EPIC, as part of the open government case EPIC v. AI Commission, has obtained more documents from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. Among the records is a report concerning best practices for advisory commissions that was delivered to the AI Commission in early 2019. Notably, the report contains no recommendations about transparency or public participation in the Commission’s work. A federal court recently ruled in EPIC’s case that the AI Commission is subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Judge Trevor N. McFadden ordered the Commission to hold open meetings and regularly publish its records in the future. Judge McFadden previously ruled that the AI Commission is subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and the Commission began disclosing its prior records in January. The case is EPIC v. AI Commission, No. 19-2906 (D.D.C.).
The U.S. Supreme Court declared that the government debt exception to the Telephone Consumer Protect Act violates the First Amendment and severed the exception, preserving the law’s important privacy protections. The case, Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, concerned a First Amendment challenge to the law that protects consumers from robocalls and the proper remedy when an exception to a statute violates the First Amendment. EPIC defended the TCPA in an amicus brief. EPIC said that the robocall ban is "constitutionally permissible and serves important governmental interests." EPIC explained that cell phone adoption has made "the harm caused by unwanted automated calls" greater than when the robocall ban was enacted in 1991. EPIC said that "without the autodialer ban, the assault of unwanted calls could make cell phones unusable." EPIC also argued that "a minor amendment to an otherwise constitutional law, passed decades after the original enactment, should not take down an act of Congress." EPIC frequently files amicus briefs on the TCPA, including in the related case, Gallion v. Charter Communications.
The Senate Judiciary today unanimously approved the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act of 2020 (S. 3398) by a vote of 22-0. In a statement to the Committee on a previous version of the EARN IT Act, EPIC supported both end-to-end encryption and reform to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. EPIC pointed out that actual end-to-end encryption "protects users, promotes commerce, and ensures cybersecurity." The Committee today adopted an amendment from Senator Patrick Leahy that clarified that companies that provide end-to-end encryption are not subject to liability because they cannot access user communications. In an amicus brief in Herrick v. Grindr, EPIC objected to a court decision that found "online platforms bear no responsibility for the harassment and abuse their systems enable."
