Washington Post

Justice Department plans to alert public to foreign operations targeting US democracy

The Justice Department plans to alert the public to foreign operations targeting US democracy under a new policy designed to counter hacking and disinformation campaigns such as the one Russia undertook in 2016 to disrupt the presidential election. The government will inform American companies, private organizations and individuals that they are being covertly attacked by foreign actors attempting to affect elections or the political process. “Exposing schemes to the public is an important way to neutralize them,” said Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

What the Justice Department will argue to get its AT&T appeal

The Justice Department’s renewed effort to thwart AT&T’s merger with Time Warner rests on claims that a federal judge misunderstood “fundamental principles of economics,” according to court documents. Asking a federal appeals court to swiftly consider their case against the telecom giant, government lawyers said Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia erred by rejecting “basic bargaining economics” when he ruled to allow the $85 billion deal in June.

President Trump says ‘I told you so!’ after Europe fines Google $5 billion

President Donald Trump attacked the European Union for fining Google $5 billion for harming its competitors, tweeting that the incident proved the regional bloc has “taken advantage of the U.S., but not for long!” To President Trump, the fine appeared to serve as the latest evidence of Europe’s exploitation of the United States on a variety of matters, including trade and nations’ contributions to defense spending, and it came a day after he threatened “tremendous retribution,” particularly on European-made cars, if the EU doesn’t change its trade policies. The EU’s penalty stood in stark c

President Trump says news media wants to see a confrontation with Russia, even war

President Donald Trump lashed out anew at the news media, suggesting that reporters are slanting their coverage of his relationship with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin with the aim of provoking a possible war. “The Fake News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war,” the president wrote amid a series of morning tweets.

Anti-censorship tool opens new rift between lawmakers and tech companies

Lawmakers are turning up the pressure on Google and Amazon to reconsider their ban on a powerful anti-censorship technique used by millions of people worldwide to bypass restrictions on Internet access.

House Judiciary Committee Examines Social Media Content Filtering Practices

Facebook, Google and Twitter on Tuesday sought to defend themselves against accusations from Republican lawmakers who say the tech giants censor conservative news and views during a congressional hearing that devolved into a political sniping match. 

NSA and Cyber Command to coordinate actions to counter Russian election interference in 2018 amid absence of White House guidance

National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone -- the head of the nation’s largest electronic spy agency and the military’s cyberwarfare arm -- has quietly directed the two organizations to coordinate actions to counter potential Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections. The move is an attempt to maximize the efforts of the two groups and comes as President Donald Trump said Russian President Vladi­mir Putin was “extremely strong and powerful” in denying Russian involvement in the presidential election two years ago.

President Trump blasted reporting from Puerto Rico as ‘fake news.’ Heeding it might have saved lives.

[Commentary] When Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico last fall, President Donald Trump playfully lobbed rolls of paper towels to those taking shelter. What if the reporting on the ground had been taken seriously — as something to be heeded, and reacted to, instead of summarily dismissed? What if the president had pushed for help from wherever it could be found, including from outside the overstressed federal agency? 

Justice Department to appeal its loss in the AT&T-Time Warner trial

The Justice Department filed an appeal challenging its loss in the AT&T-Time Warner antitrust trial. AT&T completed its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner a few weeks ago after a federal judge rejected the Justice Department’s argument that the deal would be anti-competitive. “My guess is that the government is going to try to show that a lot of important evidence was rejected by the judge, and the judge put too much weight on the testimony of the merging parties," said Gene Kimmelman, a former Justice Department antitrust official who now leads Public Knowledge. 

Robocalls are getting worse. And some big businesses soon could start calling you even more.

Robocalls ravaged Americans’ smartphones in record numbers in June. But some of the nation’s top businesses – from credit card companies and student lenders to retailers and car dealers – are still urging the Trump administration to make it easier for them to dial and text mobile devices en masse. For many smartphone owners, there’s rarely a day that they don’t receive an unanticipated call from an unrecognized number, some sporting an area code that’s suspiciously similar to their own. In June, robocalls rang an estimated 4 billion times.

In America’s tech capital, tens of thousands go without home Internet. Here’s how San Francisco wants to fix it.

Despite being awash in tech start-ups and the latest innovations, San Francisco has a surprising lack of connectivity. As many as 1 in 8 people  — more than 100,000 residents — don’t subscribe to home Internet, city officials say. To close that digital divide, the local government has come up with an entrepreneurial solution: Build a high-speed network of its own that could compete with the likes of AT&T and Comcast. If the estimated $1.9 billion proposal is approved, San Francisco would become the biggest U.S.