Enlarge (credit: Saul Gravy, Getty Images)

A federal appeals court is giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation a big boost when it comes to secretly investigating national security affairs. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld federal rules prohibiting companies from promptly disclosing to customers that the FBI is demanding a user's private data with a National Security Letter (NSL).

The FBI annually issues thousands of so-called NSLs to ISPs, financial institutions and telephone companies. A judge's signature is not required, and targets of NSLs cannot challenge them because they don't know they exist.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, on behalf of Cloudfare and CREDO Mobile, brought a challenge to the gag orders under the First Amendment. They argued that the gag orders burdened the speech of companies that receive them. A federal judge in 2013 agreed, and declared NSLs unconstitutional for that reason.

Enlarge / President Donald Trump. (credit: Getty Images News | Pool)

The Trump administration supports the Federal Communications Commission effort to overturn net neutrality rules passed during the Obama years, a White House spokesperson said yesterday.

"The previous administration went about this the wrong way by imposing rules on ISPs through the FCC's Title II rulemaking power,"White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters yesterday. "We support the FCC chair's efforts to review and consider rolling back these rules and believe that the best way to get fair rules for everyone is for Congress to take action and create regulatory and economic certainty."

The net neutrality rules passed in 2015 are enforced with the FCC's Title II authority over common carriers; a previous version of the rules that did not rely upon Title II was thrown out in court. Under Chairman Ajit Pai's leadership, the Republican-controlled FCC took a preliminary vote to undo the Title II classification and the net neutrality rules in May.

Enlarge (credit: Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

Uber drivers have the same employment rights as other full-time employees in Britain, a court has ruled in a landmark decision which looks likely to send shockwaves through the nation's so-called "gig economy."

The ruling means that drivers are now entitled to earn the national minimum wage, holiday pay, sick pay, and other benefits, after the San Francisco-based taxi firm lost a case brought against them by two drivers backed by the GMB union. Uber had argued that it was a tech firm rather than a transport one, and that as its drivers were self-employed contractors it was not obliged to provide the kinds of statutory employment rights full-time workers would expect.

According to the GMB, the Central London Employment Tribunal's decision will have ramifications in other industries which rely on casualised labour, and that "similar contracts masquerading as bogus self employment will all be reviewed."

Enlarge / CenturyLink servers. (credit: CenturyLink)

CenturyLink today announced a deal to purchase Level 3 Communications in a merger that would give CenturyLink another 200,000 miles of fiber and make it a bigger player in the business network market. CenturyLink will reportedly pay $25 billion, and the deal is valued at $34 billion when accounting for the Level 3 debt that will be assumed by CenturyLink.

CenturyLink has nearly 6 million residential Internet customers in the US US, but makes about 60 percent of its revenueselling network services to businesses. Level 3 sells only to businesses, and 76 percent of the combined company's revenue will come from business customers.

The companies hope to complete the merger by the third quarter of 2017. If approved by the Federal Communications Commission and other regulators, the deal will greatly expand CenturyLink's fiber footprint in the US and overseas.