against him.

But the Internet Association, which has largely been on the same side of the net neutrality fight, took issue with Fight for the Future’s announcement.

Read more here.

 

TECH ON TAX REFORM: Groups representing the technology industry criticized the current tax system on Tuesday and called for reforms.

The Information Technology Council (ITI) and TechNet — two D.C. trade associations that represent major tech firms such as Apple, Amazon and Google — took advantage of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch’s (R-Utah) call for public feedback on tax reform, sending the senator letters outlining their positions.

Both organizations endorsed switching to a territorial tax system in which corporations would be taxed only the basis of income inside the country they’re based in. The U.S. currently taxes companies on their income at home and abroad. Corporations, however, don’t have to pay taxes on their income abroad until they repatriate it back home

Read more on the debate here.

 

CHINA CRACKS DOWN ON WHATSAPP: WhatsApp users in China are reporting that the app isn’t properly working across the country, sparking concerns that the Chinese government is censoring the encrypted messaging app.

Many users on the app in China have not been able to send videos, pictures and, in some cases, even texts, reports The New York Times. One Beijing-based reporter tweeted that the app had not been working since Sunday and could only be used with the help of a VPN.

The app’s partial shutdown appears to be the result of China’s “Great Firewall,” the government’s internet censorship system.

Read more here.

 

FACEBOOK SNAGS FORMER UBER PR CHIEF: Uber’s former top communications executive is joining Facebook.

Rachel Whetstone headed Uber’s communications and public policy team until she resigned in April, amid a mass shake-up that also prompted the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick.

Whetstone will be Facebook’s vice president of communications for Whatsapp, Instagram and Messenger.

Read more here.

 

ON TAP:

The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for FCC nominees at 10 a.m.

The House Science Committee will examine energy innovation at 10 a.m.

The House Agriculture Committee will hold a hearing on rural infrastructure at 10 a.m.

USTelecom hosts a policy forum on Trump’s cybersecurity executive order at 11:30 a.m.

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Labor union says Amazon-Whole Foods merger could lead to job automation

Wyden accuses FCC chair of being ‘willfully ignorant’ on net neutrality

Reuters: Silicon Valley sitting out surveillance debate

Broadband companies make closing arguments against net neutrality

Internet companies urge FCC to keep net neutrality rules in place

The Verge: Security robot commits suicide in a fountain