In a first, the FCC is fining a major cable company for getting hacked

The Post reports:

In the first such case against a U.S. cable company, federal regulators are slapping Cox Communications with a $595,000 fine after Cox allowed hackers from Lizard Squad to penetrate its systems and steal private customer information.

By posing as an IT administrator and tricking a couple of Cox employees into giving up their login credentials, a hacker known as "EvilJordie" broke into Cox's databases and gained access to customer names, addresses, password recovery information and even "partial" Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers, according to the Federal Communications Commission. They also got hold of some customers' telephone records.

Read the whole story here. (HT: Allison Zieve.)

Gallup: "Americans With Government Health Plans Most Satisfied"

As a new Gallup survey puts it:

Americans' satisfaction with the way the healthcare system works for them varies by the type of insurance they have. Satisfaction is highest among those with veterans or military health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and is lower among those with employer-paid and self-paid insurance. Americans with no health insurance are least satisfied of all.

This chart breaks it down:

Health uninsured rate hits all-time low

This report just issued by the Centers for Disease Control explains that the percentage of people in the U.S. without health insurance has hit an all-time low: 9 percent. That's down from 11.5 percent in 2014 and 14.4 percent in 2013. In terms of real people, that's 16,300,000 more people with health insurance than in 2013. 

InsideSources's Carter Dougherty: Warren Tries to Head Off Wall Street Gifts on Congressional Christmas Trees

Here.  Excerpt:

Since lawmakers passed a landmark overhaul of American financial regulation in 2010, congressional Democrats and the Obama administration have successfully fought changes to the law, known as Dodd-Frank. Among the proposed changes, Republicans have sought to restructure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or ease the regulatory burden on mid-sized banks, which have struggled to differentiate themselves from Wall Street behemoths.

In those five years, Republicans have never had such clear opportunities to pass bills with provisions that President Barack Obama clearly doesn’t like — but that he might sign anyway, just for the sake of ending budgetary wrangles that have paralyzed Washington. That’s why groups that fought for Dodd-Frank are on high alert, trying to stop Democrats from defecting and keeping Republicans isolated.

“In spite of the importance of these reforms, and their broad popularity, some members of Congress are nonetheless attempting to use the appropriations process to roll them back, putting the public interest at risk to deliver a wish list to narrow Wall Street interests,” Americans for Financial Reform, an umbrella organization of labor unions, civil rights groups and consumer advocates, wrote lawmakers on Oct. 28.

DeGirolami on Spokeo Oral Argument

My colleague, Marc DeGirolami, read through the Spokeo oral argument transcript and had the following observations. I thought they might be of interest to readers of the blog.

 

* Justice Kagan emphasized to counsel for Spokeo that the reporting/dissemination of false information in credit reports is itself plausibly described as a harm. So that although Congress has to identify a concrete harm, that is such a harm. In response to counsel for Spokeo's claim that Robins needed to show some tangible consequence from the dissemination of false information (e.g., an employer's decision not to hire him), Justice Kagan said that such evidence was extremely difficult to come by.

 

*  Justice Sotomayor fairly plainly indicated that an "injury in fact" is any legally recognized right, a right that Congress can create. So that ought to be concrete enough.

 

* On the latter point, it seemed to me that Justice Kagan disagreed with Justice Sotomayor. Justice Kagan instead agreed with the following statement by Spokeo's counsel: "de facto injuries as to which there's no cause of action can be made actionable when Congress creates a cause of action. [But] [t]hat's quite different from saying that something that doesn't qualify under this Court's injury ­in ­fact standard as tangible harm can be made actionable." 

The future of cars, and car safety

Released last month, new Tesla software includes (the NYT reports)

a semiautonomous feature that allows hands-free, pedal-free driving on the highway under certain conditions. The car will even change lanes autonomously at the driver’s request (by hitting the turn signal) and uses sensors to scan the road in all directions and adjust the throttle, steering and brakes.

