• New research from cybersecurity firm Cybereason reveals that a cyberespionage campaign dating back to 2017, and likely linked to a Chinese hacking group, has targeted 10 cellular providers around the world, except in North America, with at least one of the breaches giving the actors deep access to the network and metadata information of 20 specific individuals that could be used to trace their exact phone usage and location. Cybereason did not identify the companies and individuals affected but said that no evidence was found that indicates hackers stole the actual content of communications. (Wired) 

• House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said her committee will host a hearing examining Facebook Inc.’s plans for a new cryptocurrency, called Libra, on July 17, which is the day after the Senate Banking Committee’s hearing on the same topic. David Marcus, the co-creator and leader of Libra, is expected to testify at both hearings, sources said. (The Hill)

• Despite an ongoing legal battle challenging the requirements in the $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract, Pentagon Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy instructed department leaders to send in their recommendations for how they would use the contract and also told them not to start any other cloud agreements without approval, according to a copy of an internal memo dated May 20. A Department of Defense spokesperson confirmed the Air Force, Army and Navy have already “begun identifying the programs and migrations to JEDI.” (Bloomberg)

Trump Admin Considered Facebook VP For Cabinet Role
Taylor Hatmaker, The Daily Beast

Accusations of social media’s anti-conservative bias didn’t stop the Trump administration from vetting one of Facebook’s most influential employees.

FedEx Sues Commerce Department Over Restrictions on Huawei
Charlie McGee, The Wall Street Journal

FedEx Corp., after botching some deliveries for Huawei Technologies Co., filed a lawsuit Monday to stop the U.S. government from requiring the package giant to enforce a crackdown on the Chinese telecommunications-gear maker. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C., claims the U.S. Commerce Department’s latest restrictions are essentially forcing FedEx to police millions of packages it ships daily to ensure prohibited items aren’t being exported to Huawei.

China says US-China trade teams in contact ahead of G-20
Christopher Bodeen, The Associated Press

Chinese and U.S. trade negotiators are discussing ways to resolve disputes ahead of a meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Japan later this week, a Chinese official said Monday. The sides were seeking to “consolidate the important consensus reached between the two leaders” in a telephone call last week, Wang Shouwen, a Commerce Ministry vice minister, told reporters.

Apple to Expand Its Footprint in Seattle With Office Lease
Noah Buhayar, Bloomberg

Apple Inc. is significantly increasing its footprint in Seattle as its expands on a previously announced plan to boost hiring, bringing an additional 2,000 jobs to the area in the next five years. The iPhone maker signed a lease for office space at 333 Dexter, a 660,000-square-foot (61,300-square-meter) development in the South Lake Union neighborhood being built by Kilroy Realty Corp., according to the office of Mayor Jenny Durkan.

Chinese Drones Made in America: One Company’s Plan to Win Over Trump
Cecilia Kang, The New York Times

DJI, the large Chinese drone maker, is facing mounting security concerns within the Trump administration that its flying machines could send sensitive surveillance data back to China. Now, the company is trying to get on American officials’ good side by building some products in the United States.

Lawyers for Huawei CFO urge Canada to withdraw extradition proceedings
Karen Freifeld and Steve Scherer, Reuters

Lawyers for Huawei’s chief financial officer urged Canada’s justice minister on Monday to withdraw extradition proceedings against Meng Wanzhou, who has been detained in Vancouver since December on U.S. fraud charges.

White House Makes Subtle But Significant Changes In Final Cloud Smart Policy
Aaron Boyd, Nextgov

The White House released the finalized version of the administration’s cloud policy, Cloud Smart, 10 months to the day after the Office of Management and Budget released its first draft. The Cloud Smart policy updates the Obama administration’s Cloud First, established in 2010, and puts this administration’s spin on the effort to increase cloud adoption.

Stocks Slip on Geopolitical Tensions; Gold Climbs: Markets Wrap
Samuel Potter, Bloomberg

U.S. equity futures edged lower alongside European and Asian stocks on Tuesday as geopolitical tensions simmered in the build up to this week’s G-20 meeting. Investors sought safer assets, and gold and the yen rose.

Big Tech must be regulated now, Bill Gates says
Clare Duffy, CNN

Bill Gates says the US government must step up its regulation of big tech companies, whose influence in culture, business and all areas of life is becoming more pervasive.

When it comes to Facebook, breaking up is hard to do
Shawn Zeller, Roll Call

Most of the current lawmakers spending big on Facebook advertisements are Democrats running for president. That’s no surprise, given the effectiveness the social media giant gives them in reaching the slice of the electorate they need to raise money and qualify for primary debates.

Schools And Phone Companies Face Off Over Wireless Spectrum
Klint Finley, Wired

Consumers are hungry for data. To give it to them, mobile carriers say they need access to more of the wireless spectrum that carries cellular data, broadcast programming, and all other wireless signals.

The Bug That Crashed New York’s Wireless Network
William Neuman, The New York Times

For at least a year, federal officials and technology companies had been warning of the so-called GPS rollover, a once-in-20-year event that had the potential to wreak havoc on computer networks around the world. The simple remedy involved some necessary upgrades.

