By Tim Grayson FCC Moves to Dismiss Net Neutrality Challenges As PCMag.com reports, the FCC moved to dismiss two challenges to the agency’s December 2010 adoption of controversial net neutrality rules regulating broadband and wireless networks. Verizon and MetroPCS filed suit, each claiming that the FCC lacks the authority to enforce net neutrality. The FCC’s motion to dismiss stems from a timing issue: Verizon and MetroPCS both filed suit before the new rules were published in the Federal Register. This ... Read More...

By Greg Tang TSA Offends Travelers with Body Scanners, Fails to be Accountable The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) commented on the TSA’s use of body scanners in airports across the country, which has raised serious public concerns over the indignity and invasiveness of the body scanners and pat-down searches. The EFF expressed skepticism over the effectiveness of the body scanners in detecting terrorist attacks like the Christmas Day Bomb of 2009, citing various sources, including a TSA document, that have ... Read More...

Lawyer Violates Telephone Consumer Protection Act with Outsourced Newsletters By Ian B. Brooks – Edited by Jad Mills Holtzman v. Turza, No. 08-C-2014 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 3, 2010) Opinion hosted by Google The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled that a lawyer makes unsolicited advertisements under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) when his primary purpose for hiring a company to distribute his materials via facsimile was to advertise his services.  Granting the plaintiff’s summary ... Read More...

By Chinh Vo Republican Senators Draft Bill in Opposition to FCC’s Net Neutrality Regulations Plans CNET reports that a group of Republican senators, led by Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, is sponsoring a new bill designed to thwart the FCC’s plans to regulate broadband providers. The bill, dubbed the Freedom for Consumer Choice Act, would allow the FCC to impose requirements on the broadband industry only if marketplace competition is inadequate, giving the agency authority similar to the Department ... Read More...

By Sharona Hakimi The White House Endorses FCC Plan and Calls for More Broadband Spectrum Reuters and CNet report that on June 28, President Obama signed a Presidential Memo endorsing the FCC’s goal to free up 500 megahertz of wireless broadband over the next ten years. The memo estimates that the flow of wireless data used in the next five years will increase to as much as 45 times the total bandwidth used in 2009. The memo calls on government ... Read More...