Government & Communications

Access Now and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are among those signing onto an amicus brief supporting Facebook in its efforts to protect the anonymity of its users and alert them if they are under investigation. According to Access Now, the government, which is investigating Trump inauguration protests that turned violent, has requested that Facebook unmask the identities of three users under a gag order, which means the company can't tell the people in question about the warrants. "First, the non-disclosure order is both a prior restraint and a content-based restriction on speech and is therefore subject to the most demanding First Amendment scrutiny," the groups write. "Second, the underlying warrants are apparently calculated to invade the right of Facebook's users to speak and associate anonymously on a matter of public interest."

There are a lot of insights to be drawn from the latest media maelstrom involving President Trump: about his sensitivity to criticism, his impulsivity, the way he talks about women and the ease with which he can still hurl the basest of insults. But the episode is also a striking example of how a presidency born of television lives there still, no matter what else might be going on In Real Life (IRL, as the internet calls it).

It’s a cable news-Twitter presidency. So is it any wonder that one of the great, early standoffs of the new administration is not between the president and Congress or the president and a foreign leader, but between the president and the hosts of a morning news show? As one of those hosts, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, told me on Friday, “He should be a lot more worried about NATO and building a relationship with Angela Merkel than he is with cable news hosts.”

[Commentary] I left the White House that day with dramatically mixed emotions. I remain convinced that we should help a government initiative that can do real good, despite my deep concerns about the current administration’s policies. I saw only a sliver of all that went on that day, given the many concurrent sessions, but I wish I’d seen more evidence that the leadership of the tech industry can actually help government do a better job, given that so many of those who seem to be engaging have a lot invested in the status quo. I guess in some way that means that I leave this event not that far from where I started, remembering that “No one is coming. It is up to us.”

[Jennifer Pahlka is Founder and Executive Director of Code for America]

When a dozen and a half CEOs of the world’s biggest tech companies descended on the White House in June, it turned a spotlight on one of the bigger mysteries of a mysterious White House: They were convened by the Office of American Innovation, the new operation being run by presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Announced with much fanfare by the president in March, the office was set up to bring “new thinking and real change” to the country’s toughest problems, according to Trump, in part by drawing on the lessons of the private sector. Since then, observers have been wondering just what it was, or even if it was. It didn’t help that the sweep of its briefing was almost comically broad, from upgrading federal government’s $82 billion worth of information technology, to spurring the creation of new jobs, changing how the country thinks about apprenticeships and "unleashing American business." Not to mention working with sometimes-antagonist Chris Christie’s commission on tackling the United States' opioid epidemic. (And all this while Kushner is also supposed to be tackling Middle Eastern peace.) But over the past few weeks, its responsibilities have started to come into focus. It now has a staff, which worked behind the scenes to bring in the impressive roster of tech CEOs who attended the summit—Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, IBM’s Ginni Rometty and more. It spurred the decision by the Veterans Administration to buy a new, multibillion-dollar computer system. And it had a hand in Trump’s executive order on apprenticeships, issued before the meeting.

[Commentary] It’s clear that most US consumers depend upon a few big players in order to access the internet. Therefore, the critical question is whether these companies have the incentive and ability to harm consumers and competition. That is, are they motivated to control what kinds of innovations come to consumers? And do they have the tools to do so? Both the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice have recognized in recent proceedings that the answers are yes and yes.

In 1776, Thomas Paine didn’t need the permission of any other content creator or distributor to circulate Common Sense. But without rules prohibiting blocking, throttling, and the like, broadband providers would gain the power to limit what unpopular content flows over their networks—to the detriment of consumers and democracy. One challenger to the 2015 Open Internet Order argued exactly this to the DC Circuit: that the rules violated its right to block legal but unpopular content. An Open Internet has worked for America, creating a virtuous circle of innovation, trust, adoption, and further innovation. That circle should not be broken.

[Terrell McSweeny is a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Jon Sallet is the former general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission. Both are alumni of the antitrust division of the Department of Justice]

Whether by whim or design, President Donald Trump keeps adding fuel to his incendiary Twitter battle against the media. The press is an easy target for the Republican president, and one his supporters love to hate. But the escalating conflict has diverted attention not just from Trump's failures but his claimed successes as well.

President Trump tweeted July 3 that "at some point the Fake News will be forced to discuss our great jobs numbers, strong economy, success with ISIS, the border & so much else!" It's his own campaign against the press, though, that keeps changing the subject from that more substantive policy debate Trump claims to crave. And it has hindered Trump's ability to push his agenda through Congress, where Republicans complain about the president's lack of focus as his health-care plan is struggling, work on next year's budget is stuck and talk of a big infrastructure deal is fading.

The minds behind LinkedIn and Zynga have a new target for disruption: American politics. Co-founders Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman unveiled Win the Future — also known as WTF — a political network aimed at helping "Americans organize around a common platform," according to the project's website. "We need a modern people’s lobby that empowers all of us to choose our leaders and set our agenda," wrote Pincus in a post explaining WTF's philosophy. "Imagine voting for a President we're truly excited about. Imagine a government that promotes capitalism and civil rights." Other founders in WTF include former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and venture capitalist Fred Wilson. The pair have contributed $500,000 to the project. Pincus says he views WTF as a "new movement and force within the Democratic Party, which can act like its own virtual party."

A Q &A with UC Santa Cruz sociology professor Lindsey Dillon.

Ars editors Annalee Newitz and Joe Mullin talked to UC Santa Cruz sociology professor Lindsey Dillon about how the Trump administration has been removing scientific and environmental data from the Web. Lindsey is part of a group called Environmental Data Governance Initiative (EDGI), which is working on ways to rescue that data and make it available to the public. Lindsey told us how EDGI got started in November 2016, within days of the presidential election. Its founders are scientists and academics whose main goal was to make sure that researchers and citizens would continue to have access to data about the environment. They organized data rescue events around the country, where volunteers identified vulnerable climate information on websites for several government agencies, including the EPA, DOE, and even NASA. The Internet Archive helped by creating digital records of all the at-risk pages.

Cybersecurity specialists are warning that President Donald Trump’s voter-fraud commission may unintentionally expose voter data to even more hacking and digital manipulation. Their concerns stem from a letter the commission sent to every state, asking for full voter rolls and vowing to make the information “available to the public.” The requested information includes full names, addresses, birth dates, political party and, most notably, the last four digits of Social Security numbers. The commission is also seeking data such as voter history, felony convictions and military service records.

Digital security experts say the commission’s request would centralize and lay bare a valuable cache of information that cyber criminals could use for identity theft scams — or that foreign spies could leverage for disinformation schemes. “It is beyond stupid,” said Nicholas Weaver, a computer science professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

More conservative outlets now have official seats in the White House briefing room according to a new seating chart the White House Correspondents' Association unveiled June 30. Conservative television networks Newsmax and One America News now have seats, though One America News' is shared with the BBC. Other changes enacted since the last time the seating chart was adjusted in 2015 include the Daily Mail's US website getting a seat, as well as the Huffington Post and the Spanish-language television network Univision getting shared seats. While the first row remains the same, populated by the major television networks and wires, USA Today has moved up to the second row, switching spots with AP Radio. For the past two administrations the WHCA, not the White House, has determined the seating in the briefing room, though White House officials have previously suggested they may seek to make changes in the future.