Consumer Watchdog filed petitions with state attorneys general asking them to investigate Amazon for allegedly engaging in deceptive pricing after the company received FTC approval to buy Whole Foods for nearly $14 billion (see 1708230064), said a Thursday news release. CW had asked the commission and DOJ to block the deal (see 1707070048). The group's Privacy Project Director John Simpson said the FTC has a "pattern of leaving high-profile enforcement action to others," citing the EU's antitrust case against Google. The group sent petitions to Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told a media outlet the FTC's decision was "disappointing" and antitrust policy should reflect more than just impact on price. Amazon and the FTC didn't immediately comment.

The FTC won't pursue an investigation into Amazon.com's acquisition of Whole Foods Market (see 1707070048), said Bruce Hoffman, acting director-Bureau of Competition, in a Wednesday news release. He said the commission did an investigation to determine whether competition would be affected under Section 7 of the Clayton Act or "constituted an unfair method of competition under Section 5 of the FTC Act. Based on our investigation we have decided not to pursue this matter further.” Amazon and Whole Foods didn't comment.

A three-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld a district court decision to approve an $8.5 million cy pres-only settlement in a class-action lawsuit against Google, which plaintiffs alleged violated their privacy by revealing their personal search engine terms. Attorney Ted Frank, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEP), representing several objectors to the settlement, said he plans to appeal the decision. Judge Margaret McKeown, who wrote the Tuesday opinion (in Pacer) and was joined by Judges Jay Bybee and, in part, Clifford Wallace, said the District Court for the Northern District of California "did not abuse its discretion" in approving the settlement, to which Google agreed in exchange for a release of the claims of about 129 million people who used the search engine from 2006 to 2014. Several plaintiffs seeking class-action status sued Google in 2010, saying the company operated its search engine in a manner that violated the Stored Communications Act (SCA) and state law by disclosing users' personal information such as search terms to third parties, said a 2015 brief filed by plaintiffs who objected to the settlement. Eventually, the parties settled and the district court certified the class for settlement with final approval in 2015. Of the funds, $3.2 million were earmarked for attorneys' fees and $5.3 million for cy pres recipients: AARP; the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; Carnegie Mellon University; the Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law Center for Information, Society and Policy; the Stanford Center for Internet and Society; and the World Privacy Forum. They agreed to use the funds for public awareness and education and/or R&D on internet privacy. But plaintiffs against the settlement, led by CEP's Frank, said the $8.5 million was enough to fund a claims process or lottery distribution to class members and "improperly favored the third-party charities," said the 2015 brief. It also said the cy pres recipients were "tainted" since they had pre-existing relationships with class counsel and Google, which has donated money to some of those organizations. McKeown in her decision said the district court "appropriately" found the cy pres recipients could address the SCA objectives and advance interests of the plaintiffs and three organizations that disclosed past funding by Google, with some even challenging company policies in the past. She also rejected any problem with any link between the cy pres recipients and class counsel. Partially dissenting, Wallace took issue that nearly half the settlement was being donated to the alma maters of class counsel. Frank said he will "petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc on or before September 5." A Google spokesperson said it was pleased with the decision.

Web hosting company DreamHost will face DOJ in District of Columbia Superior Court Thursday over the government's demand for information on protesters in a criminal investigation of the Jan. 20 protests. Justice initially sought information about 1.3 million IP addresses that visited disruptj20.org (see 1708140063) but said in a Tuesday filing it has "no interest" in those records. "What the government did not know when it obtained the Warrant -- what it could not have reasonably known -- was the extent of visitor data maintained by DreamHost that extends beyond the government's singular locus in this case," the filing said. DOJ said it modified its warrant to minimize information collected. It said it tried to talk to DreamHost but "those attempts have proven unproductive" since the company says the warrant is improper. DOJ's move to narrow the scope of data sought is a "huge win" for privacy, blogged the company, saying much of the original demand for information is in place and that's "problematic." Justice said it still wants DreamHost to provide records for the account in question, such as subscribers' names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and means of payment. The department said a small group of individuals used the site to publicly spread information but also privately communicate among a small group "whose intent included planned violence." It said the investigation resulted in 19 guilty pleas and nearly 200 pending criminal cases. DOJ said the warrant won't be used to identify political dissidents.

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.