Courts

As Google continues to struggle to defend its changes to its privacy policies, the company could see the whole controversy shift to a federal court.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center said Wednesday that it planned to ask a federal court to order the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the privacy settlement the agency reached last year with Google. EPIC says Google's privacy changes violate that settlement.

"We haven't yet seen the filing so [we] can't comment on the specifics," Google said in a statement in response to EPIC's court filing. "Protecting people's privacy is something we think about all day across the company, and we welcome discussions about our approach."

Google says the changes will make it easier for users to understand its privacy policies. It also denied a claim EPIC made in its court filing that the company did not obtain users consent before sharing data with third parties. Google maintains that it does not share user data with third parties and that will continue to be the case even after the privacy changes go into effect on March 1.

A partner at a law firm that represented AT&T in its blockbuster merger case has been nominated by President Obama to head the Justice Department office that moved to block the merger.

William Baer, a partner at Arnold & Porter, has been nominated to replace Sharis Pozen as an assistant attorney general over the DOJ's antitrust division, the White House officially announced on Monday. Last week Obama indicated he planned to nominate Baer.

Baer currently heads the antitrust office at Arnold & Porter, whose lawyers staffed top positions in AT&T's failed bid to buy T-Mobile last year. According to a confidentiality statement filed in May with the Federal Communications Commission, which also reviewed the merger, AT&T hired at least 32 lawyers from Arnold & Porter. Baer was not listed.

Pozen's antitrust division at DOJ spearheaded a court battle that ultimately led to AT&T's decision to abandon the deal. Pozen was serving as acting head of the division after Christine Varney left in August.

According to a profile on the Arnold & Porter website, Baer has represented clients like General Electric, Intel, Cisco, and Visa. He previously worked at the Federal Trade Commission when it blocked a1997 merger between Staples and Office Depot.

A federal judge has ruled that the Justice Department can access Twitter accounts connected to the anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks, CNet reports.

T-Mobile reported a boost in subscribers for the first time in a year and profits that beat expectations even as it fights to gain regulatory approval of a deal to sell itself to AT&T, according to Bloomberg.

MSNBC reports that demand for Amazon's new Kindle fire could pose a threat to the iPad's dominance of the tablet market.

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The Federal Communications Commission is moving to dismiss Verizon's challenge to the agency's open Internet rules.

The FCC filed a motion Wednesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to dismiss Verizon's lawsuit challenging rules barring wireline broadband providers from discriminating against Internet content, services or applications.

"We look forward to defending our open Internet framework in court. This strong and balanced framework has brought certainty and predictability, stimulating investment across the broadband economy," an FCC spokesman said Thursday. "Verizon's legal challenge is not only misguided; it threatens to destabilize an important and growing part of our economy at a critical time."

Verizon officially relaunched its legal bid to overturn the so-called net neutrality rules last week. Its original lawsuit filed in January was derailed after a federal court said the company could not file a challenge until the rules were published in the Federal Register, which the FCC did on Sept. 23.

In its motion to dismiss, the FCC argued that Verizon lacks jurisdiction to challenge the rules to the federal appeals court because it would not modify "radio licenses" as Verizon has claimed.

The federal government must release information about how and when it uses cellphone data to track criminal suspects, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday, saying the public's interest outweighs any privacy concerns, CNN reports.

The American Civil Liberties Union declared victory in the decision, one of several involving technology such as GPS that can be used to track the movements of people using smartphones, laptop computers and other devices.

"The disclosure sought by the plaintiffs would inform this ongoing public policy discussion by shedding light on the scope and effectiveness of cellphone tracking as a law enforcement tool," the three-judge District of Columbia panel said in a 35-page ruling. "It would, for example, provide information about the kinds of crimes the government uses cell phone tracking data to investigate."

"I highly doubt that the 90 percent of Americans who carry cellphones thought that when they got cellphone service they were giving up their privacy in their movements," Catherine Crump, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who argued the case, was quoted by Reuters as saying.

It's not often you get references to Dante, dime store novels and Snow White in a Supreme Court ruling. Justice Antonin Scalia did just that in telling California it can't regulate sales of even the grossest video games to kids. The Supremes also agreed to hear cases about indecency and police use of GPS tracking devices on their last Read more here.

The biggest antitrust case of the digital age comes to an official end Thursday in the United States with the expiration of the final judgment in the antitrust case against Microsoft.

