Spencer Hsu

The Trump administration is withholding $20 million in funding approved by Congress for a US Internet freedom organization, forcing the cutoff of tools used by tens of millions of people worldwide to access the Internet and uncensored news through the Voice of America, officials said. Laura Cunningham, the head of the Washington-based Open Technology Fund, said that it is being forced to halt 49 of the fund’s 60 Internet freedom projects.

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued a rare emergency injunction July 21, blocking staffing changes that the Trump Administration’s new head of the Voice of America made to a US organization that protects digital speech worldwide. In a bluntly worded two-page order, the panel warned that actions taken by Michael Pack, a conservative filmmaker and associate of former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, could endanger activists under repressive governments who rely on the Open Technology Fund to combat Internet censorship and surveillance.

Federal prosecutors concluded an 18-month investigation into a former congressional technology staffer on July 3 by publicly debunking allegations — promoted by conservative media and President Donald Trump — suggesting he was a Pakistani operative who stole government secrets with cover from House Democrats. As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Imran Awan pleaded guilty to a relatively minor offense unrelated to his work on Capitol Hill: making a false statement on a bank loan application. U.S. prosecutors said they would not recommend jail time.

Federal prosecutors said they are not seeking to subpoena reporters or Senate aides in the prosecution of James A. Wolfe, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer charged with lying to the FBI about his contacts with journalists. Attorneys for Wolfe, meanwhile, are asking a federal judge for a gag order including on President Donald Trump to forbid government officials from making remarks they contend could harm Wolfe’s case.

A federal judge ordered Paul Manafort to jail over charges he tampered with witnesses while out on bail — a major blow for President Trump’s former campaign chairman as he awaits trial on federal conspiracy and money-laundering charges.  “You have abused the trust placed in you six months ago,” US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told Manafort.

Can a federal court decide whether the White House is breaking presidential record-keeping laws, such as by using encrypted apps that automatically erase messages once they’re read or issuing executive orders to avoid creating a paper trail accessible to the public? Government attorneys told a federal judge in Washington that the answer is a sweeping “no,” in a case that could help determine whether open-government laws are keeping pace with frontiers in communications technology.

Secret law enforcement requests to conduct electronic surveillance in domestic criminal cases have surged in federal courts for Northern Virginia and the District, but only one in a thousand of the applications ever becomes public, newly released data show. The bare-bones release by the courts leaves unanswered how long, in what ways and for what crimes federal investigators tracked individuals’ data and whether long-running investigations result in charges. Yet the listings of how often law enforcement applied to judges to conduct covert electronic surveillance — a list that itself is usually sealed — underscore the exponential growth in the use of a 1986 law to collect data about users’ telephone, email and other Internet communications.