Cat Zakrzewski

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) – led by Chairman L. Cedric Richmond (D-LA), and Congressional Black Caucus Diversity Task Force Co-Chairs, Reps Barbara Lee (D-CA) and GK Butterfield (D-NC) – issued the following joint statement in response to a new report prepared for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which reveals Russia targeted African American voters in attempts to suppress the vote in the 2016 election:

A broad coalition of more than 200 retailers, banks and technology companies is releasing new recommendations for national privacy legislation in a clear push to get out in front of lawmakers promising to rein in their data collection practices in the next Congress. The Business Roundtable’s consumer privacy legislation framework calls on the United States to adopt a national privacy law that calls on companies to give consumers more control of their data and form a national standard for breach notification. Recommendations to lawmakers include: 

A New Hampshire judge’s attempt to compel Amazon to share recordings from an Echo device at the scene of an alleged double murder is putting a fine point on law enforcement’s growing demand for data from Internet of Things devices. Prosecutors are seeking two days of recordings from the smart speaker in a Farmington (NH) home where two women were found dead in Jan 2017.

There’s even more phony or misleading political news circulating on social media than there was in 2016, according to a new University of Oxford report that casts doubt on tech companies’ attempts to crack down on disinformation ahead of the midterms. The report also found that social media users were more apt to share “junk news” than what researchers considered “professional content,” which includes news from established media outlets and information from the government, academics or political candidates.

President Donald Trump’s reported refusal to give up his personal iPhone demonstrates the complications of keeping government officials secure at a time when they are increasingly tied to their phones by the time they take office.

Executives from major technology companies including Apple and Google expressed broad support for a national consumer privacy law in a hearing Sept 26, but offered few concrete specifics for how such a law might be best crafted. Lawmakers are no longer questioning whether technology companies should be regulated -- the conversation on Capitol Hill has shifted to how they can design a consumer privacy law that would span a broad swath of US tech and telecommunications companies with divergent data-collection practices.

A leaked video of Google executives trying to console employees who were upset after the election of President Trump has infuriated conservatives, who say the remarks illustrate the search giant's political bias and should prompt regulators to take a close look at the company.