Online privacy

The Trump administration likely will seek public comment on a new online privacy proposal it is hammering out with tech companies before sending it to Congress. The White House is working with technology giants on a legislative proposal through the National Economic Council and the Commerce Department.

I want today to register my concern that laws and regulations intended to promote privacy may build protective moats around large companies (some of which already possess significant amounts of data about people) by making it more difficult for smaller companies to grow, for new companies to enter the market, and for innovation to occur—and insist that competition be part of our conversation about privacy. If our concern is warranted, the questions for proponents of new privacy rules then must include: Are we willing to allow a reduction in competition or innovation?

Customer proprietary network information (usually abbreviated as “CPNI”) refers to a very specific set of privacy regulations governing telecommunications providers (codified at 47 U.S.C. §222) and enforced by the Federal Communications Commission. But while CPNI provides some of the strongest consumer privacy protections in federal law, it also does much more than that.

Sen. Mark Warner's office has laid out 20 different paths to address problems posed by Big Tech platforms — ranging from putting a price on individual users' data to funding media literacy programs. The proposal is a window t0 the options available to US policymakers concerned about disinformation and privacy. Enacting any of these plans is a long shot in the near-term, but a shift in party control of Congress come November could give them more momentum.

The Trump administration is crafting a proposal to protect Web users’ privacy, aiming to blunt global criticism that the absence of strict federal rules in the United States has enabled data mishaps at Facebook and others in Silicon Valley. Over the past month, the Commerce Department has been huddling with representatives of tech giants such as Facebook and Google, Internet providers including AT&T and Comcast, and consumer advocates, apparently.

For months, Facebook has weathered a series of scandals — including Russian misuse of the platform to interfere in the 2016 American presidential campaign and the harvesting of its users’ data through the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica — with hardly any effect to its business. Facebook has continued to post healthy double-digit increases in revenue and profit every quarter. But on July 25 it showed some of the first signs of wear and tear from the months of scrutiny.

The major problem law enforcement faces in obtaining digital evidence is not the encryption of devices but figuring out which company holds the relevant data and how to get it, according to a study released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Though much of the debate around access to digital evidence has focused on the challenges law enforcement agencies face in cracking encrypted devices or decoding encrypted data, CSIS researchers William A.

An update to Twitter’s terms of service that was made months ago due to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is still locking users out of the platform for being underage — even though some are in their mid-20s.

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter joined to announce a new standards initiative called the Data Transfer Project, designed as a new way to move data between platforms. Google described the project as letting users “transfer data directly from one service to another, without needing to download and re-upload it.”