Top Stories

  • A United Nations investigation set to be released today will implicate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the 2018 hacking of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos’ cellphone, according to a person with direct knowledge of the report. The report is expected to show that Bezos’ phone was infected with malware and hacked after receiving a WhatsApp message from the Saudi prince; the Saudi Embassy has denied reports that the country was behind the cyberattack. (The Washington Post)
  • Vodafone has left the Libra Association, making it the eighth company to withdraw its membership from the governing body for the Facebook Inc. digital currency project. The British telecommunications conglomerate said it is leaving to focus its resources on its own digital payment service, M-Pesa, rather than because of the regulatory concerns that caused other companies to withdraw. (CoinDesk)
  • The United Kingdom is expected to move forward with plans to introduce a new digital tax in April, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, despite Washington’s threat to levy tariffs in retaliation. The decision comes as the United Kingdom and the United States prepare to start talks over a post-Brexit trade deal next month, and the same week the United States agreed to a truce with Paris in the trade battle surrounding France’s own digital tax. (Financial Times)

Chart Review

Events Calendar (All Times Local)

01/22/2020
NIST’s Identity Management & Access Control in Multiclouds Workshop and Conference
MobilityTalks International
Senate Commerce hearing on 5G workforce and broadband deployment 10:00 am
FTC closed commission meeting 3:00 pm
01/23/2020
NIST’s Identity Management & Access Control in Multiclouds Workshop and Conference
MobilityTalks International
Next Century Cities’ second annual Opportunities for Bipartisan Tech Policy event feat. FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks 9:30 am
Hudson Institute’s “America’s Global Leadership in Advancing Next-Generation Tools for First Responders” event 11:45 am
CSIS’s “Cities of Tomorrow” event focused on safety, smart technology and surveillance 1:45 pm
01/24/2020
NIST’s Identity Management & Access Control in Multiclouds Workshop and Conference
01/27/2020
FCC’s Arizona and New Mexico Rural Tour
FTC’s workshop on voice cloning technologies 12:30 pm
View full calendar

Special Report: The State of Consumer Trust

As the new decade begins, Morning Consult’s The State of Consumer Trust report is the first look at how today’s societal forces are shaping a new era of trust. Based on interviews with thousands of consumers, the report provides actionable intelligence into how companies can earn and deepen trust with customers.

Download the full report.

General

Judge rules dozens of Lyft sexual assault cases can potentially be joined together
Dara Kerr, CNET

Dozens of women have filed lawsuits against Lyft over the last few months alleging the company hasn’t done enough to protect passengers from sexual assault. On Friday, a California state judge ruled these lawsuits can potentially be combined together into one case. The ruling was confirmed on Tuesday.

Senators bend the rules by wearing Apple Watches to Trump trial
Katherine Tully-McManus, Roll Call

The rules of decorum state that senators can’t use phones or electronic devices in the chamber during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, but what about Apple Watches? At least eight senators had them strapped on their wrists in the chamber at the start of the trial Tuesday, despite guidelines from Senate leadership that all electronics should be left in the cloakroom in the provided storage.

Tech Giants’ Lobby Spending Shows Washington’s Growing Hostility
Eric Newcomer and Ben Brody, Bloomberg

Three of the four biggest U.S. technology giants boosted their lobbying spending last year as they battled charges of unfair competition, sought to shape privacy legislation and pursued large government contracts in an increasingly hostile Washington. The four biggest tech companies by market value — Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. — shelled out $45.5 million in 2019, 12% less than the $51.6 million the year before.

Davos: Hopes for digital tax breakthrough between US, France
Pan Pylas and Jamey Keaten, The Associated Press

Hopes are rising that a breakthrough in discussions on how to tax digital companies will emerge at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday. José Ángel Gurría, the secretary general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development group of leading industrial nations, told The Associated Press that he expects there to be a solution as “there is no plan B.”

The tech industry’s diversity problem won’t get better unless tech companies unite to solve it, Dell exec urges at World Economic Forum
Aaron Holmes and Cadie Thompson, Business Insider

As the tech industry continues to struggle to improve diversity, Dell diversity and inclusion head Brian Reaves argued that companies must work together with a shared goal of improving representation of women and people of color. Reaves made the case for collaboration in an interview with Business Insider during the World Economic Forum in Davos Tuesday.

G.M.’s Cruise Unveils a Self-Driving Car. Don’t Look for It on Roads.
Erin Griffith, The New York Times

The futuristic Origin, which seats six passengers and lacks a steering wheel, will require intensive testing and regulatory scrutiny before it can hit the streets.

San Francisco Pride members voted to ban Google and YouTube from its parade
Shirin Ghaffary, Recode

Google and YouTube may no longer be welcome at one of the world’s largest LGBTQ Pride Parades. Last week, members of the organization San Francisco Pride (SF Pride) voted to ban Google from participating in future celebrations, saying that the company doesn’t do enough to protect LGBTQ persons on its platforms, particularly those who are the target of harassment and hate speech on YouTube.

The IRS Decided to Get Tough Against Microsoft. Microsoft Got Tougher.
Paul Kiel, ProPublica

For years, the company has moved billions in profits to Puerto Rico to avoid taxes. When the IRS pushed it to pay, Microsoft protested that the agency wasn’t being nice. Then it aggressively fought back in court, lobbied Congress and changed the law.

