Ali Breland

The New York attorney general’s office announced a lawsuit filed against Spectrum-Time Warner Cable and its parent company, Charter Communications, for allegedly defrauding and misleading New Yorkers about internet speeds and quality. “The allegations in today’s lawsuit confirm what millions of New Yorkers have long suspected — Spectrum-TWC has been ripping you off,” said New York Attorney General Schneiderman. “Today’s action seeks to bring much-needed relief to the millions of New Yorkers we allege have been getting cheated by Spectrum-Time Warner Cable for far too long.”

Schneiderman claimed that the Spectrum-Time Warner Cable was still misleadingly promising consumers internet speeds that they could not deliver on. The complaint specifically alleges that since January 2012, Spectrum-TWC marketing materials claimed that consumers who subscribed to their internet service would "fast, reliable connection" in their homes. After 16 months of investigation, though, the Schneiderman's office found that hundreds of thousands of speed tests showed that customers were “getting dramatically short-changed on both speed and reliability” by as much as 80 percent.

The handoff of federal agencies' social media accounts to the Trump administration is sparking controversy and complicating the transition.

Trump's is the first administration to take power in the Twitter age. That’s led to confusion about the rules for handing off government accounts and oversight. Twitter laid out plans for seamlessly transferring the @POTUS account from former President Obama to President Trump — and other social media platforms, including Instagram and Facebook, did the same. But for many other government agencies, there were no plans in place for how to manage communications on social media as a new president took power. Obama administration officials say that's because they largely left agencies to handle their own accounts free of political influence from the White House. They say they didn't anticipate that the next administration would want tighter controls on social media.

AT&T spent more money on lobbying during 2016 in the midst of its proposed merger with Time Warner than it has since 2012. The telecommunications company spent $16,370,000 in 2016, almost $2 million more than the $14,860,000 AT&T spent on lobbying in 2015. Time Warner has not released its fourth quarter data on lobbying spending. However, in the first three quarters of 2016, the company had slightly increased its lobbying expenses from $2,026,000 in the first three quarters of 2015 to $2,187,000 in 2016. In the last four years, AT&T only spent more in 2012 during their attempted, contentious horizontal merger with T-Mobile. The Department of Justice approved the merger, but the Federal Communications Commission ruled that the deal failed to meet “the burden of proving that the proposed transaction, on balance, will serve the public interest.” That year AT&T spent $17,460,000 on lobbying expenses.

Here are five areas where the tech industry is cautiously awaiting the Administration's plans:

1. Trade: tech leaders are sweating over the possibility they could lose access to huge burgeoning markets abroad, especially China.
2. Immigration: Technology companies across the board have voiced a strong desire for comprehensive immigration reform.
3. Privacy rights: Protecting privacy has been a longstanding passion for tech leaders, who say strong privacy practices give their products a competitive edge and help them win over consumers. But Trump unsettled tech groups and civil libertarians after the San Bernardino shooting.
4. Corporate mergers: Trump's views on corporate mergers have left many in tech scratching their heads, in particular over the biggest merger on the table: AT&T's proposed $85 billion deal with Time Warner.
5. Network neutrality: The fight is set to flare again with the Trump administration and congressional Republicans certain to look at ways to roll back elements of net neutrality.

Here are five of the biggest players to watch on technology:

1. Peter Thiel, one of the co-founders of PayPal, was arguably the sole top Silicon Valley executive to have publicly backed Trump during the campaign. He is also reportedly considering a run for governor in California in 2018, in a race that may pit him against another billionaire, the Democratic environmentalist Tom Steyer.
2. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) will oversee the confirmation process for Trump’s nominees to the Federal Communications Commission and will likely have a say in who is selected to chair the commission. Some of Thune’s legislative priorities could get more traction under the Trump administration, including sharing government-owned wireless spectrum with the private sector, rewriting the Communications Act and expanding broadband access to rural communities.
3. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai is widely seen as Tom Wheeler’s likely successor as chairman of the FCC. As chairman, Pai will get to set the FCC’s agenda and potentially reverse policies imposed under Wheeler, including net neutrality. Pai has already expressed interest in reevaluating the rules as soon as possible.
4. House Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is an outspoken opponent of the net neutrality rules enshrined in the FCC’s Open Internet Order.
5. The Trump transition’s FCC landing team will be in charge of setting the agenda and recommending hires for the new administration when it takes over the agency. The group consists of three scholars from the conservative American Enterprise Institute: Roslyn Layton, Mark Jamison and Jeffrey Eisenach, as well as David Morken, the founder of Republic Wireless and Bandwidth.com. Layton, Jamison and Eisenach are all critics of net neutrality and are generally seen as traditional conservatives when it comes to telecommunications policy.

