Lauren Frayer

Just three months after Comcast announced its $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable, its rival AT&T announced a $48 billion takeover of DirecTV. Both deals were poised to create new industry behemoths and transform the country’s media landscape. But while the Comcast transaction set off a widespread public outcry and ultimately collapsed last month under regulatory scrutiny, the AT&T-DirecTV merger proposal has largely avoided intense examination. Until now.

The spotlight has turned to AT&T’s deal for DirecTV, which -- if approved -- would unite the telecom giant with the satellite company to create the country’s largest television distributor. With about 26 million subscribers, it would surpass Comcast. Federal regulators are poring through more than 7.5 million pages of documents, hundreds of white papers and testimony by company executives to evaluate whether the AT&T-DirecTV deal will harm competition or serve the public interest. AT&T and DirecTV have both said they are confident the deal will close by the end of June.

As Silicon Valley companies seek to diversify their ranks and address the glaring absence of women, black and Latino engineers, a new report says they are overlooking a problem hidden in plain sight. Asian-Americans are well-represented at the Bay Area's leading technology firms, but few rise to the ranks of management and even fewer are in executive positions, according to an analysis of the employment records of Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn and Yahoo by the Ascend Foundation.

The gap is starkest for Asian women. Only one of every 285 Asian women at those companies is an executive, compared with one of every 87 white men.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers weighed the Obama administration's attempt to sidetrack Twitter's legal challenge to the government's tight lid on national security investigations that reach into the tech industry. After a lengthy hearing, Judge Gonzalez Rogers indicated she would rule later in the case, which she signaled raised tough new legal questions pitting the government's need to protect the secrecy of national security probes against the free speech rights of Internet titans such as Twitter.

Twitter is going further than the rest of the tech industry, seeking broader rights to expose how much government surveillance, if any, is going on in the Twitterverse. Twitter's legal salvo involves both national security letters sent by the FBI that forbid the release of information and National Security Agency demands for Internet user data.

[Commentary] New York’s public libraries want about $1.5 billion from the city over the next 10 years so they can fix their buildings, which are old, crowded, falling apart or lacking in things they need to be useful in the 21st century, like electrical outlets. They also want more operating money, $378 million, up from about $320 million, to improve programs and services in the coming fiscal year and to stay open longer — a basic indicator of library-system vigor in which New York lags embarrassingly behind Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio and San Diego. And the city’s suburbs. And Albany.

Mayor Bill de Blasio should give them the money, no question.

Of all the eyes on Google’s new wireless service last month, none were watching more intently than those at the North Carolina headquarters of Republic Wireless -- a startup that is about to face a big new rival.

Google’s new service, called Project Fi, takes the potentially disruptive approach of routing users over free Wi-Fi airwaves where possible and using expensive cellular service only as a fallback. That’s exactly what Republic has done as it has built up a service with a few hundred thousand subscribers over the past four years. It isn’t clear what the entrance of a big consumer brand like Google means for Republic. Optimists say it validates the Wi-Fi-first approach and may help Republic persuade subscribers to switch from mainstream carriers while expanding the number of phones that will work on the service. But there’s also a risk that Google could end up disrupting the 225-person company that moved more quickly to challenge the telecom industry’s predominant pricing.

TV networks are getting battered in the ratings, with double-digit viewership declines across the cable dial. But that hasn’t yet taken a toll on the earnings of media companies that own TV channels.

Reports for the first quarter so far showed that companies ranging from Viacom Inc. to Time Warner to Discovery Communications have avoided declines in revenue commensurate with the big losses of viewers they have suffered. In some cases, they have posted revenue gains. First, hotter shows have received a lift in prices, according to John Janedis, an analyst at Jefferies. When ratings are struggling, in-demand shows become even more so, and networks with portfolios of channels can have stars that outshine a roster of duds. Networks are also pumping more commercial time into their shows, Janedis said. In some cases networks are speeding up shows to cram in more ads. TV companies are also pulling some of their own promotional commercials to fill them with spots from advertisers. Though often these are “make-goods,” or free commercial time given back to advertisers due to ratings woes.

[Commentary] The en banc Eleventh Circuit has ruled that historical cell-site records are not protected by the Fourth Amendment under the third-party doctrine. The case, United States v. Davis, also adds an alternative holding that is even more important: Even if cell-site records were protected, the en banc court holds, accessing them would trigger only minimal Fourth Amendment concerns and would not require a warrant or probable cause. My bottom line: I agree with court’s ruling that the third-party doctrine applies and there was no search, but I think the alternative holding is puzzling, inconsistent with precedent, and unnecessary. But stay tuned. It’s a long shot, but that second alternative holding might end up drawing Supreme Court review of both holdings.

[Orin Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School]

The Senate isn't getting any closer to reforming the nation's spying laws or reauthorizing expiring portions of the Patriot Act with fewer than three legislative weeks left for lawmakers to do so. On May 5th, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would not pledge to take up legislation called the USA Freedom Act, which is expected to gain broad support in the House. “We’re going to try to do something to avoid expiration at the end of the month,” he told reporters. “Exactly how that plays out will be determined in part by how much time is left to achieve [a deal].” Instead, Majority Leader McConnell indicated that the starting point for his chamber would be legislation he and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) introduced to make a "clean" extension of the existing law for five years, which he would open up for amendments.

“I think, most likely, the outcome is some kind of an extension,” he said. “Chairman Burr and I consulted and we agreed that the underlying bill would be a simple extension but it would be open for amendment, whenever we are able to fully turn to it.” “The question is whether we can do all of that between now and Memorial Day, and I can’t tell you right now," he added. The lack of certainty about a path forward could lead to a heightened standoff as lawmakers approach a June 1 deadline to extend or reform the Patriot Act. With members of both parties pledging to oppose a "clean" reauthorization of the law, it seems unlikely Republican leaders would be able to get the 60 votes they need to avoid a filibuster on the bill.

Little did I know when I accepted this meeting that it would be crunch time for discussing the details of a Connect America Fund (CAF) for rate-of-retrun providers. The heart of universal service cannot be accomplished without ensuring that there are networks in place throughout America to deliver those services. It is absolutely critical to complete the Connect America Fund reforms. I appreciate the work that you and other associations have undertaken so far to find paths forward for rate-of-return areas. I recognize that no rate-of-return reform has ever been sustainable without your input. And I am convinced that with some hard work, creative thinking, and compromise from everyone -- including us Commissioners at the Federal Communicatiosn Commission -- we can get this done.

The next US president needs a fundamental understanding of technology and a vision to use it, said GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO said the next inhabitant of the White House also needs to know when to take a hands-off approach. "It's important to have someone in the White House who has a fundamental understanding of technology, a fundamental vision for how technology can be used," she said. "One of the things I think government shouldn't be doing is trying to regulate in some bureaucracy how innovation progresses in the technology industry," she added. If elected, she said she would immediately try to roll back the new network neutrality rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission. She asserted the "400 pages" of regulations "can't possibly work."