JURIST - Paper Chase: Saturday, August 11, 2012

[JURIST] Libya's newly empowered General National Congress elected Mohamed al-Megaryef as interim president on Friday. Al-Megaryef, a long time opponent of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi [BBC obituary; JURIST news archive], was elected by a vote of 113 to 85 [Bloomberg report]. This is the latest in the transitional period that began with the National Transitional Council of Libya (NTC) [official website, in Arabic; JURIST news archive] handing over power to the elected assembly [JURIST report] earlier this week. Al-Megaryef will serve as interim president while the assembly selects a prime minister, which will happen in 30 days, and during the constitution writing panel, which will take place in 60 days.

The national assembly was elected [CFR report] last month. The draft of the electoral law was finalized in February after the earlier version was revised [JURIST report] to address criticisms of the public. The finalized law provided for 20 percent of the 200 seats to be reserved for women, double the number proposed in the earlier version. The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) [official website] welcomed the new electoral law [JURIST report], commenting that the country is coming closer to being a democratic society.

[JURIST] Florida Administrative Judge Thomas Crapps on Friday heard a challenge [petition, PDF] to a voting rights law [HB 1355 materials] filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) [advocacy websites] and Senator Arthenia Joyner [official profile]. The new regulation, which applies to only 62 of 67 counties, creates conflicting voting rules depending on the county. HB 1355 limits the window for early voting to one week prior to an election, down from the previously established two weeks, and imposes a series of additional regulations on organizations that enlist new voters, including requiring that they register with the state, submit periodic reports and file voter registration materials within 48 hours of completion. It also requires voters that have moved between any of the state's counties to use provisional ballots if they wish to update their information while at a polling location. The complaint alleges the newly implemented regulation violates the Voting Rights Act (VRA) [text] that requires state voting regulations to be "precleared" by the Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website]. Judge Crapps said he would rule on August 24.

There has been significant controversy surrounding voting rights in Florida recently. Over the last two months, the voter purge controversy caused the DOJ and various rights groups [JURIST reports] to call for an end to the purging of voter rolls. In July, Florida was given access to federal voter rolls [JURIST report] in an effort to continue the purge.

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of Montana [official website] on Friday ruled [decision, PDF] that its state's November ballots may include Initiative 166 [text, PDF], a nonbinding policy statement that would direct the state's congress to support an amendment to the US Constitution [text] asserting that corporations are not people and money does not qualify as speech. The goal of the endeavor is to counteract the 2010 US Supreme Court [official website] decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission [text, PDF], which allows corporations to spend and contribute unlimited and unrestricted money in political campaigns. The court's majority made clear, however, that its decision was limited only to whether the initiative complied with constitutional requirements regarding its proper submission to electors, and that it did not consider the "substantive legality of the issue, if approved by voters." The dissent echoed this distinction, labeling Initiative 166 as "simply a feel-good exercise exhibiting contempt for the federal government and, particularly, the US Supreme Court." In another election case on Friday, the court upheld a ruling to strike Legislative Referendum 123 [text, PDF], a tax rebate referendum that would have allowed individual taxpayers and property owners "a refund of surplus state government fund balance through an income tax credit." While the 4-3 majority declared that its "opinion, analysis and rationale will follow in due course," District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock, who originally ruled on the case, declared [AP report] the referendum to be an unconstitutional delegation of power by the Legislature.

Campaign finance [JURIST news archive] laws have been recently contentious in the state of Montana. In a June per curiam opinion, the US Supreme Court struck down [JURIST report] a century-old Montana campaign finance law that restricted the amount of money corporations can spend on political campaigns. In particular, the court said that the restrictions imposed by Montana's 1912 Corrupt Practices Act [PPL backgrounder] were already rejected by the Citizens United ruling. The June order overturned a previous Montana Supreme Court decision upholding [JURIST report] the law.

[JURIST] Google Inc. [corporate website] on Thursday agreed to pay a record fine [press release] of $22.5 million to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) [official website] after being charged with misrepresenting Apple Inc.'s Safari [corporate website] internet browser. Specifically, the FTC claimed [materials] that the company allowed the browser to track users' search histories and target ads to those users in violation of a previous privacy settlement between Google and the FTC. The settlement also requires Google to disable the tracking "cookies" that it originally said would not be placed on buyers' computers. In its complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website], the FTC asserted that Google told users that Safari would block third-party cookies by default so long as users did not alter their browser settings. According to the FTC, however, Google nevertheless placed a temporary cookie in the browser that led to all others, including the advertising tracking cookie that allowed it to serve online ads based on the a user's recorded web-browsing activities. While FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz declared that "all companies must ... keep their privacy promises to consumers" or "end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place," Google has yet to issue a statement on the settlement.

Google, Inc. has faced frequent legal challenges regarding the privacy of internet users. In February, a federal judge dismissed [JURIST report] a suit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) [advocacy website], a consumer privacy group, that asked the FTC to block Google's proposed privacy changes [text] that would allow a user's information to be shared among several Google products, including YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps. Also in February, members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus [official website] sent a letter [JURIST report] to the FTC asking it to look into Google's possible unlawful privacy practices related to bypassing Safari settings to track users browser histories without their consent. The settlement allegedly violated by Google in this case was arranged in October 2011, and barred Google from misrepresenting the extent to which consumers can exercise control over the collection of their information. Several months prior, in March, the FTC announced [JURIST report] a similar settlement regarding Google's breach of consumer privacy rights by misleading users with Google Buzz, the company's then-social networking site. Previous concerns were raised in April 2007 when several internet privacy groups asked [JURIST report] the FTC to investigate the merger between Google and the advertising provider DoubleClick [corporate website]. "Deceptive" and "unfair" advertising claims were also brought against Google [JURIST report] by consumer groups in November 2006.