Decisions by Cloudflare, GoDaddy and Google not to manage neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer (see 1708150001 and 1708140044) are "dangerous" because they can have "far-reaching impacts on speech around the world," blogged Electronic Frontier Foundation Executive Director Cindy Cohn, Senior Global Policy Analyst Jeremy Malcolm and International Director Danny O'Brien. The actions followed Aug. 12 clashes between white nationalists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. Companies have the right to decide what speech does and doesn't appear on their platforms and are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, said EFF: But "precedents being set now can shift the justice of those removals." Access Now similarly blogged Thursday about the issue and provided recommendations.

The 14 largest cable and telco providers in the U.S., with about 95 percent of the market, acquired close to 230,000 net additional broadband subscribers in Q2, Leichtman Research Group said in a news release Friday. LRG said those companies combined have more than 94.1 million subscribers, with 59.9 million for cable ISPs and 34.2 million for telcos. The Q2 additions were 7 percent higher than in Q2 2016, LRG said. It said cable ISPs added about 460,000 subs in Q2 2017, but telcos lost 230,000. The researcher said the past year saw about 2.55 million net broadband adds, compared with 3 million in the previous 12 months.

A federal court entered a temporary restraining order against an operation that allegedly deceived consumers into buying an online work-at-home scheme, "falsely promising" thousands of dollars in earnings without them needing skills or experience, said an FTC Thursday news release. Commissioners voted 2-0 to file the complaint and ask the District Court for the Southern District of Texas to enter the Aug. 8 order against defendants Bobby Robinson, Michael Sirois, Bob Robinson LLC, Mega Export 2005, Mega Export USA and Netcore Solutions. The agency said it requested a preliminary injunction. An evidentiary hearing is Aug. 24. A message on one of the defendants' site said the system was experiencing problems. Contact information otherwise couldn't be located and some of the defendants' sites were inoperable.

The FTC approved a final order Thursday that it said would resolve any anticompetitive consequences resulting from Broadcom's proposed $5.9 billion buy of Brocade (see 1707030030). Commissioners voted 2-0, after a comment period. The order requires Broadcom to implement firewalls preventing the flow of Broadcom's OEM partner Cisco's "confidential business information outside of a group of relevant Broadcom employees."

The National Institute of Standards and Technology drafted updates to security and privacy guidelines for government systems, which also can be applied to private-sector IoT devices, said a Tuesday news release. For the first time, privacy is "fully integrated" into revisions to special publication 800-53, security and privacy controls for information systems and organizations, it said. For instance, NIST said the publication suggests how to minimize data collection of traffic-monitoring cameras. Comments on draft revisions are due Sept. 12.

Marketers bilked hundreds of thousands of consumers out of at least $42 million by enrolling them in an online discount club membership without consent, the FTC said in a Wednesday news release. Commissioners voted 2-0 to file the complaint in the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Through websites and telemarketing calls, consumers thought they were applying for loans and provided bank account data, which was used to enroll them in a monthly online coupon service that 99.5 percent of consumers never accessed, the FTC said. When consumers alerted banks, the banks rejected 75 percent. The agency accused EDebitPay, seven other firms and 10 individuals of participating. EDebitPay's phone number and website didn't work.

Amazon launched Instant Pickup tied to staffed pickup locations near UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley. Available free to Prime and Prime Student members with deliveries of “two minutes or less,” it goes to self-service lockers, said Amazon. The service is to go online in Columbus, Ohio, College Park, Maryland, and Atlanta. Those locations weren’t operational Tuesday afternoon.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich resigned from the White House's American Manufacturing Council Monday amid bipartisan outcry over President Donald Trump's response to a weekend white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to one protester's death (see 1708140044). “I resigned to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues, including the serious need to address the decline of American manufacturing," Krzanich blogged.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored a Virginia man's lawsuit​ against data broker Spokeo, which he accused of reporting inaccurate information about him and of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The case was on remand from the Supreme Court, which in May said the 9th Circuit used incomplete analysis in deciding whether Thomas Robins suffered "concrete" harm (see 1605160026). A unanimous three-judge panel said Tuesday, in an opinion written by Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, the FCRA was crafted to protect consumers' "concrete interests in accurate credit reporting about themselves." The opinion said the alleged FCRA violations in this case "actually harmed" Robins' interest. "Robins alleged inaccuracies by Spokeo concerning his age, marital status, educational background, and employment history that could be deemed a real harm to his employment prospects," it said. The panel also rejected Spokeo's suggestion that Robins' allegations were "too speculative." The opinion said "the challenged conduct and attendant injury had already occurred." Spokeo didn't comment. Judges Susan Graber and Carlos Bea joined O'Scannlain in his opinion.

DreamHost and DOJ will square off Friday in District of Columbia Superior Court over the web hosting company's refusal to comply with a July 12 search warrant that seeks more than 1.3 million visitor IP addresses plus contact information, email and photos connected to a website that organized Inauguration Day protests. The company blogged Monday that the government is seeking data about the owner of disruptj20.org and the visitor IP addresses to identify individuals who used the site to express protected political speech. It's "a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority," said DreamHost. More than 300 people were arrested Jan. 20 for rioting and other disruptive activities, said media reports. In a July 28 motion to force DreamHost to produce the information, DOJ said the search warrant was properly issued. The government said the company's contention that some information is protected under the Privacy Protection Act "lacks merit," but even if the law does protect some data, the PPA doesn't preclude DOJ from searching and seizing electronic information via a warrant. Justice discounted the company's concern the warrant is "overbroad" and might result in more information being taken than necessary. DreamHost, working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said last week that handing over the IP addresses would allow the government to identify specific computers that visited the website and what they viewed, endangering "innocent" people's First Amendment rights. It said the warrant "requires scrutiny of 'particular exactitude,'" which shows it "lacks the specificity required by the Fourth Amendment and is unreasonable as a whole."