• Tech executives, including Alphabet Inc.’s Eric Schmidt and Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, have been using their positions on agency boards and relationships with former employees to influence the Pentagon, according to an investigation based on interviews with those familiar with the matter and one whistleblower, Roma Laster. In one instance, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis sought to give Bezos a post on a department advisory board without a background check required for security clearance — a move that ultimately failed, but resulted in a dinner where Bezos pitched Mattis on a new cloud-computing contract, according to six people familiar with the matter; Amazon said in a statement that the company was told Bezos did not need a clearance. (ProPublica)

• In court filings in Canada, the United States is alleging that Huawei Technologies Co. controlled a subsidiary in Iran that obtained American goods, technologies and services in a manner that violated U.S. sanctions. The United States also alleged in court documents tied to its extradition case of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou that Huawei secretly operated de facto units in Sudan and Syria. (Bloomberg)

• The European Union is looking into ways to regulate facial recognition technology so its citizens have explicit rights regarding how such data collected on them is used as a part of an overhaul of Europe’s current artificial intelligence regulations, according to senior officials. Under the plan, EU citizens would know when their facial recognition data is being used and limits would be in place to prevent the “indiscriminate use” of such technology, one source said. (Financial Times)

Sanders targets gig economy as part of new labor plan
Harper Neidig, The Hill

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took a shot at companies like Uber and Lyft on Wednesday with a new plan that would make it harder for them to rely on gig workers. Sanders, a presidential candidate, unveiled a wide-ranging “Workplace Democracy” plan to promote workers’ rights and expand unions.

Amazon’s strategy to win over congressional critics: Tours of its giant warehouses
Jay Greene, The Washington Post

From the White House to the campaign trail for the Democratic presidential nomination, politicians have found a popular punching bag in Amazon, accusing the retail giant of paying subsistence wages to warehouse workers while dodging taxes.

Lyft Has Been Flooded With Sexual Assault Lawsuits
Lauren Kaori Gurley, Motherboard

On August 1, seven women filed sexual assault lawsuits against Lyft, alleging they were raped or assaulted by Lyft drivers, then charged fees for rides even after reporting them to the company. Four of these women allege that they were raped by their Lyft drivers.

Google DeepMind Co-Founder Placed on Leave From AI Lab
Giles Turner and Mark Bergen, Bloomberg

The co-founder of DeepMind, the high-profile artificial intelligence lab owned by Google, has been placed on leave after controversy over some of the projects he led. Mustafa Suleyman runs DeepMind’s “applied” division, which seeks practical uses for the lab’s research in health, energy and other fields.

Manufacturers Want to Quit China for Vietnam. They’re Finding It Impossible.
Niharika Mandhana, The Wall Street Journal

With the U.S. and China tangled in a nasty trade fight, this should be Vietnam’s time to shine. Instead, it is becoming increasingly clear that it will be years, if ever, before this Southeast Asian nation and other aspiring manufacturing destinations are ready to replace China as the world’s factory floor.

Big Tech, a Conservative Provocateur and the Fight Over Disinformation
Nicholas Confessore and Justin Bank, The New York Times

A veteran political operative built a potent online disinformation mill with his son. When Silicon Valley changed the rules, they tried to go straight. Or did they?

A Recession May Be on the Way. How Will Tech Fare?
The Information

The modern U.S. technology economy has experienced two recessions in its relatively short existence: the 1999 dot-com bust, and the Great Recession that began in 2008. Both transformed the technology industry, killing off companies built on unsustainable models while forcing others to adjust to changing circumstances.

U.S. Stock Futures Dip; Dollar Advances With Oil: Markets Wrap
Todd White, Bloomberg

U.S. equity futures slipped with stocks as traders parsed European economic data and awaited an address by the Federal Reserve chief on Friday. The dollar climbed with oil futures, while gold dipped.

Eminem’s publisher sues Spotify for copyright infringement over ‘Lose Yourself’ and other tracks
Nick Statt, The Verge

Eminem’s music publisher, Eight Mile Style, has filed a lawsuit against Spotify, alleging copyright infringement. The suit claims the steaming platform didn’t get proper licenses for the rapper’s music and wants Spotify to compensate the publisher for billions of streams.

AT&T restores service to Breitbart after buying out upstart ad company
Russell Brandom, The Verge

In 2016, the ad tech company AppNexus took a stand against hate speech. Just two weeks after the election of Donald Trump, CEO Brian O’Kelley announced he was dropping service to Breitbart.

T-Mobile ‘Put My Life in Danger’ Says Woman Stalked With Black Market Location Data
Joseph Cox, Motherboard

Telecom giants are giving up customers’ real-time location data to stalkers and bounty hunters. Now, Motherboard speaks to a victim.

Sen. Manchin Pledges to be FCC’s Broadband Speed Pen Pal
John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable

Saying the lack of broadband access is having a “devastating” impact on tourism in his state, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) said he plans to be a regular correspondent with FCC chair Ajit Pai on the issue of broadband speeds and availability.

