Technology Policy & Law
www.reuters.com
Mehta tossed out accusations brought by the states that Google made it harder for internet users to find specialized search engines, like Expedia for travel or OpenTable for restaurants, saying the states "have not demonstrated the requisite anticompetitive effect in the relevant market." Google said Friday it appreciated the court's "careful consideration and decision to dismiss claims regarding the design of Google Search" in the case brought by the states. "We look forward to showing at trial that promoting and distributing our services is both legal and pro-competitive," added Kent Walker, Google's chief legal officer. Google has denied any wrongdoing in both cases. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said he was pleased with Mehta's opinion, adding: "We will continue to evaluate how to best press forward and establish Google’s pattern of illegal conduct that harms consumers and competition." --- Justice must be seen to be done. And seeing is believing. Good enough for google and the government, I guess.
www.abc.net.au
Under the restrictions unveiled on Wednesday following a public consultation, anyone under the age of 18 will be cut off from accessing the internet on a device from 10pm to 6am. A tiered system for managing smartphone usage time will also be imposed when the restrictions come into force on September 2. There will be a maximum of 40 minutes of usage a day for those under the age of eight, to two hours for 16 and 17-year-olds. The new rules — proposed by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) — are some of the most stringent in the world. Parents will be able to bypass them if they wish, however.
www.abc.net.au
"Effectively countering foreign interference through social media is, therefore, one of Australia's most pressing security challenges," it said, adding that the rise in the use of social media could "corrupt our decision-making, political discourse and societal norms." The committee that compiled the report was particularly concerned by the national security threat posed by social media platforms such as TikTok and WeChat. The parent companies of both apps ByteDance and Tencent, have headquarters in and are run out of China. "China's 2017 National Intelligence Law means the Chinese government can require these social media companies to secretly cooperate with Chinese intelligence agencies," the report said.
www.theverge.com
KOSA is supposed to establish a new legal standard for the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general, allowing them to police companies that fail to prevent kids from seeing harmful content on their platforms. The authors of the bills, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), have said the bill keeps kids from seeing content that glamorizes eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, and gambling. It would also ban kids 13 and under from using social media and require companies to acquire parental consent before allowing children under 17 to use their platforms. The other bill lawmakers approved, COPPA 2.0, raises the age of protection under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act from 13 to 16 years of age, along with similar age-gating restrictions. It also bans platforms from targeting ads to kids. The tech trade group NetChoice issued a scathing statement on the bills Thursday. “When it comes to determining the best way to help kids and teens use the internet, parents and guardians should be making those decisions, not the government,” Carl Szabo, NetChoice vice president and general counsel, said. “Rather than violating free speech rights and handing parenting over to bureaucrats, we should empower law enforcement with the resources necessary to do its job to arrest and convict bad actors committing online crimes against children.”
Xi said popularization of science is an important and fundamental work needed to achieve innovative development. He hoped the academicians and experts will continue to carry forward the glorious tradition of serving the country through science, encourage more scientific and technological workers to support and participate in the cause of science popularization, and inspire young people's interest in respecting science and seeking knowledge via high-quality and rich content and popular ways, in order to promote science literacy for all, and make new contributions to achieving high-level self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology and promoting Chinese modernization. The "science and China" academician and expert lecture tour was launched in December 2002. Since then more than 2,000 science popularization activities have been held nationwide. Recently, 20 academicians and experts who initiated and participated in "science and China" wrote a letter to Xi, reporting on the achievements made since the launch of the campaign. They proposed to advance an initiative involving one thousand academicians and one thousand science popularization activities to gather the strength of the academicians and experts, and make greater contributions to strengthening national science popularization and speeding up the realization of high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Defense Intelligence Agency and are among several government entities known to have solicited private data brokers to access information for which a court order is generally required. A growing number of lawmakers have come to view the practice as an end run around the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable government searches and seizures. “This unconstitutional mass government surveillance must end,” Ohio congressman Warren Davidson says. Members of the House Judiciary Committee, led by Ohio’s Jim Jordan, will hold a markup hearing on Wednesday to consider a Davidson bill aimed at restricting purchases of Americans’ data without a subpoena, court order, or warrant. If passed into law, the legislation's restrictions would apply to federal agencies, as well as state and local police departments. Known as the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, the bill is cosponsored by four Republicans and four Democrats, including the committee’s ranking member, Jerry Nadler, who first introduced it alongside California’s Zoe Lofgren in 2021. Notably, the bill's protections extend to data obtained from a person's account or device even if hacked by a third party, or when disclosure is referenced by a company's terms of service. The bill's sponsors note this would effectively prohibit the government from doing business with companies such as Clearview AI, which has admitted to scraping billions of photos from social media to fuel a facial recognition tool that's been widely tested by local police departments.
