General
Anonymous Trump Critic And Former DHS Staffer Miles Taylor Has Left Google
Hamed Aleaziz and Ryan Mac, BuzzFeed News
Miles Taylor, the former Trump administration official who penned an anonymous New York Times opinion piece criticizing the president, is no longer working at Google, according to a company document seen by BuzzFeed News. Taylor, who served as both deputy chief of staff and chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, was hired last year by Google following his departure from the Trump administration.
The Facebook Lawyer Trying to Prevent Election Chaos
Alex Heath, The Information
After vowing for four years that it would move quickly to curb misinformation around a heated U.S. general election, Facebook faced a critical moment late in the evening Tuesday. Knowing that ballot counting would drag on into the week, and with President Donald Trump already spreading doubt about the results to his tens of millions of followers, Facebook’s policy team asked to add an alert at the top of Instagram and Facebook feeds in the U.S. saying that votes were still being counted.
The US government seized $1 billion in bitcoin from dark web marketplace Silk Road
James Vincent, The Verge
Earlier this week, the bitcoin community was shocked when a digital wallet containing roughly $1 billion in bitcoin — thought to be proceeds from the now-shuttered dark web drug marketplace Silk Road — was emptied by an unknown individual. Now, those responsible for cleaning out the funds have revealed themselves: it was the US government.
QAnon goes to Washington: two supporters win seats in Congress
Katherine Tully-McManus, Roll Call
QAnon is heading to Congress, as Marjorie Taylor Greene, a supporter of the baseless and complicated pro-Trump conspiracy theory, won a House seat in Georgia, and Lauren Boebert claimed a House seat in Colorado. While those victories are the first by Republican candidates who publicly backed the wide-ranging delusion centered on allegations of a “deep state” undermining President Donald Trump and liberals trafficking children, they will join a GOP conference that may already host some “Q-curious” members.
Venture capitalists watch the tight White House race for tech trade war and H-1B visa implications: ‘Silicon Valley is losing its monopoly’
Martin Coulter and Callum Burroughs, Business Insider Premium
Venture capitalists on either side of the Atlantic have weighed in on a nail-biter race for the White House — which has yet to determine whether incumbent President Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden will spend the next four years in the Oval Office. Biden is narrowing the gap with Trump in key states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Intellectual Property and Antitrust
DOJ seeks to block Visa’s $5.3 billion acquisition of start-up Plaid over antitrust concerns
Kate Rooney, CNBC
The Department of Justice is looking to block Visa’s planned acquisition of fintech start-up Plaid on grounds that it would limit competition in the payments industry. U.S. attorneys for the DOJ outlined potential for the deal to extend a Visa “monopoly” on debit transactions. For antitrust reasons the $5.3 billion acquisition, which was announced in February, “must be stopped,” according to the complaint.
Telecom, Wireless and TV
EU telecoms firms slam proposed tweaks to EU privacy rules on WhatsApp, Skype
Foo Yun Chee, Reuters
Europe’s telecoms industry on Thursday slammed proposed tweaks to planned EU rules governing Facebook’s WhatsApp and Microsoft unit Skype that would tighten the rules faced by telecoms providers to use electronic communications metadata. The planned EU rules subject WhatsApp and Skype to the same rules as telecoms providers.
T-Mobile will extend fast 5G service nationwide in 2021, pressuring rivals
Aaron Pressman, Fortune
T-Mobile will offer nearly nationwide coverage on its super-fast 5G network by the end of 2021, company executives said on Thursday, a move that could pressure rivals Verizon and AT&T to keep pace. At the end of next year, the network will blanket an area where 200 million people live, the company promised.
Mobile Technology and Social Media
Facebook groups are turning into election disinformation vectors
Ashley Gold, Axios
Public and private Facebook groups are becoming vectors of disinformation about ballot counting, as the results of the presidential race remain unclear and states finish tallying votes under individual state laws and timelines. Driving the news: Facebook took down a public group called “Stop the Steal” that quickly amassed hundreds of thousands of members Thursday.
