AT&T overcharged U.S. businesses millions of dollars by improperly handling and billing thousands of Internet Protocol relay calls made by Nigerian scammers, the Department of Justice alleged in a complaint filed Wednesday. The DOJ says AT&T violated the False Claims Act by seeking payment for IP relay calls made by international callers who sought to use the system for fraudulent purposes. The Telecommunications Relay Services Fund has reimbursed AT&T more than $16 million since December 2009, of which up to 95 percent of payments were made for non-compensable IP relay calls, the complaint said.
Lawmakers lauded the Department of Homeland Security’s increase in cybersecurity funding, during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee budget hearing Wednesday. The president’s budget request includes a 74 percent increase in the department’s cybersecurity budget, for a total request of $770 million for cybersecurity in fiscal year 2013. The administration’s total fiscal year 2013 request for the department is $39.5 billion in net discretionary spending, a 0.5 percent decrease from the year prior.
A European Commission roadmap for the future of satellite navigation system Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS) began moving through the European Parliament Wednesday. Lawmakers in the Industry, Research and Energy Committee said they're generally enthusiastic about the programs, which are seen as a way to boost European growth, competitiveness and clout, but they remain wary about the cost overruns that have plagued Galileo. Questions about financing and governance remain, they said.
The FCC should rethink the spectrum parts of the National Broadband Plan in light of the experience of the last two years, said Blair Levin, manager of the plan, and FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell last week in separate interviews. Friday marked the two-year anniversary of the formal release of the plan, at the FCC’s March 2010 meeting.
The Supreme Court’s Jones privacy decision is rippling through electronic communications well beyond the GPS tracking it involved, less than two months after the ruling came down, legal experts said. The decision was “very cautious” but “very important,” leaving the court “potentially poised to change 40 years” of law on Americans’ privacy in relation to the government, law Professor Stephen Henderson of the University of Oklahoma said on an American Bar Association webcast. The court decided Jones “on the narrowest possible ground, but they certainly left the door open in the years to come” for litigation to decide profound questions concerning technologies besides GPS, said moderator William Baker of Wiley Rein.
The Supreme Court’s Jones privacy decision is rippling through electronic communications well beyond the GPS tracking it involved, less than two months after the ruling came down, legal experts said. The decision was “very cautious” but “very important,” leaving the court “potentially poised to change 40 years” of law on Americans’ privacy in relation to the government, law Professor Stephen Henderson of the University of Oklahoma said on an American Bar Association webcast. The court decided Jones “on the narrowest possible ground, but they certainly left the door open in the years to come” for litigation to decide profound questions concerning technologies besides GPS, said moderator William Baker of Wiley Rein.
Enforcement and implementation of privacy within the technology sector is coupled with challenges in the mobile and social media arenas and figuring out reasonable levels of opt-in features, government officials and privacy and tech experts said Thursday at a Consumer Federation of America event.
On March 8, 2012, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a proposed rule to revise the regulations and bring them in line with CITES decisions. Proposed revisions include revised definitions for coral, cultivar, and sturgeon caviar; revised labeling and tagging for elephant ivory, vicuna, fur, and sturgeon caviar; processing changes for CITES documents, changes to how some CITES specimens may be used after import, etc. Comments are due by April 9, 2012.
There is a problem with the congressional push to reform the way states collect online sales taxes: Grover Norquist. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., told us it’s “a terrible disappointment” that Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) opposes the Marketplace Tax Fairness Act (S-1832), in an interview following his speech to the National League of Cities conference Tuesday. The bill “does not raise taxes, it only collects what is owed,” Enzi said.
AT&T and T-Mobile jointly asked the FCC to deny objections by Diogenes Telecom Project to the transfer of AWS licenses from AT&T to T-Mobile. The transfer was part of the breakup fee after AT&T dropped plans to acquire its smaller competitor in December. “The proposed assignments will serve the public interest and are fully consistent with the Communications Act,” they said. “Specifically, the proposed assignments will help T-Mobile USA address its spectrum needs in the subject markets to enable it to better address the growing demands of consumers for wireless data and content services and to move to next-generation mobile technology.” Diogenes filed a petition to deny (http://xrl.us/bmxkv9), arguing that AT&T and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom “made numerous material misrepresentations to the Commission throughout those proceedings, including false and misleading statements and material omissions.” AT&T and T-Mobile said Diogenes “is simply renewing groundless character claims previously raised before the Commission and unnecessarily wasting scarce agency resources."