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The European Commission requested that Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus alter their terms of service or face potential fines. The Commission — the executive arm of the European Union — noted that their demands came amid increasing complaints from consumers who have been targeted by frauds and scams and that they had “been subject to certain terms of services that do not respect EU consumer law.”

The companies mentioned met with the Commission on March 16 to discuss solutions to the rising consumer complaints regarding their social media platforms, and according to the Commission will offer solutions in one month. Should the Commission not find the solutions “satisfactory,” it noted, “consumer authorities could ultimately resort to enforcement action.”

The Federal Trade Commission could be facing big changes under President Donald Trump. President Trump must fill three vacant commissioner seats and decide on a chairman — moves that Republicans hope could push the regulatory agency in a business-friendly direction. The agency’s primary role is to police companies for deceptive practices and to review high-profile mergers to determine if they are in consumers’ best interests.

President Trump himself is no stranger to the FTC, having had his own run-ins with its regulators as a businessman. In 1988, he agreed in a settlement with the FTC to pay a $750,000 fine for failing to disclose a stock purchase in a planned merger. And in recent years, students of the now-defunct Trump University filed complaints with the FTC alleging the school misled and overcharged them. In 2016, Trump agreed to a $25 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit against the school.

A White House adviser said that the Trump Administration will develop metrics to track federal agencies’ implementation of a federal cybersecurity framework. Thomas Bossert, an adviser to President Trump on homeland security and counterterrorism, said that the new administration will require agencies and departments to abide by the framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and report back to the White House on their adoption and implementation of the cybersecurity recommendations. The aide said the move is part of a larger effort by President Trump to treat the entire federal network as its own entity and safeguard it from cyber threats.

“We’re going to go through a thoughtful approach that requires federal departments and agencies to adopt and implement cybersecurity framework developed by NIST and any subsequent iteration of that document,” Bossert said. “They’re going to be required to produce for us a report.” The report will be submitted to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the White House, and will serve as a “scorecard” to assess agencies’ cybersecurity efforts, Bossert said.

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.”