Legal & Privacy Brief

Today: The FTC and state attorneys general secured a settlement with pesticide manufacturer Corteva to dismantle its loyalty program that blocked generic competitors and inflated prices for American farmers. President Trump directed the FCC to punish news anchor Kristen Welker for reporting critical information about his political endorsements. A cryptographic forgery attack against RSA signatures was implemented, though it remains impractical for most real-world systems.

Enforcement Actions

FTC, States Win Protections to Lower Pesticide Prices for American Farmers in Antitrust Case Against Corteva

Summary: The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general reached a 10-year settlement with Corteva Inc. resolving allegations that the pesticide manufacturer implemented an anticompetitive loyalty program that paid distributors to block generic competitors after Corteva patents expired. The settlement prohibits Corteva from conditioning payments on distributors purchasing more than 50% of their pesticide active ingredient requirements from Corteva or limiting generic purchases below 50%. The original 2022 lawsuit against both Corteva and Syngenta alleged the loyalty programs illegally extended monopolies and forced U.S. farmers to overpay millions of dollars for crop protection products.

• Compliance Action: Agricultural distributors should review existing purchasing agreements with pesticide manufacturers to ensure they are not subject to similar exclusionary loyalty programs. Companies in regulated industries should audit vendor rebate and loyalty programs to verify compliance with antitrust laws prohibiting market exclusion tactics.
• Source: FTC Press Releases

Policy Changes

Trump Orders The FCC To Punish A Reporter. Where Did All The 'Ministry Of Truth' Screamers Go?

Summary: President Trump publicly directed the FCC to punish NBC news anchor Kristen Welker for reporting that Trump had a "mixed record" on the success of his political endorsements, stating she "will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment." This follows a pattern of demands for the FCC to police speech about negative polling data. The directive contrasts sharply with the 2022 controversy over the Biden administration's Disinformation Governance Board, an advisory group with no enforcement authority that faced intense criticism and was disbanded after death threats against its director. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has embraced an active role in content moderation requests from the administration.

• Compliance Action: Media organizations and broadcasters should document all government requests or directives to modify editorial content and consult First Amendment counsel before complying with agency demands that lack statutory authority. Communications companies should review protocols for responding to politically motivated enforcement threats.
• Source: TechDirt

Privacy Developments

New Attack Against RSA

Summary: Researchers implemented a 2007 cryptographic attack that forges RSA digital signatures without factoring the private key, though the attack remains computationally expensive and limited in scope. The forgery attack works only against pure RSA signatures without padding or formatting, which are not standard in modern implementations. The research team required 1,380 CPU core-years over five months to forge signatures for 1024-bit RSA keys using a subexponential-time algorithm that is faster than factoring but still not polynomial-time.

• Compliance Action: Organizations using RSA cryptography should verify that all implementations use properly formatted and padded signatures (PKCS#1 v1.5 or PSS) rather than pure signatures. Cryptographic architects should continue migration planning from 1024-bit RSA to 2048-bit or 4096-bit keys, or to alternative signature schemes like Ed25519.
• Source: Schneier on Security

Compliance Takeaways

• Review vendor loyalty and rebate programs for potential antitrust issues. The Corteva settlement establishes that post-patent loyalty programs conditioning payments on market share exclusion violate antitrust law.
• Media and communications companies should establish documented protocols for responding to government content moderation requests that lack clear statutory authority under the Communications Act.
• Audit RSA signature implementations to confirm use of proper padding schemes (PKCS#1 v1.5 or PSS). Pure RSA signatures without formatting are vulnerable to forgery attacks.
• Agricultural distributors and farmers can now access lower-cost generic pesticides following the dismantling of Corteva's exclusionary loyalty program. Monitor similar enforcement actions against Syngenta.
• Organizations in concentrated markets should review loyalty programs and exclusive dealing arrangements in light of increased FTC enforcement against anticompetitive rebate structures.