It is the first time that a production vehicle available to consumers will have such advanced self-driving capabilities. Or more to the point, the first time they will be unleashed for driving 70 miles per hour along twisty, though clearly marked, highways for long stretches. (Other manufacturers like Volvo and Mercedes-Benz recently introduced their own semiautonomous features, but limit the functions to lower speeds or require the driver to constantly touch the wheel.) And it’s perfectly legal. Among the states, only New York has any law prohibiting hands-free driving.

Check out the NYT's account of driving an autonomous vehicle.

New Yorker economics correspondent sums up the abuses of for-profit colleges

For anyone seeking to understand the interwoven problems with for-profit schools -- misleading advertising, taking advantage of federal government loans, and trapping students in spirals of debt -- James Surowiecki's column in the Nov. 2 New Yorker provides a great synopsis. Surowiecki explains:

Dependence on student loans was not incidental to the for-profit boom—it was the business model. The schools may have been meeting a genuine market need, but, in most cases, their profits came not from building a better mousetrap but from gaming the taxpayer-funded financial-aid system. Since the schools weren’t lending money themselves, they didn’t have to worry about whether it would be paid back. So they had every incentive to encourage students to take out as much financial aid as possible, often by giving them a distorted picture of what they could expect in the future. 

 

The percentage of non-elderly people lacking health insurance over time

Note the post-ACA drop.

 

FTC and Federal, State and Local Law Enforcement Partners Announce Nationwide Crackdown Against Abusive Debt Collectors

The Federal Trade Commission announced today:

[The FTC] and other law enforcement authorities around the country announced the first coordinated federal-state enforcement initiative targeting deceptive and abusive debt collection practices. This nationwide crackdown encompasses 30 new law enforcement actions by federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities against collectors who use illegal tactics such as harassing phone calls and false threats of litigation, arrest, and wage garnishment. The cases announced today bring to 115 the total number of actions taken so far this year by the more than 70 law enforcement partners in the Operation Collection Protection initiative.

Some of these actions allege that collectors knowingly attempted to collect so-called phantom debts – phony debts that consumers do not actually owe. The illegal practices targeted by authorities also include the failure of some collectors to give consumers legally required disclosures and notices, or to follow state and local licensing requirements.

The FTC's press release is here.

U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hears testimony on non-disparagement clauses and Palmer v. KlearGear

Today, Public Citizen client Jen Palmer told the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Technology the story of her ordeal involving KlearGear.com's attempt to fine her family $3,500 and subsequent reporting of a phony debt to ruin the Palmers' credit based on a non-disparagement clause. You'll recall we succeeded in fixing the credit problems and obtained a default judgment against KlearGear for more than $300,000. In addition to Jen's testimony to the Committee today, I submitted written testimony on behalf of Public Citizen addressing the scope of the problem, the harms caused by non-disparagement, and examples of cases we've litigated or learned of.

Jen received a warm reception from the Committee; all the Senators who spoke at the hearing (by my count, about 10) expressed sympathy for her plight and support for federal action to ban non-disparagement clauses. 

Now pending in the Senate is a bill to do just that, backed up by federal and state enforcement authority. The current version of the bill has a troubling clause limiting the ability of state attorneys general to engage private counsel to help enforce the prohibition, but two of the bill sponsors stated on the record at today's hearing that this provision would be removed at markup, scheduled for later this month. When the provision is removed, Public Citizen will support the bill.

There is a complementary bill in the House, as we've noted previously and which Public Citizen already supports (this bill lacks the problematic enforcement limitation). Both the Senate and House bills are known as the "Consumer Review Freedom Act" and both have bipartisan sponsorship.

California has already passed a state law prohibiting non-disparagement clauses and providing a private a private right of action for consumers.

We hope Congress acts to prohibit non-disparagement clauses, which chill consumer speech, restrict the exchange of information and ideas among consumers, and punish honest businesses by enabling their unscrupulous competitors to scrub the internet of negative reviews. Stay tuned.