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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 166 / Tuesday, August 31, 2021 / Rules and Regulations Authority Board. The Governance Authority will then review the Technical Committees recommendation and request further investigation or discussion for the complaint, including submitting questions to all entities involved in the complaint review process. After reviewing all the material, including the Technical Committees recommendation if necessary, the Governance Authority Board votes on whether to revoke the token, requiring a two-thirds vote of the Governance Authority Board to approve the revocation. If the Governance Authority Board votes to revoke the token, the decision is transmitted to the affected voice service provider, the complainant, and the Policy Administrator. The Policy Administrator then will execute the token revocation by deactivating the voice service providers account and notifying all Certification Authorities to stop assigning new certificates to the voice service provider.
The aggrieved voice service provider may appeal an adverse decision by the Governance Authority Board through a formal appeal process outlined in the Governance Authoritys Operating Procedures. In addition to the Governance Authority Board reviewing the complaint and issuing a written response, the formal appeal process includes the potential for a hearing before an independent panel of three individuals. Following a hearing, the appeal panel issues a written decision stating its findings of fact, conclusions, and the reasoning for its conclusions. If a voice service provider loses the appeal, or chooses not to appeal, it may seek reinstatement to the STIR/SHAKEN
ecosystem if the Governance Authority approves of its plan of action to remedy the issue or issues underlying the token revocation.
On January 14, 2021, the Commission released a Second Caller ID
Authentication Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing and seeking comment on establishing an oversight role for the Commission to oversee token revocation decisions made by the Governance Authority. The Commission specifically proposed adopting an appeal process similar to our process for reviewing decisions by the Universal Service Administrative Company USAC. All commenters in the docket generally supported the proposal to establish such a role for the Commission. The Governance Authority Board states that given the impact token revocation decisions will have on providers abilities to comply with the Commissions call authentication rules, it is appropriate that the Commission should have a role in reviewing these
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decisions. INCOMPAS supports an oversight role for the agency in the certificate revocation process while VON recognizes the benefits to all stakeholders from such a role, and USTelecom states the Commission has a critical role in reviewing any Governance Authority revocation decisions.
III. Discussion After reviewing the record, we conclude that the Commission should have an oversight role and therefore establish a review process of the Governance Authoritys token revocation decisions. We do so to provide proper due process for voice service providers aggrieved by Governance Authority token revocation decisions and to ensure that the STIR/
SHAKEN ecosystem remains robust.
We detail the specific appeals process we adopt below. As we explain, we largely adopt the proposals in the Second Caller ID Authentication Further Notice. We deviate from those proposals in several respects, however, such as by requiring parties seeking review of a Governance Authority decision to file their requests for review in a dedicated public docket in the Commissions Electronic Comment Filing System ECFS and by directing the Wireline Competition Bureau Bureau to review all appeals in the first instance. As we explain below, we make these changes from our initial proposals because we find doing so will facilitate efficient review based on a full record.
A. Appeals Process and Requirements Exhaustion of Governance Authority Appeals Process Required. We will require parties seeking review by the Bureau to first exhaust the Governance Authority appeal process, including completing the Governance Authoritys formal appeal process. In the Second Caller ID Authentication Further Notice, the Commission proposed to require exhaustion of the Governance Authoritys process before accepting appeals, stating that such a requirement would enable the dispute to fully develop before potentially reaching the Commission, thereby making it easier for the Commission to identify the relevant facts and issues. All commenters addressing the issue support this proposal. We agree with USTelecom that requiring exhaustion of the Governance Authority process will ensure that the Governance Authority can complete its process and render an independent decision before the FCC intervenes. Doing so will ensure that only serious challenges will end up in front of the Commission,
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and will avoid wasting Commission resources by preventing us from duplicating efforts and expending resources to develop the same facts as the Governance Authority. As VON
notes, requiring exhaustion of the Governance Authoritys process will resolve a large majority of complaints without Commission action ensuring the Commission does not waste time on issues that can be properly resolved by the Governance Authority.
Parties Permitted to Seek Review. We establish that any voice service provider aggrieved by a Governance Authority decision to revoke that providers token may seek review by the Bureau after exhausting the appeals process established by the Governance Authority. We only allow appeals by the aggrieved party that suffered the token revocation, and not another party on its behalf, to ensure efficient use of limited Commission resources and provide finality and certainty for affected parties seeking an appeal. Third parties, including the Governance Authority, may participate to the extent that they may file oppositions and replies. This procedure mirrors the process in Universal Service appeals, where only the aggrieved party may appeal a USAC
decision and other interested third parties may participate by filing oppositions and replies as appropriate, as well as supportive filings. We find that this approachin addition to being consistent with the well-established process for USAC appealsbest balances competing arguments in the record. VON argues that voice service providers that rely on a delegated certification from a token holder should also be allowed to participate in the appeal as intervenors or have interested party status. VON states that some voice service providers required to participate in the STIR/
SHAKEN ecosystem may not obtain their own certificates and may instead rely on delegated certification from a token-holder. Therefore, it asserts, revoking a token would not just result in potential injury to the token-holder, but also to any other service provider that relies on the token-holders continued authorization. We disagree that voice service providers that rely on delegated tokens should be accorded special status because allowing them to participate in the appeal as interested parties is not likely to give them the relief they need if the token holder is abusing its token. Furthermore, the impact to a voice service provider with a delegated token is irrelevant as to whether the token holder acted in violation of rules such that token
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