NSO. Spyware developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group was used to hack into phones belonging to at least nine U.S. State Department employees based in Uganda, Reuters reports. The report comes on the heels of a decision by the U.S. government to blacklist NSO, potentially cutting it off from key U.S. suppliers. While NSO claims to only serve clients who use it software to target the communications of criminal and terrorist groups, this most recent report illustrates how its technology is proliferating and is enabling more traditional espionage—a fact that may explain why Washington recently chose to sanction the firm.
Anti-trust. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed suit to block Nvidia’s $40 billion acquisition of the British chip designer Arm. The move to block the acquisition is the latest in a series of regulatory setbacks around the world for a tie-up that would represent the largest in the history of the semiconductor industry. It also represents the biggest anti-trust case to-date of FTC Chair Lina Khan, the progressive head of the agency who has promised to reinvigorate American anti-trust law by more aggressive enforcement.
Child safety. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri faced sharp questioning from lawmakers on Wednesday over whether the platform is doing enough to protect kids online. Lawmakers mostly dismissed recent changes aimed at protecting children as insufficient and called on the platform to improve tools for parents and children to control the content they see online. Separately, new legislation set to be introduced on Thursday would enlist the National Science Foundation to facilitate access to social media company data necessary for researchers to carry out studies of online harm.
Ad labeling. A new study by researchers at New York University and KU Leuven in Belgium found that Facebook’s efforts to label political advertisements as such is beset by high error rates. Of 189,000 political ads in which Facebook had to make a determination about whether the ad was political in nature, Facebook got the decision wrong in 83% of cases, Protocol reports. Error rates in political ad classification were significantly higher outside the United States.
Ad markets. More than 200 American newspapers are suing Facebook and Google, alleging that their dominance of the online ad market represents an illegal monopoly, Axios reports. The cases have been consolidated in New York’s Southern District, where they will provide a test case for whether newspapers can recover damages from tech giants that have reshaped online advertising markets.
Takedowns. Google disrupted a major botnet and filed suit against two Russian nationals it accused of being behind the Glupteba botnet. Separately, Microsoft said it had obtained a court order to seize more than three dozen domains used by a Chinese espionage group. Taken together, the actions by Google and Microsoft are indicative of the ways in which tech companies are getting increasingly creative in using the courts to disrupt cyber-criminal activity.
Cybersecurity. A group of senior Biden administration officials met with representatives of a group of U.S. technology and cybersecurity companies this week in a bid to get more support from companies in combating cybersecurity threats, Politico reports. The meeting comes as part of an effort by the administration to improve collaboration and information sharing between Washington and Silicon Valley.
Crypto. A group of senior executives at cryptocurrency firms went before a House panel on Wednesday to argue for light-touch regulation of their industry. In what was one of the first major congressional hearings on the cryptocurrency industry, lawmakers largely split along partisan lines, with Democrats urging greater regulation of the nascent technology and Republicans arguing that excessive rulemaking could put the United States at a disadvantage to other countries.
Apple in China. According to a report in the Information, Apple CEO Tim Cook signed a non-binding agreement to invest some $275 billion dollars in China in part to avoid regulatory scrutiny for the company there. The agreement included a pledge to invest in Chinese advanced manufacturing capabilities, greater use of components made by Chinese suppliers, and to invest in Chinese tech firms. The report may explain why Apple has managed to operate in China with relatively little backlash from the Chinese state, even as Beijing has embarked on a crackdown on the country’s tech giants.
Predictive policing. Reporters at Gizmodo and the Markup obtained some 5.9 million crime predictions generated by the predictive policing software PredPol from an unsecured server online. The data provides a window into how PredPol is helping direct U.S. policing resources and indicates that the software is directing police to patrol poor areas with larger numbers of residents of color at higher rates than whiter, richer areas. “The fewer white residents lived in an area—and the more Black and Latino residents lived there—the more likely PredPol would predict a crime there,” Gizmodo and the Markup conclude. “The same disparity existed between richer and poorer communities.”
Quantum computing. A Honeywell subsidiary said it will begin to offer an encryption generated using quantum computing, a development that may represent a major milestone on the road to widely available quantum encryption.
Rohingya. A group of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are suing Facebook for $150 billion, alleging that the company failed to prevent its services from being used to facilitate a genocide against the Rohingya people.
