Stories from Abroad

Facebook has won the backing of European Union courts after the European Court of Justice dismissed a potential class action lawsuit from Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems.  The EU’s highest court ruled that Schrems — a dogged campaigner against Facebook’s handling of users’ personal data — could not bring a consumer lawsuit on behalf of 25,000 Facebook users for alleged privacy breaches. Instead, the ECJ said Schrems could only file an individual case against Facebook for allegedly illegally handling data relating to his personal Facebook account in Austria.

Today more than 2.5 trillion images are shared or stored on the Internet annually—to say nothing of the billions more photographs and videos people keep to themselves. By 2020, one telecommunications company estimates, 6.1 billion people will have phones with picture-taking capabilities. Those are merely the “watching” devices that we’re capable of seeing.

Fifty percent of the world's population is expected to be connected to the Internet by the end of 2019. This leaves the other half – an estimated 3.8 billion people – unconnected and unable to benefit from key social and economic resources in our expanding digital world. In response, the United Nations' Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development has set seven ambitious yet achievable 2025 targets in support of  "Connecting the Other Half" of the world's population. 

Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development 2025 Targets:

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority decided that Rupert Murdoch’s £11.7 billion bid to take full control of Sky would concentrate too much power in the media mogul’s hands, giving the Murdoch family “too much control over news providers across all media platforms, and therefore too much influence over public opinion and the political agenda”.  Walt Disney will have to decide whether to take full control of Sky when it completes its proposed $66 billion takeover of the entertainment assets owned by Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox group.

Twitter is planning to notify users who may have been exposed to Russian propaganda during the 2016 presidential election, the company's head of public policy said during the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, "Terrorism and Social Media: #IsBigTechDoingEnough?". While the hearing was ostensibly about how social media companies can better combat terrorism, it veered onto other topics, primarily Russia.

A recent decision by the Federal Communications Commission to repeal net neutrality, which are rules designed to prevent the selective blocking or slowing of websites, has wide-ranging implications for China, which never believed in net neutrality and banned hundreds of foreign websites. The decision could result in a major trade war involving Chinese telecom and Internet companies, which are interested in accessing the US market. The move will allow American telecom service providers to charge differential prices for various services and even examine the data of their customers.

Apparently, US lawmakers are urging AT&T to cut commercial ties to Chinese phone maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and oppose plans by telecom operator China Mobile Ltd to enter the US market because of national security concerns. The warning comes after the administration of President Donald Trump took a harder line on policies initiated by his predecessor Barack Obama on issues ranging from Beijing’s role in restraining North Korea to Chinese efforts to acquire U.S. strategic industries.

Freedom House's report, "Freedom in the World 2018: Democracy in Crisis" key findings:

The same Russian government-aligned hackers who penetrated the Democratic Party have spent the past few months laying the groundwork for an espionage campaign against the U.S. Senate, a cybersecurity firm said. The revelation suggests the group often nicknamed Fancy Bear, whose hacking campaign scrambled the 2016 U.S. electoral contest, is still busy trying to gather the emails of America’s political elite.

The White House took steps to protect access to the media and speech in Iran. Those were part of a series of moves meant to signal that, while the President was again waiving nuclear-related sanctions--the U.S. still had lots of issues with that country, including that it is the leading state sponsor of terrorism and oppresses, tortures and silences its people.