China Mobile to set up $4 billion 5G industry fund
Sijia Jiang, Reuters

China’s largest telecommunications operator China Mobile said on Tuesday it will set up a 30 billion yuan ($4.36 billion) 5G industry fund and has already raised the first installment of 7-10 billion yuan. China Mobile Chairman Yang Jie made the announcement at a press conference in Shanghai, according to a transcript of his speech provided by the company.

FTC to Unveil Robocall ‘Call It Quits’ Campaign
John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable

The Federal Trade Commission is announcing a new campaign to crack down on unwanted robocalls. Operation Call it Quits will be a joint agency effort, announced June 25 in Chicago by the director of the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau, Andrew Smith, and Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill, as well as a consumer who has been “adversely affected” by telemarketing robocalls.

Google warns its employees that Pride protests are against the company’s code of conduct
Megan Farokhmanesh, The Verge

Employees are allowed to peacefully protest YouTube or Google during the Pride parade — as long as they are not marching with Google in an official capacity. According to internal memos sent to employees, anyone who chooses to walk the parade as a representative of Google and voice any protest will be considered in violation of Google’s code of conduct.

Facebook’s Clegg Fires Back at Apple’s Cook
Sara Germano, The Wall Street Journal

A senior Facebook Inc. executive took a veiled shot at Apple Inc., continuing the sniping between the tech giants as their business models are under increasing scrutiny from global regulators. In a speech Monday at the Hertie School of Governance in the German capital, Facebook vice president of global affairs and communications Nick Clegg criticized other large tech companies for selling expensive hardware and catering to what he called an “exclusive club” of wealthy consumers.

TikTok Has A Predator Problem. A Network Of Young Women Is Fighting Back.
Ryan Broderick, BuzzFeed News

The same mechanics that have turned TikTok into this year’s fastest-growing social media app have brought with them a dark side: sexual predation. In an era when the failure of social media giants to police their platforms has gone from a scandal to a fact of life, an ad hoc network of young women is springing up to combat the exploitation that seems inseparable from the Chinese-owned app’s explosive success.

Ravelry, the Facebook of knitting, has banned pro-Trump posts over ‘open white supremacy’
Alex Horton, The Washington Post

Scarves, gloves, shawls, caps — if it can be knit or crocheted, you can probably find a design for it on Ravelry. It just can’t resemble President Trump.

Data brokers are selling your secrets. How states are trying to stop them.
Douglas MacMillan, The Washington Post

Until recently, Randy Koloski had never heard of Amerilist, a small business 25 miles north of Manhattan. But for $150, Amerilist makes available a list of information on 5,000 people that includes Koloski’s name, home address, age, religion, education level and income.

Senate investigation finds multiple federal agencies left sensitive data vulnerable to cyberattacks for past decade
Maggie Miller, The Hill

Several federal agencies failed to update system vulnerabilities over the course of the last two administrations and left Americans’ personal information open and vulnerable to theft, a report released Tuesday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found.

Alphabet commits to data privacy in Toronto smart city master plan
Tyler Choi, Reuters

A high-tech smart city project proposed along Toronto’s waterfront by Alphabet Inc unit Sidewalk Labs has pledged not to sell advertisers the personal data collected to serve residents and visitors, as part of a 1,500-page master plan released on Monday.

DHS cyber director warns of surge in Iranian “wiper” hack attacks
Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica

With tensions between the US and Iran on the rise following the downing of a US military drone last week, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is warning that Iran is elevating its efforts to do damage to US interests through destructive malware attacks on industrial and government networks.

Amazon Ring Will Survive the Anti-surveillance Backlash
Sidney Fussell, The Atlantic

In most cases, when police want to search your neighborhood, they need a warrant and a reason to believe something’s amiss. Now “reasonable suspicion” is going the way of dial-up.

When Myspace Was King, Employees Abused a Tool Called ‘Overlord’ to Spy on Users
Joseph Cox, Motherboard

During the social network’s heyday, multiple Myspace employees abused an internal company tool to spy on users, in some cases including ex-partners, Motherboard has learned. Named ‘Overlord,’ the tool allowed employees to see users’ passwords and their messages, according to multiple former employees.

Time to Clean Up Facebook’s Dark Side
Gretchen Peters and Amr Al-Azm, Morning Consult

The world’s largest social media company does more than just connect people. Facebook has also become a repository for massive online criminal markets and terrorist groups.

Take a scalpel, not an axe, to ‘Big Tech’
Robert Litan, The Hill

How the mighty have fallen. Just a few short years ago, “Big Tech” and its founders were lionized. Now they are punching bags for all sorts of sins: taking away our privacy, causing the demise of local journalism, threatening our democracy, contributing to income inequality and chilling innovation by startups.

Emergency Communications: Required Auction of Public Safety Spectrum Could Harm First Responder Capabilities
U.S. Government Accountability Office

In 11 large metropolitan areas, critical communications for police, firefighters, and others take place in the T-Band part of the radio spectrum. For example, the NYPD dispatches 911 calls via the T-Band.