A coalition of tech workers in Silicon Valley will demonstrate outside of Palantir’s headquarters to protest the company’s assistance to the US government in creating a system to track immigrants and foreign travelers entering the country. Documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center showed that Palantir, based in Palo Alto (CA), could help create a system for “extreme-vetting” of immigrants and foreign travelers entering the US. The company had also reportedly played an undisclosed role in US Customs and Border Protection intelligence. “We want to make it clear that the overall tech community is watching what Palantir does,” said Jason Prado, a software engineer at Facebook and member of the Tech Workers Coalition. The Tech Workers Coalition is organizing the Palantir demonstration. “And we want to hold the tech community overall accountable for the values that we as a community have,” Prado said.

The Tech Workers Coalition has created an online campaign to support their protests, which are apart of the 120 hours of action in the Bay Area, a set of anti-Trump protests invoking Martin Luther King Jr. in the lead up to inauguration day. The Coalition has three primary demands: join other major tech companies in pledging to never create a Muslim registry, disclose steps taken to avoid government overreach and abuse and if this not possible, dismantle databases that could be abused.

Lawmakers will have a shortened, but busy week, ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. Congress will be moving into its second week of hearings on Trump's Cabinet nominees, with the tech industry keeping a close eye on his Commerce pick, Wilbur Ross.

Ross will appear before the Senate Commerce Committee on Jan 18, following the delay of his first scheduled hearing, which was pushed back because he had not submitted ethics paperwork. The investor and former banker could have a big impact on tech issues. The Commerce Department is responsible for the National Telecom and Information Administration, the Patent Office, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology -- agencies that closely oversee the tech industry. Ross can expect to field questions about the Privacy Shield, the U.S. legal framework with the EU that allows companies to move data across the Atlantic.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler will be taking a job in communication policy at the Aspen Institute think tank after he steps down from the FCC. Chairman Wheeler will be joining the institute's Communication and Society program as a senior fellow. He is the sixth consecutive FCC head to move to the Aspen Institute after stepping down from the FCC chairmanship. "Throughout my tenure as Chairman, I maintained that network providers have certain responsibilities to their consumers, including access, interconnection, consumer protection, public safety, and national security. I think Aspen's unique platform for dialogue will be an excellent opportunity to address those goals," Chairman Wheeler said.

President Barack Obama and Democrats are making a last-ditch try to get Jessica Rosenworcel back on the Federal Communications Commission. President Obama renominated Rosenworcel for a five-year term. Rosenworcel, a former FCC commissioner, failed to be reconfirmed at the end of the 2016 legislative session, after a two-year fight over her nomination. Rosenworcel failed to get a vote, despite efforts from lawmakers to try and cut a deal and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's offer to step down in exchange. Wheeler is still stepping down when President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office. Control of the FCC will swing to Republicans, but two of the five commissioners must be Democrats. That has Dems hopeful that Rosenworcel can return, but its unclear if anything will be different this time around. Republicans will likely be reluctant to work out a deal on Rosenworcel with Trump slated to take office in two weeks. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) has said that while he respects her work, he'll wait on confirmations until Trump is in the White House.

Here are five regulatory fights the tech world will be watching closely in 2017.
1) Apple's record tax penalty in Europe: In August, the European Union’s Commission on Competition handed a record judgment against Apple, ordering the company to pay over $13 billion in back taxes to Ireland.
2) The fight over encryption
3) AT&T-Time Warner merger: AT&T's plans to merge with Time Warner will be under heavy scrutiny.
4) Google's antitrust fight: Google has its own fight with the European Commission.
5) Amazon's EU tax case: Amazon is also awaiting a key tax ruling form the European Union. The decision was expected in 2016 but will be coming in the new year.