Consumer Watchdog said it welcomed plans by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to “examine” the FTC’s “antitrust investigation of Google (see 1503300052) that was closed in 2013 without a lawsuit,” the group said in a news release Monday. After a Wall Street Journal report earlier this month, Consumer Watchdog said it “urged” Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Lee and Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn, to hold a “full-fledged public hearing” to examine “how Google managed to dodge antitrust prosecution,” the news release said. "Google has one of the biggest lobbying operations in Washington and its executives have close ties to the Obama Administration," Consumer Watchdog’s John Simpson said. The group also urged the FTC to release the “complete report of the Bureau of Competition recommending prosecution, as well as another report from the Commission’s Bureau of Economics,” the news release said. "Given the Internet giant's connections and power, it's essential we get to the bottom of what happened and why," Simpson said. "Unless there is something to hide, all involved should benefit from a full airing of details and public scrutiny in this important case."
Two former agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Secret Service were charged with wire fraud and money laundering bitcoin during the investigation of Silk Road, a secret website that law enforcement seized in 2013 (see 1411060029), said a Justice Department news release Monday. The complaint against the pair was filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California and alleges that one of the agents transferred more than $800,000 worth of bitcoin into his personal account. The other agent “allegedly sold information about the government’s investigation to the target of the investigation,” said DOJ. A jury in the U.S. District Court in New York last month convicted Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht on a range of charges, including money laundering and operating a continuing criminal enterprise, media have reported.
The FCC Wireline and the Consumer & Governmental Affairs bureaus scheduled a workshop April 28 to discuss what steps the FCC should take to protect privacy after the net neutrality order forbore broadband providers from rules barring the disclosure of consumer proprietary network information, the agency said in a public notice Monday. Acknowledging the order raised questions about privacy issues, Chairman Tom Wheeler announced at the Center for Democracy & Technology annual dinner last month that the agency would hold a workshop (see 1502240070). The 10 a.m. event will be at FCC headquarters. “Diverse stakeholders” will discuss a range of matters about the application of statutory privacy protections to broadband Internet access service, said the release, which didn't identify the participants. The workshop also will address to what extent the commission can apply a harmonized privacy framework across various services within its jurisdiction, the release said.
A new group, the High Tech Forum, plans to examine the technology behind high-tech policies, its organizers said in a news release last week. “The Internet is one of the most successful experiments in world history -- but most people have no idea how it works,” the group said. "The new High Tech Forum will change that.” The forum is led by Richard Bennett, longtime network engineer and visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The group is offering a classroom, which will provide “basic explanations” of Wi-Fi, wireless networks and “more complex issues like the limitations of unlicensed spectrum and functionality of high versus low frequencies,” the group said. It's offering an "Ask the Engineer" feature and forums for discussing issues.
PayPal agreed to settle a dispute with the Treasury Department over alleged, wide-ranging violations of the U.S. sanctions regime through the company’s facilitation of financial transactions. PayPal pledged to pay the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control more than $7.5 million, but the company didn’t admit to or deny the accusations, which included violations of nearly every major U.S. sanctions law, such as those against Iran, Sudan and Cuba. The company will have to report to OFAC in six months on its sanctions compliance programs, the settlement said.
“Given the inaccuracies that have been published” in the media, specifically by The Wall Street Journal, Google Senior Vice President-Communications and Policy Rachel Whetstone said in a blog post Friday, the company wanted to share its side of the story. In response to The WSJ’s report saying FTC commissioners voted unanimously to end the investigation into Google despite the Competition Bureau recommending legal action be taken, Google said The WSJ chose not to report what “the FTC made clear this week,” (see 1503260030) which is the Commission’s decision was in accord with the recommendations made by the Competition Bureau, Economics Bureau and Office of General Counsel. With respect to The WSJ reporting Google employees have met with senior officials about 230 times since President Barack Obama took office, compared to Comcast employees visiting 20 times, Google said the reporting was inaccurate. “Our employment records show that 33 of the White House visits were by people not employed here at the time,” Whetstone said. More than five visits involved a Google engineer “on leave helping to fix technical issues with the government’s Healthcare.gov website (something he’s been very public about),” Whetstone said. “Checking through White House records for other companies, our team counted around 270 visits for Microsoft over the same time frame and 150 for Comcast.” The meetings Google employees had with senior officials “were not to discuss the antitrust investigation” but issues such as patent reform, science, technology, engineering and math education, self-driving cars, mental health, advertising, Internet censorship, smart contact lenses, cloud computing, cybersecurity and energy efficiency, Whetstone said. Directing her comments to Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp, the Journal's owner, she wrote: “We understand you have a new found love of the regulatory process, especially in Europe, but as the FTC’s Bureau of Competition staff concluded, Google has strong pro-competitive arguments on our side.” Like the FTC, the Texas and Ohio Attorneys General “closed their comprehensive competition investigations into Google in 2014,” Whetstone said. “Courts in Germany and Brazil found that there is no basis in the law for Google competitors to dictate Google’s search results." The WSJ had no immediate comment.
The third meeting of the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee is set for April 21 at FCC headquarters in the Commission Meeting Room, the Media Bureau said in a public notice Friday. The meeting of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization-mandated group (see 1503240063) will include subcommittee presentations by the Current Commercial Requirements Working Group and the Technology and Preferred Architectures Working Group. The meeting is in the Commission Meeting Room.
Google officials suggested FCC rule changes that would remove barriers to broadband deployment. The officials met with commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s senior counselor Philip Verveer and other agency officials March 24, said an ex parte filing posted in docket 07-245 Friday. Existing rules still permit owners of infrastructure including poles, ducts and conduits to delay network build-outs through protracted make-ready timelines and processes, Google officials said in the meeting. The commission should “expeditiously update and clarify its infrastructure access and make-ready rules to streamline deployment processes,” Google said. Representing the company were Kevin Lo, Google Fiber general manager, Johanna Shelton, Google director-public policy and government relations, and Staci Pies, senior policy counsel. Google met with Wheeler aide Gigi Sohn and Matthew DelNero, deputy Wireline Bureau chief. Earlier last week, NCTA said it's “particularly puzzled” by Wheeler’s comments that cable companies are blocking access to utility poles by competitors (see 1503260052).
Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable threatens competition in ways beyond the scope of the FCC net neutrality order, said Stop Mega Comcast in an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 14-57. “Neither the 2010 nor the 2014 open Internet rules address Comcast’s core incentive to harm OVDs [online video distributors], and neither can adequately address the numerous ways in which Comcast can act on that incentive,” said the group, composed of Consumers Union, Dish Network, Public Knowledge and other companies and associations. In a recent response to critics of the deal, Comcast disagreed that it has incentive to foreclose OVD competitors, and pointed to conditions from the NBCUniversal deal as constraining it from doing so. Comcast has “shown a propensity” to work around merger conditions and the competitive harms of the deal go beyond the broadband focus of the Open Internet Order, the filing said. “Even for those harms that the open Internet rules are meant to address, Mega-Comcast will have the incentive to design around particular regulations, interpret them narrowly, and litigate them for years, as it has done in the past.”
NCTA said on its policy blog it's “particularly puzzled” by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s comments to congressional committees that cable companies are blocking access to utility poles by competitors. “For starters, cable operators are not denying access to poles" and often "do not even own poles,” the post said Thursday. “Rather, like other competitors, they attach their facilities to poles owned by electric utilities and telephone companies. We are unaware of any case where a cable operator has denied pole access to another company and it is unfortunate that the Chairman continues to suggest otherwise.” NCTA said also the net neutrality order would allow pole owners to “demand higher pole rental fees from cable broadband providers.” The agency didn't comment.