Consumers shopping for new smart home devices will soon be able to look for the official stamp of trust from the US government: the US Cyber Trust Mark.

Similar to how an Energy Star label on home appliances denotes a certain level of energy efficiency, the Cyber Trust Mark is meant to be a way for consumers to quickly understand that a connected device meets certain standards to secure it from cybersecurity threats. The standards cover things like whether a device issues software updates, how it securely moves data to the cloud, and how other devices are able to gain access to the product.

Image: Federal Communications Commission

Companies can voluntarily apply to use the logo by having their products tested by an accredited lab recognized by the Federal Communications Commission, showing that they meet the standards for the label. The label could be applied to Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including smart appliances, home security cameras, fitness trackers, and baby monitors.

Now that the label is launched, companies are able to submit their products to be tested. Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, predicts that products with the Cyber Trust Mark will be on shelves by the end of the year.

“We know Americans are afraid,” Neuberger said on a press briefing call. “Consumers don’t have the confidence that they can connect a device at home and know that their private pictures and communications will be secure. So this program takes on that problem in a bipartisan and voluntary way.”

In addition to giving consumers a sense of security, the government hopes the labels will incentivize companies to raise the bar. The White House included statements from Amazon and Best Buy executives in its announcement of the launch. Amazon vice president Steve Downer says that “consumers will value seeing the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark both on product packaging and while shopping online,” and Best Buy head of enterprise privacy and data protection Michael Dolan says it’s “a positive step forward for consumers.”

The launch is a long time coming after initially being announced in 2023. FCC commissioners unanimously voted to approve the labeling program in March, opening a public comment period. Recently, the FCC conditionally approved 11 companies to be Cybersecurity Label Administrators, which will help review applications for the label. Neuberger and FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel are slated to discuss the program at the Consumer Electronics Show on Thursday.

“Americans buying home alarm systems and baby monitors need to know hackers can’t disable the alarm system remotely or hack in to watch their babies asleep,” Neuberger says. “Companies need to have an incentive to bake security into products, and the US government wants to give American consumers that confidence, and we welcome this voluntary mechanism to assure consumers and companies that products are cyber safe.”

Federal net neutrality rules, which briefly came back from the dead under the Biden administration, have been struck down by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The three-judge panel ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have the authority to impose net neutrality rules on internet service providers (ISPs). The FCC sought to reclassify ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act in order to impose policies meant to prevent them from discriminating against different internet traffic, like by slowing speeds or blocking content.

But the judges disagreed with the agency’s interpretation of how ISPs could be classified and were emboldened by the recent downfall of Chevron deference, a legal doctrine that instructed courts to defer to regulatory agencies in many cases. After the Supreme Court did away with that principle in 2024, courts became more free to favor their own interpretations over the judgment of expert agencies. Net neutrality was immediately seen as a prime target to be struck down without Chevron. While the DC Circuit Court of Appeals upheld previous iterations of net neutrality, the Sixth Circuit judges note that it relied on Chevron to do so. “Unlike past challenges that the D.C. Circuit considered under Chevron, we no longer afford deference to the FCC’s reading of the statute,” they write.

“We acknowledge that the workings of the Internet are complicated and dynamic, and that the FCC has significant expertise in overseeing ‘this technical and complex area,’” the ruling says, citing an earlier decision. After the fall of Chevron, it continues, “that ‘capability,’ if you will, cannot be used to overwrite the plain meaning of the statute.”

This left the judges free to wax philosophical about phrases like “offering of a capability” and “information services,” finely parsing the distinction between those and more heavily regulated telecommunications services. “The existence of a fact or a thought in one’s mind is not ‘information’ like 0s and 1s used by computers,” one part of the ruling reads. It asserts that “speaking reduces a thought to sound, and writing reduces a thought to text ... during a phone call, one creates audio information by speaking, which the telephone service transmits to an interlocutor, who responds in turn,” but “crucially, the telephone service merely transmits that which a speaker creates; it does not access information.”

Net neutrality was already in danger, even before this ruling came out — in a suit filed against the FCC by broadband industry associations. The appeals court had already blocked the net neutrality rules from taking effect. During oral arguments in October, the three Republican-appointed judges prodded attorneys about the correct interpretation of the Communications Act and about deference to agency expertise. With President-elect Donald Trump — under whom net neutrality was previously repealed — due to take office in mere weeks, this could be the last we hear about the attempt to reclassify broadband providers as common carriers for a while.

FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel called on lawmakers to take up the mantle of creating rules to safeguard the open internet. “Consumers across the country have told us again and again that they want an internet that is fast, open, and fair,” she says in a statement. “With this decision it is clear that Congress now needs to heed their call, take up the charge for net neutrality, and put open internet principles in federal law.”

Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to lead the agency once he assumes office, issued a lengthy statement calling the ruling “a good win for the country.” He calls net neutrality rules an attempt by the Biden administration to “expand the government’s control over every feature of the Internet ecosystem” and says the push for the rules was a waste of time. While he’s pleased with the ruling, he adds, “The work to unwind the Biden Administration’s regulatory overreach will continue.”

Former FCC Chair Ajit Pai, who led the movement to repeal the rule during the first Trump administration, took a victory lap on X. “For a decade, I’ve argued that so-called ‘net neutrality’ regulations are unlawful (not to mention pointless),” he wrote. “Today, the Sixth Circuit held exactly that.”

After its victory against Google in an antitrust trial earlier this year, the Department of Justice recently proposed a sweeping set of changes its search business. The DOJ put a lot on the table, demanding that Google sell its Chrome browser, syndicate its search results, and avoid exclusive deals with companies like Apple for default search placement. It even kept open the possibility of forcing an Android sale.

Now, Google has responded with a far simpler proposal: prohibit those default placement deals, and only for three years.

A court found Google liable for unlawfully monopolizing online search, and its remedies are supposed to reset the market, letting rivals fairly compete. Google (obviously) disagrees that it’s running a monopoly, but before it can appeal that underlying conclusion, it’s trying to limit the fallout if it loses.

Google’s justification is that search deals were at the heart of the case, so they’re what a court should target. Under the proposal, Google couldn’t enter deals with Android phone manufacturers that require adding mobile search in exchange for access to other Google apps. It couldn’t require phone makers to exclude rival search engines or...

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Kids Online Safety Act was supposed to fix (or break) the internet. Now, after nearly three years of rewrites, it’s got days left to pass.

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments on whether a bill that could ban TikTok violates the First Amendment. The arguments will take place on January 10th, just over a week before a potential ban could take effect.

While the outcome is far from guaranteed, SCOTUS’ decision to take up the case is a small win for TikTok, which is barreling toward expulsion from the US unless the court throws out or pauses the law, or its China-based parent company ByteDance agrees to sell it in time. The law at the center of the case, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, seeks to prohibit apps like TikTok from being owned by companies in a set list of foreign adversary countries.

The Department of Justice successfully defended the law as constitutional before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals by arguing the government had a compelling interest in protecting US national security from foreign influence. Congress voted overwhelmingly to pass the bill after classified briefings in which intelligence officials shared concerns over how China could potentially use the app to exert influence over the kinds of content US users see, and potentially access sensitive data — though publicly, the government has not come forward with declassified information showing such dangers are already happening.

The arguments before the Supreme Court will consolidate two cases against the law, from both TikTok and a group of creators on the platform. The parties will get a total of two hours to make their cases. The court said it would defer a decision on whether to halt the law until after the oral arguments. The lower court had declined to stop the law from taking effect pending the Supreme Court’s review.

TikTok filed for an emergency injunction to the Supreme Court just two days ago. That same day, CEO Shou Zi Chew was set to meet with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Trump, who has noted his success on TikTok in the campaign, at one point seemingly promised to save the app, although his more recent comments post-election make it less clear how exactly he’d plan to do that. The deadline for the ban — unless the court stops it — is the day before Trump’s inauguration. The president has discretion to extend the deadline 90 days, though one big remaining question is whether China would even agree to let ByteDance sell the app.

TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes says the company is “pleased” with the court’s order. “We believe the Court will find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech rights.”

