Latest news with #FCC
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Business
- Reuters
FCC orders review of 'Cyber Trust Mark' program over China ties
June 20 (Reuters) - Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr said on Friday he had ordered a review of the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark program over "potentially concerning ties to the government of China." Carr said the review was being carried out by the FCC's Council on National Security. He did not provide details. The review was earlier reported by Fox News, opens new tab.
CNA
5 hours ago
- Business
- CNA
AT&T's $177 million data breach settlement wins US court approval
WASHINGTON :A U.S. judge granted preliminary approval on Friday to a $177 million settlement that resolves lawsuits against AT&T over breaches in 2024 that exposed personal information belonging to tens of millions of the telecom giant's customers. U.S. District Judge Ada Brown in Dallas said in a ruling that the class-action settlement was fair and reasonable. The deal resolves claims over data breaches that AT&T announced in May and July last year. Depending on which breach is involved, AT&T has agreed to pay up to $2,500 or $5,000 to customers who suffered losses that are "fairly traceable" to the incidents. After payments are made for direct losses, the remaining funds will be distributed to customers whose personal information was accessed. AT&T did not immediately comment. One of the incidents resulted in the illegal downloading of about 109 million customer accounts at the U.S. wireless company. AT&T disclosed that its call logs were copied from its workspace on a Snowflake cloud platform covering about six months of customer call and text data from 2022 from nearly all its customers. In March 2024, AT&T said it was investigating a data set released on the "dark web" and said its preliminary analysis showed it affected approximately 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders. The company said the data set appeared to be from 2019 or earlier. The Federal Communications Commission is also investigating. In September, AT&T agreed to pay $13 million to resolve an FCC investigation over a data breach of a cloud vendor in January 2023 that impacted 8.9 million AT&T wireless customers. The FCC said the data exposed in 2023 covered customers from 2015 through 2017 that should have been deleted in 2017 or 2018.
Newsweek
6 hours ago
- Business
- Newsweek
Justice Kagan Says Supreme Court 'Wrong' on Text, History and Precedent
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said the majority was "wrong" on matters of text, history and precedent in a dissent published Friday. The Court ruled that courts are not bound to the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which protects businesses and consumers from intrusive telemarketing by prohibiting unsolicited fax advertisements to "telephone facsimile machines." In the 6-3 ruling, liberal Justices Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Why It Matters The Supreme Court's decision could determine the role of FCC rulings in future judicial proceedings. In 2009 and 2010, a subsidiary of health care company McKesson Corporation sent unsolicited fax advertisements to various medical practices, including McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates. McLaughlin sued McKesson in 2014, alleging violations of the TCPA without the notice to opt out required under the statute. In a class-action lawsuit against McKesson, led by McLaughlin, the district court did not distinguish between advertisements received on traditional fax machines and those received through online fax services. A third party with no connection to the litigation petitioned the FCC for a ruling on whether the TCPA applies to online fax services. The FCC ruled that "an online fax service is not a 'telephone facsimile machine.'" The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled against McLaughlin on claims involving online fax services following the FCC's ruling. The Supreme Court, however, ruled that the FCC's decision did not bind the district court and was instead required to interpret the statute independently. What To Know Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who delivered the Court's majority opinion, warned that ruling in favor of McKesson and the FCC would require district courts to show "absolute deference" to the agency. He said the Court sees "no good rationale" for embodying that position on the Hobbs Act, a 1950 law that allows for a court of appeals to review FCC orders. "As McKesson and the Government see things, when the initial window for pre-enforcement review closes, no one can argue in court that the agency's interpretation of a statute is incorrect—no matter how wrong the agency's interpretation might be," Kavanagh wrote. Kagan disagreed. "The majority today is wrong as a matter of text: The Hobbs Act gives the courts of appeals exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of agency action, meaning that district courts have no jurisdiction to do so," Kagan said in her dissent. Kagan said the majority is also "wrong as a matter of history" and "wrong as a matter of precedent" concerning the Hobbs Act. "There is simply nothing in the law to support today's result," Kagan said. Kagan argued that the Court's interpretation of the law prevents it from serving its "intended function." "Today's holding undermines the certainty and finality Congress sought in designing a mechanism for judicial review; it subjects all administrative schemes, and the many businesses and individuals relying on them, to the ever-present risk of disruption," Kagan said. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan sits on a panel at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference in Sacramento, California, on July 25, 2024. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan sits on a panel at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference in Sacramento, California, on July 25, 2024. AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli What People Are Saying Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in the majority opinion: "The Hobbs Act dictates how, when, and in what court a party can challenge a new agency order before enforcement. The Act does not purport to address, much less preclude, district court review in enforcement proceedings." Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent: "The majority today is wrong as a matter of precedent: This Court has held that the Hobbs Act, like its precursors, sets up a single judicial review mechanism for agency rules and orders, and prevents later collateral attacks on them in other courts." What Happens Next The Supreme Court's decision reversed the ruling made by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Do you have a story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have any questions about this story? Contact LiveNews@
The Verge
7 hours ago
- Politics
- The Verge
Fax spam is apparently still a thing.
The Supreme Court sent a fax spam case back to a lower court after determining it erred in deferring to the Federal Communications Commission's legal interpretation. After the FCC said the law didn't cover online fax services, a lower court decertified a class of fax recipients seeking damages for receiving unsolicited ads. SCOTUS says the court should have made its own interpretation, which could be meaningful for medical professionals who still use faxes.
The Hill
10 hours ago
- Business
- The Hill
Robocalls are rising fast in 2025 – especially in these US cities
(NEXSTAR) – Your phone ringing a little extra lately? You're not alone. Americans got nearly 5 billion robocalls last month according to tracking by YouMail, a call screening and blocking service that tracks call volume. In the first five months of the year, robocalls have gone up 11% when compared to the same period in 2024, the company's latest analysis found. Last month averaged more than 1,800 robocalls per second. The people most likely to have their phones ringing endlessly these days live outside the country's biggest cities, the report found. The cities that saw the largest year-over-year jump in robocalls, according to YouMail, were: Larger cities, like Houston and Philadelphia, also saw increases in robocall volume, YouMail CEO Alex Quilici said, but the changes weren't as dramatic. 'It's really fascinating, the bigger cities are very similar to last year – slight increases or decreases,' he said. 'It's the mid-tier cities, especially in the Midwest seeing big jumps.' While would-be scammers haven't given up trying to contact you, it's actually legal telemarketing callers that are driving much of the increase, according to Quilici. It has to do with a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule change earlier this year. The agency was trying to make it so that when you give consent for a company to contact you, you're only agreeing to be contacted by that specific company. But that rule was tossed out in court, and now companies can often share your contact information with others who may want it. Quilici gave an example: 'I was shopping for a car, and there's five or six local dealers. And sure, the local dealers can call me. I'm happy to give consent for that, right? I want them to call me and tell me what they've got, but I didn't mean to then give consent to insurance companies and everybody else out there.' Most people don't read the terms before clicking that little box online, so they don't realize they've agreed to being blasted with marketing calls. Giving that consent also means they can be contacted even if they're on the federal Do Not Call Registry. Thanks to another recent court ruling, the FCC has also had a harder time fining wrongdoers, Quilici explained. Other agencies, like the Department of Justice, may pick up the mantle and try to go after excessive telemarketing calls, spam texts and scammers, he said. But in the meantime, we may be stuck screening more and more unwanted calls.
