April 2018

A closely divided Supreme Court struggled to decide whether internet retailers should have to collect sales taxes in states where they have no physical presence. Brick-and-mortar businesses have long complained that they are disadvantaged by having to charge sales taxes while many of their online competitors do not. States have said that they are missing out on tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that helped spur the rise of internet shopping.

The House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a hearing examining data prioritization and how it is critical to the internet’s function and growth. Members of the Subcommittee heard from a range of expert witnesses who testified on the how and why data is currently prioritized on the network, and potential needs for future prioritization.

If Facebook has to pay a  Federal Trade Commission penalty for the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, it will join a very short list of companies to have done so. Of 91 cases involving online privacy issues the Federal Trade Commission has brought since the first in 1998, just two companies have paid civil penalties specifically for violating adult users' privacy. They are Google, which paid $22.5 million in 2012 and Upromise, which paid $500,000 in 2017. The numbers aren't surprising to experts because of the constraints on the FTC when it comes to policing consumers' privacy rights.