Mastercard and eBay followed PayPal Friday in abandoning membership in Facebook’s Libra Association. Visa and Stripe also reportedly declined to join the association. The companies are five of the 28 founding members that Facebook expected to sign the association’s charter. Their exits came days after Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, sent letters to Visa, Mastercard and Stripe expressing concerns about the project. “We highly respect the vision of the Libra Association; however, eBay has made the decision to not move forward as a founding member,” a spokesperson emailed. “At this time, we are focused on rolling out eBay’s managed payments experience for our customers.” Mastercard remains “focused on our strategy and our own significant efforts to enable financial inclusion around the world,” a spokesperson emailed. “We believe there are potential benefits in such initiatives and will continue to monitor the Libra effort.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to testify Oct. 23 before House lawmakers on Libra (see 1910090038). Facebook, Visa and Stripe didn't comment.
Broadcom bowed a 3x3 Wi-Fi 6 chip for WLAN applications including Wi-Fi routers, residential gateways, wireless range extenders and set-top boxes. The BCM6710 has integrated RF power amplifiers, giving OEMs a cost-effective, high-performance chip for mass-market products, said the company Thursday, and it’s the first 3x3 Wi-Fi 6 solution supporting three transmit and three receive streams in 2.4-GHz, 5-GHz and future 6-GHz bands. The 6-GHz Wi-Fi capability paves the way for high-bandwidth, low-latency applications such as 4K video streaming, real-time immersive gaming, and augmented reality, it said.
European Commission principles for developing responsible artificial intelligence don’t address the promotion of innovation, BSA | The Software Alliance reported Wednesday. BSA compared framework principles from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the EU, Australia and Japan. OECD and Japan satisfactorily addressed promoting innovation, but the EU and Singapore left that category unaddressed, BSA said: Australia partially addressed that category. All but Australia and Singapore reportedly satisfactorily addressed privacy and security.
ICANN has generally adopted earlier recommended changes to its Whois system, but more are needed, said its registration directory service-Whois2 (RDS-Whois2) review team Tuesday in a final report. Assessment of the system for collecting data on domain name registrants is required by ICANN's contract with the U.S. Department of Commerce and under its bylaws. A second review examined whether recommendations in the 2010-12 assessment were met. It found eight of the 16 were fully implemented, seven partly implemented and one not put in place. The report made 22 new recommendations on which ICANN is seeking input. The review team "specifically did not focus on ICANN's actions" in response to the EU general data protection regulation (GDPR) because the actions are ongoing, it said. The panel "recognized the issue is of significant importance and that it would probably impact several policies related to registrant data." Recommendations included: (1) Ensuring that RDS/Whois is given strategic priority by creating a mechanism to monitor possible impacts on it from legislative and policy developments worldwide. (2) Updating all information on RDS and any other information about registration of second-level generic top-level domains, and making the content readily accessible and understandable. (3) Ensuring ICANN's contractual compliance department is adequately resourced to deal with increased workload and any additional responsibilities due to compliance with the GDPR or other rules. The board must act on the final recommendations by March 3. Comments are due Nov. 25.
Local, state and federal officials should end Amazon partnerships that allow police to use the company’s Ring doorbell products, more than 30 advocates wrote Tuesday. Fight for the Future, Color of Change and Project on Government Oversight signed. Amazon Ring data shows at least 500 partnerships between the company and cities, which the groups wrote threaten privacy, civil liberties and democracy because of lack of oversight. Police can use face scanning technology to profile individuals and invade the privacy of their homes, the groups wrote. Claims that the partnerships pose privacy and civil liberties risks are “inaccurate,” emailed an Amazon spokesperson. “Ring’s mission is to help make neighborhoods safer,” the spokesperson said, citing design that keeps users in control of their privacy.
The Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium launched Tuesday to bring together industry leaders from automotive, automotive supply, semiconductor and computing to help solve challenges of deploying self-driving vehicles at scale. Founding AVCC members are Arm, Bosch, Continental, Denso, General Motors, Nvidia, NXP Semiconductors and Toyota. The first goal is recommendations for a system architecture and computing platform that reconciles autonomous performance requirements with vehicle-specific requirements and limitations in size, temperature range, power consumption and safety.
The U.S. is negotiating a Cloud Act agreement with Australia, DOJ announced Monday. The U.S. and U.K. signed the first Cloud Act agreement last week, allowing police to demand cross-border data.
Efforts to secure World Trade Organization agreement on e-commerce that’s “inclusive, high-standard, and commercially meaningful,” has backing of “global industry,” said 27 tech groups Monday. “Digital trade is critical to the prosperity of all economies,” and to the ability of companies of all sizes “to grow, innovate, and create jobs,” they said. ACT|The App Association, BSA|The Software Alliance, CTA, Internet Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others made 13 recommendations for what a WTO agreement should contain, including a prohibition on internet tariffs and “customs formalities on electronic transmissions,” plus mechanisms to “facilitate the flow of data across borders.” The groups want a WTO agreement that counters “digital protectionism while protecting and promoting consumer trust, fosters inclusivity in digital trade, and generates real commercial value for the global economy,” they said.
A bipartisan group of state attorneys general met with DOJ and FTC officials Monday to discuss the group’s Facebook antitrust investigation, New York Attorney General Letitia James said: “We have grave concerns over potential anticompetitive practices by large tech companies. We are concerned that Facebook’s actions may have put consumer data at risk of data breaches, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, and increased the price of advertising, so we will continue to work in a bipartisan manner to protect consumers and protect competition.”
About 80 percent of U.S. adults have adjusted their social media privacy settings or decreased their social media usage, DuckDuckGo reported Thursday. Nearly a quarter of survey participants “deleted or deactivated a social media profile due to privacy concerns,” the platform reported. It surveyed about 1,100 American adults in August.