Lauren Frayer

Following a presidential campaign season characterized by regular conflicts between Donald Trump and the news media and the continuation of these tensions since President Trump took office, nearly all Americans have taken notice, and large majorities feel these tensions are causing problems. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, 94% of Americans say they have heard about the current state of the relationship between the Trump administration and the news media. And what they’ve seen does not reassure them: Large majorities feel the relationship is unhealthy and that the ongoing tensions are impeding Americans’ access to important political news. Moreover, both of these concerns are widely shared across nearly all demographic groups, including large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans.

About eight-in-ten Americans (83%) say current tensions have made the relationship between the administration and the news media unhealthy; just 15% say it is healthy despite current tensions. Americans also think these tensions are impacting them directly. About three-in-four U.S. adults (73%) say that these tensions are getting in the way of access to important national political news and information.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation that would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before searching the digital devices of Americans trying to reenter the United States. The practice of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents asking for passwords to search the digital devices of Americans seeking entry into the United States has attracted significant media attention and raised concerns among privacy advocates in recent months. Sens Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced legislation that cites the 2004 Supreme Court case Riley v. California, in which the court ruled that law enforcement needed a warrant to search an electronic device in the case of an individual’s arrest.

The bill, a version of which Reps Jared Polis (D-CO) and Blake Farenthold (R-TX) introduced in the House, states that the principles of the Supreme Court decision extend to searches of Americans’ digital devices at the border. The legislation, called the Protecting Data at the Border Act, also states that Americans must be made aware of their rights before they agree to give up passwords, social media account names or other digital account information or to hand over their devices to law enforcement.

The Federal Trade Commission and Amazon have agreed to end appeals related to 2016’s court findings that the company billed consumers for unauthorized in-app charges incurred by children, paving the way for affected consumers to seek refunds from the online retailer shortly. A federal district court found in April 2016 that Amazon billed consumers for unauthorized in-app charges incurred by children using mobile apps such as online games downloaded through the company’s app store. The court found that Amazon failed to get parents’ consent for in-app charges made by their children. In that same ruling, the court also denied the FTC’s request for an injunction that would have forbidden Amazon from similar conduct in the future.

The FTC appealed the denial of the injunction, and Amazon then cross-appealed the court’s ruling that the company had violated the law. The district court stayed its order requiring Amazon to begin offering refunds to injured consumers while the appeals were pending. The decision by the FTC and Amazon to end their litigation will allow the refund process to begin shortly. More than $70 million in in-app charges made between November 2011 and May 2016 may be eligible for refunds. Details on the refund program, which Amazon will operate, will be announced shortly.

President Donald Trump signed a congressional resolution to complete the overturning of internet privacy protections created by the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama Administration. The change will allow broadband internet service suppliers, such as cable and telecommunications companies, to track and sell a customer’s online information with greater ease.

The bill uses a little-known tool called the Congressional Review Act (CRA) that allows Congress and the president to overturn recently passed agency regulations. A successful CRA bill also prevents the agency from implementing similar rules in the future.

President Donald Trump and Congress have appropriately invalidated one part of the Obama-era plan for regulating the Internet. Those flawed privacy rules, which never went into effect, were designed to benefit one group of favored companies, not online consumers. American consumers’ privacy deserves to be protected regardless of who handles their personal information.

In order to deliver that consistent and comprehensive protection, the Federal Communications Commission will be working with the Federal Trade Commission to restore the FTC’s authority to police Internet service providers’ privacy practices. We need to put America’s most experienced and expert privacy cop back on the beat. And we need to end the uncertainty and confusion that was created in 2015 when the FCC intruded in this space.

I applaud President Trump and Congress for utilizing the Congressional Review Act to undo the Federal Communications Commission’s detrimental privacy rules. The parade of horribles trotted out to scare the American people about its passage are completely fictitious, especially since parts of the rules never even went into effect. Hopefully, we will soon return to a universe where thoughtful privacy protections are not overrun by shameful FCC power grabs and blatant misrepresentations.

The nullification of the Federal Communications Commission's broadband privacy rules at the stroke of the President Donald Trump's pen drew a big audience in Washington, most of them either to weigh in on one side or the other of the contentious issue.

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) said, “Once again, the American people lose out at the hands of President Trump and the Republican Congress. The Republicans thought they could jam through this harmful law without anyone noticing. But despite their effort to hide this latest corporate giveaway, Americans of all political stripes spoke out loud and clear to say that they wanted to keep their personal information private and secure. Despite this setback, the fight is not over, and I will work to restore privacy protections for the American people.”

President Donald Trump and the broader Republican Party are moving forward on an agenda of business deregulation with a lack of concern for public opinion that, depending on how you look at it, could be seen as reckless, courageous, or horrifying. The latest and clearest example is the bill rolling back Obama-era efforts by the Federal Communications Commission to prevent cable and telecom companies from secretly selling users’ data. This was, obviously, not a major Trump campaign pledge or a headline feature of any GOP House or Senate candidate’s campaign. And a March 31 YouGov poll shows the public overwhelmingly wanted Trump to veto the bill — 80 percent of Democrats favored a veto, but so did 69 percent of independents and 75 percent of Republicans.

The Trump Administration’s decision to allow internet service providers (ISPs) to sign away their customers’ privacy and sell the browsing habits of their customers is “disgusting” and “appalling”, according to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web. Speaking in an interview, as he was declared recipient of the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery’s AM Turing award, Berners-Lee expressed mounting concerns about the direction of the internet he did so much to promote.

Berners-Lee expressed particular concern for the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to scrap an Obama-era rule that would have prevented ISPs from harvesting their customers web logs. “That bill was a disgusting bill, because when we use the web, we are so vulnerable,” he said. Berners-Lee also discussed Republican politicians’ plans to roll back the so-called net neutrality protections that are the backbone of an open internet, how his own legacy intersects with the great Alan Turing’s, and the astonishing progress of the web since he launched the very first website on 1 August 1991.

An interview with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.

Asked, "What's your reaction to last week's vote? Is it consistent with your vision for the Web?" Berners-Lee said, "We do things on the Web that are very intimate, like look up cancers we're worried other people might have or that we're having. We have intimate conversations with people in a way that we would have only in the very close quarters of a security-locked room. Just by the things that we do on the Web — we betray completely the most intimate details of our lives and hopes and fears and weaknesses that can be exploited. Maybe the ISPs don't go in this direction; maybe they realize it would be inappropriate. If they do [go in that direction] I think there'll be a massive outcry." When asked, "Google and Facebook already collect and share our data for advertising purposes. Are Internet providers that different?" Berners-Lee replied, "Absolutely those industries are completely different. The business of supplying bits is a really important business. It's like water; it's a lower part of the infrastructure on which everything else depends. The fact that [your provider] doesn't have an attitude about what you use it for is why it's been successful. It's why the Internet has taken over the world. A social network is different — it's not got much to do with moving bits from place to place. You have a choice, and even if you're a member of one of these social networks, you don't have to do everything there."