Washington Post

Two pivotal developments this week could dramatically expand the power and footprint of major telecom companies, altering how Americans access everything from political news to “Game of Thrones” on the Internet.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's team is reportedly reviewing the encrypted messaging apps of witnesses in the Russia investigation. The team is looking at what experts say are some of the best apps at keeping messages private. Not all encrypted messaging apps disclose their user numbers, so it's hard to pinpoint just how prolific they have become. But the most popular among them, WhatsApp, claims 1.5 billion users around the world.

Legislation to rein in Facebook’s practices — and even stiff penalties from the Federal Trade Commission — are starting to look like a real possibility, even in a Congress typically slow to move on tech issues.  Lawmakers are pointing to two main vehicles emerging in Congress.  One is the Consent Act, a bill sponsored by Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) that would require Facebook and other tech companies such as Google to get explicit permission from users before doing anything with their personal information.

Here is a brief explanation of how 5G will be used and what it will mean for your online experience — and  your everyday life:

Existing applications: 5G, which will supplement rather than replace today’s 4G networks, will radically improve the bandwidth, capacity and reliability of mobile broadband, much more than in previous generational shifts.

Increasingly, members of Congress are confronting a wide array of complex policy debates posed by inventions like artificial intelligence and problems like the rise of Russian propaganda online. And policymakers themselves admit they aren’t fully prepared to deal with the issues. To address that digital knowledge gap, some in Washington are now angling to revive the Capitol’s old science-and-tech think tank, the Office of Technology Assessment, which lawmakers disbanded amid partisan squabbles in the 1990s.