Civil Rights group, watchdog formally request Twitter suspend Trump’s account over disinformation
Rebecca Klar, The Hill
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the watchdog group Common Cause issued a joint request Thursday for Twitter to temporarily suspend President Trump’s account over the spread of disinformation about the election. The groups sent a joint letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey calling for Trump’s account to be suspended over “repeated violations” of the platform’s Civic Integrity Policy.
YouTube channels making money from ads, memberships amplify Trump voting fraud claims
Paresh Dave, Reuters
At least nine popular YouTube channels were promoting on Thursday debunked accusations about voting fraud in the U.S. presidential race, conspiratorial content that could jeopardize advertising and memberships revenue they get from the video service.
Trump’s Special Twitter Treatment Would End With Biden Win
Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg
As U.S. president, Donald Trump receives special treatment from Twitter Inc. when he violates the company’s rules around offensive or misleading content. That exemption will end in January if he loses the presidency.
Election-related misinformation is spilling into the real world. Just look at Arizona.
Shannon Vavra, CyberScoop
When a group of pro-Trump protesters surrounded an election center in Arizona in the wee hours of Thursday morning, demonstrators chanted slogans echoing manufactured narratives amplified by right wing social media users that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was somehow being stolen from President Donald Trump.
Social platforms tackle wave of Spanish-language misinformation
Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan and Hannah Murphy, Financial Times
Facebook and Twitter face deluge of misleading content targeting Hispanic populations in battleground states.
Cybersecurity and Privacy
US seizes more domains with ties to suspected Iranian influence campaign
Joe Warminsky, CyberScoop
The U.S. Department of Justice’s actions against alleged Iranian influence campaigns continued this week with the seizure of 27 internet domains, including four that the feds say were targeted directly at U.S. audiences. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) unlawfully used the domains in operations to “covertly influence” opinions in the U.S. and elsewhere, the department said in an announcement Wednesday.
Facebook removes ‘inauthentic’ networks spanning 8 nations
Fanny Potkin, Reuters
Facebook on Friday said it has dismantled seven separate networks of fake accounts and pages on its platform that were active in Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Myanmar, Georgia, and Ukraine due to “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”. The social media platform announced it had taken down the new networks as part of its monthly report into “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, which also noted Facebook had removed nearly 8,000 pages involved in deceptive campaigns around the world in October.
Apple will require apps to add privacy ‘nutrition labels’ starting December 8th
Ian Carlos Campbell, The Verge
Apple debuted a collection of privacy features when it announced iOS 14, but the company’s privacy “nutrition label” concept did not arrive with the launch of the new operating system in September. Today, Apple announced that developers will be required to provide the information for those “labels” starting December 8th.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
Our Digital Privacy Has Been Compromised: It’s Time We Fought to Take It Back
Tom Kelly, Morning Consult
Imagine you look outside your window one day and see a crowd of people staring back at you. Someone has been selling tickets to a public viewing of your private life. Everything about you, from the toothpaste brand you use in the morning to the phone calls you make at night, is being sold to a plethora of interested viewers – viewers you don’t know, can’t identify and have no way to stop.
‘Those in Power Won’t Give Up Willingly’: Veena Dubal and Meredith Whittaker on the Future of Organizing Under Prop 22
Meredith Whittaker, OneZero
California voters, overwhelmed by a deluge of gig-company-sponsored misinformation over several months, voted in favor of Proposition 22, which eradicates basic labor protections for the state’s most vulnerable workers. The law — a wholesale elimination of basic workers’ rights across an entire sector — has the potential to spread across the country and to other industries.
Has Big Tech won 2020?
Richard Waters, Financial Times
The five giants Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook ride high through the US election.
Research Reports
Understanding the U.S. National Innovation System, 2020
Robert D. Atkinson, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
The United States has no national, coordinated innovation policy system. In fact, its overall innovation system has been deteriorating. The country’s economic future and national security will depend on rising to the challenge of addressing this problem.
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