www.pi-top.com
many states are struggling to get their students to take the courses, especially amongst underrepresented communities. For example, Kerr’s state of Connecticut reveals 92% of Connecticut students have access to computer science learning opportunities and 88% of Connecticut districts are offering some form of a computer science course. Notwithstanding the availability of courses, only 12% of Connecticut students are taking them. “We needed to make computer science accessible and appealing for everyone,” urges Kerr.
arstechnica.com
As part of the investigation, the FTC sent a 20-page record request to OpenAI that focuses on the company's risk management strategies surrounding its AI models. The agency is investigating whether the company has engaged in deceptive or unfair practices, resulting in reputational harm to consumers. The inquiry is also seeking to understand how OpenAI has addressed the potential of its products to generate false, misleading, or disparaging statements about real individuals. In the AI industry, these false generations are sometimes called "hallucinations" or "confabulations." In particular, The Washington Post speculates that the FTC's focus on misleading or false statements is a response to recent incidents involving OpenAI's ChatGPT, such as a case where it reportedly fabricated defamatory claims about Mark Walters, a radio talk show host from Georgia. The AI assistant falsely stated that Walters was accused of embezzlement and fraud related to the Second Amendment Foundation, prompting Walters to sue OpenAI for defamation. Another incident involved the AI model falsely claiming a lawyer had made sexually suggestive comments on a student trip to Alaska, an event that never occurred.
www.politico.com
Meanwhile, opposition in the U.S. has reignited in recent days after the Securities and Exchange Commission sued the world’s two largest crypto exchanges over alleged securities law violations. Amid the crackdown, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler told CNBC last week, “We don’t need more digital currency,” because the dollar and other sovereign currencies already exist. Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican, seized on the comments, echoing a popular line among crypto executives that this year’s crackdown on crypto is intended to ease any future rollout of a digital dollar. “The Biden Admin wants to kill market innovation to pave the way for a CBDC, which would give the federal gov. unprecedented insight into your life. I will fight to make sure this doesn’t happen,” Hagerty tweeted Wednesday. The issue has seeped into U.S. political discourse to the extent that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, reiterated his opposition to CBDCs at his presidential campaign launch event with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces last month. The issue is among those that have endeared DeSantis — who signed a bill last month restricting the use of CBDCs in Florida — to a group of libertarian Silicon Valley investors, led by former PayPal executive David Sacks, who are supportive of cryptocurrencies.
www.politico.com
Content laws are coming, and coming soon. Unlike the ongoing partisan divide in Washington over regulating social media, politicians in the European Union and United Kingdom are already on the same page and they are about to make Facebook do something it has long tried to avoid: take legal responsibility for content. Under proposals expected to be completed by next year, the EU wants to overhaul its existing hands-off approach to Facebook and others via its so-called Digital Services Act. Those rules will make it mandatory for tech companies to immediately remove illegal content, such as hate speech, or face hefty fines. For politically divisive or other legal but harmful material, such as posts sowing distrust in a country’s election, social media platforms must also show outside auditors and regulators how they are stopping that content from spreading like wildfire. Across the English Channel, British lawmakers are going one step further. In rules, known as the Online Safety Bill, to be voted on by the end of 2021, the likes of Facebook will be held to a so-called duty of care to protect their users from both illegal and legal, but harmful, content — a world first. Penalties for inaction include fines totaling 10 percent of a company’s annual revenue and potential prison sentences for social media executives.
arstechnica.com
The Biden administration is appealing a federal judge's ruling that ordered the government to halt a wide range of communications with social media companies. President Biden and the other federal defendants in the case "hereby appeal" the ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, according to a notice filed in US District Court yesterday. The US will submit a longer filing with arguments to the 5th Circuit appeals court. On Tuesday, Judge Terry Doughty of US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction that prohibits White House officials and numerous federal agencies from communicating "with social-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms." Doughty found that defendants "significantly encouraged" and in some cases coerced "the social-media companies to such extent that the decision [to modify or suppress content] should be deemed to be the decisions of the Government." The Biden administration has argued that its communications with tech companies are permissible under the First Amendment and vital to counter misinformation about elections, COVID-19, and vaccines. .... The injunction doesn't cut off all contact between the Biden administration and social media companies. Doughty's ruling said the government may continue to inform social networks about posts involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies, national security threats, extortion, criminal efforts to suppress voting, illegal campaign contributions, cyberattacks against election infrastructure, foreign attempts to influence elections, threats to public safety and security, and posts intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures.
