Ajit Pai

The worst thing, going forward, would be for these false alerts to undermine public confidence in the wireless emergency alerting system because, when a real emergency hits, you want people to take that information seriously.

It is exceptionally rare to have the Department of Justice refuse to sign onto an FCC brief, but this says that the DOJ doesn’t trust that this is legal, president Obama’s own Department of Justice implicitly is questioning whether or not this is government overreach.

The California law prohibits many free data plans, which allow consumers to stream video, music, and the like exempt from any data limits. They have proven enormously popular in the marketplace, especially among lower income Americans. But notwithstanding the consumer benefits, this state law bans them.