Nearly three years ago in January of 2022, the Senate seemed poised to reform antitrust law and place a check on Big Tech’s power. The Senate Judiciary Committee had just voted to advance the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), led by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). The bill would have forced major changes to how many tech businesses operate, including by prohibiting them from self-preferencing their own products on their marketplaces.

But the bill’s momentum petered out in the months to come. Congress did manage to pass two important competition updates that year, the first allowing state attorneys general to choose which courts they filed antitrust suits in, and the second raising merger filing fees on the largest transactions to raise money for federal enforcers. AICOA, though, never passed through the Senate — let alone into law.

Klobuchar has been one of the leading advocates of antitrust reform. After House lawmakers launched a probe into Big Tech companies in 2019, she and several other lawmakers concluded the monopoly-busting system was broken. Existing antitrust rules were theoretically powerful, their theory went, yet decades of lax enforcement and unfavorable case law left courts and enforcers with flimsy tools for keeping the industry in check. Congress needed to step in and get it back on track.

Legislative efforts to overhaul the system have failed — yet in 2024, antitrust enforcement is experiencing something of a boom. Apple, Amazon, Meta and Google each face a federal anti-monopoly suit (two, in Google’s case.) The Department of Justice secured a win in its Google Search case, while Epic Games won a ruling against Android’s Play Store. The DOJ and Federal Trade Commission under the Biden administration have tightened merger guidelines and aggressively scrutinized deals.

Klobuchar is now reaching the end of her time chairing the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust. While its mission might look a bit less urgent these days, she argues it’s as important as ever. “It would be a lot easier to have some set rules of the road in place instead of this laborious, long litigation process,” she tells The Verge in a phone interview. Today, she’s overseeing a hearing about how to continue a bipartisan path to reform as the Trump administration prepares to take over.

While the most groundbreaking legislation hasn’t passed, she says, antitrust issues have still garnered more interest from congressional leadership on both sides of the aisle in recent years. “Maybe because of the bipartisan support and the good work that’s being done, we do keep bringing these cases,” she says. “But the lesson from the last four years is aggressive enforcement matters.”

Klobuchar expresses hope that President-elect Donald Trump’s antitrust watchdogs will continue pursuing important cases. While the Senate won’t hold new hearings to approve existing FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson’s ascendance to chair, she noted that FTC commissioner nominee Mark Meador wrote a positive article about the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster. “I consider that a good sign,” she says. Klobuchar adds that former Democratic enforcers have told her that Trump’s pick to lead the DOJ Antitrust Division, Gail Slater, “gets it.”

Republicans will get to set the subcommittee’s agenda next year when they take over the majority in the Senate. But while she’ll no longer be chairing the panel, Klobuchar says, she’s going to continue to work for reforms. “It couldn’t be more important right now, with a new administration coming in, that we find ways to work across the aisle to get this done.”

The Department of Justice during the Trump administration defied agency policy in an attempt to identify journalists’ sources, the agency’s inspector general alleges in a new report.

The IG alleges the agency sought “non-content communications records” — information like email logs, rather than the content of those conversations — on eight journalists across The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN. The Times had previously reported that Trump’s DOJ was looking into whether former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey had been the source of classified information that leaked in 2017 about Russian hackers.

The report comes just over a month before President-elect Donald Trump is set to resume office following his election win and raises questions about how his administration will handle similar information requests in the future. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attempted to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act by unanimous consent on Tuesday, but was blocked by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). If passed, it would help protect reporters from having to reveal their sources.

The IG found that Trump’s DOJ in his first term failed to follow policy in seeking the journalist’s records, including neglecting to convene a committee to review the compulsory records requests. The alleged violation happened just a few years after the department under the Obama administration “overhauled” its policy regarding the news media following backlash over its aggressive tactics toward journalists. “We were troubled that these failures occurred only a few years after this overhaul,” the IG’s office writes.

Trump’s DOJ also sought similar kinds of records from two members of Congress and 43 congressional staffers across the political spectrum, the IG allegedly found, though the department did not have a policy at the time addressing this kind of information gathering.

