Adam Bender

A Pennsylvania bill reauthorizing the state’s call-before-you-dig law will go to the House floor. The House Consumer Protection Committee quickly and unanimously cleared the measure (HB-2189) without amendments during a livestreamed hearing Monday. Chairman Robert Matzie (D) indicated that the bill would likely be amended on the floor. At a hearing on HB-2189 earlier in September, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chairman Stephen DeFrank said the expected influx of broadband work is a key reason for reauthorizing the law requiring excavators to call 811 before digging (see 2409170004).

Emergency 911 networks appear largely to have withstood the powerful Hurricane Helene, officials said Friday. Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane Thursday at 11 p.m. in Taylor County, part of Florida’s Big Bend region, with maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour, the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Friday. After preparing for the massive storm (see 2409250048), telecom companies reported some damage to network infrastructure and said they are responding to problems that flooding and power outages caused.

Two consumer privacy organizations assembled a model privacy bill for states that includes a private right of action, making it unlike legislation in nearly all the 20 states that have comprehensive privacy laws. Basing their model bill on the Connecticut Data Privacy Act, Consumer Reports and the Electronic Privacy Information Center said the aim of the model bill is to fill “loopholes” in that measure. Industry likes -- and many state legislators are familiar with -- the Connecticut law, CR and EPIC said Tuesday. Notably, though the model bill has a private right of action, it's narrow and wouldn’t allow lawsuits against small businesses. Under the model bill, consumers could seek relief, including at least $5,000 in damages per violation, from larger companies. Moreover, the model bill provides enforcement by a state attorney general, district attorney or city corporation counsel, and the AG would have rulemaking authority. Most states with privacy bills allow AG enforcement only. The model bill calls for a 60-day right to cure for a limited time. Also, unlike the Connecticut law, the model bill requires data minimization, which limits the amount of data businesses collect from the start. In addition, the CR and EPIC model adds protections for children and sensitive data and clarifies advertising rules contained in the Connecticut bill. When considering specific industries like healthcare that federal privacy covers, the model bill makes exemptions based on the type of data, unlike the Connecticut law, which does so based on the type of entity. As in the Connecticut law, the CR/EPIC model supports browser-based, global opt-out mechanisms. “The State Data Privacy Act was developed in an effort to more meaningfully protect user privacy than we’ve seen in many state laws, while also retaining a format more familiar to state policymakers,” said Matt Schwartz, CR policy analyst. EPIC Deputy Director Catriona Fitzgerald added, “This proposal sets out rules allowing companies to collect and use data in ways consumers expect while putting a stop to the data abuses that happen outside of their view.” Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Public Interest Research Group support the model bill, CR and EPIC said. Fitzgerald emailed us Wednesday, "Our next step is to work to get folks [committed] to introduce it."

State government entities and telecom companies braced Wednesday for the imminent arrival of Hurricane Helene. The powerful weather event could become a Category 4 hurricane before reaching Florida's Gulf Coast Thursday, likely damaging buildings and knocking out power in many places, said an AccuWeather advisory Wednesday.

The railroad industry is too early to challenge a 2023 Virginia law that gave ISPs access rights to railroad properties, said Virginia State Corporation Commission Judge Jehmal Hudson and other state officials in a response brief Wednesday at the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Association of American Railroads (AAR) is appealing a U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia decision to dismiss its lawsuit against the state officials for lack of standing and other reasons (see 2407220018). The Virginia appellees urged the 4th Circuit to affirm the district court’s judgment.

The U.S. Supreme Court mustn’t discourage states and Congress from trying to prevent children from accessing pornography online, the federal government said in an amicus brief Monday. However, SCOTUS should correct the 5th U.S. Circuit Court’s error of using rational-basis review to support a Texas law requiring age-verification on porn websites, said DOJ. The Supreme Court received a flurry of briefs this week from amici supporting the Free Speech Coalition's challenge of the Texas law. FSC is a porn industry trade association. The American Civil Liberties Union represents it.

