Fast Company

With every change in power, especially in the social media era, questions are raised about the new US president’s commitment to privacy rights. Here are some of the biggest things to look out for:
1) The Federal Communications Commission Makes it Easier for ISPs to Share Your Data
2) Citizens and Non-Citizens: Since Donald Trump entered office, the news media has regularly reported on phones and social media being searched at the airport. Although this also took place during the Obama era, anecdotal reports suggest that immigration officers are now requesting these searches of more travelers, and of both citizens and non-citizens.

As the CEO of Connecting for Good, a nonprofit in Kansas City, Esselman helps several thousand households at low-income housing projects in the city get free access to the internet. His group has provided such services since 2012, in addition to conducting computer training sessions for poor and working-class Kansas City residents. Now it wants to expand its reach, having recently applied for a federal program called Lifeline, which provides a monthly subsidy of $9.25 to low-income Americans to allow them to get online. But the Trump administration just made it harder for the new program, which launched in December, to have an impact.

Ajit Pai, the newly appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has announced a review of the program and blocked most of the already-vetted companies from participating in Lifeline, which could make it difficult for tens of thousands of low-income Americans to get online. The move shocked broadband access proponents in both parties, who have long argued that helping low-income and rural Americans get internet access is essential to educating young people and training the workforce of the future.

President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t commented publicly on the issue of network neutrality since his election, nor has he indicated who he’d nominate to fill Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s position or another open commissioner’s seat at the FCC. But some of his top tech advisers have backed calls to reduce the telecommunication regulator’s clout.

"In terms of net neutrality, I think their intention is to deregulate the cable and telephone industry completely," says Ernesto Omar Falcon, legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "I think that’s their intention right off the get-go, and I think that’s a fight that we’ll have to engage in pretty quickly." Traditionally, the FCC doesn’t issue major new policies in the absence of a permanent chair, as will be the case after Chairman Wheeler’s departure, but it’s unclear whether the regulator will maintain that tradition under Trump, Falcon says. But any push to revoke the existing Open Internet Order would require a period of public comment and could potentially spur Congressional hearings as well, he says. And while Republicans and telecom groups have publicly denounced the FCC rules, business groups are also averse to regulatory uncertainty and shifting legal frameworks, says Harold Feld, senior vice president at the pro-neutrality group Public Knowledge.

In recent years, people have become more aware of a type of cyberattack called "denial-of-service," in which websites are flooded with traffic—often generated by many computers hijacked by a hacker and acting in concert with each other. This happens all the time, and has affected traffic to financial institutions, entertainment companies, government agencies and even key internet routing services. A similar attack is possible on 911 call centers. In October, what appears to be the first such attack launched from a smartphone happened in Arizona. An 18-year-old hacker was arrested on charges that he conducted a telephone denial-of-service attack on a local 911 service. If we are to prevent this from happening in more places, we need to understand how 911 systems work, and where the weaknesses lie, both in technology and policy.

Over the last eight years, President Barack Obama has upended the way the executive branch of government interacts with technology. When President-elect Donald Trump moves into the White House in January, he'll find the place buzzing with tech talent. As part of his legacy, President Obama will be leaving President-elect Trump with an in-house startup called the United States Digital Service that pairs the nation's top tech talent with public servants, and a consulting firm called 18F that government agencies can hire to build websites, manage data, or do user research.

But, it took a lot of effort to bring the government to this level of ease with technology. All of President Obama's hard work is now President-elect Trump's to preserve and push forward—or squander.

For Silicon Valley and the tech sector, the ground has dramatically shifted in the last seven days. In the months leading up to the election, the sector overwhelmingly contributed more money to Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. There were persistent rumors that some of the Valley’s brightest minds, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, were being considered for top positions in a Clinton Administration. And Clinton’s tech platform read so much like the industry’s wish list that some joked that it was a love letter to the Valley.

To find out what else Silicon Valley and the tech sector want from the new administration, we asked dozens of executives and entrepreneurs for their wish lists. Most of them included comprehensive immigration reform, STEM education, smarter regulations, and incentives to increase technology development and to spur innovation.

[Commentary] For smart cities and smart cars to succeed, a legal framework needs to exist to undergird the technology. Officials will have to understand how the new technology will impact every corner of their state. States will have to create new rules of the road for autonomous and self-driving vehicles on all streets and highways. And federal officials at all government agencies will deal with unprecedented levels of tech integration in their areas of governance. They will need to understand next-generation technology and its ramifications as they’re asked to regulate a world where technology must be applied equally and fairly within their purview.

Unless our elected officials become more tech-savvy, they will only slow down the role technology will play in their cities, states, and the broader US. We will need our legislators at all levels to grasp how technology will impact their constituents so that they can make laws that work for everyone.

[Bajarin is President at Creative Strategies, Inc]

Clinton generally favors continuing Obama's cyber policies, while Trump calls for more cyber warfare and surveillance.

Verizon is acquiring Yahoo for $4.83 billion in cash—and along with it, Tumblr, the Internet’s quirky link sharing network with 65 million users. To any fan of the service, the reaction may be something along the lines of, "What will happen to Tumblr? Will Verizon ruin it? Or worse, will it shutter it?" In reality, Tumblr may barely be on Verizon’s radar right now. Meanwhile, even though Yahoo stayed true to its promise to leave Tumblr alone after acquiring it for $1 billion in 2013, some Tumblr editors think the company should have done more to push the envelope and keep the service relevant.

Maybe the real hope for Tumblr under Verizon is that the network isn’t forgotten or left alone, but positioned as a relatively untapped source of revenue for Verizon—something that could contribute billions of dollars for Verizon each year rather than fall short of projections. Leveraging the full weight of AOL’s properties, Tumblr could become the social glue holding all of these services together. Verizon’s Facebook, if you will. And with more investment—maybe in the mixed-media experimentation we see Instagram, Snapchat, and countless other platforms embracing—Tumblr could become an irresistible app again, distributed across Verizon’s monstrous network of Internet, TV, and smartphones. If Verizon revamps the UX and sells the right ads, Tumblr could still become a juggernaut in its own right.

[Commentary] I decided to hold my daughter’s hand as we waded into the Internet as it is. I explained to Bug that the Internet was like the outside world: There’s fun stuff there and there’s awful things kids shouldn’t see, so you can’t go without an adult.

When you’re out there, you don’t tell anyone your name. If they need a name to refer to you by, use a code name, so no one can trace it back to you. We demonstrated two important lessons: 1) Google is always trying to take your money, and 2) How to close pop-up ads.