General
Jeffrey Epstein directed allies to aggressively lobby for a meeting with Microsoft’s Bill Gates – he eventually got one
Brian Schwartz, CNBC
Bill Gates once wanted nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy financier and sex offender who already had several powerful connections. That changed in 2013, when Epstein unleashed an aggressive lobbying campaign to meet with Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and one of the richest, most influential people in the world.
Facebook Sees Libra Tied to Dollar, Euro, Yen But Maybe Not Yuan
Joe Light, Bloomberg
Facebook Inc. told U.S. senators that the initial basket of currencies that will back its Libra cryptocurrency will likely include the U.S. dollar, euro, yen, British pound and Singapore dollar. The list responds to concerns from Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner that China may push the Libra Association to include the yuan in the so-called stable coin, which Facebook and more than two dozen partners are currently developing.
California Labor Bill, Near Passage, Is Blow to Uber and Lyft
Kate Conger and Noam Scheiber, The New York Times
A pack of Teamsters fanned out through California’s Capitol building last week, marching into legislators’ offices and pressing them to pass a bill that would force Uber and Lyft to treat their drivers as employees. The measure, Assembly Bill 5, would entitle gig workers to protections like a minimum wage and unemployment benefits.
Europe buys Chinese drones, even as US expresses data concerns
Saim Saeed, Politico
As the United States panics about China’s dominance in the global drone industry, Europe has barely blinked. In an era of paranoia over data security in which military officers and public officials warn of the reams of sensitive data collected by drones, European governments and militaries are increasingly looking to China, and its premier drone manufacturer DJI, for their needs.
Dozens of Google employees say they were retaliated against for reporting harassment
Shirin Ghaffary, Recode
Last November, Google made a promise to do better. More than 20,000 employees around the world had walked out of the company’s offices to protest that Google had paid out over $100 million to multiple executives accused of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Cities Are Trying—Again—to Plan for Autonomous Vehicles
Aarian Marshall, Wired
On the one hand, autonomous vehicles offer an excellent opportunity to rethink how American cities operate, down to each lane line, crosswalk, and curb. Two years ago, the National Association of City Transportation Officials, representing 81 North American cities, published its first planning guide to self-driving vehicles, highlighting the possibilities.
Tech Work Is a Bright Spot in Lackluster Jobs Report
Angus Loten, The Wall Street Journal
Employers are on a hiring spree for technology workers as U.S. businesses expand their use of cloud computing, data analytics and other emerging digital tools. Companies last month added 104,000 information-technology workers, the fourth consecutive month of gains, boosting the total number of U.S. information-technology jobs to more than 5.6 million, according to a report by IT trade group CompTIA.
Want to Do Business in Silicon Valley? Better Act Nice
Nellie Bowles, The New York Times
The first rule of Silicon Valley venture capital is never insult a start-up. Founders are always killing it, disrupting the world or just plain ???.
U.S. Stock Futures Slip as Treasuries, Dollar Rise: Markets Wrap
Todd White, Bloomberg
U.S. equity futures fell with shares in Europe while Asian stocks were mixed as investors marked time before key central bank meetings in the coming days. Treasuries edged higher with the dollar.
Intellectual Property and Antitrust
California and Alabama are the only two states that aren’t participating in the giant antitrust investigation of Google, and neither is really saying why
Troy Wolverton, Business Insider
Only two state attorneys general aren’t taking part in the multi-state antitrust investigation of Google and one of them just happens to be the head of law enforcement in the company’s home state. Xavier Becerra and Steve Marshall, the attorneys general of California and Alabama, respectively, are the only two holdouts in the joint state investigation of the two tech companies.
Antitrust regulators pounce on Big Tech as probes widen
Michael Liedtke, The Associated Press
The crackdown on Big Tech is intensifying as flanks of the government across the U.S. try to rein in the industry’s immense power. Nearly every state — California and Alabama being the notable exceptions — joined in a bipartisan investigation of Google, just days after a smaller group announced a probe into Facebook.
Telecom, Wireless and TV
Huawei drops lawsuit against U.S. over seized equipment: court filing
Sijia Jiang, Reuters
China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd has dropped a lawsuit against the U.S. government after Washington released telecommunications equipment it had seized on suspicion of violations of export controls, according to a court filing on Monday.
FCC Hits CBS with $272,000 Fine for Emergency Alerts on ‘Young Sheldon’
Gary Arlen, Broadcasting & Cable
For the second time in less than a month, the Federal Communications Commission has tentatively slapped a stiff fine on a media company for transmitting a simulated Emergency Alert System (EAS) tone during a telecast. In the ruling, the agency proposed a $272,000 fine against CBS Broadcasting for the infraction during an episode of the sitcom Young Sheldon on April 12, 2018.