You Got a ‘Free’ Internet Speed Upgrade. Then Your Bill Went Up.
Patrick Thomas and Lillian Rizzo, The Wall Street Journal

Melissa Shank and her fiancé moved into their apartment in late 2016 and bought a $90-a-month cable and internet package. Two years later, the couple noticed their bill had spiked to $121.

Alaska public broadcasters lose state funding
Tyler Falk, Current

With a line-item veto to an appropriations bill Monday, Alaska’s governor eliminated the state’s funding for public broadcasters. The bill signed by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy rescinded some of his previous cuts to the state budget after public pushback but did not spare cuts to public broadcasting.

Many Are Abandoning Facebook. These People Have the Opposite Problem.
Kashmir Hill, The New York Times

For a decade, Christopher Reeves, an Uber driver in Seattle, used Facebook for everything: talking with friends, communicating with fellow drivers, meeting singles. But one day in June, as he was uploading photos from a comic book convention and a family trip to Disney Land, he found himself abruptly logged out.

YouTube pressured to ban Chinese state media ads that spread misinformation about protesters
Julia Alexander, The Verge

YouTube is being pressured to remove ads from China Central Television, a state media channel that’s allegedly spreading misinformation about protesters in Hong Kong. Users on Twitter and Reddit have posted a number of screenshots of the ads, many of which paint the Hong Kong protests as an illegitimate product of foreign influence.

This viral Instagram hoax duped A-listers — and the man overseeing our nuclear arsenal
Hannah Knowles, The Washington Post

The ramifications of Instagram’s supposedly new “rule where they can use your photos” weren’t totally clear. But the warnings multiplied rapidly online: Your posts could end up being leveraged against you in court cases.

Gamergate Comes to The Classroom
Megan Farokhmanesh, The Verge

It was the phones that tipped off Bo Ruberg. Ruberg, a UC Irvine assistant professor in the department of informatics, was teaching “Games & Society.”

Lawmakers sound alarm on China’s disinformation campaign in Hong Kong
Olivia Beavers and Emily Birnbaum, The Hill

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is warning that the Chinese government is harnessing social media platforms to carry out disinformation campaigns about the protests in Hong Kong in an attempt to manipulate public opinion abroad. 

Microsoft Contractors Listened to Xbox Owners in Their Homes
Joseph Cox, Motherboard

Contractors working for Microsoft have listened to audio of Xbox users speaking in their homes in order to improve the console’s voice command features, Motherboard has learned. The audio was supposed to be captured following a voice command like “Xbox” or “Hey Cortana,” but contractors said that recordings were sometimes triggered and recorded by mistake.

Facebook shuts dozens of Myanmar social media accounts over ‘inauthentic behavior’
Thu Thu Aung, Reuters

Facebook Inc said on Thursday it had shut 216 social media pages, groups and accounts in Myanmar, some tied to the army, to stymie efforts to “manipulate or corrupt public debate”. The company closed 89 Facebook accounts, 107 pages, 15 groups and five Instagram accounts, some of which had hundreds of thousands of followers, it said in a blogpost.

Amazon’s Ring wants police to keep these surveillance details from you
Alfred Ng, CNET

Police might be able to see throughout neighborhoods using Ring’s video doorbells, but that transparency doesn’t go both ways. In documents sent to police in Illinois, Amazon’s Ring unit instructs officers on exactly what law enforcement shouldn’t share with the public.

Accused Capital One Hacker’s Volatile History Put Before Judge
Erik Larson, Bloomberg

Federal prosecutors in Seattle have pieced together a string of disturbing social-media posts and police complaints to portray the accused Capital One Financial Corp. hacker as an unhinged danger to society who should remain locked up while awaiting trial.

Ransomware Attacks Are Testing Resolve of Cities Across America
Marina Trahan Martinez et al., The New York Times

At the public library in Wilmer, Tex., books were checked out not with the beeps of bar code readers but with the scratches of pen on notebook paper. Out on the street, police officers were literally writing tickets — by hand.

Inside Microsoft’s plan to fix America’s broken voting system
Mark Wilson, Fast Company

Voting is broken. From the hanging chad debacle of 2000 to the 2018 midterms when decade-old touchscreen computers cast the wrong votes, to long lines outside polling places, our democratic right to elect our own officials is constantly at odds with unreliable equipment and balloting policies that vary from one district to the next.

Will Congress act to stop robocalls?
Margot Saunders,  The Hill

Lately, Congress has been known more for all its partisan gridlock and infighting than for getting things done. But lawmakers have leapt at the chance to provide relief from robocalls to their constituents.

Disinformation as Collaborative Work: Surfacing the Participatory Nature of Strategic Information Operations
Kate Starbird et al., University of Washington 

In this paper, we argue that strategic information operations (e.g. disinformation, political propaganda, and other forms of online manipulation) are a critical concern for CSCW researchers, and that the CSCW community can provide vital insight into understanding how these operations function—by examining them as collaborative “work” within online crowds.