The California Senate approved legislation that would require Internet service providers (ISPs) in California to follow the now-repealed 2015 Open Internet Order. While well-intentioned, the legislators sadly chose an approach that is vulnerable to legal attack.
Two Missouri lawyers have sued the Missouri governor’s office over its use of Confide, an ephemeral messaging mobile app, which they say is in violation of state public records law. The two men are set to appear before a county judge on Feb 2 to ask for a temporary restraining order that would bar current and future use of such apps by the governor and his staff. Lawyers representing Gov Eric Greitens (R-MO) say that such a move is unwarranted.
[Commentary] Mark Zuckerberg announced recently that Facebook plans to ask its community to help rate news producers’ credibility. Randomly selected users will be asked whether they are familiar with an outlet, and if so, invited to judge its trustworthiness. The ratio that results — of those who know the source, the proportion that trusts it — will “inform ranking in the News Feed” (though Facebook has remained vague about its relevance compared with other metrics).
President Donald Trump boasted that the viewership of his State of the Union speech was “the highest number in history” — a claim at odds with ratings figures released the day before. In a Feb 1 tweet, President Trump said, "Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network, for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!
It was reported that special counsel Robert Mueller's team is interested in President Donald Trump's role in drafting a misleading statement to the New York Times in the summer, about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that involved Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. Mueller's team already has questioned several White House officials about the statement and that “some lawyers and witnesses who have sat in or been briefed on the interviews have puzzled over Mueller's interest in the episode.
Cuba handed a note of protest to the top U.S. diplomat in Havana on Jan 31 over the Trump administration’s creation of a Cuba Internet Task Force that it said was an attempt to violate its sovereignty and carry out subversive activities. The U.S. State Department said recently it was convening the task force to promote “the free and unregulated flow of information” on the Communist-run island that has one of the lowest internet penetration rates in the world. The group would examine ways of “expanding internet access and independent media”, it said.
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