Government & Communications

When Amazon confirmed it was planning to launch 3,236 broadband internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit, much of the media reported it as if it were a done deal—the latest, inevitable step in the corporation’s quest to conquer commerce, the cloud, and beyond. Amazon officials said the massive satellite constellation, called Project Kuiper, would one day provide low-latency, high-speed broadband to tens of millions of underserved people around the world, no doubt also connecting them to the wide world of Amazon offerings.

Facebook will remove posts, photos and other content that mislead people about the US Census starting in 2020, aiming to prevent malicious actors from interfering in a critical, once-in-a-decade process that determines political representation. The new policies come as civil-rights leaders urge Facebook to act more aggressively against content that targets vulnerable communities, including people of color and immigrants, who may be most influenced by social-media misinformation about voting.

How will 2020 – the first online census – offer new challenges? Historically, the census has always been completed using paper forms. But in 2020, the census will be conducted primarily online for the first time. While there will still be options to respond with a paper form or via phone, most homes will receive an invitation to complete the census online.

The general openness of the Internet has generated tremendous economic and social value, giving users the freedom to connect, speak, innovate, and share content without restrictions. Unfortunately, many countries have in recent years enacted policies that undermine this openness. At the same time the Internet has never been fully open. Governments have long blocked illicit and dangerous material such as terrorist propaganda, pirated content, and malware. Too little openness limits the economic and social value of the Internet. Too much openness allows harmful activity.

The Metropolitan Information Exchange (MIX) is a close-knit association of CIOs from U.S. cities and counties with populations over 100,000. Gathering annually for over 51 years, members focus on sharing insights and cases from their own communities in order to build their collective knowledge and capabilities as leaders.

Phone logs subpoenaed from Verizon and AT&T put a spotlight on the powerful tools at lawmakers' disposal as they seek to investigate President Donald Trump in the impeachment inquiry. The records were some of the strongest circumstantial evidence included in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment report, revealing extensive contact between President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and the Trump administration during critical points of the Ukraine saga.

Chairman Ajit Pai and the rest of the Federal Communications Commission took hits from both sides of the aisle in a House Communications Subcommittee oversight hearing Dec 5. Democratic Reps were particularly pointed in their criticisms of the FCC over broadband mapping, internet deregulation, merger approvals, and the funding cap on the Universal Service Fund, among other issues.

Free-speech advocates are challenging the Trump Administration’s policy of requiring foreigners to list their social media accounts as part of their visa applications, alleging in a lawsuit filed Dec 5 that the policy violates federal law and runs afoul of the Constitution.

In 2016, the US Census Bureau faced a pivotal choice in its plan to digitize the nation’s once-a-decade population count: build a system for collecting and processing data in-house, or buy one from an outside contractor. The bureau chose Pegasystems Inc, reasoning that outsourcing would be cheaper and more effective. Three years later, the project faces serious reliability and security problems. And its projected cost has doubled to $167 million — about $40 million more than the bureau’s 2016 cost projection for building the site in-house.

A Q&A with New York Times tech policy reporter David McCabe. 

When asked, "How is Silicon Valley having an impact on Washington (DC)?", McCabe said, "Washington has become intertwined with the Valley in lots of different ways. Every major tech company has ramped up its presence here. Small armies of lobbyists work Capitol Hill and a vast swath of the administration to fight attempts to regulate the industry or to shape the rules when they become inevitable."