8 a.m. eastern to monday morning at eight in east. nonfiction books all we can every weekend right here on two. >> here's a look at what's coming up on c-span2. .. >> the president on telecommunications issues. he discusses privacy issues on the internet and the ntia's recommendations for reallocation

of spectrum. >> host: larry strickling, if you can start this "communicators" by telling us what the ntia does, the national telecommunications and information administration, how -- what you do, how you interact with the fcc, the white house, cftc, etc. >> guest: sure. so we are a branch of the department of commerce, but by statute we are also the principle adviser to the president on communications and information policy issues. the fcc, of course, is an independent regulatory agency reporting to congress, um, but many of our issues intersect with the fcc, our work on spectrum, our work on broadband. so we work closely with the fcc and have a overall good relationship with the commission. >> host: now, you mentioned spectrum, and there was a recent spectrum report that came out. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: freeing up where you recommended how to free up 95 megahertz of spectrum. what's involved with that? what kind of -- who owns that

now or who uses that now, or is it unused? what's going to be involved in freeing that up? >> guest: right. well, as you'll recall, the president back in 2010 charged both ntia and the fcc to work together to find 500 megahertz of spectrum that we could reallocate to commercial broadband use. the report we released a couple of weeks ago focuses on one particular band of 95 megahertz of spectrum, almost a fifth of the president's goal. the band is currently used by about 20 federal agencies, and they each have in total about 3,000 assignments of spectrum within that band, and what we're looking at is what's involved in reallocating that band to commercial use. what we concluded was that it's technically possible to reallocate that entire band to commercial use, but to do it the traditional way which is to, actually, relocate the federal uses somewhere else would take

more than ten years and would cost $18 billion. and we thought that that's too much and too long. and so what we've proposed is that we move forward and work in tandem between industry and the federal agencies to figure out if there's a new paradigm that we can apply here that leaves some number of these federal operations in place and allows the commercial providers to come in and share that spectrum with the federal users. we think we can make the spectrum available faster and more cheaply if we follow that approach. so we're about to sit down with industry and with the agencies to have those discussions. >> host: now, there were some dod concerns because dod used some of that spectrum. how have you addressed those? >> guest: well, dod is a very large user of the band, and they have very complex systems in that band, one in particular that we talk about is the air combat training system, and these are transmitters that are literally embedded in the skin of aircraft. and when pilots are doing their training runs up in the sky,

there's a stream of data being transmitted to the ground which provides almost instantaneous feedback to the pilots when they get back. they come out, and they're able to sit down and get a review and a critique of their performance based on this information that's transmitted in. that system alone would cost according to dod about $5 billion if we were to try and put in new transmitters with different spectrum. so that's a perfect example of a system that we really want to explore, um, how could we leave that in place and let it use the spectrum it currently uses where it uses it. i mean, for the most part that system doesn't use spectrum in our major or metropolitan areas. so there may be a way that we can leave the system there and allow the commercial folks to come in and use that same spectrum, sharing it with the federal agency. again, these are issues we need to explore with the agencies and with industry, and those are the

discussions we want to get under way here as quickly as we can. >> host: and be now joining our discussion with larry strickling of the national telecommunications and information administration is jasmine melvin who is the telecommunications reporter for reuters. >> host: thank you. um, well, in terms of your latest proposal and the emphasis on sharing the airwaves between government agencies and commercial users, um, the wireless trade association, ctia, has said while they know such sharing is inevitable, their hope is that the primary goal clears much of the band as possible for solely commercial use. um, what's your thinking in this areasome. >> guest: well, that's the way we've done it in the past. in the past the solution always was move the federal agencies somewhere else and then allow the commercial provider to take the exclusive use of the spectrum. we just don't have the ability to do that much any longer. part of the problem is federal use is growing, so just as the

commercial demands are increasing, so, too, are the needs of federal agencies to perform the missions they carry out. unmanned aerial drones is a good example of a system that didn't even exist as a spectrum user 15 or 20 years ago but increasingly these systems are being put into operation not just in the work theaters, but also here in the united states to support disaster relief and those sorts of efforts. so, um, we just don't have places to move the federal agencies to any longer. so we have to find a way to coexist here and allow industry and the federal agencies to use the same spectrum. and the way we can take advantage of it is the fact that the federal agency use is somewhat intermittent and more importantly it doesn't necessarily involve the entire country at any point in time. and advances in the new cellular technologies, particularly lte, seem to offer an opportunity for

the commercial industry to apply this new technology and be able to operate in an environment where they don't have the exclusive use of the spectrum any longer. um, we know industry was particularly interested in the bottom 25 megahertz of this 95 megahertz band, the 1755 to 1850 band that we reported on a couple of weeks ago. but our o goal here is to find 500 megahertz of spectrum as the president asked and, indeed, we're hearing from industry that they think the need's going to be greater than that. so, um, from our perspective we had an opportunity to put 95 megahertz of spectrum on the table and bring people together with this new paradigm of spectrum use. we felt that was the responsible thing to do, to have tried to continue to do it the way we've done it before and just put another incremental 25 megahertz on the table would not have met the president's goal and i think, frankly, it would have been an irresponsible way for us

to proceed when we had the federal agencies willing to talk about accommodating commercial use in all 95 megahertz of the spectrum. >> host: okay. and with this goal of getting 500 megahertz, the goal is to get it within the next decade. but how soon do you think consumers will start to really feel the effects of this spectrum crunch? >> guest: well, the congress in the payroll tax holiday extension act has directed the fcc to conduct a certain number of auctions, i think, within three years, um, with the idea that that spectrum, i think, would be in the marketplace probably within five years. last year we identified 115 megahertz of spectrum through our fast track review that, um, we felt could also be made available within fife years -- five years, and the fcc's still evaluating when and how to make that available. so i do think consumers and industry will be able to take advantage of this spectrum within five years but, again, the overall goal was to have it made available within ten.

>> host: okay. and you mentioned the payroll tax compromise. that also included legislative language for a public safety network that would give some airwaves, um, to create a nationwide broadband network for first responders. um, what will be ntia's role in developing that network? >> guest: well, congress in its wisdom determined to hand that assignment off to ntia in terms of standing up a new organization first net which will be an independent authority within ntia consisting of a board of 15 people including the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security and the head of omb, and their mission will be to design, build and operate a national, interoperable public safety network. this is something that we've known has needed to be done for years. it was a recommendation from the

9/11 commission to improve the interoperability of these public safety communications. frankly, we owe it to our first responders to give them a modern communications network, and that's exactly what this legislation does. so, um, so congress created firstnet, put it under ntia and then indicated that $7 billion from auction revenues would be made available to firstnet to go ahead and design and construct this network. so we're in the process right now of putting together the board. the board has to start its operations this summer, and then get on with this very large, complicated task of getting a network built. >> host: larry strickling, when looking for the 500 megahertz of spectrum, do you foresee using broadcasters' spectrum at some point or recommending that that be shared as well? >> guest: well, that's within the jurisdiction of the federal

communications commission. another landmark of the recent legislation was to give the fcc the authority to conduct incentive auctions which they are now organizing to do. and this will involve, um, providing broadcasters an opportunity to make their spectrum available for auction, and then they will share in the proceeds of that. that'll all be handled at the fcc. >> host: so ntia does not have a role in spectrum auctions? >> guest: no. that's handled at the fcc. now, the spectrum that we're identifying for reallocation from federal use, um, the idea is that much of that spectrum can be considered for auction by the fcc. in addition, there's an opportunity here to look at some spectrum that might be made available for unlicensed use in the legislation that was, we've been talking about. congress directed us to take a look at a couple of bands up in the five gigahertz range which

is typically higher than what the commercial cellular industry would use today, but we are going to be studying that pursuant to the legislation with an idea that it might be made available for unlicensed use which would allow, um, anyone to come in and use that to try out new technologies, new ideas which, of course, is what led to the development of wi-fi in this country. i mean, that was a result of the use of unlicensed spectrum and, frankly, i don't think any of us -- including the existing cellular carriers -- could exist today was the very robust wi-fi service that's available today. >> host: jasmine melvin. >> host: um, i understand that you do play a role in military and government spending. >> guest: yes. >> host: and this got you involved in the regulatory review of the wireless start-up lightsquared. i know your agency recommended in february that there was no practical, immediate solution to the interference problems at

that company's planned network caused with gps. so do you see any way that the lightsquared spectrum situation could be resolved? >> guest: well, that's now a matter before the fcc. our role is to serve as the honest broker of the competing lab and testing reports. the testing was conducted last year in two separate tranches, the first in the first half of the year and then after lightsquared proposed modification in its operating structure, we did a second set of tests where the government ran a second set of tests in the second half of the year. basically, we were trying to determine the extent to which the lightsquared operations would interfere with or overload gps receivers. um, our technical evaluation concluded, as you indicated, in february that as currently planned we could not find a way to solve the interference issues

and still leave lightsquared with what it deemed to be a viable network. now, we did take the test results that emerged out of the testing last fall and use that data to come back to lightsquared with an option as to how they could proceed to build without causing interference or overload to the gps receivers, but, um, quite reasonably they looked at it and concluded that that -- because it would involve really ramping back the power of their network -- did not leave them with a viable commercial network. and that left us where we had to end up given the state of technology as it existed when we did the testing. going forward, um, we certainly believe that part of the issue involves the issue -- the question of receiver specifications and receiver standards, and we are going to initiate an effort with the federal agencies to look at the extent to which we could develop some receiver specifications for

future procurement by federal agencies of gps receivers that would avoid the kind of interference that they otherwise would have suffered from, the lightsquared operations. but that's a five, ten, fifteen-year effort, and be it only handles the devices bought by federal agent is says. we have no ability to deal with the much larger commercial base. so we think it's a ten forward, we do -- a step forward, we do think the question of evaluating how receivers perform is a necessary part of the larger question of where do we find 500 megahertz of spectrum to use because if we're going to run into situations where the receivers prevent us from utilizing spectrum such as the lightsquared spectrum for commercial broadband, we're going to have a very hard time meeting the president's goal. so we do think that longer term this has to be part of the solution. >> host: larry strickling, in a

recent interview with "the washington post," phil fell pone talked about how his situation with lightsquared could put a damper on future innovation and future ways to make the spectrum more efficient. what are your thoughts? >> guest: well, i think we had a very unique set of facts and situation with the lightsquared issue. they -- the spectrum that they had purchased was spectrum that is directly adjacent to gps, and anytime you're putting a high-powered, land-based cellular radio service next to one that's depending on much fainter signals from satellites, you're going to have potential issues. and we worked as hard as we could, and all the federal agencies worked hard to really understand and evaluate how those two very disparate types of systems could coexist with each other. and all we could conclude was based on current technology we couldn't see a path forward that was going to be helpful to

lightsquared given its business needs. >> host: larry strickling is our guest this week on "the communicators." he is the national telecommunications and information administration administrator and assistant commerce secretary for communications and information. our guest reporter, jasmin melvin of reuters. >> host: yes. just following up on the lightsquared issue, um, the company has said that if federal communications commission were to pull the authority it had priestly given -- previously given the company to build its cellular network, it would be -- they called it a bait and switch by the government of historic scale. do you believe that the government at all misled lightsquared, um, in this proceeding? >> guest: well, this is really a matter over at the fcc, and i'm really not in a position to speculate or comment on those sorts of allegations. >> host: okay. and the company has proposed several possibilities including, um, possibly swapping its

interfering spectrum. um, do you believe, do you think there's any spectrum that ntia manages that might be available for this? >> guest: again, that's a matter initially between lightsquared and the fcc. if lightsquared wishes to put a proposal at the fcc for a swap that might involve spectrum used by federal agencies, in our role we would certainly respond to any request from the be fcc to work through those issues. i'm aware of one wand of spectrum that -- one band of spectrum that's on the other side of the spectrum that lightsquared has that they've indicated some in, but that actually is a shared band. it's used both by federal agencies as well as by a lot of commercial aerospace companies, and again, i think one of the first questions that would have to be addressed is the extent to which companies such as boeing and lockheed and those that make use of that spectrum would be willing to consider swapping to some other part of the spectrum and, indeed, if there even is

spectrum they could move into. so, but i think in the first instance that's a question for the fcc but we're here and quite willing and able to support that if they want to move forward. >> host: larry strickling, let's switch topics. ntia and the white house recently introduced a privacy bill of rights. what's your current thinking on how consumers' data should or could be used? >> guest: well, the privacy effort has been one that we started early on in the administration. first, we did a green paper back in 2010 and followed on with the administration's blueprint that came out in february. what we set forth is a plan that we think both protects consumer privacy, but just as importantly protects and promotes information on the internet. from the start we were concerned about those being in conflict, that if you regulate it too heavily in favor be of privacy, you might, in effect, damage or

deter innovation. and we know that american companies have been the most innovative on the internet, and it would be a great loss to our economy and to our overall innovative position if that were somehow deterred through heavy-handed regulations. so that was paramount in our thinking throughout this process. what we ended up propose being what the administration has set forth as the plan is to enunciate some very specific privacy principles, um, and those are the seven elements of our consumer bill of rights x. they are very straightforward, declarative sentences of what consumers have a right to expect. and we really did model it against the similarly spare language of the constitutional bill of rights. then we had a choice. what we could have proposed was that those basic principles be taken and handed off to a regulatory agency for a lot of detailed rulemaking and creating

of definitions, but that, we felt, could lead to exactly the outcome we wanted to avoid which was heavy-handed regulation, very descriptive or prescriptive regulation that would actually by not being able to predict where technology's going to go, actually hamper innovation. so our solution was let's let the private sector fill in the gaps. let's bring industry together with all the other relevant stakeholders including the consumer groups, academics and others and take these principles and apply them to specific situations through the creation of what we call voluntary but enforceable codes of conduct. then that is a process that we are going to manage at ntia. we just concluded a comment period where we asked, um, industry as well as the consumer groups to share their ideas first as to what topics should we take on with these codes and, more importantly, what process

should we use. because one of the issues always will be if you don't have somebody making the decision at the end, how do you know, how do you reach consensus? how do you insure transparency? how do you insure people have a full right of participation? these are all things we want to get right x in my -- and in my mind they are just as important to the ultimate success of this effort as what we end up with as the actual substance of a particular code of conduct. so, um, so again, we are focusing on what we think is creating important protections for consumers, and this consumer bill of rights we've proposed the congress enact that into legislation. but, again, not without all of the 200 pages of regulatory language that often accompanies these sorts of bills. we think we can have a pretty straightforward, simple piece of legislation to enshrine the principles in legislation, and then allow this multistakeholder process to take over to actually fill in the specifics as to how

these principles will be interpreted in particular industry sectors and as relates to particular elements of the bill of rights. and then, um, we would depend on strong enforcement by the federal trade commission of any codes of conduct that a company decides to adopt. and again, all of this would be voluntary. i'm not a regulator. i can't force anybody to do anything in terms of, you know, adopting any particular regulation which i think is why the department of commerce is the perfect place to run a process of this type because people will know that what comes out of the process will be what they, working together, are able to achieve as a consensus output. and our job is to be the facilitator and the convener to make that happen. >> host: with, um, the privacy framework so heavily dependent on voluntary commitments, how much faith do you have in internet players to, um, adequately self-police on privacy issues?

>> guest: well, we've had a lot of interest from industry as well as the consumer groups to participate in developing the codes. once a company adopts a code, in this goes back to the federal trade commission enforcement issue, if they don't follow the code, the federal trade commission can bring an enforcement action. one of the reasons we'd like the basic principles enshrined in legislation, though, is for those companies that choose not to participate in that process. we do want to insure a basic level of protection for all citizens, and that would be done through enactment of the bill of rights into legislation which would then be directly enforced by the federal trade commission. but we can move forward with these codes well before any legislation is enacted by congress and, in fact, we do intend to start the process of convening folks to work on codes as quickly as we can. >> host: and, um, the worldwide web consortium which creates standards for the web is in

washington, d.c. this week, um, ahead of recommending a do not track system that would basically give consumers one quick option or mechanism to bar advertisers from tracking them across different web sites. um,sec chairman jon leibowitz has said do not track should be do not collect data. what's your thoughts on that function? >> guest: my thoughts are that i want to be a fair facilitator and convener of outcomes that other people decide. and i think every time the department of commerce puts its finger on the scale and says this is what has to be the outcome, i think that, in effect, potentially weakens or damages the process that we want to see happen. so i have to really resist the impulse to step this and say, well, here's what the department of commerce has to say. that's not our job. our job is to help these other

parties reach consensus and for us to say what we think the outcome needs to be could be destructive of that process. >> host: larry strickling, i wanted to ask you about something you recently talked with representative mary bono mack about, and that's the u.n. and control of the internet. what are your fears with regard to the u.n.? and where do you agree with representative bono mack? >> guest: right. so this is an issue that has been emerging for some period of time, but it's coming to a head here over the next year or two due to some activities of other nations as well as some international conferences that will be coming up later this year and next year, in particular the international telecommunication union will be holding two conferences in december, one being the world conference on international telecommunications, the other being a standards conference. and then they'll follow on with a telecommunications policy conference next year. um, we are concerned in the

united states government with interest of some of these organizations and some individual nations to take what has worked so well to create the internet that we know as this marvelous engine of economic growth and innovation, um, and be put it into the hands of more top-down government control through treaty organizations and such. we find that quite threatening to the success of the internet. and, indeed, thinking about -- thinking back to our discussion, that very much informed our view that we wanted to make advantage of this multishake holder process to settle on what the specifics ought to be of privacy protection as opposed to top-down regulation. if you expand that idea to the international community, it's the same situation. we have relied on multistakeholder organizations such as the w3c that jasmin mentioned or the international

engineering forum -- i'm sorry, the internet engineering forum so that these multistakeholder organizations have allowed the internet to develop the way it's developed. and we want to preserve that. so we are quite concerned when we see individual nations suggesting that, well, maybe this ought to be handed over to a group of governments to run. all of a sudden, we lose the flexibility, the innovation, the creativity that has so characterized the development of the internet. so we very much want to push back against those sorts of notions wherever they emerge in the international arena over the next couple of years. >> host: and, unfortunately, we're out of time. larry strickling, ntia administrator and jasmin melvin, telecommunications reporter for reuters. thank you for being on "the communicators." >> guest: thank you. >> coming up next, a look at how the media has covered race issues and the trayvon martin case. then a senate committee hears from veterans on their experiences in getting government aid to avoid

homelessness. later, we'll bring you live to the annual tax day eve news conference hosted by americans for tax reform. and at 2 p.m. eastern, the senate returns for more debate and a procedural vote on the income rate for tax earners, also known as the buffett rule. also today on the c-span networks, organizers with the brady campaign hold a news conference with victims of gun violence. it's observing the anniversaries of the mass shootings at columbine high school in 1999 and virginia tech five years ago as well as the recent death of trayvon martin. it airs live at noon eastern over on c-span. it's been nearly ten years since robert caro's third volume of the release of lyndon johnson. it follows the path to power and