“In our judgment, the Department’s deviation from its own requirements indicates a troubling disparity between, on the one hand, the regard expressed in Department policy for the role of the news media in American democracy and, on the other hand, the Department’s commitment to complying with the limits and requirements that it intended to safeguard that very role,” the IG’s report says.

In a memo from DOJ Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer included in the report, the agency noted that much of the report focuses on matters “undertaken before the Department’s revised News Media and Congressional Investigations policies were put into place that changed the operative requirements.” Still, the DOJ agreed with the core recommendations from the IG, including considering changes to how certain information requests are escalated to more senior officials.

Nvidia must face an investor lawsuit claiming it misled shareholders about the impact of the cryptocurrency market on its sales after the Supreme Court dismissed the company’s appeal.

The court said it had “improvidently granted” Nvidia’s petition, meaning it decided it shouldn’t have taken it up in the first place. That means the case will have to continue on in the lower courts. During oral arguments last month, some justices seemed skeptical about whether it was appropriate for them to weigh in on the case, wondering if it was more of a dispute over facts than a legal question, according to Reuters.

The case stems from a pair of 2018 investor lawsuits claiming Nvidia recklessly misled investors about how closely tied its revenue growth was to cryptocurrency performance. Investors alleged that Nvidia and its top executives made materially false claims downplaying the impact of the volatile cryptocurrency market on its revenue growth, and exaggerating its ability to adapt its changes. An appeals court had allowed at least a portion of the consolidated case to move forward.

In a separate case in 2022, Nvidia settled charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $5.5 million over claims it obscured how its success was linked to the volatile cryptocurrency market. The company did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.

Nvidia is facing increased legal scrutiny alongside its business success. The company is reportedly facing antitrust investigations from both Chinese authorities and the US Department of Justice.

“We would have preferred a decision on the merits affirming the trial court’s dismissal of the case, but we are fully prepared to continue our defense,” Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo says in a statement. “Consistent and predictable standards in securities litigation are essential to protecting shareholders and ensuring a strong economy, and we remain committed to supporting them.”

A court rejected arguments against forcing a sale of the massive Chinese-owned social network.

Read the full story at The Verge.

With just weeks left to pass legislation before Congress adjourns, X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced she worked with the authors of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to update the bill in what seems like a play to win over the Republican House leaders standing in the way of it becoming law.

The striking announcement is the latest example of how Elon Musk and his companies are taking on significant roles in influencing government output. While it’s not unusual for outside stakeholders, including companies, to weigh in on pending legislation, the fact that the bill’s sponsors, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), announced X’s input indicates they view it as helpful to the bill’s chances of passing.

“Led by X, the new changes made to the Kids Online Safety Act strengthen the bill while safeguarding free speech online and ensuring it is not used to stifle expression,” Blumenthal and Blackburn said in a joint statement. “These changes should eliminate once and for all the false narrative that this bill would be weaponized by unelected bureaucrats to censor Americans. We thank Elon and Linda for their bold leadership and commitment to protecting children online and for helping us get this bill across the finish line this Congress.”

KOSA aims to make the internet safer for kids by imposing a duty of care on tech platforms to prevent and mitigate certain harms when they implement certain design features, including photo filters and infinite scroll. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the Senate over the summer but has stalled in the House, with the bill’s critics fearing it could be weaponized against disliked speech or lead to a more restricted internet due to platforms’ fears of legal risk.

The changes include a clarification that the bill can’t be used to enforce the platforms’ duty of care “based upon the viewpoint of users expressed by or through any speech, expression, or information protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” It also narrows the duty of care with respect to anxiety and depressive disorders to make it enforceable only when those conditions are “objectively verifiable” and linked to “compulsive usage.”

Yaccarino previously endorsed the bill on behalf of X earlier this year, while CEOs of companies like Meta and Google have not gone so far, and KOSA supporters point to tech lobbying as a key obstacle.

But Republican leadership in the House has also become a hurdle for the bill’s passage. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told Punchbowl News in October, “I love the principle, but the details of that are very problematic.” He worried about “unintended consequences.” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) is viewed as potentially even harder to win over, Punchbowl reports, and is concerned about the scope of the duty of care in the bill.

