A bipartisan group of state attorneys general is investigating Facebook for antitrust violations, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) announced Friday. AGs from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Washington, D.C., are helping James lead the effort. The probe “focuses on Facebook’s dominance in the industry and the potential anticompetitive conduct stemming from that dominance,” said James. The group will use “every investigative tool at our disposal to determine whether Facebook’s actions may have endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising,” she said. The FTC is also probing Facebook on antitrust grounds (see 1907250049). Meanwhile, a related group of state AGs confirmed it will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. Monday outside the Supreme Court (see 1909030053) to announce a “multistate investigation into whether large tech companies have engaged in anticompetitive behavior that stifled competition, restricted access, and harmed consumers.” That group is targeting Google, according to officials.
The Transportation Department will again delay publishing its NPRM for drone remote identification of unmanned aircraft systems until at least December (see 1906180075), the agency announced Friday. It was previously delayed until September, more than a year after the original deadline for issuing a final rule. The comment period is expected to end in February, two years after the project was launched. Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International CEO Brian Wynne expressed disappointment, saying the remote ID rule is needed for economic and societal reasons: “Remote ID is critical for ensuring airspace safety by helping law enforcement identify and distinguish authorized UAS from those that may pose a security threat. We urge the FAA to move as quickly as possible with rulemaking for remote identification to keep the skies safe for all aircraft -- both manned and unmanned.”
Intel’s Mobileye chose Orange Business Services' IoT connectivity for the U.S., Europe, and Asia, it said Wednesday. Mobileye 8 Connect is said to “see” the road ahead through a camera lens and can be retrofitted into most vehicles. It will provide municipalities and utilities with data to monitor infrastructure and plan for smarter cities.
NIST is gathering comments through Nov. 1 for its cyber resiliency engineering framework, it said Wednesday. Its publication, "Developing Cyber Resilient Systems: A Systems Security Engineering Approach," offers a framework for understanding and applying cyber resiliency.
Facebook will no longer suggest to users which friends to tag in photos via face-scanning technology, the social network announced Tuesday. So-called “tag suggestions” has been at the center of a lawsuit involving alleged facial recognition technology abuses (see 1908080056). The platform’s “face recognition” technology will now be available to all users with the ability to opt out, Facebook said. That feature allows users to be notified when their photos are used by other people.
Critics of some ways tech can target kids found nothing to like in a potential FTC settlement with YouTube. “Once again, this FTC appears to have let a powerful company off the hook with a nominal fine for violating users’ privacy online,” said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. He's disappointed the settlement is reportedly on a party-line commissioner basis. In that scenario, Google would pay $150 million-$200 million over allegations YouTube violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (see 1906250061). It would be "a nominal fine," Markey tweeted Friday. Under COPPA, the commission "had authority to impose tens of billions in fines ... for YouTube’s improper corporate surveillance of children, targeted advertising to kids and failure to alert parents," said Public Citizen. The FTC and Google declined to comment.
The Federal Election Commission plans an event Sept. 17 on digital disinformation. FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub is co-hosting it with the Global Digital Policy Incubator at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and PEN America, an FEC spokesperson said Thursday. She didn't have further details. Facebook will participate, a spokesperson said. So, too, will Twitter, its spokesperson said. Weintraub reportedly also asked Google to participate. The company didn't comment, nor did PEN or Stanford.
PayPal should change its Venmo payment service’s privacy settings, urged Mozilla and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in an open letter Wednesday. “Make transactions private by default and give users privacy settings for their friend lists.” With users unable to hide their friend lists, “anyone can uncover who you pay regularly, creating a public record of your personal and professional community,” EFF said. The company didn’t comment.
ICANN wants input on how to improve its multistakeholder model. Tuesday's consultation, which closes Oct. 14, seeks comment on what next steps would improve effectiveness. The exercise will lead to the development of a work plan, which will map the work to be done 2021-2025, and will consider: What issues will be addressed; who will take charge of developing a solution or approach to each issue; when the task owner will deliver a proposed solution/approach; and what resources will be needed. The completed plan will be part of ICANN's five-year operating plan, due out for comment next year. ICANN will host a Sept. 11-12 webinar on the consultation document. Issues under discussion include work prioritization; efficient use of resources; culture and trust; and improving openness, inclusivity, accountability and transparency.
Qualcomm is demonstrating four new networking platforms at its Wi-Fi 6 event in San Francisco designed for densely congested networks, onboarding of hundreds of devices without degradation of user experience, and high performance, it said Tuesday. The platforms leverage all the elements of Qualcomm’s Wi-Fi 6 feature implementation but differ by format, scale of application and computing profile. Netgear's Orbi Wi-Fi 6 Mesh system, based on Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6 technology, delivers “significantly enhanced capacity, coverage and simultaneous multi-user performance” via dedicated tri-band support with quad stream radios for all the three Wi-Fi bands, said David Henry, Netgear senior vice president-connected home product.