The Supreme Court declined to hear the American Civil Liberties Union’s case seeking access to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) documents, on docket 20-1499. The ACLU argued the First Amendment provides a “qualified right of public access” to the court’s “significant opinions” on statutory and constitutional law. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. The FISC and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR) denied the ACLU access to secret opinions authorizing surveillance on U.S. citizens in 2016. The ACLU asked the high court to review a series of rulings denying access. The case presents questions about the “right of public access to Article III judicial proceedings of grave national importance,” Gorsuch wrote in the dissenting opinion Monday with Sotomayor. “Maybe even more fundamentally, this case involves a governmental challenge to the power of this Court to review the work of Article III judges in a subordinate court. If these matters are not worthy of our time, what is?” The high court failed to “bring badly needed transparency to the surveillance court and to rulings that impact millions of Americans,” ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Patrick Toomey said . “Our privacy rights rise or fall with the court’s decisions, which increasingly apply outdated laws to the new technologies we rely on.” Because SCOTUS “refuses to let the American people see how their own constitutional rights are being interpreted, Congress’s responsibility to conduct aggressive oversight and end secret law is even more important,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to have tech groups’ lawsuit against the state’s social media law dismissed is “meritless,” said the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice in a filing Thursday in docket 1:21-cv-00840 (see 2110270031). Supreme Court and 5th Circuit precedent allow associations to sue on behalf of members when members are subject to state regulation, the associations argued. Paxton (R) attempted to have the case dismissed for lack of jurisdiction earlier this month. The law in question would require members to “spend significant time and money overhauling their content-moderation policies and proprietary computer programs, both of which have taken years to develop with substantial resources,” the associations said. Paxton’s office didn’t comment Friday.

Facebook announced its parent company will now be called Meta. The company’s flagship social network will retain the name Facebook. Meta’s “focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses,” the company said Thursday.

The FTC’s rule for promoting public participation in the rulemaking process takes effect Friday (see 2109150061), the agency says in that day's Federal Register: The changes provide “increased transparency” and “greater guidance” for the public when filing petitions.

A federal court date for argument on the Texas social media law could change, plaintiff NetChoice's General Counsel Carl Szabo told us Wednesday. U.S. District Court in Austin on Tuesday scheduled for Dec. 10 at 9 a.m. CST argument on NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association’s preliminary injunction request (case 1:21-cv-00840-RP). The law is to take effect on Dec. 2 (see 2110220064). “With the court’s schedule still in flux, we expect the hearing will be moved up,” Szabo emailed.

Technologies are emerging to combat deepfakes, but rules might be needed, panelists said at a Tuesday webinar hosted by the Convention of National Associations of Electrical Engineers of Europe (EUREL). Deepfake technology enabled some beneficial uses, but it's increasingly difficult to distinguish between real and fake content and people, said Sebastian Hallensleben, chairman of German EUREL member VDE e.V. One common argument is that AI fabrications aren't a problem because we can use other AI systems to detect them. As deepfakes become more sophisticated, there will be more countermeasures, causing a "detection arms race," said Hallensleben. What's needed is a "game-changer" to show what's real online and what isn't, Hallensleben said. He's working on "authentic pseudonyms," identifiers guaranteed to belong to a given physical person and to be singular in a given context. This could be done through restricted identification along the lines of citizens' ID cards; a second route is through self-sovereign identity (SSI). If widely used, authentic pseudonyms would avoid the "authoritarian approach" to deepfakes, Hallensleben said. SSI is a new paradigm for creating digital ID, said Technical University of Berlin professor Axel Kupper. The ID holder (a person) becomes her own identity provider and can decide where to store her identity documents and what services to use. The infrastructure is a decentralized, tamper-proof, distributed ledger. The question is how to use the technology to mitigate the use of automated content creation, Kupper said. Many perspectives besides technology must be considered for cross-border identification infrastructure, including regulation, governance, interoperability and social factors, said Tanja Pavleska, a researcher at the Joef Stefan Institut Laboratory for Open Systems and Networks in Slovenia. Trust applies in all those contexts, she said. Asked whether the proposed EU AI Act should classify deepfakes as high-risk technology, she said such fakes aren't just done by a single player or type of actor, so rules aimed at single points might be difficult. All panelists agreed the EU general data protection regulation should be interpreted to cover voice and facial data.

Growing consumption of streaming video entertainment could upend business models for rural ISPs, Strand Consult said Friday. The infrastructure needed to support streaming video entertainment costs a lot more than work, educational or healthcare applications because streaming video entertainment traffic volume is bigger, and broadband providers are largely absorbing the middle mile capital investment costs, it said.

A court partially granted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R) deadline extension Friday in the tech industry’s lawsuit against the state’s social media law (case 1:21-cv-00840). U.S. District Court in Austin set Paxton’s response deadline for Nov. 22, more than a week before the new law’s Dec. 2 effective date. The Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice accused Texas of delay tactics in the case. The court granted Texas expedited discovery. “It would prejudice Plaintiffs to impose a briefing schedule that goes beyond the effective date when a shorter timeframe for expedited discovery would still provide Defendant with a ‘fair opportunity to oppose the application and to prepare for such opposition,’” the court said.

Akamai completed buying cybersecurity vendor Guardicore for $600 million cash (see 2109290020). Akamai will add Guardicore's “micro-segmentation” products to its portfolio of “zero trust” safeguards against ransomware attacks, it said Thursday.

The Connectivity Standards Alliance partnered with NFC Forum to bridge smart home interoperability gaps, the associations said Thursday. This lets the groups explore ways to use near field communication proximity-based connectivity technology with CSA standards, they said.