Associated Press

The five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board in disarray just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. It will have only two remaining members as of Jan. 7 — and zero Democrats, even though it is required to operate as an independent, bipartisan agency.

The vacancies mean it will lack the minimum three members required to conduct business and can work only on ongoing projects. Trump would have to nominate new members who would have to be confirmed by the Senate. Jim Dempsey, a Democrat, will leave the board Jan. 3 because for months the Senate has not confirmed his re-nomination by President Barack Barack Obama. And former US Judge Patricia Wald, the only other Democrat, informed the White House this month that she intends to retire effective Jan. 7. The board also will lose its executive director, Sharon Bradford Franklin, who apparently plans to step down before Trump's presidency. One of the board's two remaining Republicans, Rachel Brand, whose term officially expires in January, could continue through March. If Trump were to move forward with any board nomination, she may continue through the end of the year. Should Brand leave, Republican Elisebeth Collins would become the last board member; her term ends in January 2020.

Clearer guidelines are needed for law enforcement's use of secretive and intrusive cellphone tracking technology, and police and federal agents should be upfront with a judge about their deployment, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said in a report.

The report examines the use of cell-site simulators by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. The technology works by mimicking a cellphone tower, allowing law enforcement to collect basic data — such as a unique subscriber number — from cellphones in a particular area or neighborhood. The data can help police determine the location of a targeted phone without the user even making a call or sending a text message. The surveillance devices have been broadly adopted by police departments and federal agencies, which see them as vital in helping track the location of criminal suspects. But the technology has raised Fourth Amendment concerns among privacy advocates for its ability to collect data not only about the targets of an investigation but also innocent bystanders who happen to be within range of the simulator device.

21st Century Fox and Sky PLC say they have agreed on a $14.6-billion takeover of the British broadcaster by the US-based media giant. The deal announced Dec 15 values Sky shares at $13.41 each. It is not expected to be complete before the end of 2017. Rupert Murdoch's Fox already owns just over 39% of Sky. An earlier attempt to acquire the rest was scuttled by the 2011 phone-hacking scandal that rocked his British newspapers. Taking control of Sky would give 21st Century Fox, which owns cable networks Fox News, FX and the Fox broadcast channel and a major Hollywood film studio, a distributor in Europe. Sky has 22 million customers in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy.

Gov Scott Walker (R-WI) is asking the state Legislature to pass a bill that allocates about $35 million to expand broadband and technology in rural areas. Gov Walker was in Seymour (WI) where a year ago he held the first of more than 70 listening sessions in the past year. The governor says a re-occurring theme at the sessions has been access to reliable broadband Internet.

The proposed legislation provides an additional $35.5 million for broadband expansion efforts and TEACH grants over the next three fiscal years. The TEACH program provides money to schools, libraries, and other educational institutions to upgrade technology and train teachers from small and rural school districts. The funding comes from a surplus in the Universal Service Fund, which was established in 1993 to address telecommunications needs.

Megyn Kelly says Donald Trump tried unsuccessfully to give her gifts, including a free stay at one of his hotels, as part of what she called his pattern of trying to influence news coverage of his presidential campaign.

In her memoir "Settle for More," Kelly says Trump may have gotten a pre-debate tip about her first question, in which she confronted him with his critical comments about women. Her book also details the insults and threats she received after Trump's tirades objecting to her reporting.

AT&T and Time Warner are playing up how their $85.4 billion merger will lead to innovative new experiences for customers. But analysts, public-interest groups and some politicians are far from convinced. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said it should be killed. Sen Tim Kaine (D-VA), the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said less concentration in media "is generally helpful." And the Republican chairman and Democratic ranking member of the Senate's antitrust subcommittee said that the deal would "potentially raise significant antitrust issues."

The potential harm to consumers from this deal could be subtle — far more so than if AT&T were simply acquiring a direct competitor like a big wireless or home broadband company. Time Warner makes TV shows and movies; AT&T gets that video to customers' computers, phones and TVs. But the concern is that anything AT&T might do to make its broadband service stand out by tying it to Time Warner's programs and films could hurt consumers overall. The company certainly wants to do that. "With great content we believe you can build a truly differentiated service," said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. "In particular, mobile." There's another way AT&T could favor its own media offerings. The company currently lets many of its wireless customers stream from the DirecTV app on their phones without counting it against their data caps, a practice known as "zero rating." AT&T has suggested it may also zero-rate its upcoming live-streaming DirecTV Now service, which doesn't require customers to install a dish on their homes.

The company responsible for spreading top-of-the-line message encryption across the Internet has had a first legal skirmish with the US government. Open Whisper Systems — whose Signal app pioneered the end-to-end encryption technique now used by many messaging services — was subpoenaed for information about one of its users earlier in 2016. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the company, said the small San Francisco firm didn't produce the user's name, address, call logs or other details requested by the government. “That's not because Signal chose not to provide logs of information,” ACLU lawyer Brett Kaufman said in a telephone interview. “It's just that it couldn't.”

Created by anarchist yachtsman Moxie Marlinspike and a crew of surf-happy developers, Signal has evolved from a niche app used by dissidents and protest leaders into the foundation stone for the encryption of huge tranches of the world's communications data. When any of WhatsApp's billion-plus users sees a discreet lock icon with the words, “Messages you send to this chat and calls are now secured with end-to-end encryption,” they have Signal to thank. Facebook's recently launched private chat feature, Secret Conversations, uses Signal's technology; so does the incognito mode on Google's messenger service Allo.

New York's attorney general says he has reached settlements with Mattel, Viacom, Hasbro and Jumpstart Games stopping them from using tracking technology on their popular children's websites. The settlements require El Segundo-based Mattel, Viacom and Jumpstart to pay penalties totaling $835,000 following a two-year investigation into violations of the 1998 federal law that prohibits unauthorized collection of children's personal information on websites directed at users under 13.

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says all allowed tracking technology such as cookies on their websites in violation of the law. Such technology can be used by marketers and advertisers. Hasbro says it cooperated with investigators, will closely monitor companies working on its behalf and that it is rolling out a stricter online privacy protection policy. The other companies didn't immediately reply to requests for comment.

The expanding world of TV series is creating more opportunities for female and minority directors, but they remain a fraction of those hired, a Hollywood guild report said. Women directed 17 percent and minorities 19 percent of the more than 4,000 episodes produced last season for broadcast, cable and high-budget streaming series, the Directors Guild of America said in its annual survey.

For both groups, that represents a 1 percent increase over the year before. "These numbers shine a light on the lack of real progress by employers in this industry, plain and simple. Of particular concern is the precedent being set by the fastest-growing category, streaming video," said Paris Barclay, the guild's president. The number of episodes from streaming services including Netflix, Amazon and Hulu increased by 120 percent last year, but just 8 percent of episodes were directed by minorities, the study found. Women directed 17 percent.

Despite widespread attention over diversity in the movie business, a new study finds that little is changing in Hollywood for women, minorities, LGBT people and others who continue to find themselves on the outside of an industry where researchers say inequality is “the norm.” A report by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism offers a stark portrait of Hollywood's feeble to nonexistent progress in eradicating what researchers call “pervasive and systematic” problems in inclusiveness in front of and behind the camera.

For example, 31.4% of speaking characters in the analyzed films were female in 2015 — roughly the same number as in 2007. That's a ratio of 2.2 men for every single woman. Characters identified as lesbian, gay or transgender accounted for less than 1% of all speaking parts, or 32 out of 4,370 characters studied. That was a slight increase from 19 portrayals in 2014. After finding zero transgender characters in 2014, researchers could pinpoint one in 2015. From 2007 to 2015, the study finds no significant change in the percentage of black (12.2%), Latino (5.3%) or Asian (3.9%) characters in the most popular films. Off screen, of the 107 directors of 2015 films, four were black or African American and six were Asian or Asian American. Just eight were women, still the most since 2008.