Fast Company will host its Innovation Festival Monday through Thursday. 

What we’re watching: Two of the speakers attending the event have significant influence over the recent unionization push that has sprung up in both tech and retail: Amazon Labor Union President Christian Smalls and Department of Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. 

Smalls was vital in forming the first union at Amazon.com Inc. and continues to push for similar efforts at other Amazon warehouses. He is set to speak about unionization during a session on Wednesday titled “Employees Strike Back: A Look at the New Worker Moment.” Smalls’ discussion comes as new Amazon worker efforts unfold: In the coming weeks, Amazon warehouse workers will hold a unionization vote in Albany, N.Y., and across the Atlantic, warehouse workers in England kicked off a formal strike ballot.

Meanwhile, Walsh will attend a one-on-one discussion at the festival on Tuesday, where he is expected to offer his views on the changing relationship between workers and employers as well as the future of work. Just last week, Walsh spearheaded a 20-hour negotiation discussion between railroad companies and unions, resulting in a tentative agreement that avoided a strike that would have heavily impacted supply chains.

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials are set to speak at several different events this week. 

What we’re watching: On Tuesday, CISA Director Jen Easterly will discuss the role of government in private-sector security and future cyberthreats at the CSO50 Conference and Awards. Later that day, CISA Executive Director Brandon Wales will talk about defending the United States from cyberattacks at The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Network Summit. And on Thursday, CISA Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein will attend a fireside chat at the Financial Times Live’s Cyber Resilience Summit.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen is set to attend Unfinished Live 2022, where she will take part in a discussion on Thursday about “a social contract for social media.” 

What we’re watching: Haugen made waves last year when she testified before Congress that Meta Platforms Inc. prioritized profits over the safety and health of users, especially children and teenagers. Since then, another whistleblower, former Twitter Inc. security chief Peiter Zatko, told Congress that Twitter faces severe lapses in security that put nearly every account on the platform at risk. 

During her appearance at Unfinished Live, Haugen is expected to advocate for a “social contract” for social media companies to set enforceable safety standards that are commonplace in other major industries, as well as other measures to hold platforms accountable.

Twitter

• Zatko testified that within the week before he was fired from the company, he learned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned Twitter that an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security was on the company’s payroll, though a Twitter spokesperson said Zatko’s allegations are “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies.”
• Twitter shareholders voted to approve Elon Musk’s proposed $44 billion acquisition of the company.

Google

• Google has pursued bids from manufacturers in India to make between 500,000 and 1 million Pixel smartphones, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions, as the company seeks to move some consumer electronics production out of China due to its COVID-19 lockdowns that have impacted supply chains.
• The European Union’s General Court mostly upheld a 2018 decision by the bloc’s competition regulator that fined Google $4.33 billion for allegations that the company abused the market dominance of its Android operating system for cellphones in order to bolster its search engine and Chrome browser. The court did annul one part of the decision that accused Google of breaking competition laws by making revenue-sharing payments to manufacturers to pre-install only Google Search, and the court reduced the company’s fine to about $4.12 billion.
• The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology reached a cooperative research and development deal with Google which will see the company produce chips that researchers can use to create new nanotechnology and semiconductor devices. Under the partnership, Google will pay the initial cost for establishing production and subsidize the first production run, while NIST and university research partners will design the chips’ circuitry.

Courts and regulators

• The California attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit against Amazon that alleges the company’s contracts with third-party sellers and wholesalers inflate prices, restrict competition and break the state’s antitrust and unfair competition laws. An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement that the company “takes pride in the fact that we offer low prices across the broadest selection” and does not have to “highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively.”
• The Department of Justice charged three Iranian citizens for allegedly conducting ransomware attacks in the United States and worldwide on hundreds of targets including power companies, local governments, small businesses and nonprofits. A senior Justice Department official told reporters that the hacking suspects carried out the attacks for their own financial gain and were not believed to be working on behalf of the Iranian government.
• A group of drivers filed a class-action lawsuit against Tesla Inc. that accuses the company of misleading consumers by falsely marketing its vehicles’ Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features. Tesla did not respond to requests for comment about the lawsuit, which alleges that the company has long advertised the autonomous features as fully functioning or “just around the corner” despite knowing that the technology worked improperly or was nonexistent.
• The Commerce Department plans to expand restrictions next month on U.S. shipments to China of semiconductors that are used for artificial intelligence and chipmaking tools, according to several people familiar with the matter. The new regulations will likely include additional actions against China and could be altered or published later than expected, the people said.
• The Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 to approve a new policy statement saying that the agency will “use the full portfolio of laws it enforces” to protect gig workers from “unfair, deceptive, anticompetitive and otherwise unlawful practices.” The FTC will focus on companies that misrepresent an employee’s potential earnings, the wrongful use of artificial intelligence to gauge worker productivity and potential wage-fixing practices.

Other big tech stories from last week

• Uber Technologies Inc. agreed to pay New Jersey $100 million in back taxes after the state’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development found that the company and subsidiary Raiser owed four years of back taxes because they classified drivers as contractors rather than employees. Despite the settlement, an Uber spokesperson said that its drivers in New Jersey and nationwide are still considered independent contractors.
• Customs and Border Protection officials have been adding data to a government database from as many as 10,000 phones, tablets and computers taken from travelers at U.S. airports, seaports and border crossings annually, according to details revealed in a letter to CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Agency officials also told congressional staff that the data can be accessed by CBP officers without a warrant and that the data is kept for 15 years.

$25.4 billion

The amount, in U.S. dollars, of damage claims that Alphabet Inc.’s Google is facing from publishers over its digital advertising practices in two lawsuits to be filed in British and Dutch courts in the coming weeks.

1) Smaller tech companies urge vote on antitrust bill

Rebecca Klar, The Hill

2) Customs officials have copied Americans’ phone data at massive scale

Drew Harwell, The Washington Post

3) Google, Meta fined $71.8M for violating privacy law in South Korea

Kate Park, TechCrunch

4) Biden to hit China with broader curbs on U.S. chip and tool exports -sources

Karen Freifeld and Alexandra Alper, Reuters

5) U.S. signs deal with Google to develop chips for researchers

Kanishka Singh, Reuters

6) Losing tech race with China could cost U.S. trillions

Ina Fried, Axios

7) California Sues Amazon, Alleging Antitrust Violations Inflated Prices and Stifled Competition

Christine Mai-Duc and Dana Mattioli, The Wall Street Journal

8) The FTC Is Closing in on Runaway AI

Khari Johnson, Wired

9) Federal Action is Needed to Protect Consumer Data, New Report Says

Edward Graham, Nextgov

10) This map shows where Amazon is closing warehouses across the country

Annie Palmer and Gabriel Cortés, CNBC

• Google closes $5.4B Mandiant acquisition (TechCrunch)
• SEC charges VMware with misleading investors by obscuring financial performance (Reuters)
• Former NSA Chief Keith Alexander Accused of Pump-and-Dump Investment Scheme (The Intercept)
• Google spins out secret hi-speed telecom project called Aalyria, and keeps stake in startup (CNBC)
• Google’s Loon Project Gets Resurrected. Without Google. Or Balloons (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• Elon Musk’s 19,000 tweets reveal his complicated relationship with Twitter (The Washington Post)
• US struggles to mobilise its East Asian ‘Chip 4’ alliance (Financial Times)
• Human Trafficking’s Newest Abuse: Forcing Victims Into Cyberscamming (ProPublica)
• The Search for Dirt on the Twitter Whistle-Blower (The New Yorker)
• Silicon Valley can’t keep track of your data (The Washington Post)