China, India, Indonesia and Chile are among the top countries the U.S. is targeting for weak intellectual property protections, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said Wednesday in its annual special 301 report (see 1904250052). In a controversial move, the administration singled out Amazon. President Donald Trump and the company have been at loggerheads over some issues.
A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel Tuesday was skeptical about DOJ arguments to seal a lower court’s ruling blocking the agency's attempt to force Facebook to break Messenger encryption. Judges Margaret McKeown, Randy Smith and Jacqueline Nguyen questioned the potential harm to investigations, while weighing the public’s right to access. Livestreamed argument was in ACLU Foundation v. DOJ (19-15472, in Pacer).
April 28, 2020 by Monica Hogan and Jonathan Make|Top News
As COVID-19 fallout continues, ISPs are extending how long they hold off disconnecting telecom services (see 2004270048). Within minutes of each other Monday, Cox and Verizon made such commitments. Comcast and AT&T followed later. More companies are expected to do the same.
Southern Nevada health authorities confirmed Friday that their existing COVID-19 testing and contact-tracing protocol give them little way of knowing whether the coronavirus was spreading among the 170,000 who attended CES 2020, as an American Public Media report Thursday inferred. CTA is “not aware of any confirmed cases of COVID-19 connected to CES 2020,” said the association.
More than 85% of Americans have access to fixed terrestrial broadband at speeds of 250/25 Mbps, said an FCC 2020 broadband deployment report Friday. The number of rural Americans with that access more than tripled from 2016 to 2018, it said. But Democratic commissioners and some consumer advocates question the findings that broadband is deployed in a reasonable and timely manner, saying the COVID-19 pandemic put the digital divide in stark relief.
Industry, policymakers and consumer advocates are seeking new ways to expand Lifeline enrollment and benefits in response to the public health and economic crisis, we're told. Some advocates are pursuing emergency funding to provide a more robust residential broadband Lifeline benefit to meet the demands of working and learning at home. Stay-at-home orders put restraints on Lifeline promotion and enrollment.
The threat of large fines in European and California privacy law focused the tech industry’s attention on compliance, FTC Chairman Joe Simons said Friday. His remarks to the American Bar Association came the day after U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly approved the agency’s $5 billion privacy settlement with Facebook (see 1912050061).
COVID-19 demonstrates why flexibility is important for enforcers while also showing the benefits of contact tracing, FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips said Tuesday. An industry representative and privacy attorney in interviews debated recent contact tracing-related testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee.
With the Google antitrust probe ongoing, there are reasons to be concerned about a monopoly in advertising tech and its harm to competition, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said Wednesday. Depriving rivals access to necessary data inputs is potentially anticompetitive, he said. “Competitors that hope to compete with Google in the online digital marketplace may not be able to do so if Google maintains a strategic bottleneck on access to critical user data,” he told the American Bar Association. He noted he wasn’t speaking directly about the ongoing Google probe (see 1909090060).
President Donald Trump renewed his support Tuesday for efforts to include broadband funding in a fourth major COVID-19 legislative package, amid continued Capitol Hill interest in addressing broadband in future pandemic-related measures. The fortunes of broadband funding as part of future pandemic-related bills fluctuated in the weeks since Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, the most recent aid bill (see 2003270058). Many tech and telecom entities listed proposals to include broadband funding in HR-748 and future aid legislation as one of the issues they lobbied the Hill on during Q1.