US Department of Justice

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are releasing a draft update of the Merger Guidelines (Draft Guidelines), which describe and guide the agencies’ review of mergers and acquisitions to determine compliance with federal antitrust laws. The goal of this update is to better reflect how the agencies determine a merger’s effect on competition in the modern economy and evaluate proposed mergers under the law. Both agencies encourage the public to review the draft and provide feedback through a public comment period that will last 60 days.

[Speech] As public attention has been drawn to the practice of collecting data, there is a heightened concern about the value of privacy and the value of consumer data. This concern is no longer limited to privacy advocates and policymakers who have sounded the alarm for years, only for their concerns to fall on deaf ears.

The United States Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T/DirecTV’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner. The $108 billion acquisition would substantially lessen competition, resulting in higher prices and less innovation for millions of Americans. The combination of AT&T/DirecTV’s vast video distribution infrastructure and Time Warner’s popular television programming would be one of the largest mergers in American history.

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a policy statement on the sharing of cybersecurity information that makes clear that properly designed cyber threat information sharing is not likely to raise antitrust concerns and can help secure the nation’s networks of information and resources.

The policy statement provides the agencies’ analytical framework for information sharing among private entities and is designed to reduce uncertainty for those who want to share ways to prevent and combat cyberattacks.

“The Department of Justice is committed to doing all it can to protect the security of our nation’s networks. Through the FBI and the National Security and Criminal Divisions, the department plays a critical role in preventing and prosecuting cybercrime,” said Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole. “Private parties play a critical role in mitigating and responding to cyber threats, and this policy statement should encourage them to share cybersecurity information.”

“Because of the FTC’s long experience promoting data security, we understand the serious threat posed by cyberattacks,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. “This statement should help private businesses by making it clear that antitrust laws do not stand in the way of legitimate sharing of cybersecurity threat information.”

In the policy statement, the federal antitrust agencies recognize that the sharing of cyber threat information has the potential to improve the security, availability, integrity and efficiency of the nation’s information systems. The policy statement also emphasizes that the legitimate sharing of cyber threat information is very different from the sharing of competitively sensitive information such as current or future prices and output or business plans, which may raise antitrust concerns. Cyber threat information is typically technical in nature and covers a limited type of information, and disseminating that information appears unlikely to raise competitive concerns.