The Justice Department, 19 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in 1998 alleging that the software giant violated antitrust laws. The suit claimed Microsoft was illegally attempting to maintain its monopoly over computer operating systems by excluding competing middleware programs such as Internet browsers and media players.

The lawsuit was launched by the Clinton administration but was settled by the administration of George W. Bush in 2002 for far less than what Microsoft's critics were seeking - such as the breakup of the company.

"The final judgment helped create competitive conditions that enabled new kinds of products, such as cloud computing services and mobile devices, to develop as potential platform threats to the Windows desktop operating system," the Justice Department said in a statement this week.

The settlement barred Microsoft from engaging in exclusionary behavior harmful to competitors and consumers and required the company to provide third parties with the programming details needed to design their products to work with Microsoft's operating system. However, it did not bar Microsoft from continuing to bundle new products into new versions of its Windows operating system.

"The general impact is that it produced a better corporate citizen in Microsoft and perhaps a less aggressive competitor," said Glenn Manishin, a lawyer with Duane Morris who worked for some of the groups that urged the Justice Department to bring the lawsuit against Microsoft.

While the final judgment was ultimately viewed as a victory for Microsoft, the case distracted the company for years and cost it millions of dollars in legal fees. Microsoft also had to deal with private legal battles and the European Union's antitrust case. Microsoft is still appealing the EU's fine in that case.

"Our experience has changed us and shaped how we view our responsibility to the industry," Microsoft said in a statement this week. "We are pleased to bring this matter to successful resolution, and we are excited to keep delivering great products and services for our partners and customers."

The Justice Department Thursday asked the Supreme Court to reverse a federal appeals court ruling that tossed out an indecency fine leveled by the Federal Communications Commission against ABC for a 2003 episode of "NYPD Blue."

Citing a 2010 ruling it made in a separate case, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in January ruled that the FCC's $1.2 million fine against ABC for briefly airing a female character's nude buttocks during the NYPD Blue episode was "unconstitutionally vague."

The Parents Television Council praised the Obama administration's decision to appeal the ruling.

"Today's appeal is a step in the right direction, but we urge the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the children and families who will be impacted if the broadcast decency law is dismantled," the council said in a statement. "The high court must not give the broadcast networks the opportunity to use narrow, misguided circuit court rulings to nullify the will of the American people, the intent of the U.S. Congress and several decades of Supreme Court precedent."

It's full steam ahead for Verizon's judicial challenge to the FCC's controversial network neutrality rules - despite a procedural hiccup on Monday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed out the company's legal challenge because Verizon jumped the gun by submitting it too early.

A Verizon spokesman blamed the dismissal on the FCC, which he said was unclear about when an appeal should be filed. He confirmed that the telecom giant plans to resubmit its suit, but this time it will wait until the commission publishes its new Internet rules in the federal register next month.

In December, the agency's three Democrats adopted net neutrality safeguards designed to bar Internet providers from blocking or degrading online competitors. Proponents say the move was necessary to protect the Internet from being controlled by major corporations, while critics - including many Republicans - dismiss the action as unecessary government overreach.

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Almost half a dozen advocacy groups waded into Verizon's lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality rules Tuesday, seeking to protect regulations that many of the groups had criticized for not going far enough.

Free Press, Media Access Project, Media Mobilizing Project, Public Knowledge and others all filed motions in the case to protect their ability to challenge any appeals.

The groups argue that the lawsuit, brought by Verizon and later joined by MetroPCS, was improperly filed and poses a threat to the FCC's ability to protect an open Internet.

"We hope the D.C. Circuit recognizes that the companies' suits are brought improperly and dismisses them, but we're filing today to preserve our rights to challenge the appeals if they're not dismissed outright," Free Press Policy Counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement. "We don't believe the FCC's order goes far enough to protect free speech online, but Verizon's and MetroPCS's efforts to ensure that the FCC has no role in protecting Internet users in the broadband marketplace are self-serving and dangerous."

In a statement at the time Verizon filed its lawsuit, Verizon Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Michael Glover said, "We are deeply concerned by the FCC's as,sertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself."

But Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior vice president and policy director of Media Access Project, called Verizon's challenge a "sideshow."

"Verizon adopted a bizarre legal theory to obtain a tactical legal advantage," he said. "We are confident that the D.C. Circuit will dismiss this appeal in short order."