Twitter hack

• Two people briefed on Twitter Inc.’s investigation of last week’s hack, which hijacked accounts belonging to high-profile figures such as former President Barack Obama, said the hackers took over at least one employee’s account and credentials, which enabled control of most Twitter accounts. Twitter said out of the 130 accounts that were targeted, hackers were able to gain control of a smaller subset of those, and since the hack, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s San Francisco office has opened an inquiry into the cyberattack.

• Lawmakers such as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) are also raising concerns about what the Twitter hack means for the safety of the upcoming elections and national security overall.

European Union court rulings

• The European Union’s top court struck down Privacy Shield, a data-sharing agreement between the United States and the European Union that allowed American companies to transfer personal data about E.U. citizens back to the United States, citing concerns that such information isn’t protected from American intelligence agencies’ mass surveillance programs. The ruling, which resulted from a lawsuit filed by privacy activist and lawyer Max Schrems, will force changes at big U.S. technology companies like Facebook Inc. that handle troves of personal data from E.U. citizens, but it does not impact “necessary” data transfers, such as emails, business transactions or access to news sites.

• In a win for Apple Inc., the European Union’s second-highest court ruled that the company doesn’t owe 13 billion euros ($14.9 billion) in taxes to Ireland, determining that the European Commission did not prove that Apple had received illegal state aid from Ireland through their tax agreements. The ruling is a blow for the European antitrust regulator, which could appeal the ruling in the highest court in Europe, and the commission’s top official, Margrethe Vestager, said the regulator will continue to aggressively investigate “illegal state aid.”

TikTok

• White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said the Trump administration is “looking at weeks, not months” as a timeline for taking potential action against social media apps that pose a national security risk, such as TikTok and WeChat.

• The White House is weighing a proposal placing TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. on the Commerce Department’s “entity list,” according to three people familiar with the matter, which would make it difficult for U.S. companies to provide technology, including software, to TikTok and effectively ban Americans from using the video app. The plan is one of several that the Trump administration is debating to prevent China from collecting personal information about Americans through TikTok, with a senior U.S. official saying the administration is also looking at ways to instead require certain data protection requirements for the app so the public can still use it.

Huawei

• In a reversal, the United Kingdom said it will stop mobile network operators from purchasing Huawei Technologies Co.’s equipment by the end of the year and remove all existing equipment from 5G networks by 2027. The move, which comes after Prime Minister Boris Johnson had given the Chinese telecommunications company restricted access to the networks in January, is a win for the Trump administration, which has been pushing the others in the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to completely ban Huawei equipment in the next-generation mobile networks due to security concerns.

• The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to start accepting public comments on how it should determine which telecommunications equipment should be considered a security risk as the commission continues to limit access to Huawei  and ZTE Corp.

Privacy and cybersecurity

• Intelligence officials in the United States, Britain and Canada named Russia-supported hacking group APT29, which is also known as Cozy Bear, as the source behind ongoing cyberattacks in several countries to steal intellectual property from governments, universities and other organizations working on coronavirus vaccine research and testing. The officials said that the attacks don’t appear to have impacted vaccine-related work.

• In a recent white paper, Facebook is calling for a “policy co-creation” for privacy legislation in the United States where governments and companies collaborate to produce a set of rules, which should focus on “the process for making privacy design decisions, not the outcome of those processes.”

Trump administration

• The Pentagon named U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios as its acting undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, which means he will oversee the Defense Department’s tech and research efforts while also maintaining his White House advisory role on tech matters. In his new role, Kratsios will also head up the agency’s Modernization Priorities, which includes initiatives regarding 5G, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and microelectronics.

• The Senate is in session. The House is operating remotely. 

• The Federal Trade Commission will host PrivacyCon virtually on Tuesday. Session topics include privacy and security of health apps, bias in artificial intelligence algorithms and the internet of things.

• Snap Inc. will report quarterly earnings after markets close on Tuesday, while Amazon.com Inc., AT&T Inc., T-Mobile US Inc. and Twitter will report earnings on Thursday.

• Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee on July 27 as part of an investigation of the companies.

• The FCC’s next open commission meeting is Aug. 6, where commissioners will vote to set an auction of C-band spectrum.

1) EU strikes down key US data-sharing protocol, citing threat of mass surveillance
James Vincent, The Verge

2) Facebook’s plan for privacy laws? ‘Co-creating’ them with Congress
Issie Lapowsky, Protocol

3) Big Tech is in the hot seat in Washington. Here are the 16 most influential people shaping policy for the industry from the nation’s capital.
Kayla Epstein, Business Insider Premium

4) Inside America’s Secretive $2 Billion Research Hub
Thomas Brewster, Forbes

5) Trump Says Phase 2 China Trade Deal Unlikely at This Point
Jennifer Jacobs, Bloomberg

6) How May Google Fight an Antitrust Case? Look at This Little-Noticed Paper
David McCabe, The New York Times

7) Amazon Finally Stops Defying Labor Law After Repeated Requests From California
Lauren Kaori Gurley, Motherboard

8) Trump administration action on risks posed by TikTok likely ‘in weeks’: official
Jeff Mason, Reuters

9) White House names Kratsios as Pentagon acting tech chief
David Shepardson, Reuters

10) UK says it will ban China’s Huawei from 5G networks in major U-turn
Ryan Browne, CNBC