| FCC'S NET NEUTRALITY REPEAL PUBLISHED: The Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) order repealing net neutrality was published in the Federal Register Thursday morning, opening the door for supporters of the Obama-era rules to launch legislative and legal challenges. The Republican-led FCC voted to repeal the consumer protections in December despite an outcry from internet users and activists worried the move would give free rein to companies like Verizon and Comcast to disrupt the free flow of information online. "As a result of the mess the agency created, broadband providers will now have the power to block websites, throttle services, and censor online content," Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who voted against the repeal, said in a statement on Thursday. "This is not right. The FCC is on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of the law and it deserves to have its handiwork revisited, reexamined, and ultimately reversed." Now that the new rules have officially been published, net neutrality supporters are able to mount a legal challenge against them. Democratic attorneys general, public interest groups and internet companies have all promised to file lawsuits to preserve the 2015 protections. One group, Public Knowledge, said that it would be filing its own lawsuit on Thursday. "Despite the hard blow [FCC] Chairman [Ajit] Pai has dealt to the Open Internet, small businesses, and consumers, the fight for net neutrality continues," John Bergmayer, the group's senior counsel, said in a statement. "Today, Public Knowledge is filing a challenge to the FCC's action in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where we are confident that the FCC's illegal and procedurally flawed action will be rejected." Read more here. Please send your tips, comments and compliments to Ali Breland (abreland@thehill.com) and Harper Neidig (hneidig@thehill.com) and follow us on Twitter: @alibreland and @hneidig. We're also on Signal and WhatsApp. Email or DM us for our numbers. STATES COME OUT SWINGING: Twenty-two Democratic state attorneys general on Tuesday launched a lawsuit aimed at preserving net neutrality on Tuesday, the same day the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published its rule striking the regulations in the Federal Register. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is leading the suit along with other state attorneys generals, had previously filed a lawsuit, but they are refiling their case now that the order is eligible for legal challenge, following its official publication. Their lawsuit hinges on the Administrative Procedure Act, which they argue prevents the FCC from "arbitrary and capricious" redactions to already existing policy. Read more here. OFFICIALS WARN OF SPIKE IN HACKERS TARGETING TAXPAYER DATA: Federal officials are warning of a spike in phishing campaigns during the IRS's tax filing season, particularly those targeting information from would-be victims' W-2 forms. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center issued an alert late Wednesday warning of an increase in W-2 phishing campaigns. "This scam is just one of several new variations of IRS and tax-related phishing campaigns targeting W-2 information, indicating an increase in the interest of criminals in sensitive tax information," the alert says. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has seen an increase in reports of compromised or forged emails asking targets to provide information about their W-2 since the beginning of the year, according to the alert. In some cases, the emails were accompanied by a request for an unauthorized wire transfer. Read more here. REPORT DETAILS SEXUAL HARASSMENT AT COMCAST CALL CENTERS: Women working at several Comcast offices have described experiencing sexual harassment from their co-workers that often was ignored or mishandled by the company, reports Jezebel. One former employee at a Comcast center in Washington, D.C., alleged an environment where her co-workers had lewd conversations about one another's sex lives and the physical appearance of women in the office. The employee, Rylinda Rhodes, transferred to another office. But in that new office, she says she was groped by a co-worker who later made comments about her breasts. Jezebel spoke with six women at Comcast centers who detailed similar experiences of sexual harassment in the workplace, which they felt were usually not properly handled by the company's HR department. Read more here. FORMER GOOGLE EMPLOYEE SUING OVER WRONGFUL FIRING: A former Google employee is now suing the company, claiming he was wrongfully terminated for his criticism of an anti-diversity memo sent to staff members last year, Wired Magazine reports. Tim Chevalier, a transgender former site reliability engineer at Google, says that he was fired for his politically liberal rebuttal to former programmer James Damore's post on one of the company's internal messaging boards. Chevalier posted multiple charged responses to Damore's memo, calling it "misogynistic" for saying biological differences between men and women were behind the gender pay gap and that women were less suited to be engineers. Included in Chevalier's posts was a link to a blog post where he wrote that "white boys" feel threatened when they don't receive the privilege they expect, along with others that stereotyped Republicans. According to Chevalier, he was fired six weeks after human resources met with him to discuss his posts on internal forums, in November 2017. Read more here. ON TAP: Georgetown Law will hold a symposium on the governance and regulation of information platforms at 9:00 a.m. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Business Insider: YouTube and Facebook promoted a right-wing conspiracy about a Florida shooting survivor The Guardian: Growth of AI could boost cybercrime and security threats, report warns Stratechery: The aggregator paradox The Hill op-ed: Hey, we might need that wall ... to stop Mexico's state-run 5G network Reuters: Intel did not tell U.S. cyber officials about chip flaws until made public | 
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