Intelligence Committee Chairman Probes 'Deepfake' Images, Videos

U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff pressed major social media companies on how they plan to handle the threat of deepfake images and videos on their platforms ahead of the 2020 elections. The Democratic congressman wrote letters to the chief executives of Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and Google, which owns YouTube, asking about the companies’ formal policies on deepfakes and their research into technologies to detect the doctored content.

Twitter Says Trump's Attacks on Congresswomen Don't Violate New Policy

Twitter’s new policy for holding powerful leaders to account for engaging in hate speech and harassment received its first major test this weekend when President Trump called on several Democratic members of Congress to “go back” to their countries — prompting widespread allegations of racism against women of color. Twitter said that the president’s tweets didn’t violate its policies, but independent researchers who study social media said they struggled to see why.

Judge's Ruling Lets Pentagon Choose Amazon or Microsoft for $10B Project

A federal judge ruled that Amazon did not unduly influence the shape of one of the largest technology contracts in the Pentagon’s history, setting the stage for the Department of Defense to choose between Amazon and Microsoft for the $10 billion project. Oracle had alleged that Amazon and the Defense Department biased the contract, known as the joint enterprise defense infrastructure, or JEDI, in Amazon’s favor because of conflicts of interest with past employees.

Chad Lifts Year-Long Ban on Social Media After Security Concerns

Chad lifted a more than a year-long ban on social media including Facebook and Twitter that the government said had been necessary for security reasons. The announcement was made by President Idriss Deby at a conference about digital technology in the capital, N’Djamena. While he said he’d instructed internet service providers to suspend the restrictions immediately, he appealed “to everyone’s sense of responsibility so that these means of communication are an instrument of development and not a source of division.”

Online Education Platform Exposes Personal Info on 7 Million Students

K12.com, an online education platform, inadvertently exposed the personal information of nearly seven million students, according to security researchers at Comparitech. The exposed database contained full names, email addresses, birthdates and gender identities, as well as the school that the students attend, authentication keys for accessing their accounts and other internal data.

FTC Votes to Approve $5 Billion Settlement with Facebook Over Privacy

The Federal Trade Commission voted to approve a roughly $5 billion settlement with Facebook that could end an investigation into its privacy practices, according to a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak on the record, a deal poised to result in unprecedented new government oversight of the company. The settlement -- adopted along party lines, with the FTC’s three Republicans supporting it and two Democrats against it -- puts in motion an end to a wide-ranging probe into Facebook’s mishandling of users’ personal information that began more than a year ago.

Trump Criticizes Facebook's Plans to Launch 'Libra' Cryptocurrency

President Trump sharply criticized Facebook’s plans to enter the cryptocurrency market, tweeting that the United States has “one real currency” and suggesting the social media giant may need to submit to heightened banking regulation. In a series of tweets, Trump said Facebook’s plans to help launch the currency, called Libra, would have “little standing or dependability,” warning that if Facebook wanted to become a bank it should seek “new Banking Charter and become subject to all Banking Regulations, just like other Banks, both National and International.”

Trump Hosts Prominent Conservative Social Media Figures at White House

President Donald Trump welcomed prominent conservative social media provocateurs to the White House on Thursday and said that along with himself, they are being treated unfairly by big tech firms, which he says suppress conservative voices. Trump said he has told his administration to look for regulations and legislation that could protect free speech — though he did not provide details on what measures were being discussed - and said he would summon major social firms to the White House for talks in coming weeks.

Schools Struggle with What to Do About Digital Data Collected on Students

Data generated in the classroom is becoming a heated front in the battle over digital privacy, but privacy experts say the issue is more complicated than it might seem. Many school districts have hundreds, if not thousands, of vendors that collect data through apps or online curricula and most are just now beginning to catch up to the proliferation of new tech tools, Ms. Vance says.

Lawsuits Accuse Ocasio-Cortez of Blocking Critical Users on Twitter

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is facing two federal lawsuits for blocking Twitter users who were critical of her or her policies. Republican congressional candidate Joseph Saladino and former New York assemblyman Dov Hikind sued the freshman congresswoman, shortly after a New York appellate court upheld an earlier decision affirming that President Trump violated the First Amendment for doing the same.

Trump Orders Investigation of France's Plan to Tax Tech Companies

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into France’s planned tax on technology companies, a probe that could lead to the United States imposing new tariffs or other trade restrictions. “The United States is very concerned that the digital services tax which is expected to pass the French Senate unfairly targets American companies,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a statement announcing the investigation.

Fed Chairman Says Facebook's Cryptocurrency Raises 'Serious Concerns'

Facebook is facing a growing chorus of doubts about its new Libra cryptocurrency project from authorities around the world, ahead of two congressional hearings on the initiative. The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said Libra raised a host of “serious concerns” around “money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability.”

YouTube Updates Process for Reporting Copyright Violations

YouTube is updating the way it handles manual copyright claims with changes that should make them much less of a headache for video creators. Owners of copyrighted content — like a record label or a movie studio — will now have to say exactly where in a video their copyrighted material appears, which they didn’t have to do in the past when manually reporting infringement.

Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple to Testify at 'Market Power' Hearing

Representatives of four huge U.S. technology companies will testify next week at a hearing on “online platforms and market power,” the House antitrust subcommittee said. The hearing will be an early flashpoint in what is shaping up to be a yearslong, high-stakes debate in Washington about if, and how, to limit the reach and influence of tech giants over markets and Americans’ personal lives.

European Privacy Regulators Scrutinize Online Ad Targeting

Privacy regulators in Europe are beginning to scrutinize a process known as “real-time bidding,” through which tens of billions of dollars flow from advertisers annually around the world. The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office, the country’s data-protection authority, said real-time ad auctions violate the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect last year. Such auctions involve the collection and distribution of sensitive information about users — including race, sexuality, health status or political leaning — without their explicit consent, the regulator said in a report last month.

UK Plans to Fine Marriott $123 Million for Breach of Starwood Guest Database

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) intends to impose a fine of $123,705,870 on international hotel chain Marriott for last year's data breach. In November 2018, Marriott disclosed that hackers accessed the Starwood guest reservation database since 2014. Initially, the company said hackers stole the details of roughly 500 million hotel guests, a number which the hotel chain later corrected to 383 million following a more thorough investigation.

Appeals Court Upholds Ruling Banning Trump from Blocking Twitter Followers

President Trump cannot block his critics from the Twitter feed he regularly uses to communicate with the public, a federal appeals court said, in a case with implications for how elected officials nationwide interact with constituents on social media. The decision from the New York-based appeals court upholds an earlier ruling that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked individual users who were critical of the president or his policies.

Twitter's New Guidelines Back Off Efforts to Ban Dehumanizing Speech

The scaling back of Twitter’s efforts to define dehumanizing speech illustrates the company’s challenges as it sorts through what to allow on its platform. While the new guidelines help it draw starker lines around what it will and will not tolerate, it took Twitter nearly a year to put together the rules — and even then they are just a fraction of the policy that it originally said it intended to create.

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