House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) joined CA state senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), firefighters, state legislators and community advocates in support of CA Senate Bill 822, which would enact the strongest net neutrality standards in the nation. “Once we have established California as a model of a state taking action, other states may follow,” she said. “And then I think you will see some of corporate America say, okay, let’s have a federal law because we don’t...want to do different things in different states,” she says. When asked how net neutrality plays into the midterm campaigns, Minority Leader Pelosi said, “Young voters are not particularly partisan, but they know what issues affect their lives. And every place I go, [net neutrality] is one of the issues...the millennials bring up.”

“Pretty soon I’m sure we’ll be able to say ‘congratulations California on net neutrality.’” Pelosi said. Gov Jerry Brown (D-CA) has until the end of Sept to sign the bill.

As the Senate Commerce Committee prepares to bring in tech and telecom officials for a hearing on consumer privacy, Chairman John Thune (R-SD) has suggested Congress should legislate. That would be welcome to many tech and telecom heavyweights wary of a patchwork of state privacy rules (like those recently passed in California) that could be more onerous to deal with than a single federal framework. Chairman Thune said, “We’re trying to take some of the best ideas out there” and “incorporate them into a legislative package.” But Chairman Thune can read a calendar. “We probably don’t have enough time in the clock this year to do anything major on privacy,” he said. “I think there are some things that could happen; maybe it doesn’t happen this year, but we’re at least setting the stage.” He said the upcoming hearing is important for “building that record” to try “to develop a plan.” Thune’s first-leg-of-a-marathon approach may clash with the sense of urgency some of his Senate colleagues have brought to the privacy conversation. But his remarks matter because the players will be different in 2019. If Chairman Thune rises in the ranks and becomes GOP whip after the midterms, for instance, he will no longer lead the Commerce Committee. Democrats could regain control of at least one chamber. And the House Telecom Subcommittee will have different leadership no matter what. Current-Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) isn’t seeking reelection to her House seat as she runs for Senate, so there will be a different lawmaker holding that gavel even if Republicans keep the House. All these factors point to a privacy playbook in flux next year.

Emergency call operators will soon have an easier time pinpointing the whereabouts of Android phone users. Google has struck a deal with T-Mobile to pipe location data from cellphones with Android operating systems in the US to emergency call centers. The move is a sign that smartphone operating system providers and carriers are taking steps to improve the quality of location data they send when customers call 911. Locating callers has become a growing problem for 911 operators as cellphone usage has proliferated. Wireless devices now make 80% or more of the 911 calls placed in some parts of the US.

While landlines deliver an exact address, cellphones typically register only an estimated location provided by wireless carriers that can be as wide as a few hundred yards and imprecise indoors. That has meant that while many popular applications like Uber can pinpoint users, 911 call takers can’t always do so. Technology giants such as Google and Apple that run phone operating systems need a direct link to the technology used within emergency call centers to transmit precise location data. Most T-Mobile customers with Android operating systems will now send location data from Google’s emergency location services via their carrier. In markets where RapidSOS is integrated into emergency call centers, Android users will send the information through the upstart company.

A major technology company has been telling senators and their staffers that their personal email accounts were targeted by foreign hackers, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, claimed in a letter to leaders. He used the letter to question why the Senate sergeant-at-arms did not have a clear mandate to help protect the personal accounts and devices of senators and their staffers as well as the official ones. “This approach must change to keep up with changing world realities,” Sen. Wyden said in his letter, in which he pointed out that similar personal protections are provided to “high-value targets” at the Pentagon. He stressed that the stakes are particularly high in advance of the midterm elections, noting that “the Senate simply does not have the luxury of further delays.” Wyden’s letter says the office of the sergeant-at-arms believes it is authorized to use its appropriated funds only for official government equipment and accounts.

Will I go to prison for violating the terms of service? This is the question journalists must ask themselves, now, when writing data stories based on public information collected from a website, such as Facebook or Twitter. Violating a terms of service that prohibits scraping can carry with it possible criminal liability under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). No journalists have been prosecuted under this statute, but their sources have, and some journalists have been asked to stop using specific reporting tools by Facebook. Moreover, the company is well within its legal rights to bring claims against journalists in the future under the statute. To address these issues, in Aug, the Knight Institute wrote a letter to Facebook, asking the company to change its terms to create a news-gathering exception to its ban on scraping. So far, the company has not complied with this request.

Because reporters must often either use these companies’ proprietary programming interfaces in order to gather the necessary information, or act covertly, legal advice has become essential in news gathering for these types of stories. Newsrooms with larger resources have attorneys who can advise journalists around the CFAA. Indeed, several newsrooms have begun providing legal trainings on the terms of service and the CFAA. But newsrooms without counsel as well as freelancers, who operate without legal advisors, are left largely at risk—leaving legislators at bat. And many news investigations have been stymied by the specter of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act’s penalties. While we have found ways of obtaining needed data through legal paths, the law creates real hurdles—and those hurdles must be removed.

[D Victoria Baranetsky is general counsel at The Center for Investigative Reporting.]