Government & Communications

[Commentary] Releasing the network neutrality draft order early had some unintended consequences. It created a flurry of activity when everybody with an opinion felt they had to re-litigate their arguments. Far too many chose it as an opportunity to hurl invectives at those with differing opinions, contributing to the downfall of productive debate. Despite the increasing vitriol during the weeks before the vote, releasing the draft order prior to the Federal Communications Commission’s vote is one key to making the FCC regulatory process more transparent.

Michael Allman is running for Congress as a Republican. But if his constituents lean left of him on a particular issue before Congress, that’s how Allman will vote. That’s because Allman is running on a direct democracy platform: For every issue, voters in his district will be able to use a blockchain-enabled website to securely log their opinions, and Allman will follow the will of the people.

Rural communities with high levels of poverty and lack of access to internet could be undercounted in the 2020 U. S. Census, according to a report. Researchers at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire have identified numerous steps the Census Bureau can take to improving census collection in rural areas. Reporter author William O’Hare’s warning is based on likely limits to budgets for Census operations and a change in methodology. The Census will rely more on the internet for data collection.

A lawyer representing President Donald Trump sought to stop the publication of a new behind-the-scenes book about the White House that has already led President Trump to angrily decry his former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon. The legal notice — addressed to author Michael Wolff and the president of the book’s publisher — said President Trump’s lawyers were pursuing possible charges including libel in connection with the forthcoming book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” The letter by Beverly Hills-based attorney Charles J.

The White House is banning its employees from using personal mobile phones while at work in the West Wing, despite concerns among some staffers that they’ll be cut off from children and other relatives trying to reach them.  “The security and integrity of the technology systems at the White House is a top priority for the Trump administration and therefore starting next week the use of all personal devices for both guests and staff will no longer be allowed in the West Wing,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

In recent months, Twitter has started to explain why it disagrees with calls for banning President Donald Trump’s account or deleting some of his tweets. 

Fight for the Future is taking the gloves off in its effort to battle the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission's party line vote to roll back network neutrality rules and deed primary Internet regulatory authority to the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department. It has launched the VoteForNetNeutrality.com website, which asks its Internet followers to vote out lawmakers--Republicans and Democrats--who do not join a Democrat-led effort to use the Congressional Review Act to nullify that rule rollback, saying holdouts are "betraying" the public. Fight For the Future

I was sitting in the nearly empty restaurant of the Westin Hotel in Alexandria (VA) getting ready for a showdown with the federal government that I had been trying to avoid for more than seven years. The Obama administration was demanding that I reveal the confidential sources I had relied on for a chapter about a botched CIA operation in my 2006 book, “State of War.” I had also written about the CIA operation for the New York Times, but the paper’s editors had suppressed the story at the government’s request. It wasn’t the only time they had done so.

Nearly half of federal website domains have policies in place to deal with spoofed emails after an October 2017 Department of Homeland Security directive mandated the use new email and web security standards.

According to a December 2017 report by cybersecurity company Agari, approximately 47 percent of the 1,106 federal domains have adopted policies for Domain-based Message authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC), which allows for improved detection and management of spoofed emails. That figure is up from 34 percent in November 2017.

As a native New Yorker, Donald Trump has been reading the New York Times for decades. When I worked at the Times in the late 2000s, Trump sometimes sent me and my colleagues copies of our stories from the print edition with a compliment or a complaint scrawled in black sharpie pen. During his presidential campaign, Trump routinely called the Times "failing," often seemingly in response to stories he did not like. His campaign even threatened to sue The Times, but did not follow through.