T-Mobile agreed to pay $200 million to settle an FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation of waste, fraud and abuse connected with Sprint receiving Lifeline subsidies for 885,000 subscribers who weren’t using the service, said an order and consent decree Wednesday (see 2011040016). T-Mobile bought Sprint earlier this year. The payment “is the largest fixed-amount settlement the Commission has ever secured to resolve an investigation,” said an FCC news release. “While we inherited this issue with our merger, we are glad that it is now resolved,” T-Mobile emailed.
Two members of a three-judge D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel appeared to side Friday with the Open Technology Fund during oral argument on its lawsuit against U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack. The court temporarily stayed Pack’s bid to purge grantee OTF’s leadership in July, which got scrutiny from congressional Democrats (see 2006240054). OTF lawyer Gregory Beck argued the International Broadcasting Act that sets out USAGM’s mandate doesn’t authorize Pack to make the sorts of leadership changes at OTF that he has attempted because the law didn’t specifically create the entity. DOJ lawyer Gerard Sinzdak countered that USAGM’s Radio Free Asia incubated OTF, and the agency then asked Congress to allow it to be spun off, meaning it’s “clearly” an organization Congress had in mind when it wrote the IBA. Judges Merrick Garland and Cornelia Pillard focused at times on OTF’s bylaws and how they set out USAGM’s authority over the nonprofit versus whether the IBA allows USAGM to have the control Pack attempted to assert. Senior Judge David Sentelle appeared to sympathize with USAGM’s argument that OTF’s incubation within Radio Free Asia clearly shows it’s governed by IBA’s mandate. Pack has repeatedly drawn scrutiny from Capitol Hill, including when he defied a House Foreign Affairs Committee subpoena to testify last month (see 2009240060). Six senior USAGM officials recently filed a whistleblower complaint with the State Department’s inspector general and U.S. Office of Special Counsel, claiming they had faced retaliation for noting their concerns with Pack’s abuses of authority.
Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy names Hillary Brill, Georgetown University, interim executive director, and Jennifer Sturiale, from Harvard Law School, program director for tech law and policy academic programs ... GuidePost Strategies adds Zack Roday, ex-House Commerce Committee (see this section, May 4) as senior adviser ... Amazon Web Services Vice President-Distinguished Engineer Tim Bray resigns, citing “dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers”; company declined to comment ... Strategy Analytics moves Edouard Bouffenie to senior analyst-media and intelligent home practice.
Privacy advocates fear COVID-19 is creating a surveillance state that will outlast the pandemic. Experts during streamed events Wednesday disagreed how much access the U.S. government will have to data, given constitutional protections.
Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., filed the Honest Census Communications Act Thursday in a bid to stem false information being distributed to prevent U.S. citizens from completing census forms. The measure would set the penalty for using written, digital or telephone communications to prevent others from filling out census forms at up to $11,000 per communication and/or five years imprisonment. Those penalties would be similar to one included in the False Claims Act, Eshoo’s office said. The bill “ensures that any attempt to intentionally spread lies about the once-in-a-decade count is met with severe consequences befitting such an egregious crime,” Eshoo said.
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.) introduced legislation Tuesday that would require dominant companies to prove their exclusionary conduct doesn’t harm competition. Klobuchar, ranking member of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, announced the legislation during a subcommittee hearing (see 2003090037). Yelp Senior Vice President-Public Policy Luther Lowe said he knows dozens and dozens of CEOs who don’t speak publicly about Google’s anticompetitive behavior due to fear of retaliation.
Broadcaster arguments stepped-up enforcement of equal employment opportunity rules would be burdensome and data collection proposals are unconstitutional are incorrect, said the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council in an FCC response posted Thursday in docket 19-177. “If a broadcaster does not discriminate, and maintains customary professional personnel records, EEO compliance and responsiveness to an audit should cost next to nothing.” The group submitted testimonials from “expert witnesses on media diversity,” including broadcasters and academics. Black College Communication Association Chairwoman Valerie White called it “astonishing” broadcasters “would believe that discrimination might have disappeared from the broadcast industry.” Increased audits “would serve as powerful deterrents to discrimination,” MMTC said. No party has opposed MMTC proposals the FCC make outreach efforts on EEO compliance, such as creating a secure whistleblower phone line and publicizing anti-retaliation rules, the group said.
The Texas Senate concurred Tuesday with House amendments to SB-14 to empower electric cooperatives to provide broadband (see 1905150045), and SB-1152 to stop municipalities from charging telecom providers twice when they use the ROW for phone and video (see 1905090032). The bills need the governor's signature. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) should veto a bill (HB-2730) passed earlier this week to scale back a 2011 Texas law against strategic lawsuits against public participation (see 1905200055), the Electronic Frontier Foundation blogged. Amendments fixed some of the biggest problems, but it “leaves big loopholes for parties to allege trade secret or non-compete violations to silence critics or whistleblowers,” and makes it unclear if defendants “can get their legal fees paid, if they use pro bono or contingent-fee counsel,” wrote EFF Policy Counsel Joe Mullin. Abbott didn’t comment Wednesday.
That neither Dish Network designated entity Northstar Wireless nor SNR Wireless has taken steps in the past four years to deploy a wireless system confirms that the Auction 97 licenses they bought were intended for Dish use, Vermont National Telephone Co. (VTEL) told U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia this week as it opposed a Northstar/SNR motion to dismiss its complaint. In a docket 15-cv-00728 filing (in Pacer), VTEL said it had made adequate allegations that the defendants had violated the False Claims Act and that the case isn't foreclosed by the government action bar since no penalty was imposed by the FCC. The defendants' motion to dismiss (in Pacer) called VTEL's fraud allegation "implausible" and lacking specificity regarding details about the alleged fraudulent conspiracy.
Sprint will pay $330 million to settle a New York state lawsuit alleging the carrier knowingly failed to collect and remit more than $100 million in state and local sales taxes owed on flat-rate wireless calling plans, Attorney General Barbara Underwood (D) said Friday. The AG said it’s the largest-ever recovery by a single state in an action brought under a state false claims act, and it followed another record-breaking New York settlement with Charter Communications about internet speed claims (see 1812180027). The AG said it has already distributed “a substantial portion” of the $330 million to localities directly harmed by Sprint’s conduct. Per terms of the New York False Claims Act, the whistleblower who brought the case in 2011 will receive $62.7 million, the AG said. Sprint collected state and local taxes for only the portion of the flat-rate charge it deemed intrastate, even though tax law and guidance doesn’t differentiate among intrastate, interstate and international calls, the AG said. Sprint violated tax law from 2005 to 2014, including after New York started investigating and after the state sued, the AG said. “Sprint knew exactly how New York sales tax law applied to its plans -- yet for years the company flagrantly broke the law, cheating the state and its localities out of tax dollars that should have been invested in our communities,” said Underwood. Acting Commissioner of Taxation and Finance Nonie Manion said that “Sprint violated the trust of its customers and deprived communities across New York State of revenue needed.” The company didn’t comment.