Russian Hackers Targeted Election Systems in 50 States, Senate Committee Says

The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time, but at the demand of American intelligence agencies the committee was forced to redact its findings so heavily that key lessons for the 2020 election are blacked out. It concluded that while there is no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines, “Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data” in the Illinois voter database.

Barr Meets with State Attorneys General to Discuss Concerns About Big Tech

Eight state attorneys general met with U.S. Attorney General William Barr to discuss concerns about big tech companies, according to a statement from the Texas attorney general’s office. The statement did not identify the other participants but said the group was bipartisan and discussions centered on “big tech companies stifling competition on the internet.”

Presidential Candidate Sues Google for Suspending Her Ads After Debate

Representative Tulsi Gabbard, the long-shot presidential candidate from Hawaii, said in a federal lawsuit that Google infringed on her free speech when it briefly suspended her campaign’s advertising account after the first Democratic debate in June. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Los Angeles, is believed to be the first time a presidential candidate has sued a major technology firm.

Bill Requires Disclosure for Third-Party Hotel Booking Websites

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in both chambers has reintroduced legislation aimed at combating online hotel booking scams. The Stopping Online Booking Scams Act, which accrued over 40 co-sponsors in the Senate during the last Congress before it stalled, would make it illegal for scammers to fool customers into thinking they are paying for hotel services when they are not.

Treasury Secretary Says No National Security Concerns About Google in China

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he and President Trump have found no national security concerns about work that Google is doing in China, a rebuke of claims made by billionaire investor and Facebook Inc. board member Peter Thiel. In an interview with CNBC, Mr. Mnuchin said he and the president looked into the matter and recently met with Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai to address Mr. Thiel’s concerns.

Facebook Agrees to $5 Billion Settlement, Agrees to Federal Oversight

The U.S. government issued an unprecedented rebuke of Facebook after a year of massive privacy mishaps, charging that the company deceived its users and “undermined” choices they made to protect their data as part of a settlement that requires the tech giant to pay $5 billion and submit to significant federal oversight of its business practices. Sixteen months after opening its investigation, the Federal Trade Commission alleged that Facebook had repeatedly misled its 2.2 billion users.

New York Legislation Would Ban Sale of Geolocation Data to Third Parties

Telecommunications firms and mobile-based apps make billions of dollars per year by selling customer location data to marketers and other businesses, offering a vast window into the whereabouts of cellphone and app users, often without their knowledge. That practice, which has come under increasing scrutiny and criticism in recent years, is now the subject of a proposed ban in New York. If the legislation is approved, it is believed that the city would become the first to forbid the sale of geolocation data to third parties.

Justice Dep't to Explore 'Widespread Concerns' About Top Tech Websites

The Department of Justice said it is opening a wide-ranging review of “market-leading online platforms” for potential competition concerns, an inquiry that could sweep up Amazon, Facebook, Google and others in the government’s regulatory crosshairs. The DOJ’s new effort aims to explore “widespread concerns that consumers, businesses, and entrepreneurs have expressed about search, social media, and some retail services online,” the agency said in a statement, pledging that it would “seek redress” if in the course of its investigation it identifies violations of federal antitrust law.

Huawei Secretly Helped North Korea Build Wireless Network

Huawei Technologies Co., the Chinese tech giant embroiled in President Trump’s trade war with China and blacklisted as a national security threat, secretly helped the North Korean government build and maintain the country’s commercial wireless network, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the arrangement. Huawei partnered with a Chinese state-owned firm, Panda International Information Technology Co. Ltd., on a variety of projects there spanning at least eight years, according to past work orders, contracts and detailed spreadsheets taken from a database that charts the company’s telecom operations worldwide.

Facebook's Settlement with FTC May Create Board Committee for Privacy

Facebook Inc.’s expected settlement with U.S. regulators will create a board committee to help ensure senior-level scrutiny of the company’s privacy-related efforts. Among the measures expected to be imposed on the social-media giant to prevent future consumer-data violations, the board committee would add to an internal privacy team already in place that vets major new products.

Microsoft to Pay $26 Million in Settlement Over Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

Microsoft will pay $26 million to settle claims that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act when a handful of Hungarian employees inflated margins on software sales to fund an improper payment scheme. Microsoft didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing, according to the settlement documents. But in an email to employees, President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said that the claims “involved employee misconduct that was completely unacceptable” and that the employees involved and the partners with whom they worked “behaved in a wholly unethical manner.”

Equifax Nears $700 Million Settlement Over 2017 Data Breach

Equifax Inc. is nearing a deal to settle a slew of state and federal investigations into a 2017 data breach that exposed nearly 150 million Americans’ Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information. Under the agreement, the credit-reporting firm would pay around $700 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and most state attorneys general, according to people familiar with the matter.

FTC Finalizes Settlement with YouTube for Children's Privacy Violations

The Federal Trade Commission has finalized a settlement with Google in its investigation into YouTube for violating federal data privacy laws for children, said two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it on record. The settlement — backed by the agency’s three Republicans and opposed by its two Democrats — finds that Google inadequately protected kids who used its video-streaming service and improperly collected their data in breach of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which prohibits the tracking and targeting of users younger than 13, the people said.

White House Economic Adviser to Meet with Execs to Discuss Huawei Ban

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow will host a meeting with semiconductor and software executives to discuss the U.S. ban on sales to China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, two sources briefed on the meeting said. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will also attend the White House event, to which chipmakers Intel Corp and Qualcomm Inc have been invited, the people said.

Hackers Breach Contractor for Russia's National Intelligence Service

Hackers have breached SyTech, a contractor for FSB, Russia's national intelligence service, from where they stole information about internal projects the company was working on behalf of the agency -- including one for deanonymizing Tor traffic. The breach took place last weekend, on July 13, when a group of hackers going by the name of 0v1ru$ hacked into SyTech's Active Directory server from where they gained access to the company's entire IT network, including a JIRA instance.

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