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☆ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rejected banning TikTok in her first TikTok video, saying it 'just doesn't feel right to me'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-26 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discussed calls to ban TikTok in her debut on the app. The New York Democrat said the bipartisan push to ban TikTok in the US "doesn't feel right to me." AOC said America needed stronger data and privacy protection laws rather than a TikTok ban. The New York Democrat started her video by saying: "This is not only my first TikTok, but it is a TikTok about TikTok. She pointed out that the US doesn't have "significant data or privacy protection laws," before mentioning the European Union's data privacy law, known as the General Data Protection Regulation.

☆ Utah just passed a bill that will force children to get parental consent before joining social media platforms
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Utah's governor Spencer Cox passed legislation restricting teenagers' access to social media. The new bill requires social media firms to obtain parental consent before children can open accounts. It also requires social media companies to establish a curfew for teens from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.Sign up for our newsletter for the latest tech news and scoops — delivered daily to your inbox. Republican Governor Spencer Cox passed the Social Media Regulation Act, which aims to force social media companies to verify the age of all Utah residents before they can sign up for or maintain a social media account. The Associated Press reported that social media companies will likely sue to stop the law going into effect.

☆ TikTok CEO set for grilling in House hearing. But U.S. lawmakers also face questions
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Lauren Feiner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +15 min

U.S. tech platforms including Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Google's YouTube , Twitter and Snap's Snapchat have raised similar fears for lawmakers and users. Evaluating a potential banThere's little appetite in Washington to accept the potential risks that TikTok's ownership by Chinese company ByteDance poses to U.S. national security. The interagency panel tasked with reviewing national security risks stemming from ByteDance's ownership has threatened a ban if the company won't sell its stake in the app. Trahan said members should ask about national security risks of the app, but those questions should be substantive. Bowman noted lawmakers haven't received a bipartisan congressional briefing from the administration on national security risks stemming from TikTok.

☆ TikTok hearing: CEO Shou Chew to testify before Congress for the first time
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

TikTok CEO Shou Chew will face the House Energy and Commerce Committee during his first appearance before Congress, in a hearing that kicks off at 10 a.m. In his prepared remarks, Chew is expected to issue broad promises to protect US user data, to keep teens safe and to remain free from any government influence. As scrutiny from lawmakers’ mounts, however, so does the app’s popularity and reach in the United States. TikTok was the top downloaded app in the United States in 2021 and 2022, according to data from analytics firm Sensor Tower. In the months leading up to his appearance on Capitol Hill, Chew, who rarely gave interviews previously, has gone on a media tour in the United States.

☆ TikTok CEO to tell lawmakers its parent company is ‘not an agent of China’
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —TikTok CEO Shou Chew plans to tell US lawmakers that the app’s parent company, ByteDance, does not work for the Chinese government as he seeks to avert a US ban and reassure policymakers TikTok poses no national security threat. “Let me state this unequivocally,” Chew will say, according to a copy of his remarks released by a key House panel. New TikTok data created by US users is already being stored on cloud-based servers operated by the US tech giant Oracle, a change that took effect last month, according to the testimony. USDS already has nearly 1,500 full-time employees and the company plans to hire more. Chew plans to describe the incident as a “misguided attempt to trace the source of a leak of confidential TikTok information.” TikTok informed the Energy and Commerce Committee about the spying “within moments of informing our employees,” Chew will add.

It exceeds in being a smart alarm clock, and it can you give control of your smart devices. It's meant to function as a very smart alarm clock while giving you the ability to control your smart home, video chat, see pictures of cute animals, and stream video. Lowest Price Amazon Echo Show 5 The second-gen Echo Show 5 is a compact smart display that's perfect for use as a smart alarm clock on your bedside table. And while it works as a decent smart alarm clock, it won't blow you away as anything beyond that. The Amazon Echo Show 8 offers a much larger screen and better speakers than the Amazon Echo Show 5.

☆ Amazon sued for not telling New York store customers about facial recognition
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Kevin Collier | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

People shop at the newly opened Amazon Go Store on May 07, 2019 in New York City. The cashier-less store, the first of this type of store, called Amazon Go, accepts cash and is the 12th such store in the United States located at Brookfield Place in downtown New York. Amazon did not alert its New York City customers that they were being monitored by facial recognition technology, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges. The lawsuit says that Amazon only recently put up signs informing New York customers of its use of facial recognition technology, more than a year after the disclosure law went into effect. Perez is represented by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a legal advocacy group devoted to New York privacy protections.

Review: Is the Discover it Cash Back the Best Credit Card for You? For example, you could look at a no-annual-fee card that offers a flat cash rewards rate on all purchases, like the Wells Fargo Active Cash® Card, which earns 2% cash rewards on spending. Insider's Featured Cash Back Credit Cards Discover it® Cash BackCiti® Double Cash CardWells Fargo Active Cash® Card Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. How to Earn Rewards With the Discover it Cash Back CardTo earn the most cash back with the Discover it® Cash Back, you'll have to activate the rotating bonus categories each quarter through your online Discover account. How to Use Discover Cash Back RewardsThe best way to redeem your Discover it® Cash Back rewards is usually as a statement credit, which lowers your balance, or simply take the cash as a direct deposit to your bank account.

☆ Virginia blocks a bill that would have stopped police from viewing period app data, raising fears it could be used to prosecute abortions
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Joshua Zitser | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A Virginia bill that would have prohibited police search warrants on menstrual cycle data was shelved. Glenn Youngkin announced his opposition to the bill this week, resulting in it being tabled. The White House has warned women against using period-tracking apps, citing privacy concerns. Around a third of menstruating adults use period-tracking apps, according to a 2019 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Abortion rights activists have raised alarm at the idea that period-tracking apps could be used to prosecute abortion-law violations, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.

☆ How to delete yourself from the internet
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Cheryl Winokur Munk | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

With so much personal data floating publicly on the internet, consumers have a legitimate interest in controlling the information flow. Self-help tools to remove personal informationFor those who are so inclined, there are ways to limit the amount of personal information available on the internet. If that fails, Google says it may remove personal information "that creates significant risks of identity theft, financial fraud, or other specific harms." It can be hard to gauge the effectiveness of these services, partly because there's so much personal information in the public domain. DeleteMe's website says that 2,389 pieces of personal information, on average, are found over a two-year subscription.

WASHINGTON, Feb 7 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden pledged to work with the opposition party on Tuesday in a State of the Union speech that served as an olive branch to skeptical Republicans and a blueprint for his 2024 re-election bid. The White House has said Biden will not negotiate over that necessity; Republicans want spending cuts in exchange for their support. McCarthy said earlier on Tuesday that he would not rip up Biden's speech, referencing the actions of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Trump's 2020 State of the Union address. He said he urged Biden not to use the phrase "extreme MAGA Republicans" in his speech, a reference to Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan. Some House Republican lawmakers have questioned Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential race against Trump, vowing to investigate his Cabinet and family.

"To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress," Biden, a Democrat, will say, according to excerpts of the speech released by the White House before the speech scheduled for 9 p.m. One test of that challenge will be the White House push to raise the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, which must be lifted in the coming months to avoid a default. The White House has said Biden will not negotiate over that necessity; Republicans want spending cuts in exchange for their support. He said he urged Biden not to use the phrase "extreme MAGA Republicans" in his speech, a reference to Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan. Some House Republican lawmakers have questioned Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential race against Trump, vowing to investigate his Cabinet and family.

WASHINGTON, Feb 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden will declare U.S democracy is bruised but "unbowed and unbroken" on Tuesday in a State of the Union speech that will serve as an olive branch to skeptical Republicans and a blueprint for his 2024 re-election bid. "To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress," Biden, a Democrat, will say, according to excerpts of the speech released by the White House ahead of the speech scheduled for 9 p.m. Biden's public approval rating edged one percentage point higher to 41% in a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll that closed on Sunday. McCarthy said on Tuesday that he would not rip up Biden's speech, referencing to the actions of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi after former President Donald Trump's 2020 State of the Union address. He said he urged Biden not to use the phrase "extreme MAGA Republicans" in his speech, a reference to Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.

Biden's public approval rating edged one percentage point higher to 41% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Sunday. In the speech, Biden will hail the resilience and strength of the U.S. economy, which saw unemployment drop to a nearly 54-year low in January, while pledging continued efforts to lower inflation and protect Social Security and other benefits. [1/3] The U.S. Capitol building is seen on the day of U.S. President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 7, 2023. He will push Congress to require background checks for all gun sales and ban assault weapons, the White House said, although the prospects for passage remain slim. McCarthy said on Tuesday that he won't rip up Biden's speech, referencing the actions of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi after former President Trump's 2020 State of the Union address.

WASHINGTON, Feb 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden will face Republicans who question his legitimacy and a public concerned about the country's direction in Tuesday's State of the Union speech that is expected to serve as a blueprint for a 2024 re-election bid. Biden's public approval rating edged one percentage point higher to 41% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Sunday. Reforms in policing will loom large in Biden's speech after the death of Tyre Nichols, a Black man fatally beaten by officers in Memphis, Tennessee last month, with his mother and stepfather to be guests of first lady Jill Biden. He will also run through a wish list of economic proposals, many of which are unlikely to be passed through Congress, the White House said. [1/3] The U.S. Capitol building is seen on the day of U.S. President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 7, 2023.

REUTERS/Elizabeth FrantzWASHINGTON, Feb 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden will face Republicans who question his legitimacy and a public concerned about the country's direction in Tuesday's State of the Union speech that is expected to serve as a blueprint for a 2024 re-election bid. Biden would urge lawmakers to "build on these historic bipartisan achievements" to improve the lives of Americans, Christen Linke Young, deputy assistant to Biden for health and veterans affairs, told reporters. He will also run through a wish list of economic proposals, many of which are unlikely to be passed through Congress, the White House said. They include a minimum tax for billionaires, and a quadrupling of the tax on corporate stock buybacks. Speaker Kevin McCarthy will sit behind Biden for the address for the first time.

Biden turned 80 in November and, if re-elected, would be 82 at the start of a second term, a fact that concerns many Democratic voters, recent polls show. Speaker Kevin McCarthy will sit behind Biden for the address for the first time. The two are at loggerheads over the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, which must raised in the coming months to avoid a default. Biden will insist during his speech that raising the debt limit is not negotiable and should not be used as a "bargaining chip" by lawmakers, National Economic Council director Brian Deese said Monday. While the U.S. economy continues to outperform expectations, faith in Biden is undermined by entrenched political divisions, high prices and concerns over his age, polls show.

☆ TikTok and its parent company spent about $5.4 million on federal lobbying last year as it faced renewed threats of a ban
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Dan Whateley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance spent about $5.4 million on federal lobbying in 2022. TikTok and its parent company ByteDance spent about $5.4 million on federal lobbying in 2022, a roughly 4% increase from the previous year, according to year-end disclosures filed by the companies and their hired lobbying firms on Friday. While ByteDance's and TikTok's lobbying spend remained relatively flat between 2021 and 2022, both years represented a significant spike from 2020 when the companies spent around $2.6 million. In late 2020, the Trump administration attempted to ban TikTok's app from US app stores. TikTok's app has faced similar government-device bans at the state level.