A bill that could ban TikTok from the US unless its Chinese parent company divests it is constitutional, a panel of judges for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled.

The decision comes soon before ByteDance’s January 19th deadline to sell the popular video app, or face its expulsion from the US. That deadline now falls one day before President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated for the second time — thanks in part to donations from ByteDance investor Jeff Yass. Though Trump sought to ban TikTok during his first term, he changed his tune on the campaign trail this year, saying a ban would just help a different target of his ire: Meta.

While Trump allies reportedly expected him to try to halt the ban, the options for recourse are somewhat limited. The law allows for a 90 day extension at the president’s discretion, but only if progress is being made toward a spin-out. Trump could direct the Department of Justice not to enforce the bill, but that still leaves app store companies like Google and Apple — tasked with being the gatekeepers to the app — in a precarious spot, should Trump change his mind or a future administration decide to enforce the law.

The court decided that the law could survive even strict scrutiny under the First Amendment, and did not find TikTok’s arguments that it violates equal protections under the Fifth Amendment compelling. “We emphasize from the outset that our conclusion here is fact-bound,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg writes in the opinion for the court. “The multi-year efforts of both political branches to investigate the national security risks posed by the TikTok platform, and to consider potential remedies proposed by TikTok, weigh heavily in favor of the Act. The Government has offered persuasive evidence demonstrating that the Act is narrowly tailored to protect national security.” These risks included both fears that China could use TikTok for data collection and that it could covertly manipulate the recommendation algorithms.

The court relies only on evidence in the public record to reach its decision, even though many of the justifications for the bill that led lawmakers to vote for it were presented in classified briefings. The judges add that TikTok’s argument that divestiture from ByteDance would be impractical is really the result of the Chinese government’s potential resistance — not a function of the law itself. “TikTok would have us turn the Takings Clause into a means by which a foreign adversary nation may render unconstitutional legislation designed to counter the national security threats presented by that very nation,” they conclude.

“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes writes in a statement. “Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people. The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025.”

Despite Trump’s opposition, many Republicans in Congress voted to pass the bill earlier this year. It received overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers, before President Joe Biden signed it into law. Proponents of the law say that it’s necessary protect the privacy of Americans and protect them from foreign influence campaigns. That’s because Chinese law lets the government compel companies headquartered there to hand over internal information for national security reasons. And while TikTok has repeatedly asserted its independent operations from ByteDance and says US data is not stored in China, many lawmakers still feared Chinese officials could have a say in what information Americans do and don’t see.

During oral arguments in September, TikTok and a group of creators also suing to block the law argued that it would stifle Americans’ speech, and unfairly limit the information they’re able to access. The DOJ defended the law as appropriately tailored to address a national security risk. The three-judge panel that heard the case appeared skeptical of the company’s arguments, prodding at the practicality of a more restrained approach.

The ruling could still appealed en banc to the full panel of judges on the DC Circuit, and ultimately to the Supreme Court.

US officials are urging Americans to make calls and send text messages over encrypted apps to minimize the risk of private information falling into the hands of foreign adversaries who might still be lurking in America’s telecommunications networks, NBC News reports.

Two officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) spoke with news outlets, including NBC News, Tuesday on the lasting effects of a recent attack on US telecommunications systems. The attack, which was tied to Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon, impacted companies including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Lumen Technologies, The Wall Street Journal first reported in October. The Journal later reported that targets of the hack included phone numbers for people in the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns.

Two months after the initial report of the hack, malicious actors may still be able to gain access to sensitive information about Americans’ communications from the telecom networks.

An FBI official on the call, who was not identified in press reports, reportedly said hackers accessed information including call records showing phone numbers called and the times of the call, and in some cases actual live phone calls of certain targets. The Journal reported last month that hackers could have gained access to unencrypted texts as well.

Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, told reporters on the call that the scale of the hack was so great that agencies could not possibly predict when there would be a “full eviction” of malicious material, NBC News writes.