www.geekwire.com
All the Big Tech firms (Amazon, Apple, and Google) have leveraged their monopoly power in one market to gain dominance or favorable terms in another market. For example, Google leveraged its position in the Android market to establish Google Search and the Google Play Store as the default apps across all third-party Android handsets. In 2018, Apple introduced a Screen Time app, a new feature that allowed parents to track and control how much time their children were spending on their iPhones. Soon thereafter, Apple removed a number of parental-control apps from its App Store. According to a Wall Street Journal investigative report, Amazon told smart thermostat maker Ecobee that it had to share data from its voice-enabled devices even when customers weren’t using them. Allegedly, Amazon told the company that if Ecobee didn’t share the data, that would affect its ability to sell its devices through the Amazon marketplace. In addition, Amazon told the company that it could potentially not retain Amazon’s certification on future models or have access to big selling events like Amazon Prime Day. Amazon is a prime example of abuse of this power. In 2010, Amazon was closely tracking Quidsi, the owner of Diapers.com, and identified Diapers.com as its largest and fastest-growing competitor in the online diaper and baby care space. Amazon was very concerned about the pricing pressure that the company was putting on it and its high level of customer service. According to the House antitrust report, Amazon executives took swift and predatory action in response to this competitive threat. Internal Amazon documents showed that the firm entered into an aggressive price war, in which Amazon was willing to bleed more than $200 million in losses on diapers in one month. Under extreme price pressure, the founders of Quidsi.com had no other option but to sell the company to Amazon. To address the conflicts of interest identified, Congress should consider regulations that draw upon the two key components of its anti-monopoly toolkit: structural separations and line of business restrictions. Structural separation would prohibit a marketplace intermediary from operating in markets in competition with third-party sellers. Line of business restrictions would limit the markets that a marketplace could compete in. For example, Amazon could be asked to divest itself of its private-label business so that it couldn’t develop products that compete with third-party sellers.
english.elpais.com
The EU has begun to debate what is being called the first AI law in the world. It could be approved in the near future: its objective is to prevent uses of AI that result in what are considered to be “unacceptable risks,” such as indiscriminate facial recognition or the manipulation of people’s behavior. AI could be heavily regulated in critical sectors such as health and education, while sanctions and sales bans could be imposed on systems and firms that don’t comply with the legislation. UNESCO has developed a voluntary ethical framework… but this voluntary nature is precisely its main weakness. China and Russia – two countries that use this technology for mass surveillance of populations – have signed on to these principles. “There are fundamental rights involved and it’s an issue that we have to tackle and worry about, certainly… but with balance,” Danesi cautions. Juhan Lepassaar – executive director of the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) – is of the same opinion: “If we want to secure AI systems and also guarantee privacy, we must analyze how these systems work. ENISA is studying the technical complexity of AI to better mitigate cybersecurity risks. We also need to find the right balance between safety and system performance.”
arstechnica.com
Rocky Linux, launched by CentOS co-founder Greg Kurtzer as a replacement RHEL-compatible distro, announced Thursday that it believes Red Hat's moves "violate the spirit and purpose of open source." Using a few different methods (Universal Base Image containers, pay-per-use public cloud instances), Rocky Linux intends to maintain what it considers legitimate access to RHEL code under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and make the code public as soon as it exists. "[O]ur unwavering dedication and commitment to open source and the Enterprise Linux community remain steadfast," the project wrote in its blog post. The Software Freedom Conservancy's Bradley M. Kuhn weighed in last week with a comprehensive overview of RHEL's business model and its tricky relationship with GPL compliance. Red Hat's business model "skirts" GPL violation but had only twice previously violated the GPL in newsworthy ways, Kuhn wrote. Withholding Complete Corresponding Source (CCS) from the open web doesn't violate the GPL itself, but by doing so, Red Hat makes it more difficult for anyone to verify the company's GPL compliance.
www.cnn.com
The FTC lawsuit has put Microsoft under the harshest antitrust scrutiny in the US in more than two decades. It also could be a crucial test for the FTC at a time when it’s trying to rein in the tech industry broadly, with mixed success. In its initial challenge to the merger in its in-house court last year, the FTC alleged the deal would harm competition by turning Microsoft into the world’s third-largest video game publisher — allowing it to raise video game prices with impunity, restrict Activision titles from rival platforms and harm game quality and player experiences on consoles and gaming services.