Lauren Frayer

The Federal Communications Commission is alerting consumers to be on the lookout for scam callers seeking to get victims to say the word “yes” during a call and later use a recording of the response to authorize unwanted charges on the victim's utility or credit card account.

"I'm surprised the tech industry isn't speaking out more forcefully," said Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator. "My guess," he said, "is there are bigger problems people are focused on right now." The industry has entered legal fights against President Trump over immigration and transgender rights. At the same time, it's trying to build bridges with the new administration on key business issues like tax reform and regulations.

Demand Progress is asking for contributions for a "grassroots" push to fight Republicans' effort to repeal the Federal Communications Commission's broadband privacy rules.

The Senate voted recently along party lines (50 to 48 (with two senators not voting) to invalidate the October order, which Internet service providers, advertisers and some others want either Congress or the FCC to roll back. The House is expected to vote on the bill March 28. In an e-mail solicitation on March 26, Demand Progress made it all about Comcast--a frequent Big Media target. "Will you chip in $5 to help stop Comcast from selling my personal financial information and browsing history?," it asked, pointing out that the bill would now be taken up in the House, "unless we can kill this awful idea."

[Commentary] The United States again confronts the grim challenge of managing technological advances and their implications for warfare (as it has several times since, from chemical weapons to missiles to drones). Today, cyberweapons are nearly as synonymous with military power as fighter jets. What’s more, as demonstrated by the recent New York Times report on the cyberattacks used to disrupt North Korean ballistic missile tests and the latest WikiLeaks claims about a CIA hacking unit, cyber capabilities are too tempting for governments to refrain from using — even in peacetime.

Persuading the world’s militaries and intelligence agencies to stop building ever more powerful cyber arsenals appears as impossible as convincing them to renounce the use of attack aircraft. Nevertheless, the United States must find a way to reduce the threat from hostile state actions in cyberspace, or else risk cyber hostilities escalating into full-blown war. Doing so will require changes to US cyber diplomacy, the bolstering of cyber defenses, and the establishment of credible cyber deterrence.

[Greg Allen is a George Leadership fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. ]

President Donald Trump’s unveiling of his budget blueprint — and the ensuing analysis and criticism — was probably the first many urban readers had heard of the Appalachian Regional Commission, one of the initiatives he proposes cutting completely. But The Daily Yonder has been reporting on these issues for a long time.

The urban-rural divide has been one of the biggest points of discussion following the election, in which rural voters overwhelmingly chose Donald Trump. And while large news organizations have pledged to pay more attention to that division — at the beginning of the year, The Washington Post assigned a reporter to the divide specifically — the Yonder focuses on the people who have a connection to rural communities because they live in them, used to live in them, or work in them, by reporting on specific issues in depth.

The major entertainment companies are putting a lot of money into luring cord cutters — millennials and others who want to ditch their cable companies — to new subscription streaming services that allow viewers to watch their favorite TV shows and movies directly over the Internet. The same industry that once blamed the Internet for stealing content now wants to use it to sell directly to consumers. It’s too bad that the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission is pursuing policies that could seriously harm these innovative efforts, just as the streaming business is getting going. And it’s really too bad that some in the media industry aren’t taking the threats seriously enough. The assault will come in the form of telecommunications regulation. Trump’s newly appointed FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, has made it clear he wants to eliminate rules that establish net neutrality. In the past, technology companies and public interest groups pushed hard for net neutrality. Now it’s time for reinforcements.

[Brodsky is a consultant in Washington. He covered the FCC as a journalist, and is the former head of communications for Public Knowledge.]

Now that Republicans are in charge, the federal government is poised to roll back regulations limiting access to consumers’ online data. States have other ideas. As on climate change, immigration and a host of other issues, some state legislatures may prove to be a counterweight to Washington by enacting new regulations to increase consumers’ privacy rights.

Illinois legislators are considering a “right to know” bill that would let consumers find out what information about them is collected by companies like Google and Facebook, and what kinds of businesses they share it with. Such a right, which European consumers already have, has been a longtime goal of privacy advocates.

Conservative media outlets have suffered through a tumultuous few weeks punctuated by infighting and public controversy, underscoring the difficulty some are having adjusting to the new levels of attention and scrutiny that comes with their elevated status in the age of President Trump.

The transition from the edges of the media to its center can be difficult. Conservative media’s mainstream peers have greeted them with suspicion and hostility, often eager to highlight the newcomers’ stumbles or question their legitimacy. In interviews with nearly a dozen key figures in conservative media, right-leaning reporters and editors spoke about their relative youth and inexperience and the need to professionalize and move on from the sensationalism that initially helped them attract readers. They see their challenge as one that mirrors what the Republican Party as a whole is experiencing, as it makes the transition from being the opposition party to the party in power.

Leaked information — its uses and abuses — lies at the heart of the current episode of Retro Report, a series of essays and video documentaries that study major news stories of the past and how they influence events today. Presidents themselves have long encouraged seepage when it suits their purposes, as the New York Times columnist James Reston observed decades ago. “The ship of state,” he said, “is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.” It is when unauthorized disclosures put them on the spot that leaders start wailing.

On March 23, a coalition of digital rights advocates, racial justice groups and grassroots activists called on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to make a more genuine effort to provide affordable internet access for low-income communities. In comments filed as part of an agency proceeding on its Lifeline program, members of Voices for Internet Freedom called on the FCC to reverse a February order revoking the Lifeline status of nine internet-access providers, and to fully implement the Lifeline Modernization Order passed in 2016. The Voices filing notes that the FCC’s revocation “erodes Lifeline's promise to bring affordable broadband to low-income consumers.”

Voices is urging the Commission to avoid any future effort to undermine Lifeline reforms put in place by former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, former Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. Free Press has received more than 13,000 comments from people across the country protesting Pai’s attacks on Lifeline and supporting the expansion of the program to broadband. Another 18,000 public comments were filed by Demand Progress, a digital rights group urging the FCC to support Lifeline and close the digital divide for those who need access most.