Hill, The

[Commentary] Since Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, many have asked what a new ninth justice might mean for campaign finance law. The shorthand for this was often “Citizens United.” Could it be overturned?

There is nothing in Judge Neil Gorsuch’s record to suggest that he is hostile to recent Supreme Court money in politics decisions. If anything, there is some evidence that he thinks the court could go further in rolling back campaign finance restrictions. Regardless of his pre-existing views, or those of other members of the court, at some point it should be necessary to compare the evidence of what has happened to what the court assumed and predicted when issuing these opinions. A Supreme Court that does so will be forced to concede that many of those decisions are built on a foundation of sand, and need to be reconsidered.

[Lawrence Norden is the deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.]

The New York attorney general’s office announced a lawsuit filed against Spectrum-Time Warner Cable and its parent company, Charter Communications, for allegedly defrauding and misleading New Yorkers about internet speeds and quality. “The allegations in today’s lawsuit confirm what millions of New Yorkers have long suspected — Spectrum-TWC has been ripping you off,” said New York Attorney General Schneiderman. “Today’s action seeks to bring much-needed relief to the millions of New Yorkers we allege have been getting cheated by Spectrum-Time Warner Cable for far too long.”

Schneiderman claimed that the Spectrum-Time Warner Cable was still misleadingly promising consumers internet speeds that they could not deliver on. The complaint specifically alleges that since January 2012, Spectrum-TWC marketing materials claimed that consumers who subscribed to their internet service would "fast, reliable connection" in their homes. After 16 months of investigation, though, the Schneiderman's office found that hundreds of thousands of speed tests showed that customers were “getting dramatically short-changed on both speed and reliability” by as much as 80 percent.

President Donald Trump scrapped plans to sign an executive action launching a government-wide cybersecurity overhaul. The White House did not immediately provide an explanation for the cancellation. It was an abrupt about face after the White House spent all day Jan 31 plugging its plans to boost the nation's offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.

Officials told reporters earlier in the day that Trump planned to order Cabinet officials to enhance their agencies’ cyber defenses and commission an administration-wide review to assess hacking risks. Hours later, Trump convened a “listening session” with top White House, Cabinet and cybersecurity experts in the Roosevelt Room. “I will hold my Cabinet secretaries and agency heads accountable, totally accountable for the cybersecurity of their organizations which we probably don’t have as much, certainly not as much as we need,” he said. “We must protect federal networks and data.”

The handoff of federal agencies' social media accounts to the Trump administration is sparking controversy and complicating the transition.

Trump's is the first administration to take power in the Twitter age. That’s led to confusion about the rules for handing off government accounts and oversight. Twitter laid out plans for seamlessly transferring the @POTUS account from former President Obama to President Trump — and other social media platforms, including Instagram and Facebook, did the same. But for many other government agencies, there were no plans in place for how to manage communications on social media as a new president took power. Obama administration officials say that's because they largely left agencies to handle their own accounts free of political influence from the White House. They say they didn't anticipate that the next administration would want tighter controls on social media.

President Donald Trump is preparing an executive order calling for a large-scale review of national cybersecurity. “Free and secure use of cyberspace is essential to advancing US national interests. The Internet is a vital national resource. Cyberspace must be an environment that fosters efficiency, innovation communication, and economic prosperity without disruption, fraud, theft or invasion of privacy," the order reportedly reads. The White House could not confirm whether the report was authentic or whether it resembled draft or finalized executive orders currently pending. The Washington Post published a document it said was a draft of the order.

According to the document, President Trump will task a team headed by the secretary of Defense — and including the heads of the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — with generating reports on the security of defense systems and critical infrastructure. They would have 60 days to complete it. The same group would assemble a report on the "principle cyber adversaries" on the same timeline, with National Intelligence taking the lead. The reported order also includes a review of operational capabilities and workforce readiness in the face of an anticipated cybersecurity skills shortage, as well as look at private sector incentive programs to encourage better security practices.

Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said that a potential merger between Verizon and Charter would raise red flags for regulators. “As Ranking Member of the Antitrust Subcommittee, I have fought hard to promote competition across a broad range of industries and sectors — including media and telecom — because competition protects consumers and fosters innovation,” Sen Klobuchar said. "A potential acquisition of Charter by Verizon would raise concerns about its potential impact on consumers across our country and would merit close scrutiny by regulators and the subcommittee.”

The White House tightened up President Trump's lax social media security shortly after it was revealed that Trump’s official Twitter account, @POTUS, was linked to a personal Gmail account. The Gmail link could have allowed any hacker with access to the Gmail account to reset the Twitter password and gain control of the influential account.

A request to reset the password for the account earlier on Jan 26 revealed that Trump’s recovery e-mail was an address on Google’s widely used e-mail service. A TV Guide editor was the first to attempt the password reset. The Hill confirmed that the password could be reset through Gmail. As the hacks of Democratic Party-affiliated e-mail accounts allegedly perpetrated by Russian hackers recently revealed, personal accounts can be vulnerable to illicit access. Theoretically, a hacker could use the Gmail account to wrest control of the @POTUS handle for mischief or worse.

Conservative groups are urging Congress to roll back the broadband privacy rules that were enacted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2016. In a letter to House and Senate leaders, the groups asked the lawmakers to use their Congressional Review Act authority to rescind the FCC’s Broadband Privacy Order. The letter’s signees include the telecom industry-aligned NetCompetition as well as free-market groups like Americans for Tax Reform and FreedomWorks.

“Congress is fully justified in rescinding these rules both because the Order lacks proper legal grounding and because of the need to ensure real consumer privacy across contexts of user experience,” the letter reads. The regulations were passed in October and require internet service providers to obtain permission from customers before using their browsing and app usage data. “Rescinding the Privacy Order would promote both innovation and effective, consistent privacy protections in over-the-top, application, wireless and wireline markets,” reads the letter. “It would also send a clear signal that the FCC has lost its way in interpreting the statute Congress gave it.”

Republicans are eager to turn the page at the Federal Communications Commission after eight years of policies under President Barack Obama that they say have stifled innovation and burdened the tech sector. President Trump’s appointment of Ajit Pai as FCC chairman has raised hopes that many of the rules and regulations enacted under President Obama — including the controversial network neutrality rules — will soon be on the chopping block.

Chairman Pai fought against the enactment of former-Chairman Tom Wheeler’s signature Open Internet Order, which codified net neutrality, the idea that all internet traffic should be treated equally. Republicans like Pai denounced the FCC order for reclassifying internet service providers as [telecommunications services]. The move subjected internet providers to heavier regulation, with the FCC effectively taking over regulatory jurisdiction on issues like privacy from the Federal Trade Commission.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who tried to roll back the net neutrality order through legislation, said Republicans are deliberating how to tackle net neutrality now that the party is in charge of both the executive and legislative branches. “I think getting some certainty on the net neutrality issue is something that industry would like for us to do,” Rep Blackburn said. “Everyone would like to see some certainty there, and everyone would like to see the FCC back in their correct lanes. FTC should have jurisdiction for privacy.”

The White House denied it has directed federal agencies to stop using social media, saying new restrictions on communications have instead come from within those agencies themselves. “There's nothing that has come from the White House. Absolutely not,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said. "There are a couple of these agencies that have had problems adhering to their own policies.” “They haven’t been directed by us to do anything,” he said. Since President Trump took office, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been told not to tweet or communicate with the media while the agency reviews its public relations strategy. The Interior Department was also reportedly instructed to stop operating its Twitter accounts following a couple of National Park Service tweets about the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd.