On Oct 31’s technology-executive hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee, a key tension at the heart of the internet emerged: Do American tech companies, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google, operate as American companies? Or are they in some other global realm, maybe in some place called cyberspace?
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is taking aim at technology firms for preventing law enforcement from accessing encrypted evidence for ongoing terror investigations, warning that such actions could have “deadly consequences.” The issue has become a point of tension between tech companies and federal investigators in high-profile cases, such as the 2016 dispute between the FBI and Apple over data stored on an iPhone belonging to a suspect in the 2015 San Bernardino terror attack. Sessions, who delivered remarks on national security in New York City, said that over the past year the FBI was
Over four dozen Democratic House members have written Sinclair President Chris Ripley asking for answers to over a dozen questions related to the proposed Tribune merger and its impact on the public interest, as well as suggesting the company commit to not raising retransmission fees for its newly acquired stations. The letter comes as the Federal Communications Commission is about to start its informal 180-day shot clock on the merger after pausing it to give the public more time to comment on Sinclair's response to the FCC's second request for info on the deal.
Americans are more likely than ever to get news from multiple social media sites, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. About a quarter of all US adults (26%) get news from two or more social media sites, up from 15% in 2013 and 18% in 2016. But there is considerable variation in the extent to which each site’s news users get news from other sites, and which sites those are. Facebook claims the largest share of social media news consumers, and its news users are much more likely to rely solely on that site for news. Just under half (45%) of U.S. adults use Facebook for news.
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