Court case

I’m pleased the Department of Justice has filed this suit. The Internet is inherently an interstate information service. As such, only the federal government can set policy in this area. And the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently reaffirmed that state regulation of information services is preempted by federal law. Not only is California’s Internet regulation law illegal, it also hurts consumers. The law prohibits many free-data plans, which allow consumers to stream video, music, and the like exempt from any data limits.

The Justice Department responded almost immediately to Gov Jerry Brown (D-CA) signing net neutrality legislation with a lawsuit seeking to overturn the law. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that the federal government, not the states, should oversee the internet, and California had “enacted an extreme and illegal state law attempting to frustrate federal policy.” In response to the Justice Department suit, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said, “While the Trump Administration continues to ignore the millions of Americans who voiced strong support for net-neutrality rules, Calif

Although the decision remains under seal, a federal judge in California apparently ruled that the government cannot force Facebook to break the encryption on its popular Messenger voice app in a criminal case in which agents wanted to intercept a suspect’s conversations. The decision could be a setback for the Justice Department which sought to compel Facebook to figure out how to give it access to the encrypted communications.

The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC) and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) are challenging the Federal Communications Commission's proposed incubator program, petitioning the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to review one element of the program—its comparability standards of ownership rule waivers—which they said was arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion, and thus illegal. MMTC and NABOB support the underlying goal of helping diversify media ownership and the incubator program specifically.

The Free State Foundation is hailing the Federal Communications Commission's planned Sept 26 vote on an item regarding local franchising authorities (LFAs) as important and appropriate pushback on localities trying to re-regulate internet access.

Advocacy groups pouring money into independent campaigns to impact the Fall 2018 midterm races must disclose many of their political donors beginning the week of Sept 17 after the Supreme Court declined to intervene in a long-running case. The high court did not grant an emergency request to stay a ruling by a federal judge in Washington who had thrown out a decades-old Federal Election Commission regulation allowing nonprofit groups to keep their donors secret unless they had earmarked their money for certain purposes.

The Federal Communications Commission must stop withholding records that may shed light on fraudulent comments submitted in the FCC's network neutrality repeal proceeding, a US District Court judge ruled the week of Sept 10. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in Sept 2017 by freelance journalist Jason Prechtel, who sued the FCC after it failed to provide documents in response to his Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request.

The United Kingdom's Government Communications Headquarters' (GCHQ’s) methods in carrying out bulk interception of online communications violated privacy and failed to provide sufficient surveillance safeguards, the European court of human rights (ECHR) has ruled in a test case judgment. But the Strasbourg court found that GCHQ’s regime for sharing sensitive digital intelligence with foreign governments was not illegal.

The Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that protesters attacked at a 2016 Trump campaign rally in Louisville (KY) can’t proceed with a lawsuit alleging Donald Trump incited the violence with inflammatory remarks. “Get ’em out. Get ’em out of here,” Trump said of protesters at the event. “Get ’em the hell out,” he said several minutes later, then added, “Don’t hurt ’em. See, if I say, ’Go get ’em,’ I get in trouble with the press.” Video clips from the rally show protesters being pushed and shoved by audience members.

A court ruling that limits state regulation of cable company offerings was praised by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, who says the ruling supports his contention that the FCC can preempt state-level network neutrality rules. The new court ruling found that Minnesota's state government cannot regulate VoIP phone services offered by Charter and other cable companies because VoIP is an "information service" under federal law.