Digital Content

A Q&A with Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University and coiner of the term "net neutrality."

[Commentary]  The headlines about the trade wars being touched off by President Donald Trump’s new tariffs may telegraph plenty of bombast and shots fired, but the most consequential war being waged today is a quieter sort of conflict: It’s the new Cold War over data protection. While the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica crisis currently burns as the latest, hottest flare-up in this simmering conflict, tensions may increase even more on May 25, 2018, when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect. Combatants in the new Cold War are fighting over the currency of t

[Commentary] Cisco Systems Vice President Jeffrey Campbell highlighted that paid prioritization is “one of the most misunderstood issues” in the telecom policy space. There's a growing realization that prioritization can play a positive role in network traffic management. But to understand why, we need to get beyond the “fast lanes, slow lanes” metaphor that has too often dominated the net neutrality debate. All internet traffic on a network moves at the same speed — the speed at which the electrons propagate on the wire.

Want to visit the United States in a non-immigrant capacity? Should the State Department get its way, your application to enter the country may soon hinge on coughing up five years of your online history. The Department of State's proposal would expand this request, which is currently required to apply for an immigrant visa.

Now that Congress has made clear that a US search warrant covers emails stored overseas, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to moot a case involving a data demand issued to Microsoft for a drug-trafficking suspect’s emails held in Ireland. The case, argued in February 2018, centered on whether a US tech firm must comply with a court order to produce emails even if they are stored abroad — in this instance, in a Dublin server. On March 23, Congress passed, and President Trump signed, the Cloud Act.

In a 2016 employee memo that was leaked the week of March 26, a Facebook executive defended the company's questionable data mining practices and championed the growth of social media at any cost — apparently even death. "Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies,” company vice president Andrew Bosworth wrote in the memo. “Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people.

The State Department wants to require all US visa applicants to submit their social media usernames, previous email addresses and phone numbers, vastly expanding the Trump Administration's enhanced vetting of potential immigrants and visitors. In documents to be published in March 30's Federal Register, the department said it wants the public to comment on the proposed new requirements, which will affect nearly 15 million foreigners who apply for visas to enter the US each year.

Facebook was for years a best friend to the data brokers who make hundreds of millions of dollars a year gathering and selling Americans' personal information. Now, the world's largest social network is souring that relationship — a sign that the company believes it has overshadowed their data-gathering machine. 

Apple is revamping privacy controls for its devices and cloud services to comply with strict new European rules as Facebook faces a user privacy backlash. The iPhone maker said it will update its web page for managing Apple IDs in coming months to let users download a copy of all their data stored with the company. The site will also let customers correct personal information, temporarily deactivate their account, and completely delete it.

Facebook has a four-part plan to protect its platform from malicious attacks during the 2018 US midterm elections: