House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers (R-MI) is leaving Congress and taking a job as a national radio host with Cumulus media. Rogers has established himself as late as a defender of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program. Just for kicks I rummaged around the Federal Communications Commission’s databases to see what he’d sent them of late. Here are three letters Rogers submitted to the FCC in 2011 and 2010.
Get tough on Google Maps. In 2011 Rogers and John Barrow (D-GA) sent the FCC a fairly stern letter regarding the agency’s investigation of Google’s collection of emails and passwords in the course of shooting panoramic photos for Google Maps.
“A serious inquiry into this matter requires hearing from the engineer that Google claims is responsible for the data collecting activity. Google’s Street View vehicles captured and stored over 600 gigabytes of data,” Rogers and Barrow wrote. “It is difficult to understand how just one individual could have been responsible for a data collecting operation of this scale.”
Protect Sirius/XM from wireless interference. In March of 2010 Rogers and Fred Upton (R-MI) took sides in the ongoing war between some wireless services and Sirius XM on possible interference (explainer here). “Deployment of new broadband services must not threaten other established licensees or cause disruptive interference to millions of existing consumers,” they advised.
Don’t create net neutrality rules. Rogers was (and probably still is) an ardent opponent of FCC enacted net neutrality rules. In 2010 he warned then FCC Chair Julius Genachowski not to vote for them at an upcoming Open Commission meeting. “If this vote is successful, I intend to work with my colleagues to immediately move to enact a disapproval resolution through the Congressional Review Act,” he wrote in December.
. . . and Rogers still might run for President . . . what fun!
