New York Times

Donald Trump’s efforts to discredit news media organizations, painting them as part of a broad conspiracy with the Hillary Clinton campaign, have reached an intensity never before seen from a presidential candidate — so much so that the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, a nonprofit group often focused on defending press freedoms in war-torn and totalitarian countries, made a rare statement regarding the American elections. “Donald Trump, through his words and actions as a candidate for president of the United States, has consistently betrayed First Amendment values,” Sandra Mims Rowe, the chairwoman for the group, said in a statement announcing that the group “passed a resolution declaring Trump an unprecedented threat to the rights of journalists and to CPJ’s ability to advocate for press freedom around the world.”

The news media has often been a frequent target of Trump’s wrath, but he has escalated his attacks over the last two days after news accounts that he behaved abusively toward some women. By attacking the news media, Trump appears to be seeking to delegitimize an industry he views as an impediment to his presidential ambitions, while riling up his base of supporters. On Oct 13, there were noticeably more Secret Service agents monitoring the new media’s pen, though the agency declined to comment about the protection. Both CNN and NBC News have their own security at Trump rallies to protect their reporters and cameramen.

A 17-word Facebook reminder contributed to substantial increases in online voter registration across the country, according to top election officials.

At least nine secretaries of state have credited the social network’s voter registration reminder, displayed for four days in September, with boosting sign-ups, in some cases by considerable amounts. Data from nine other states show that registrations rose drastically on the first day of the campaign compared with the day before. “Facebook clearly moved the needle in a significant way,” said Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state. In California, 123,279 people registered to vote or updated their registrations on Friday, Sept. 23, the first day that Facebook users were presented with the reminder. That was the fourth-highest daily total in the history of the state’s online registration site.

Facebook’s effort is notable not just for boosting voter registration, but also for the kinds of voters it may have helped to enlist. While Facebook could not provide demographic breakdowns of the users who registered, the social network is more popular among female internet users than male users, and the same is true for young users compared with older users. Both groups — women and younger adults — tend to lean Democratic.

There is an axiom in technology: New products typically go to wealthy customers first, before prices eventually fall to reach the masses. With broadband now classified as a utility, telecommunication and tech companies including Sprint, Comcast and Facebook are increasingly working to make high-speed Internet accessible to every American, not just a luxury. The companies are among those that have set their sights on bringing free or cheap high-speed Internet service to low-income and rural populations in the United States, spurred by philanthropy and, for some, the hope of turning Americans who are not online today into full-paying customers in the future.

Those goals were on display, when Sprint announced that it plans to give one million low-income high school students a free device and a free high-speed data plan until graduation. Facebook is also working to bring to the United States a service known as Free Basics, which gives people free access to certain websites, including Facebook. Comcast recently loosened requirements for its low-cost broadband service, expanding it to anyone in public housing. These moves go toward closing what has been an intractable divide between broadband haves and have-nots. Low-income broadband programs have been vital to closing the digital divide, where half of all low-income Americans lack broadband, said Mignon Clyburn, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. “Lowering the price for service has been instrumental in bringing millions online,” Commissioner Clyburn said.

The Obama Administration formally accused the Russian government of stealing and disclosing e-mails from the Democratic National Committee and from a range of prominent individuals and institutions, immediately raising the issue of whether President Barack Obama will seek sanctions or other retaliation for the cyberattacks. In a statement from the director of national intelligence, James Clapper Jr., and the Department of Homeland Security, the government said the leaked e-mails that have appeared on a variety of websites “are intended to interfere with the US election process.” The e-mails were posted on the well-known WikiLeaks site and newer ones that have run under the names DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.1. “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said. It did not name President Vladimir Putin, but that appeared to be the intention.

For weeks, aides to President Obama have been debating a range of possible responses to the Russia action, from targeted economic sanctions to authorizing covert action against the computer servers in Russia and elsewhere that have been traced as the origin of the attacks. The White House has not said whether President Obama has reviewed those options, or decided on any. The statement said that the recent “scanning and probing” of election systems “in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company,” but did not say the Russian government was responsible for those probes.

It has been six months since the Justice Department backed off on demands that Apple help the FBI break the security of a locked iPhone. But the government has not given up the fight with the tech industry. Open Whisper Systems, a maker of a widely used encryption app called Signal, received a subpoena in the first half of 2016 for subscriber information and other details associated with two phone numbers that came up in a federal grand jury investigation in Virginia. The subpoena arrived with a court order that said Open Whisper Systems was not allowed to tell anyone about the information request for one year.