☆ Snapchat's role in fentanyl crisis probed during House roundtable: 'It's a Snap-specific problem'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Lauren Feiner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

The roundtable featured the mother of a child who died after taking a drug containing fentanyl allegedly purchased over Snapchat, apparently believing it was a prescription painkiller. "Big Tech has many problems," said Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer who works on cases seeking to hold tech platforms accountable for often offline harms. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice are also investigating Snap's role in fentanyl sales. That's because it does not incentivize safety features, she said, and also prevents tech platforms from reaching the discovery stage in many cases, which could otherwise reveal internal information. But legislation weakening encryption for law enforcement investigations would also likely be at odds with the committee's other goal of increasing digital privacy protections.

☆ Fed up with facial recognition cameras monitoring your every move? Italian fashion may have the answer
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( Elliott Gotkine | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Facial recognition software immediately identifies the man as … a giraffe? While there, she read about how tenants in Brooklyn had fought back against their landlord’s plans to install a facial recognition entry system for their building. “This was the first time I heard about facial recognition,” she says. Whichever route they took, they had to test the images on a well-known object detection system called YOLO, one of the most commonly-used algorithms in facial recognition software. At the recent World Cup in Qatar, creative agency Virtue Worldwide came up with flag-themed face paint for fans seeking to fool the emirate’s legion of facial recognition cameras.

☆ Biden's plea to lawmakers in rare op-ed: Unite to hold tech accountable
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Lauren Feiner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

"We need bipartisan action from Congress to hold Big Tech accountable," Biden wrote. Biden's call for bipartisanship on tech issues is notable since the split Congress will complicate the landscape for passing legislation in any domain. The decision to focus the op-ed on tech suggests it may be a rare area of hope for progress while working across the aisle. Biden focused on three key areas of tech legislation he hopes to see this Congress. Finally, Biden called for "fairer rules of the road" when it comes to competition in the tech sector.

☆ Google, YouTube content providers must face U.S. children's privacy lawsuit
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Jonathan Stempel | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle said Congress did not intend to pre-empt state law-based privacy claims by adopting the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. In July 2021, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in San Francisco dismissed the lawsuit, saying the federal privacy law pre-empted the plaintiffs' claims under California, Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Tennessee law. The case was returned to Freeman to consider other grounds that Google and the content providers might have to dismiss it. Lawyers for Google and the content providers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Their lawsuit sought damages for YouTube users age 16 and younger from July 2013 to April 2020.

☆ Fortnite and Epic Games must give players $245 million in refunds — here's who qualifies
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( Nicolas Vega | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Epic Games, creator of the massively popular video game Fortnite, was hit with the Federal Trade Commission's biggest penalty ever for a rule break this week. "These tactics led to hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized charges for consumers," the FTC said. Fortnite allowed children to purchase its in-game currency "without requiring any parents or card holder action or consent." Parents complained that their kids "racked up hundreds of dollars in charges before they realized Epic had charged their credit card without their consent." Of the $520 million fine, $245 million will be set aside for customer refunds.

☆ Omnibus Bill Expands TikTok Ban on Government Smartphones
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( John D. Mckinnon | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

WASHINGTON—The omnibus spending bill unveiled by lawmakers Tuesday expands a ban on Chinese-owned TikTok on federal smartphones, but tough new measures targeting the tech industry didn’t make the cut. The tech industry lobbied heavily to head off measures to establish online privacy protections, impose legal liability on social-media companies for their content and toughen antitrust rules. The industry also spent more than $100 million since the beginning of 2021 on ads opposing the legislation, much of that targeted in congressional districts.

☆ Trump tax returns: House Ways and Means Committee considers potential release
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Dan Mangan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Drew Angerer | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesThe House Ways and Means Committee began meeting Tuesday to consider potentially publicly releasing years' worth of federal income tax returns filed by former President Donald Trump. A police escort delivered documents that were presumed to be Trump's tax returns shortly before the scheduled 3 p.m. hearing. Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the ranking Republican on Ways and Means, warned against the potential release of the returns. "Let me be clear, our concern is not whether the president should have made his tax returns public as has been tradition, nor about the accuracy of his tax returns," Brady told reporters. Documents arrive as the House Ways & Means Committee holds a hearing regarding tax returns from former President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2022.

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