A Hedge Fund Becomes a Very Noisy Stakeholder in AT&T
Michael J. de la Merced and Edmund Lee, The New York Times
With its $85.4 billion purchase of Time Warner last year, AT&T announced to the world that it was becoming a new kind of corporate behemoth, one that would be a force in media and entertainment while also maintaining its dominant position in the telecommunications industry.
Mobile Technology and Social Media
YouTube promised to halt comments on kids videos already. It hasn’t
Joan E. Solsman, CNET
A pedophilia scandal compelled YouTube to vow to suspend comments on videos with kids age 13 and younger. Six months later, comments are still easy to find.
YouTube Creators Are Turning The Site Into A Podcast Network
Julia Alexander, The Verge
YouTube might not be the first platform people think of when they’re looking for podcasts, but a growing number of top creators are proving YouTube is a bonafide podcast network. Several YouTubers — including Logan Paul, Marques Brownlee, and Emma Chamberlain — have launched podcasts in the last year.
Cybersecurity and Privacy
Microsoft’s LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles
Jonathan Stempel, Reuters
A federal appeals court on Monday rejected LinkedIn’s effort to stop a San Francisco company from using information that users of the professional networking website have deemed public. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals let stand an August 2017 preliminary injunction that required LinkedIn, a Microsoft Corp unit with more than 645 million members, to give hiQ Labs Inc access to publicly available member profiles.
Facebook Faces Massive Damages in Cambridge Analytica Suit
Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg
Facebook Inc. users suing over the social network’s worst-ever privacy scandal gained leverage to pry into its internal records to back up their claims that it failed to safeguard their personal data, exposing the company to potentially billions of dollars in damages.
Bernie Sanders Says DMVs Should Stop Profiting From Drivers’ Personal Data
Joseph Cox, Motherboard
Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said that Departments of Motor Vehicles should not profit from drivers’ personal information after a Motherboard investigation found DMVs across the country selling data to a wide array of companies, including private investigators.
California sees push on data privacy
Gopal Ratnam, Roll Call
Companies across the country are waging one last battle in Sacramento to carve out a few exemptions before California’s tough data privacy law is approved by the state’s lawmakers, who will adjourn for the year by the end of this week.
Period Tracker Apps Used By Millions Of Women Are Sharing Incredibly Sensitive Data With Facebook
Megha Rajagopalan, BuzzFeed News
Period tracker apps are sending deeply personal information about women’s health and sexual practices to Facebook, new research has found. UK-based advocacy group Privacy International, sharing its findings exclusively with BuzzFeed News, discovered period-tracking apps including MIA Fem and Maya sent women’s use of contraception, the timings of their monthly periods, symptoms like swelling and cramps, and more, directly to Facebook.
Facebook warns about iPhone privacy change that could unsettle Facebook users
Kif Leswing, CNBC
Less than two weeks before a likely iOS software update that will give iPhone users regular pop-ups telling them which apps are collecting information location in the background, Facebook has published a blog post about how the Facebook app uses location data.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
N.S.A. Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
Glenn S. Gerstell, The New York Times
The National Security Operations Center occupies a large windowless room, bathed in blue light, on the third floor of the National Security Agency’s headquarters outside of Washington. For the past 46 years, around the clock without a single interruption, a team of senior military and intelligence officials has staffed this national security nerve center.
Election security isn’t that hard
Kevin Shelley and Wayne Williams, Politico
Intelligence experts warn that hostile nation-states, criminals and political partisans are preparing attacks on our election systems in 2020. We’ve set ourselves up for this: In the course of modernizing our voting systems, our country has introduced computers into many layers of our election process, including the recording and tallying of our votes.
Google and Facebook Can’t Count on Consumers Saving Them
Shira Ovide, Bloomberg
The scrutiny of giant technology companies and the inevitable anxiety that follows are now so commonplace that they have become rote. Once terms like “techlash” become household words, it’s easy to become numb.
Research Reports
H.R. 2500, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020
Congressional Budget Office
CBO has completed the estimate of the direct spending and revenue effects of H.R. 2500, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, as passed by the House of Representatives on July 12, 2019. Enacting the act would increase net direct spending by $6.2 billion over the 2020-2029 period.
Grading on a Curve: Privacy Legislation in the 116th Congress (2019-2020)
Electronic Privacy Information Center
The United States is now considering several bills to protect privacy. These bills are intended to address growing public concern about the absence of adequate legal protection in the United States for personal data.
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