U.S. Futures Gain as China Moves to Contain Virus: Markets Wrap
Todd White, Bloomberg

U.S. equity-index futures gained on Wednesday as China took steps to contain the spread of a deadly virus that had rattled international markets. European stocks fluctuated amid political turmoil in Italy. Contracts on the three main American equity indexes all rose, with Netflix Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. climbing in the premarket as traders digested their earnings.

Intellectual Property and Antitrust

The House Democrat Taking On Silicon Valley
Nancy Scola and Cristiano Lima, Politico

Practically everybody in Washington is mad at Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. David Cicilline might actually do something about it.

Amazon just filed a bunch of international trademarks for ‘Amazon Pharmacy’
Christina Farr, CNBC

Amazon has filed to trademark ‘Amazon Pharmacy’ in Canada, the U.K. and Australia, signaling a potential move into selling prescription drugs outside of the U.S. According to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office website, Amazon filed for the patent on Jan. 9, 2020.

EU and US regulators scrutinise Big Tech and digital ‘monopoly’
Rana Foroohar, Financial Times

Watchdogs growl as traditional antitrust thinking comes under review.

Telecom, Wireless and TV

Huawei stockpiles supplies, fearing new US tech ban
Cheng Ting-fang and Lauly Li, Nikkei Asian Review

Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant that Washington views as a global security threat, is scrambling to stockpile up to a year’s worth of foreign supplies for its core telecoms equipment business ahead of a widely-expected toughening of U.S. technology sanctions that may come as soon as next month, multiple sources told the Nikkei Asian Review.

Dems Seeks to Re-Regulate Cable Franchise Fees
John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable

A group of Democratic legislators are trying to thwart an FCC effort to deregulated franchise fees by ruling that in-kind services or equipment local franchise authorities (LFAs) require those cable operators to provide as part of their franchise agreements must count toward the FCC’s 5% (of cable revenues) cap on franchise fees.

Mobile Technology and Social Media

Meet The 26-Year-Old Socialist Trucker Running For Congress On TikTok
Makena Kelly, The Verge

Joshua Collins looks like just about every other young person on TikTok. His nails are painted black, his videos are set to trending songs, and he’s not afraid to dunk on fascists online. But where many young people use the app for clout or entertainment, Collins’ TikTok has become the centerpiece for a new kind of political campaign — one he hopes will carry him all the way to Congress.

How Snapchat has dodged the techlash over speech issues
Ina Fried, Axios

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel says his company has managed to avoid heavy criticism over speech issues by clearly dividing private, largely unregulated communications from heavily moderated public broadcasts. Why it matters: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have all struggled in recent years over where to draw the line on permitted speech.

Cybersecurity and Privacy

UK lays out tough child data privacy rules
Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press

Social media sites, games and other online services won’t be allowed to “nudge” British kids into revealing personal details or lowering their privacy settings, under tough new rules drawn up by the country’s privacy regulator. The set of standards aimed at protecting children’s online privacy were released Wednesday by the Information Commissioner’s Office for Parliament’s approval.

FBI Took Two Months to Crack Lev Parnas’s iPhone 11, U.S. Says
Edvard Pettersson, Bloomberg

It took the Federal Bureau of Investigation about two months to unlock the Apple iPhone 11 that was seized from Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani. The Justice Department on Tuesday rebuffed allegations by a lawyer for Parnas that the government had delayed turning over the information extracted from his phone to “frustrate” his ability to comply with requests for the data from a congressional committee.

Google CEO eyes major opportunity in healthcare, says will protect privacy
Greg Roumeliotis, Reuters

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet Inc and its Google subsidiary, said on Wednesday that healthcare offers the biggest potential over the next five to 10 years for using artificial intelligence to improve outcomes, and vowed that the technology giant will heed privacy concerns.

Microsoft Looms Over the Privacy Debate in Its Home State
Tom Simonite, Wired

The software company helped torpedo a facial recognition bill last year, though a state senator—who’s also a Microsoft program manager—has a new bill in the works.

Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives

We Need to Stop Turning a Blind Eye on the Real Threat
Krisztina Pusok, Morning Consult

With multimillion-dollar lawsuits related to data misuse and data breaches peppering the news in the past few years, it’s hard to keep track of the many cases exposing how the internet is being misused and manipulated at the expense of consumers, the economy, national security, and our democratic system. 

Elections have changed. So has Facebook.
Nathaniel Gleicher, Des Moines Register

As Iowans prepare for the caucuses next month, officially kicking off the U.S. 2020 presidential nominating process, we want to share some of the ways that Facebook has changed to help better secure elections here in the United States and around the world. What happened in 2016 was a wake up call. 

We Need a Law to Save Us From Dystopia
Charlie Warzel, The New York Times

Over the long weekend, my newsroom colleague Kashmir Hill had a blockbuster article about a facial recognition company “that might end privacy as we know it.” It charts the rise of Clearview AI, a company that scrapes images from social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other sites to create a repository of billions of images.

Facial recognition’s risks demand a temporary halt
The Editorial Board, Financial Times

The EU should define where controversial technology can be deployed.

What Jeff Bezos’s Reported Phone Hack Says About Billionaires
Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic

Stunning new allegations about the relationship between the Amazon CEO and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia hint at just how connected the world’s most powerful people are.

Research Reports

Annual Research Review: Adolescent mental health in the digital age: facts, fears, and future directions
Candice L. Odgers and Michaeline R. Jensen, University of California‐Irvine and University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Adolescents are spending an increasing amount of their time online and connected to each other via digital technologies. Mobile device ownership and social media usage have reached unprecedented levels, and concerns have been raised that this constant connectivity is harming adolescents’ mental health.

Morning Consult