“Encryption is your friend, whether it’s on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication,” Greene said, according to NBC News. “Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible.” Services like Signal and WhatsApp offer end-to-end encrypted messaging that can obscure communications outside of the users involved in the call or text.

Law enforcement’s embrace of encrypted apps is particularly notable given that the FBI has previously railed against tech companies’ protectiveness over the technology. Though the FBI publicly says it does not oppose encryption, it has strict parameters on its support. The agency’s website states that it “does not want encryption to be weakened or compromised so that it can be defeated by malicious actors,” but wants companies that “manage encrypted data to be able to decrypt that data and provide it to law enforcement only in response to U.S. legal process.” That’s something tech companies say could undermine the whole system.

The bureau engaged in a long standoff with Apple following a shooting in San Bernadino, California in 2015, because the company refused to break the encryption on the shooter’s iPhone to give investigators access, warning that to do so would endanger users’ privacy across its products. The FBI eventually found a way to get into the phone without Apple.

President-elect Donald Trump made two nominations Wednesday that will shape significant parts of his administration’s tech enforcement, if confirmed by the Senate.

Former Republican Securities and Exchange Commissioner Paul Atkins is Trump’s pick to lead the agency, replacing Biden-appointed chair and crypto foil Gary Gensler. The selection of Atkins, who co-chairs the Token Alliance at the Digital Chamber, a group dedicated to the use of digital assets, suggests a sharp divergence from Biden-era crypto policy. In his announcement, Trump says Atkins “recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”

Trump also selected Gail Slater to lead the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, which is currently litigating two anti-monopoly suits against Google, and a third against Apple, as well as reportedly probing AI-chipmaker Nvidia. Slater has previously worked at the Federal Trade Commission, in Trump’s National Economic Counsel, and most recently as Vice President-elect JD Vance’s economic policy advisor in his Senate office. She’s also worked at Fox, Roku, and the now-defunct Internet Association, whose member included several Big Tech companies.

In his announcement on Truth Social, Trump writes that, “Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump is borrowing a favorite term of Marc Andreessen’s in with his reference to “Little Tech.” Andreessen — a venture capitalist and crypto supporter who publicly backed Trump in the election — has pushed for the recognition of a contrast between policies that benefit startups versus the largest tech players.

Slater has historically worked across the aisle, having served as an attorney advisor to former Democratic FTC Commissioner Julie Brill (who now works as Microsoft’s chief privacy officer). Her history working for Vance — who has publicly praised Biden’s FTC Chair Lina Khan for her aggressive approach toward tech — suggests Big Tech is likely to remain a key target of antitrust scrutiny in the years to come.

Amazon quietly carved out two Washington, DC zip codes from being serviced by its fastest Prime delivery service with its own branded trucks, outsourcing deliveries to slower services like UPS and the Postal Service, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb alleges in a new lawsuit.

The alleged decision led to about 48,000 Prime members living in two zip codes east of the Anacostia River receiving fewer benefits than they were actually paying for (at $14.99 a month or $139 a year), according to Schwalb. The neighborhoods that were allegedly affected include majority-Black and low-income areas. But even when customers noticed and complained about the slower delivery times, the AG alleges, Amazon “misled the consumers to believe it was a coincidence.”

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel tells The Verge in a statement that Amazon changed how it serviced the zip codes cited in the lawsuit due to “specific and targeted acts against drivers delivering Amazon packages” in those areas. “We made the deliberate choice to adjust our operations, including delivery routes and times, for the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers.” Nantel calls the AG’s claims “categorically false” and says Amazon is “always transparent with customers during the shopping journey and checkout process about when, exactly, they can expect their orders to arrive.”

But while Amazon has the right to protect its workers through these changes, Schwalb says it can’t deceive customers while doing so. “Amazon is charging tens of thousands of hard-working Ward 7 and 8 residents for an expedited delivery service it promises but does not provide. While Amazon has every right to make operational changes, it cannot covertly decide that a dollar in one ZIP code is worth less than a dollar in another,” he says in a statement.

Schwalb is suing under DC’s consumer protection law. He’s seeking to stop Amazon from continuing its allegedly deceptive behavior and collect an unspecified amount of civil penalties, restitution, and damages.

