Government & Communications

The world’s 3.6 billion internet users depend on computer algorithms to sort through the vast ocean of information available online. Algorithms follow a set of programmed instructions to transform data into a form that humans can understand, deciding everything from the content of social media feeds to the creditworthiness of borrowers. Though algorithms handle digital data, their decisions also have consequences in the analog world.

In May, a homeowner in Illinois filed a lawsuit against the real estate data website Zillow, alleging that their home value estimator tool significantly undervalued her home and impeded its sale. To protect European citizens when their data is used in “automated decisionmaking”, the European Union enacted new data protection rules last year. This kind of scrutiny may increase with a greater reliance on algorithms to make sense of online data.

[Commentary] Prime Minister Theresa May’s political fortunes may be waning in Britain, but her push to make internet companies police their users’ speech is alive and well. In the aftermath of the recent London attacks, PM May called platforms like Google and Facebook breeding grounds for terrorism. She has demanded that they build tools to identify and remove extremist content. Leaders of the Group of 7 countries recently suggested the same thing. Germany wants to fine platforms up to 50 million euros if they don’t quickly take down illegal content. And a European Union draft law would make YouTube and other video hosts responsible for ensuring that users never share violent speech. The fears and frustrations behind these proposals are understandable. But making private companies curtail user expression in important public forums — which is what platforms like Twitter and Facebook have become — is dangerous. Outraged demands for “platform responsibility” are a muscular-sounding response to terrorism that shifts public attention from the governments’ duties. But we don’t want an internet where private platforms police every word at the behest of the state. Such power over public discourse would be Orwellian in the hands of any government, be it May’s, Donald Trump’s or Vladimir Putin’s.

[Keller is the director of Intermediary Liability at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and previously was associate general counsel to Google]

CNN is asking questions about the White House’s decision to place their reporter in the back of a White House press briefing.

“We were in the equivalent of Siberia, no pun intended, when it comes to where we were seated,” CNN’s Jim Acosta told Wolf Blitzer. “That could be seen as an oversight on the part of the White House staff but it could also be seen as retaliation over the reporting we’re doing over here at CNN.”

CNN reporters are typically seated with other cable news networks at the front of press events so that their cameras have an unobstructed view for stand up live shots. The White House has occasionally changed seating arrangements in the past for various reasons, however during the June 9 event President Donald Trump specifically called out the cable news networks for treating him "so badly." "Should I take one of the killer networks that treat me so badly as fake news?" President Trump asked, before calling on ABC’s Jon Karl.

President Donald Trump accused James B. Comey, the former FBI director, of lying under oath to Congress in testimony that the president dismissed as a politically motivated proceeding. President Trump also asserted that Comey’s comments, in which the former FBI director implied that the president fired him for pressing forward with the Russia investigation, had failed to prove any collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow nor any obstruction of justice.

“Yesterday showed no collusion, no obstruction,” President Trump said in the White House Rose Garden, during a news conference with the visiting Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis. “That was an excuse by the Democrats, who lost an election they shouldn’t have lost,” he said. “It was just an excuse, but we were very, very happy, and, frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said, and some of the things that he said just weren’t true.”

Congress wants to know if President Donald Trump taped his conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey. A House panel led by Reps Mike Conaway (R-TX) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) sent a letter to White House counsel Don McGahn demanding the release of any "tapes" of conversations between Comey and President Trump.

The president first suggested the existence of such tapes after Comey revealed that he wrote memos of his private conversations with President Trump leading up to his firing. Reps Conaway and Schiff are representing the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's Russia investigation, and a separate bipartisan group of Senate Judiciary Committee members led by Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also sent letters requesting the notes Comey wrote documenting the same meetings with Trump. The Senate group requested the memos from Professor Daniel Richman, the friend Comey gave his notes to, and the House group requested any memos still in Comey's possession. Reps Schiff and Conaway provided a deadline of June 23.

White House social-media director Dan Scavino Jr. violated a federal law that bars public officials from using their positions for political activity when he urged President Donald Trump's supporters to defeat a GOP congressman, the Office of Special Counsel has concluded. As a result, Scavino was issued a warning letter and advised that additional violations of the law could result in further action, according to a June 5 letter that the office sent to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which filed a complaint about Scavino's tweet.

Scavino's April 1 message called on the “#TrumpTrain” to take out Rep Justin Amash (R-MI) in an upcoming primary, referring to him as “a big liability.” Rep Amash is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group that President Trump had blamed at the time for derailing legislation that would have repealed parts of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Even though Scavino was tweeting from his personal account, his page at the time listed his official White House position and featured a photo of him inside the Oval Office.

President Donald Trump broke his public silence June 9 on former FBI director James B. Comey’s testimony to Congress in the Russia probe, accusing him in a tweet of lying under oath and calling him a “leaker.” A day after he had allowed surrogates to respond for him, President Trump took to Twitter to attack Comey directly, writing: “Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication … and WOW, Comey is a leaker!”

President Trump’s statement came as surrogates fanned out to defend the president and his personal lawyer was preparing to file a “complaint” early next week over Comey’s testimony to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s Office and the Senate Judiciary Committee, apparently.

In 2015, the Library of Congress received critical audits from the Government Accountability Office and its inspector general, both detailing serious years-long IT governance, security and strategy issues. The troublesome findings, in particular, those from GAO, drove the library to hire a permanent chief information officer—something it hadn’t had since 2012—and laid out 30 recommendations to right the legislative branch’s IT ship. In the two years since, the Library of Congress has made significant strides improving its IT operations, according to CIO Bernard Barton, though the library still has large challenges ahead.

CQ Roll Call reporter John Donnelly, who was allegedly manhandled at the May Federal Communications Commission open meeting, contested how FCC Chairman Ajit Pai described the incident in a letter to lawmakers.

"I appreciate that Chairman Pai has offered an apology, but his version of the facts is inaccurate. I never attempted to enter a restricted area. That is false. Even if the guards had somehow convinced themselves that I was trying to enter a restricted area, that does not excuse what they did," Donnelly said. "As for the supposedly 'inadvertent' physical contact with me: if it was an accident, then why didn't they say so then or apologize?" Donnelly said guards appeared to know he was a reporter and contends Pai's account denying that he was pinned against the wall is inaccurate.

President Donald Trump has changed American attitudes towards the media “for the worse,” 52 percent of voters say, while 22 percent say he has changed attitudes “for the better.” Only 10 percent of voters are “enthusiastic” about the media, while 30 percent are “satisfied.” Another 33 percent are “dissatisfied” and 26 percent of voters, including 46 percent of Republicans, are “angry.”