On Wednesday, April 29, the US Department of Justice released guidance titled “Best Practices for Victim Response and Reporting of Cyber Incidents.” The guidance outlines steps companies should take before, during, and after an incident, and includes a summary checklist. The guidance also states the Justice Department’s positions on the legal permissibility of a number of monitoring techniques and the impermissibility of many forms of so-called “hacking back.”

[Guidelines are here .]

Source: Department of Justice issues best practices guidance on cyber incidents (WilmerHale, 1 May 2015) via MIRLN (miscellaneous IT related law news)

Photo: Washington DC – Federal Triangle: Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building via Wally Gobetz [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

FCC decides that it will no longer enforce the Zapple doctrine – killing the last remnant of the Fairness Doctrine (Broadcast Law Blog, 8 May 2014) – The Zapple Doctrine was an outgrowth of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine. The Zapple Doctrine required that broadcast stations that give air time to the supporters of one candidate in an election give time to the supporters of competing candidates as well. Even though the Fairness Doctrine has been defunct for years, having had various manifestations of the Doctrine declared unconstitutional either by the Courts or the FCC, Zapple apparently lived on, or at least a death certificate had never been issued (see, for instance, our articles mentioning the continued life support of the Doctrine, here and here ). Thus stations had to be concerned about giving air time to supporters of political candidates for fear of having to provide a similar amount of time to those supporting competing candidates. Apparently, that uncertainty has now been resolved, as in two just released cases, the FCC”s Media Bureau has declared that Zapple, like the rest of the Fairness Doctrine, is dead. The cases just decided (available here and here ) both involved the recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, where complaints were filed against the renewals of two radio stations, complaining that those stations did not provide equal opportunities to supporters of Walker’s recall opponent even though station hosts provided on-air support for Walker. The FCC rejected those complaints, declaring: Given the fact that the Zapple Doctrine was based on an interpretation of the fairness doctrine, which has no current legal effect, we conclude that the Zapple Doctrine similarly has no current legal effect.

Provided by MIRLN.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Stuart Miles.

Here’s how Twitter might challenge the NSA’s gag order (Washington Post, 10 Feb 2014; interview with Eugene Volokh) – The United States government limits how much companies can disclose about their cooperation with surveillance by the National Security Agency and other federal agencies. Government officials have insisted that Internet companies such as Google and Microsoft report the number of surveillance requests only in broad numeric ranges. In a Thursday blog post, Twitter wrote that it was unsatisfied with this arrangement, and was “considering legal options we may have to seek to defend our First Amendment rights.” The company argues that it has a right to disclose specific details about the extent of its participation in U.S. surveillance programs. Would such a legal challenge succeed? To find out, I asked Eugene Volokh, a prominent First Amendment scholar at the University of California-Los Angeles. His blog, the Volokh Conspiracy , is hosted by the Washington Post. We spoke by phone on Friday. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity * * *

Provided by MIRLN.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/phanlop88.