Politics
Trump’s Supreme Court nominee opposes net neutrality, supports NSA bulk collection
President Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee will face more scrutiny for his ideological leanings around issues like abortion than his thoughts on tech, but we do know a bit about…
Salesforce reportedly won’t cancel its contract with border agency despite employee petition
While denouncing the separation of migrant families as “inhumane,” chief executive officer Marc Benioff reportedly told employees that Salesforce will continue its contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)…
Microsoft says it is “dismayed” by the forced separation of migrant families at the border
Amid calls for a boycott and employee dissent over its cloud-computing deal with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Microsoft issued a statement saying that the company “is dismayed by the…
Twitter will give political candidates a special badge during US midterm elections
Ahead of 2018 U.S. midterm elections, Twitter is taking a visible step to combat the spread of misinformation on its famously chaotic platform. In a blog post this week, the…
U.S. and China reportedly working on a deal to save ZTE
The United States and China are said to be working on a deal that would keep ZTE from going out of business. According to the Wall Street Journal, the two…
What we can learn from the 3,500 Russian Facebook ads meant to stir up U.S. politics
On Thursday, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released a massive new trove of Russian government-funded Facebook political ads targeted at American voters. While we’d seen a cross section of…
Pro-Trump social media duo accuses Facebook of anti-conservative censorship
Following up on a recurring thread from Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional appearance earlier this month, the House held a hearing today on perceived bias against conservatives on Facebook and other social…
Facebook’s new authorization process for political ads goes live in the US
Earlier this month — and before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress — the company announced a series of changes to how it would handle political advertisements running on its…
Centrify gives states a deal on identity management software to secure midterm elections
To secure U.S. election systems from the very real threat of targeted cyberattacks, states might need to reframe their security practices to look more like they would in a tightly…
Higher Ground Labs backs 13 startups to help Democrats win in 2018 and beyond
With 2018 midterms around the corner, the Democrats are looking for their answer to Cambridge Analytica, the Robert Mercer-backed political data firm that either won the 2016 election or tricked…
Trump’s new national security advisor has ties to Cambridge Analytica
Trump’s third national security advisor, John Bolton, shares at least one thing in common with his first one, Michael Flynn: both men have ties to Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm…
John Bolton is Trump’s new National Security Advisor
With one fell swoop, President Trump just swapped out the “warrior scholar” for the warmonger. I am pleased to announce that, effective 4/9/18, @AmbJohnBolton will be my new National Security…
Facebook’s latest privacy debacle stirs up more regulatory interest from lawmakers
Facebook’s late Friday disclosure that a data analytics company with ties to the Trump campaign improperly obtained — and then failed to destroy — the private data of 50 million…
DHS and FBI detail how Russia is hacking into U.S. nuclear facilities and other critical infrastructure
With a joint alert from the FBI and DHS, the Trump administration has formally accused the Russian government of a “multi-stage intrusion campaign” targeting the U.S. energy grid for the…
U.S. issues broad Russian sanctions citing NotPetya attack and Internet Research Agency meddling
In a surprisingly robust reprimand for the Trump administration, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a set of sanctions Thursday citing interference in the 2016 election as part of a broader…
The citizens of Sierra Leone went to the polls on March 7 but this time something was different: the country recorded votes at 70% of the polling to the blockchain…
Featured Article
Facebook should disclose and limit pricing for political campaign ads
An interesting report on the Facebook ad machinery in play during the election highlighted an issue that I hadn’t considered: Facebook’s ad marketplace gave a huge pricing advantage to one candidate over the other. It seems like a no-brainer that these differences should at least be made public in the case of political contests, and…
Special counsel Robert Mueller indicts Russian bot farm for election meddling
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has just handed down a set of indictments, charging 13 Russian citizens and three Russian organizations with interference in the U.S. presidential election in efforts dating…
Seattle says Facebook broke one of its campaign advertising laws
Seattle’s election commission says Facebook broke a city law that requires it to disclose who paid for campaign ads. Reuters reports that the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission’s executive director,…
At the State of the Union, Trump touts tax cuts and immigration deal
With a president as mercurial as Trump, it was anyone’s guess what would happen during his first State of the Union address. The appearance is the president’s most high profile…
The GAO will investigate potential fraud in the FCC’s net neutrality comments… in 5 months
The Government Accountability Office has accepted a Congressional request to investigate the possibility of fraud and identify theft in the comments for the FCC’s net neutrality rollback. Several members of…
Twitter updates total of Russia-linked election bots to 50,000
Twitter has provided updated details on its investigation into Russian election interference on its platform in 2016. Its identification of more than 13,000 more Russian-linked bots that made election-related tweets…
With all 49 Democrats on board, Senate leaders sound off on plan to restore net neutrality
Democrats in the Senate have achieved unanimous party support of the plan to undo the FCC’s recently passed order gutting net neutrality. All 49 Democratic Senators and one Republican are…
Twitter hits back again at claims that its employees monitor direct messages
Twitter is pushing back against claims made by conservative activist group Project Veritas that its employees monitor private user data, including direct messages. In a statement to media outlets, it…
Twitter asserts that it won’t ban Trump because he’s a world leader
Just days after President Trump’s tweets antagonized a foreign adversary over who would be first to start nuclear war, Twitter has addressed calls for the company to ban the chatty,…
Researchers can now make neighborhood voting predictions from Google Street View images
In a sign that computers will be able to perform image analysis as fluently as text analysis, a group of Stanford-based researchers were able to make accurate predictions about neighborhood…
A new bipartisan Senate bill seeks to bolster US election security at the state level
A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Senate has introduced a bill designed to protect the technical integrity of American elections as the nation moves toward midterm season. Introduced in…
There’s no magic bullet for reversing the FCC’s net neutrality decision
Huge numbers of people are upset at the FCC’s decision to undo its own highly popular net neutrality rules. But the grand plans to undo this mischief being announced left…
Tech’s massive tax cut Christmas present from Trump just cleared Congress
The Republican tax bill is ready for the president’s signature. After forcing its second vote in two days, the bill passed the House with a vote of 224 to 201.…
Alabama Supreme Court blocks order to preserve digital voting records
Following an eleventh-hour order instructing voting officials in Alabama to keep the digital ballots generated in Tuesday’s Senate election, the state’s Supreme Court has issued a stay to block that…
