New York Times

NSO Group and the dozens of other commercial spyware outfits that have cropped up around the globe over the past decade operate in a largely unregulated market. Spyware makers like NSO Group, Hacking Team in Italy and Gamma Group in Britain insist they sell tools only to governments for criminal and terrorism investigations. But it is left to government agents to decide whom they will and will not hack with spying tools that can trace a target’s every phone call, text message, email, keystroke, location, sound and sight. The discovery of NSO’s spyware on the phones of Mexican nutrition policy makers, activists and even government employees raises new questions about whether NSO’s tools are being used to advance the soda industry’s commercial interests in Mexico.

[Commentary] As President Trump rushes to dismantle Obama-era rules that protect Americans, he has an energetic helper over at the Federal Communications Commission. Its new Republican chairman has started undoing policies of his predecessor that were intended to make phone, cable and internet service more fair and more affordable.

Ajit Pai, who was a commissioner before he became chairman, is trying to wipe away network neutrality rules put in place by Tom Wheeler, the former chairman, to prevent broadband companies from creating fast and slow lanes on the internet. Chairman Pai has scrapped a proposal to let people buy cable-TV boxes instead of renting them at inflated prices from companies like Comcast. Many of Pai’s moves would hurt the people who have the least power. For instance, he has backed away from rules to lower the exorbitant rates for prison phone calls. And he has suspended nine companies from providing discounted internet service to poor people through a program known as Lifeline.

Congress created the FCC to help all Americans obtain access to communication services without discrimination and at fair prices. Pai’s approach does exactly the opposite.

Support among American high school students for the First Amendment is stronger today than it has been in the last 12 years, according to the latest in a series of large nationwide surveys of the nation’s rising voters. Some 91 percent of high school students say they believe that individuals should be allowed to express unpopular opinions, according to a Knight Foundation survey of nearly 12,000 students conducted in 2016. The survey is the sixth in a series, the first of which was carried out in 2004, when 83 percent supported such rights.

“Ajit Pai is intelligent and genial, but he is not on the side of consumers and the public interest.”

[Commentary] The “Bowling Green Massacre” may go down in the record of the Trump presidency as the first break in the “fake news” clouds that have cast such gloom over our fair and once (relatively) true republic.

The same internet that enabled false stories to run unchecked through news feeds during the election year dispatched new white blood cells that attacked Kellyanne Conway’s “alternate facts” with “true facts” (a redundant term that I guess we’re stuck with for now). Their most effective attack was traditional reporting, in many cases from news organizations that have doubled down on fact-checking, joined by newfangled memes that accentuate the truth. The Massacre That Wasn’t showed that while Facebook, Google and Twitter take steps to combat nefarious hoaxes, they are already playing host to an organic correction movement led by ordinary users who are crowdsourcing reality. It’s early. Vigilance, and continuing improvements throughout the news business, remain necessary. But the tale of the “massacre” could be the start of something new.

In his first days as President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai has aggressively moved to roll back consumer protection regulations created during the Obama presidency.

Chairman Pai took a first swipe at network neutrality rules designed to ensure equal access to content on the internet. He stopped nine companies from providing discounted high-speed internet service to low-income individuals. He withdrew an effort to keep prison phone rates down. In total, the chairman of the FCC released about a dozen actions in the last week, many buried in the agency website and not publicly announced, stunning consumer advocacy groups and telecom analysts. They said Pai’s message is clear: The FCC, an independent agency, will mirror the Trump administration’s rapid unwinding of government regulations that businesses fought against during the Obama years.

“With these strong-arm tactics, Chairman Pai is showing his true stripes,” said Matt Wood, policy director at the consumer group Free Press. “The public wants an FCC that helps people. Instead, it got one that does favors for the powerful corporations that its chairman used to work for.”

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) said, “Ajit Pai is intelligent and genial, but he is not on the side of consumers and the public interest.”

Whether you are reading these words online or in print, there is a strong chance that Harold A. Rosen played a part in getting them to you. He was a driving force in the invention of modern communication satellite technology.

His inspiration came in 1957, when, as a young engineer, he watched the Sputnik satellite, the first ever launched, streak across the night sky in Los Angeles on its historic journey. From its orbit, the Soviet Sputnik could transmit only beeps back to Earth. But Rosen could see that the future of relaying information over long distances was in space, and he began imagining the possibilities. In those days, telephones were the best way to communicate between two points, but the terrestrial telephone system was reaching its operational limits. Long-distance phone calls were made by means of overtaxed cables and radio towers, and connectivity was limited. Some parts of the world were unreachable. Rosen set out to design a satellite that would usher in a new era of telecommunications.

Precipitous declines in print advertising rocked the newspaper industry in 2016. And while The New York Times Company recorded significant growth in subscriptions and promising increases in digital advertising, it nevertheless has not avoided the inevitable. The company said Feb 2 that its print advertising revenue in 2016 fell 16 percent, driving a 9 percent drop in total advertising revenue. For the quarter, print advertising revenue declined 20 percent.

The story on the digital side was positive. Digital advertising revenue rose 6 percent last year, to $209 million. The Times added 514,000 net digital-only subscriptions for its news products during the year, bringing its total to 1.6 million. Buoyed by readers’ intense interest in the presidential election, The Times added 276,000 net digital-only subscriptions to its news products in the last three months of the year. Including print and crossword product subscriptions, The Times now has more than three million total paid subscribers.

We’re witnessing the stirrings of a national popular movement aimed at defeating the policies of President Donald Trump. It is a movement without official leaders. In fact, to a noteworthy degree, the formal apparatus of the Democratic Party has been nearly absent from the uprisings. Unlike the Tea Party and the white-supremacist “alt-right,” the new movement has no name. Call it the alt-left, or, if you want to really drive Mr. Trump up the wall, the alt-majority. Or call it nothing. Though nameless and decentralized, the movement isn’t chaotic. Because it was hatched on social networks and is dispatched by mobile phones, it appears to be organizationally sophisticated and ferociously savvy about conquering the media. The protests have accomplished something just about unprecedented in the nearly two years since Trump first declared his White House run: They have nudged him from the media spotlight he depends on. They are the only force we’ve seen that has been capable of untangling his singular hold on the media ecosystem.

Experts said they had not seen data to conclude that consumers had changed their habits to protect their mental health, but added that the news ecosystem had changed drastically over the past five years, accelerating the sense of information overload. How then best to cope with the velocity and quantity of news?

Some have found comfort in positive news, said Seán Dagan Wood, editor in chief of Positive News, a website and quarterly print magazine that highlights “quality independent reporting that focuses on progress and possibility.” For those glued to the news, Curtis W. Reisinger, a clinical psychologist at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks (NY) recommended not reading or watching any just before bedtime because thoughts of how to respond to it can disrupt sleep. Better to watch sports or entertainment rather than the “worry content” of news, he said.