Hill, The

The House Intelligence Committee has taken the first public step in its investigation into intelligence community leaks involving aides to President Donald Trump, pressing three agencies to provide information on spying involving 2016 campaign associates. Committee heads Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) revealed that they are pressing the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) on aides who may have been spied on through a loophole in US surveillance law and were then subsequently “unmasked” and exposed to the media. The demand formalizes Chairman Nunes’s promise to investigate media leaks of sensitive information, and his recently expressed concern over backdoor surveillance of US persons. Chairman Nunes pointed to former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign in Feb after leaked surveillance of his phone calls to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak revealed that he had misled Vice President Pence about a discussion of U.S. sanctions.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said that his panel has not received any evidence that President Donald Trump was wiretapped during the election campaign. "As I told you last week about the issue with the president talking about tapping Trump Tower, that evidence still remains the same, that we don't have any evidence that that took place," Chairman Nunes said. "In fact, I don't believe just in the last week of time, the people we've talked to, I don't think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower." It is not the first time Chairman Nunes has stated that there is no evidence to suggest Trump was wiretapped.

Numerous high-profile Twitter accounts were hacked March 15 to display Nazi swastikas and messages supporting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Some of the more prominent accounts that were hacked included BBC North America, Reuters Japan, Forbes Magazine and Justin Bieber Japan. Many of the compromised account holders have regained control of their profiles according to tweets sent out after the hacks. The tweets from compromised accounts bear the hashtags #NaziHollanda or #Nazialmanya.

President Donald Trump slammed NBC News early March 15 for releasing two pages of his 2005 tax forms, questioning a reporter's version of how he obtained the documents. "Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, 'went to his mailbox' and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!" the President tweeted.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow spent 20 minutes March 14 teasing what questions President Trump’s tax returns could answer, including potential ties to Russian banks and to corrupt Azerbaijani businessmen. David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, said on MSNBC that he received the tax forms in his mailbox. Johnston on March 15 fired back at Trump's tweet. "Gee, Donald, your White House confirmed my story. POTUS fake Tweet. Sad!" Johnston tweeted.

A group of Democratic Reps is turning to legislation to call out President Donald Trump and his White House for their history of false statements and disregarding the truth. Rep Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) introduced a resolution that calls for “opposing fake news and alternative facts.” Reps Ted Lieu (D-CA) and John Lewis (D-GA) signed on as co-sponsors. If adopted, the resolution would put the House on record as stating, “the United States should continue being a democracy, not an autocracy.” The measure establishes the sense of the House that “the president must immediately acknowledge his support of the First Amendment and express his support for United States democracy” and “White House spokespersons should not issue fake news.” “White House spokespersons who offer alternative or inaccurate facts should retract their statements immediately,” it adds.

[Commentary] President Donald Trump and some of his supporters on Capitol Hill have recently been expressing anxiety over the possibility of politically motivated surveillance and leaks by our intelligence agencies. But ironically, at the very same time they are moving to give our nation’s largest Internet telecommunications companies even more power to share their customers’ data, including with the government, without permission. Indeed, some of the most ardent critics of government surveillance — including Sen Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Sen Heller (R-NV) — are among those leading the charge to roll back rules that would prevent such abuses by companies.

[Jay Stanley is a Senior Policy Analyst at the ACLU's Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology.]

The advertising industry is calling on Congress to eliminate the Federal Communications Commission’s privacy rules on internet providers. Six advertising trade groups on March 13 applauded Sen Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) for introducing bills last week that would roll back the rules approved in October.

“Our digital economy is the global leader, providing billions of dollars in ad-supported content and services to consumers, and the innovation and investment that have driven its success have rested on robust, consistent self-regulatory privacy standards backstopped by the Federal Trade Commission,” the groups said. “Without prompt action in Congress or at the FCC, the FCC's regulations would break with well-accepted and functioning industry practices, chilling innovation and hurting the consumers the regulation was supposed to protect.”

Congressional Republicans are moving against the Federal Communications Commission's broadband privacy rules. In recent days, lawmakers in both the House and Senate have offered legislation to roll back the Obama-era measures, with bills from Sen Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Both bills aim to kill the rules using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Republicans to block rules with only a simple majority in both chambers.

The FCC's privacy rules were approved under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat, in October, and bar internet service providers from collecting "sensitive" consumer data like browsing information and app usage data without their customers' express consent. But Congress has only 60 legislative days after the regulations were approved to roll them back using the CRA. That timeline means Sen Flake and Chairman Blackburn have until mid-May to get their measures through Congress. So far, things are moving in the right direction for opponents of the privacy rules.

President Donald Trump slammed the media for being “rude” to his representatives. "It is amazing how rude much of the media is to my very hard working representatives," he tweeted. "Be nice, you will do much better!"

[Commentary] A cost-effective subsidy program should provide funds first where they will yield the largest bang for the buck and last where they yield the smallest. In this case, the government would define the network services it believes everyone should have (hopefully based on a careful analysis of both supply and demand information) and geographic areas it wants covered, and ask companies to say the size of the subsidy they would need to build out in those areas. A group of 71 economists signed a letter in 2009 encouraging this type of approach. It would then be possible to make an objective choice about which projects receive subsidies and which do not.

We should take this opportunity to rethink universal service and implement new ways of promoting coverage where it does not exist so that it benefits consumers, not just rural Internet service providers.

[Scott Wallsten is president and senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute]