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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 229 / Thursday, December 2, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
scope of the Committees current triage questions and serves no additional purpose. Attachment B/International Section 214 Assignment or Transfer and Attachment D/Submarine Cable Assignment or Transfer define Relevant Parties and use the term in a manner that would require information from both the current owners and proposed owners of authorization or license holders.
Question 1 in these questionnaires seeks broad information, such as ownership and PII about all Relevant Parties.
Several commenters urge the Commission to clarify that the disclosures in these questions do not apply to transferors or assignors. CTIA
indicates that the current triage questions only request information concerning the Prospective Owners/
Controllers and Prospective Licensees.
18. We amend Question 1 of the transfer and assignment questionnaires in Attachments B/International Section 214 Assignment or Transfer and D/
Submarine Cable Assignment or Transfer. The Committees national security or law enforcement review is primarily focused on the buyer or new entity obtaining the authorization or license. We therefore remove transferors and assignors the sellers from the definition of Relevant Parties.
Accordingly, the term Relevant Parties will only include the Proposed Authorization Holders of an international section 214 authorization or the Proposed Licensees of a cable landing license, and any individual or entity with an ownership interest in the Proposed Authorization Holders or Proposed Licensees. This change focuses the Standard Questions on the appropriate parties and decreases burdens on the applicants.
19. Domestic Communications Infrastructure. We reject USTelecoms request to remove Network Operations Center NOC facilities from the definition of Domestic Communications Infrastructure.
USTelecom notes that Domestic Communications Infrastructure includes any NOC facilities, and argues this is inconsistent with the many cases where the NOC is placed outside the U.S. and thus not domestic.. USTelecom urges the Commission to remove NOC facilities from the definition of Domestic Communications Infrastructure and address sic as a separate item. We disagree. Although a NOC can be located outside of the United States, a foreign NOC can control an entitys Domestic Communications Infrastructure, and is therefore appropriately included within this
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definition. Information concerning a NOC located outside the United States, including information regarding the individuals and entities with access to that NOC, is critical information to assess the national security and law enforcement concerns of the foreign NOC. As a result, we reject USTelecoms suggestion to remove NOC facilities located outside of the United States from the definition of Domestic Communications Infrastructure, or to address NOC facilities as a separate item. Accordingly, we retain the current definition.
B. Protection of Submitted Information 20. We concur with MLB that all information submitted in response to the Standard Questions should be treated as business confidential and protected from disclosure and change the instructions accordingly. As proposed, the Standard Questions stated that applicants must specifically identify answers or documents for which a claim of privilege or confidentiality is asserted based on the information containing trade secrets or commercial or financial information.
MLB notes that all of the information submitted by applicants to the Committee should be automatically deemed as business confidential information and properly exempt from disclosure under FOIA and Section 8 of Executive Order 13913. Based on our experience and understanding of the responses to such questions from the Executive Branch agencies in the past, we agree that most of the information supplied in response to the Standard Questions is business confidential as it is extremely sensitive and proprietary. Moreover, no commenter opposed MLBs suggestion. Most importantly, however, the Committee staffto whom the information will be submittedagrees that all responses to the Standard Questions submitted to the Committee will be treated as business confidential and the applicants should not have to specifically identify information for such treatment.21
Consequently, we modify the instructions in all questionnaires to provide that all of the submitted information will be treated as business confidential and that applicants will not have to specifically identify information for such treatment.
21. We decline, however, to take any specific action with regard to MLBs request for heightened protection of PII and restrictions on sharing it within 21 Information submitted to the Committee may not be shared except under the terms of Executive Order No. 13913.

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Committee agencies. The Privacy Act already requires federal agencies to protect PII 22 and Executive Order 13913
explicitly addresses this issue, thereby ensuring the Committee protects this information. In particular, Section 8 of the Executive Order states that information submitted to the Committee . . . shall not be disclosed beyond Committee Member entities and Committee Advisor entities, except as appropriate and consistent with procedures governing the handling of classified or otherwise privileged or protected information . . . . Therefore, we do not believe any additional Commission action is necessary to address this concern.
C. Filings Involving Multiple Applicants 22. Based on comments in the record, we decline to revise and reorganize the Standard Questions with regard to filings involving multiple applicants joint applicants; however, we clarify and improve the instructions on how applicants can submit joint filings confidentially. USTelecom urges the Commission to make the questionnaires clearer so that questions requiring joint responses can be separated from questions where applicants must respond individually. CTIA asks that the questions be organized so when there are multiple applicants they can clearly see which questions can be answered jointly and which can be separated so sensitive information is not shared. USTelecom requests removal of questions that ask for a list of all government customers and descriptions of services. We recognize that joint applicants have a legitimate interest in preventing the sharing of certain information and identifying which questions an applicant is responsible for answering. Consequently, we will 22 The Privacy Act generally applies to U.S.
citizens and legal permanent residents; however, in 2016 Congress enacted the Judicial Redress Act of 2015, 5 U.S.C. 552a note, which extends the right to pursue certain civil remedies under the Privacy Act to citizens of designated countries or regional economic organizations. Claims under the Judicial Redress Act are limited to those involving covered records, defined as a record that is transferred A by a public authority of, or private entity within, a country or regional economic organization, or member country of such organization, which at the time the record is transferred is a covered country; and B to a designated Federal agency or component for purposes of preventing, investigating, detecting, or prosecuting criminal offenses. Id. 2h4. The Attorney General is responsible for designating covered countries or regional economic organizations, as well as federal agencies and components for purposes of the Judicial Redress Act. Id. 2d, e, h2, and h5. A list of covered countries is available at 84 FR 3493 Feb.
12, 2019. A list of designated federal agencies and components is available at 82 FR 7860 Jan. 23, 2017 and includes members of the Committee.

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