A Cox complaint about the state’s handling of NTIA’s broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program is “misleading and unsupported by facts,” the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation said Tuesday. In a lawsuit Monday at Rhode Island Superior Court in Providence, Cox said that Commerce’s flawed mapping and challenge process will lead to the state overbuilding wealthy communities with its $108.7 million BEAD allocation. Cox's complaint seeks declaratory judgment and an injunction to stop the state “from using flawed internet speed data that the Commerce Corporation refuses to make public to build taxpayer-subsidized and duplicative high-speed broadband internet in affluent areas of Rhode Island like the Breakers Mansion in Newport and affluent areas of Westerly.” The FCC’s broadband map shows 99.3% of Rhode Island residents have high-speed internet, Cox said. But Rhode Island Commerce reclassified 30,000 homes as underserved, including several mansions, which can receive at least 1 Gbps download and 35 Mbps upload speeds from Cox, the cable ISP said: Additionally, Rhode Island “devised a process to challenge its flawed data … that exists nowhere else in the 18 states where Cox offers service and that is impossible for Cox to meet.” Rhode Island Commerce noted that NTIA reviewed and approved its initial BEAD plan, which was “a proposal built on fairness, transparency, and a commitment to maximizing the impact of this historic federal investment.” However, Cox, the state’s biggest ISP, “declined to engage in the robust, months-long public planning process on how the Corporation would deploy Rhode Island’s BEAD funds.” The lawsuit “is an attempt to prevent the investment of $108.7 million dollars in broadband infrastructure in Rhode Island, likely because ... [Cox] realizes that some, or even all, of that money may be awarded through a competitive process to other internet service providers,” added Commerce. It said Rhode Island has unserved or underserved areas even in wealthier areas. “Whether an area is affluent or not has no bearing on the type of broadband service that is -- or is not -- available in that area.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed a privacy bill the same day that he signed a measure aimed at protecting children on social media websites. On Monday, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) applauded Newsom’s veto of a privacy bill on Friday that would have required global opt-outs in web browsers and mobile operating systems. But Consumer Reports slammed the decision to kill the bill that was sought by the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA). Meanwhile, CCIA slammed his signing of legislation meant to reign in algorithms on social platforms.

The “current technological reality of implementing” a Texas bill requiring age-verification on porn websites “means that it will burden adults’ access to constitutionally protected speech,” said the Center for Democracy and Technology, other nonprofits and three privacy professors in an amicus brief Friday. The groups and academics supported a challenge by the Free Speech Coalition of a Texas law at the U.S. Supreme Court. FSC is a porn industry trade association represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (see 2409170012). “The limitations of current age verification technology -- and the difference between the internet’s inherent capability to transmit and make available uploaded identifying data and the ability of a stationery-store owner to recall such data from a quick flash of ID -- create a significantly higher burden on adult access to protected content,” the amici wrote in case 23-50627. Several other groups also supported the FSC in amicus briefs posted Monday. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Reason Foundation and the First Amendment Lawyers Association said jointly that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals incorrectly granted the state “a free hand to force adult Texans to show their papers and surrender their privacy simply to access content protected by the First Amendment.” Another amici filing including TechFreedom and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the 5th Circuit erroneously applied rational-basis review rather than strict scrutiny. Along similar lines, the Cato Institute wrote, “It is the government’s burden to prove that the law serves a compelling government interest and uses the least restrictive means to achieve that interest. Texas did not clear this high bar.” Agreeing with others, the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote that it’s “important for [SCOTUS] to take special care in this case to apply a constitutional framework capable of distinguishing unconstitutional censorship laws from constitutional kids’ privacy and safety laws.” Meanwhile, the Institute for Justice said the Supreme Court should use the case to stop a “growing problem” of courts “selecting the standard of review based on the government’s professed motive rather than by examining the actual conduct subject to regulation under the law.” A group of internet law professors, including Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University's High Tech Law Institute, said age-verification gates online are costly, raise privacy concerns when they collect sensitive data, and discourage “readers from accessing constitutionally protected material.”

A phone company may be held liable for illegal robocalls transmitted over its network, a federal court ruled Thursday. Partly granting Florida’s motion for summary judgment, the U.S. District Court of Southern Florida found that Smartbiz Telecom violated the Truth in Caller ID Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). While the court will move to trial on Florida’s additional counts alleging Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) violations, Judge Jose Martinez disagreed with Smartbiz, which, as an intermediate provider that didn't initiate the calls, argued it can't be held liable under the TCPA. Smartbiz, Martinez wrote, "was involved in the placing of the telephone calls because it knowingly allowed fraudulent calls to transit its network.”