May 2013

Dozens of House lawmakers joined together on to introduce legislation that would bar employers from asking for their workers' passwords to Facebook or other social media accounts.

The Password Protection Act, authored by Reps. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) and Peter Welch (D-VT), would protect both current employees and job applicants. The lawmakers pushed similar legislation last year, and Reps. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Michael Grimm (R-NY) have introduced their own bill on the issue, which would also apply the restriction to colleges and universities asking for student information.

Verizon has told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit that its recent ruling in a National Labor Relations Board case forecloses the Federal Communications Commission's argument in defense of network neutrality rules that broadband providers are not speakers but only "conduits" for speech.

In its January filing to the court, the FCC said that Verizon and other broadband providers "do not engage in speech; they transport the speech of others, as a messenger delivers documents containing speech." It drew the distinction between that and "cable systems, newspapers, and other curated media," saying that broadband providers "do not exercise editorial discretion." In a filing with the court, attorneys for Verizon, which has challenged the FCC's open Internet order, pointed to the case, National Association of Manufacturers [NAM], et al. v. National Labor Relations Board [NLRB], decided by the circuit May 7 to argue that the FCC was wrong. In that decision, the court pointed to what it said were "some firmly established principles of free speech law," including "the dissemination of messages others have created is entitled to the same level of protection as the creation' of messages."

The Federal Trade Commission's 2012 privacy recommendations could unintentionally disadvantage smaller online ad companies, Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen suggested.

Speaking at a conference of the trade group Network Advertising Initiative, she said the FTC “did not address the possible competitive effects of its recommendation” in the privacy report. That report, issued before she was sworn in, called on the ad industry to develop a universal do-not-track tool that will allow consumers to easily opt out of all online behavioral advertising. “New privacy restrictions may have an effect on competition by favoring entrenched entities that already have information, over new entities,” she said. She added: “A policy that limits the ability of advertisers to access new information, to reach consumers, can have unintended effects in the marketplace.” Commissioner Ohlhausen also said she disagrees with the agency's 2012 recommendation that Congress consider enacting a baseline privacy law. “I don't currently support a baseline privacy bill, but am not against privacy legislation per se,” she said. She added that she supports the online ad industry's efforts at self-regulation, as a means of protecting consumers' privacy. “A voluntary self-regulatory process should operate without undue government involvement,” she said.

At first glance, you’d never guess there’s anything unusual about Tom Coates’s San Francisco home. But take a closer look at, say, the ficus tree in the corner of the living room and you’ll notice something odd: a sensor, sticking out of the dirt, that’s connected to a little box. The sensor monitors the plant’s moisture, and the box transmits readings wirelessly to the Internet; it is just one of numerous Internet-connected devices in Coates’s home, which help keep an eye on everything from how warm it is to whether someone is currently in the living room.