Microsoft is asking the inspector general at the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether agency management improperly leaked news of its antitrust investigation into the company, and make their findings public.

Bloomberg first reported that the probe was underway last week, which The Verge later confirmed. The investigation covers Microsoft’s cloud and software licensing businesses, AI, and cybersecurity offerings.

Now, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and deputy general counsel Rima Alaily is accusing FTC management of leaking details of the probe, in violation of the agency’s own ethics guidelines. The agency instructs new employees that “the existence of an FTC investigation is nonpublic information,” though it may be disclosed after the Office of Public Affairs determines the target of a probe already made it public in a press release or government filing. Still, the guidelines add that the Commission has authority to make “appropriate disclosures” when “it determines that doing so would be in the public interest.”

Alaily writes that the information and sourcing in the Bloomberg story “strongly suggests” the details came from “within the FTC.” She says that the story “appears to be consistent with an unfortunate trend over the last two years of the FTC strategically leaking nonpublic information,” citing a September report from the FTC IG that found a “steadily increasing” volume of “unauthorized disclosures” of nonpublic information to the press. The FTC declined to comment on the Microsoft letter.

Microsoft claims it learned about the FTC’s information demand “like the rest of the world, through the Bloomberg story.” Even when it inquired with FTC staff about the validity of the story, Alaily says, they wouldn’t confirm the information demand existed, and she adds that Microsoft still hasn’t seen the information demand reported by the press.

The letter is the latest example of a more aggressive approach Microsoft has taken in recent months when it comes to antitrust scrutiny of its business. In October, Alaily accused Google in a blog post of launching an astroturf group “to discredit Microsoft with competition authorities, and policymakers and mislead the public.”

Microsoft has mostly flown under the radar in past years as a target of antitrust lawsuits while its Big Tech peers were hit with complaints from US regulators. But it’s increasingly faced scrutiny in both the US and in Europe amid major cybersecurity issues, its acquisition of game studio Activision Blizzard, and its partnership with OpenAI. Still, the fate of any existing investigation will ultimately depend on how officials in the incoming Trump administration view the matter.

Microsoft is being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission in a wide-ranging antitrust probe, making it the fifth Big Tech company to fall under such scrutiny in several years.

The agency is looking into Microsoft’s cloud and software licensing business, cybersecurity services, and AI offerings. Bloomberg first reported the news and The Verge confirmed the investigation with a person familiar with the matter, granted anonymity to speak to a confidential probe.

The demand for information that spans hundreds of pages and culminates over a year of informal discussions with Microsoft competitors and partners. One focus is on how Microsoft bundles productivity and security software with its Azure cloud, per the source. The FTC’s...

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Elon Musk’s xAI could soon make its next move to compete with OpenAI: launching a standalone app for its Grok chatbot.

Musk created xAI as an alternative to OpenAI, the company he helped found but later distanced himself from over ideological differences. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports, xAI is planning to launch an app as soon as December that could go head-to-head with OpenAI’s ChatGPT as it races to scale up.

Currently, users can access Grok through X, but only if they subscribe to the service. Citing unnamed sources, the Journal reports that xAI is also behind customer support features for Starlink, part of Musk’s other company, SpaceX. X did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT,...

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A Chinese commercial ship is suspected of deliberately dragging its anchor to cut undersea cables that connect countries over the internet, The Wall Street Journal reports.

International investigators reportedly believe the crew aboard Yi Peng 3, a bulk carrier full of Russian fertilizer, dragged its anchor for more than 100 miles across the Baltic seabed, damaging the cables that run across it. Two different internet links — one between Sweden’s Gotland Island and Lithuania, and another between Finland and Germany — stopped working earlier this month, prompting the investigation by authorities from all four countries and other nations, according to the Journal.

Investigators are now trying to figure out if Russian intelligence...

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Selling Chrome might not be the most painful part of the DOJ’s antitrust demands for Google.

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Google and the government recently wrapped their search antitrust case, which ended in a judge finding Google to be a monopolist.

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