Technology companies contend that court-imposed gag orders are being used too often by law enforcement and that they violate the Bill of Rights. The companies also complain that law enforcement officials are casting a wide net over online communications — often too wide — in their investigations. Justice Department officials, for their part, argue that these gag orders are necessary to protect developing cases and to avoid tipping off potential targets. The officials say that they are simply following leads where they take them.

[Commentary] “Are you tired of taking the time to drive to the jail and wait in long lines for your visit?” asks the website of Securus, a private company that manages phones in jails and prisons throughout the United States. “Visit your loved one from the comfort of your home using a computer.” Computer-based video visitation, a service that Securus provides for a fee, can indeed be a helpful option: It allows people in jail or prison to see loved ones who can’t visit in person for whatever reason — the long distance, disability, illness, a busy schedule or responsibilities at home. However, what Securus doesn’t advertise is that, in many cases, you’re not allowed to visit any other way.

In county jails, when video visitation is introduced, in-person visitation is typically banned. (Securus’s contracts with jails have sometimes mandated this ban, though recently the company announced that its contracts would no longer include the requirement.) Jails are embracing the practice, in part because video visitation is less time-consuming and requires fewer staff members than in-person visits. More than 13 percent of local jails in the United States now use video visitation, and at most of those jails, in-person visits have been abolished, according to research by the Prison Policy Initiative.

[Maya Schenwar, the editor in chief of Truthout, is the author of “Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better.”]

When the Federal Communications Commission announced a plan that would free people from having to rent cable set-top boxes, the cable and television industries balked and lobbied hard to forestall the proposal. But it turns out the biggest threat to the plan, which the FCC is expected to vote on Sept 29, is a low-profile Democratic commissioner within the agency itself.

Jessica Rosenworcel, a career telecom wonk whom President Obama appointed to the FCC in 2012, has become the crucial swing vote on the cable box proposal. She is one of three Democrats of the agency’s five rule-making members, which would normally be enough to carry a vote since commissioners typically act in line with their parties. But Commissioner Rosenworcel has not fully embraced the cable box proposal like her two Democratic colleagues and instead has indicated her unease with the plan. Rosenworcel’s concerns hinge on what she views as what may be too much meddling by the FCC in the private agreements between cable providers and device makers. However, consumer groups say the FCC needs to play an oversight role in those licensing deals to ensure fairness. Commissioner Rosenworcel believes that the market for costly set-top boxes required reform. But she said the cable box proposal needed to be revised to comply with copyright and licensing laws that would not give the FCC outsize power.

This year’s winners of the MacArthur fellowships, awarded for exceptional “originality, insight and potential” include writers, visual artists, scientists, nonprofit organization leaders and others, who are chosen at a moment when the recognition and money — a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000 distributed over five years — will make a difference.

All around New York City, cellphones blared Sept 19 with the dissonant, but familiar, tone of an emergency alert. But this time, the alert — typically used for weather-related advisories or abducted children — was different. For what is believed to be the first time, the nation’s Wireless Emergency Alerts system was deployed as an electronic wanted poster, identifying a 28-year-old man wanted in connection with the bombings in Manhattan and New Jersey. Suddenly, from commuter trains to the sidewalks of Manhattan, millions were enlisted in the manhunt. The message, probably received by millions, nearly at once, was simple: “WANTED: Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28-yr-old male. See media for pic. Call 9-1-1 if seen.” The messages are targeted to a cellphone’s location, so the alert was received by those in New York City, but not those in all parts of the state. A spokesman for the State Police said the decision to release the message came from the authorities in New York City.

There are three broad types of alerts in the national system: emergency alerts for storms and other threats to public safety; so-called Amber Alerts, which seek to enlist the public in a search for an abducted child; and those issued by the president. Cellphone users can opt to block all but the presidential alerts. The emergency alerts can be sent to the national system by federal, state or local authorities who have been authorized to do so and can include shelter-in-place instructions or evacuation orders precipitated by “severe weather, a terrorist threat or a chemical spill,” according to the Federal Communications Commission.

The docks at the Port of Oakland are a tangle of cranes, shipping containers, railroad tracks and snaking lines of trucks waiting to load and unload cargo. Streamlining this kind of traffic is one of the few ideas Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton agree on. Clinton has said that if she is elected president, her administration will seek to spend $250 billion over five years on repairing and improving the nation’s infrastructure — not just ports but roads, bridges, energy systems and high-speed broadband — and would put an additional $25 billion toward a national infrastructure bank to spur related business investments. Trump said he wanted to go even bigger, saying his administration would spend at least twice as much as Clinton.