Broadband's Impact
Armed With Broadband, Libraries Are Resuscitating Communities Ravaged by COVID-19
No offense to Melvil Dewey, but what does his system of decimals have on the algorithmic horsepower of the Google search engine?
Big Tech
The Internet’s Response to the Coronavirus Could be Better, Says World Wide Web Creator
May 27, 2020 — The internet could be better serving world peoples affected by the coronavirus pandemic, said Tim Berners-Lee, who created the World Wide Web, in a webinar Wednesday. The webinar was hosted by the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival, which brings together top business
FEC
Broadband Roundup: Trump’s Media Bias Panel, Facebook Shops, Virtual Private Networks in Hong Kong
May 26, 2020 — President Donald Trump has proposed a federal panel that would monitor alleged incidents of anti-conservative bias on tech platforms, according to The Wall Street Journal. The panel would work in conjunction with existing government offices like the Federal Election Commission and the
ACA Connects
Coronavirus Roundup: Twitter May Allow Users to Limit Replies, Congressional Broadband Funding, Contact Tracing App
A new Twitter feature allows users to decide who can reply to their tweets, sparking questions about the constitutionality of the function when used by government officials. The feature gives users the option of opening their tweet to responses from all other users, only those who they follow or onl
FTC
Healthcare Deregulation Best for Competition, Says Federal Trade Commissioner
May 18, 2020 — Deregulation of healthcare will increase competition and personal choice, said Federal Trade Commissioner Christine S. Wilson in a Monday webinar. The webinar, hosted by the Federalist Society and moderated by Svetlana Gans, vice president associate general counsel of NCTA, the Intern
Apple
Coronavirus Roundup: Contact Tracing Gold Rush, Tech Companies’ Misinformation Criteria, Additional Telelearning Funds
May 12, 2020 — As the United States turns its focus to reopening, tech companies are looking at the opportunities for contact-tracing technology as the next tech gold rush, CNBC reported. Contact-tracing technology, as seen in South Korea, would use GPS technology to tell users if they have come wit
House Judiciary
Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Vows to Hold Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Other Tech Executives to Account
May 7, 2020 — Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., head of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, said Thursday that he will not lessen the intensity of his investigation into anticompetitive practices potentially committed by big tech. Cicilline expressed concern
Apple
Coronavirus Roundup: Former Google CEO on Military Tech, ISP Internet Speeds, Parking Lot Wi-Fi
May 6, 2020 – Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has reinvented himself as a bridge between Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex, according to the New York Times on Saturday. The U.S. military is “stuck in software in the 1980s,” Schmidt said after touring the military’s Special Operations
COVID
Artificial Intelligence Not Very Helpful in Addressing the Coronavirus, Say Experts on Brookings Panel
April 22, 2020 – With artificial intelligence coming up more and more frequently in every area of everyday life—from transportation, grocery shopping to Alexa and Siri— it might be natural assume that the technology would be helpful in addressing the coronavirus. “That at least so far hasn’t turned
COVID
Google and Apple May Help Us Understand ‘Typhoid Mary’s’ Cell Phone Movements
April 19, 2020 – Apple and Google are forgoing using their massive troves of location data for contact tracing and instead tinkering with the less invasive “proximity tracing,” according to industry analysts at a FutureTense webinar on Thursday on “Will the Coronavirus Claim Privacy Among its Victim
COVID
Data Produced By Cell Phones Not Sufficiently Accurate to Use for Coronavirus Contact Tracing, Says ACLU
April 10, 2020 – Data produced by cell phones is “not sufficiently accurate to be used for contact tracing,” according to Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at a Wednesday press briefing by the American Civil Liberties Union. Contact tracing is the practice of using data to infer the likelihood that
COVID
‘The Techlash Should Be Over’: Commentator Wants to Call Off Big Tech Watchdogs in Light of the Coronavirus
April 10, 2020— The coronavirus has stretched aspects of American society to its last line: Many businesses have seen broadband technologies as a lifeline to a precarious economy. At an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation webinar on Thursday, commentators said that big tech has proved e
COVID
Coronavirus Roundup: Senators Question Google on Privacy, UTOPIA CEO on Fiber’s Inevitability, NCTA’s COVID19 Dashboard
Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Tuesday asked Google for information about the company’s recently announced COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports. Google describes the project as an aggregated and anonymized form of providing insight into movement trends related to th
Antitrust
Witnesses at Senate Hearing Criticize Google and Say Antitrust Case ‘Could be Brought Today’
WASHINGTON, March 22, 2020 – Google took several punches at a March 10 Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at Open Markets Institute, conceded that big tech companies like Google “started on their paths to dominanc
E-Rate
Coronavirus Rondup: AI on YouTube, Comcast and Internet Essentials, Senators Press FCC over E-Rate Funds
YouTube will be relying on AI to take down content policy violations as the coronavirus spreads, according to Paresh Dave of Japan Today. Alphabet Inc’s Google, which owns YouTube and typically relies on humans to identify violating content, is now transitioning to less accurate automated tools as o
Antitrust
Deputy Attorney General Blames Big Tech for Using Section 230 to ‘Enable Harm’
WASHINGTON, March 12, 2020 – “Is this third industrial revolution over? And if so, why?” That was the question Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen posed to the attendees of the Free State Foundation conference on Tuesday. “Some say innovation in the U.S. has been on the decline for the past two de
