Tuesday's State of the Union address will stream live on Amazon, White House Chief Digital Officer Jason Goldman said in a blog Sunday. "Our job in the Office of Digital Strategy has been to find new or expanded ways for the American people to engage with the President's address," he said. "That means meeting people where they are [and] recognizing the massive shift in the American media diet toward on-demand video." The Amazon Video streaming will be in addition to streaming on the White House's YouTube channel and on wh.gov/sotu, said Goldman. Amazon also will make the speech available on demand Wednesday through the end of the week, and the company has made President Barack Obama's previous State of the Union addresses available, Goldman said. As in past years, real-time video excerpts of the speech will be available on Facebook and Twitter, he said. Amazon didn't comment Monday.

One hundred ninety-five experts, companies and organizations are protesting laws and legislation that would weaken strong encryption, in a letter that will be delivered to world leaders in China, India, the U.K., U.S. and other nations. “The internet belongs to the world’s people, not its governments," said Access Now Executive Director Brett Solomon Monday in a news release. "We refuse to let this precious resource become nationalized and broken by any nation. This letter seeks to unify the voices of global internet users by demanding the protection of tools necessary to the expression of our human rights.” Access Now, which organized the letter, said several countries, including the U.S. (see 1511240023), want companies to provide governments with a back door to encrypted files. David Kaye, U.N. special rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression, security expert Bruce Schneier and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic Parliament, among others, signed the letter. Among organizations and companies, ACLU, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet Association and TechFreedom signed it.

HDBaseT connectivity is moving into the automotive sector, the HDBaseT Alliance said at CES. The alliance is finalizing specifications for HDBaseT Automotive, which is said to allow better efficiency and cost-savings in automotive applications such as infotainment and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. General Motors joined the HDBaseT Alliance board and Daimler and Delphi joined as contributor members.

Purchases made online from desktop computers during November and December totaled $56.4 billion -- up 6 percent over the previous holiday season, comScore said in a news release Friday. Total holiday digital spend reached $69.1 billion -- a 13 percent growth from 2014 -- and mobile commerce was 18 percent of total holiday digital commerce, said comScore. "I believe that we've seen a paradigm shift in 2016 where the future of retail will increasingly be defined by consumers' behavior on mobile," said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman emeritus.

The FTC unanimously approved a settlement resolving its complaint against "revenge porn" website creator Craig Brittain (see 1501290058), the commission said in a news release Friday. The FTC voted 4-0 after a public comment period to OK the settlement, which was announced in January 2015. Under the settlement, Brittain must permanently delete all of the images and personal information he received while operating the "revenge porn" site, and is prohibited from publicly sharing "intimate videos or photographs of people without their affirmative express consent," the FTC said.

Lenovo will bring to market this summer the first consumer mobile device with Google's Project Tango, and the two companies opened it to app developers Thursday at CES in Las Vegas. Project Tango uses computer vision, depth sensing and motion tracking to create on-screen 3D experiences. The Lenovo smartphone, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, has a “magic window” that can overlay digital information and objects using the Project Tango platform, allowing users to explore their physical worlds with their device, said the companies. Specialized hardware and software work together so a device such as a smartphone reacts to user’s movements. Unlike GPS, Project Tango motion tracking works indoors. It typifies the kind of “innovation risks” smartphone vendors need to take in the “hypercompetitive smartphone and tablet industries,” said Chen Xudong, president of Lenovo’s mobile business group. It means mobile devices can blend the virtual and real worlds, said Johnny Lee, Google’s Project Tango lead.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and other federal officials were still meeting with executives from Google, Twitter and other tech companies at our deadline Friday to push those companies to improve their methods of combating terrorists’ use of social media as a propaganda and recruitment tool. The meeting in San Jose, California, began at 11 a.m. PST, an industry lobbyist told us. Several communications and Internet industry trade groups confirmed that trade associations weren't participating in the meeting. Spokesmen for Google and Twitter confirmed their firms’ involvement but didn’t comment on what would be discussed during the meeting. Executives from more than a dozen tech companies were invited, an industry lobbyist said. Federal officials planned to discuss how to “make it harder for terrorists” to use the Internet “to recruit, radicalize and mobilize followers to violence,” and how the U.S. “can help others to create, publish and amplify alternative content that would undercut” the Islamic State group, said an agenda we obtained. Federal officials also planned to discuss ways to “use technology to help disrupt paths to radicalization to violence, identify recruitment patterns” and ways to “make it easier for law enforcement and the intelligence community to identify terrorist operatives and prevent attacks.” The meeting came following pressure from Congress in December for the federal government to combat terrorists' use of social media. The Combat Terrorist Use of Social Media Act (HR-3654), which the House passed in December (see 1512160022), would require federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies to coordinate their strategies for combatting terrorists’ messaging and recruitment efforts online. The Requiring Reporting of Online Terrorist Activity Act (S-2372) would require technology companies to inform law enforcement about terrorists’ activities on social media platforms (see 1512080070).

B2B digital music and radio services company 7digital announced its first content available in the high-resolution MQA audio file format. Onkyomusic.com, powered by 7digital, will offer indie music in MQA in its Hi-Res audio store beginning Friday, said 7digital. 7digital is the first platform provider to offer MQA master quality audio for download and streaming. The 7digital customer base includes consumer brands, mobile carriers, broadcasters, automotive systems, record labels and retailers and numbers 46 clients in 33 countries. The company has licensing rights in 82 countries, which it says offers quick time-to-launch for prospective new clients worldwide.

The CTA Foundation and IBM will collaborate on cognitive computing research to proactively monitor the health and well-being of older people and those with physical and cognitive disabilities. CTA said Thursday in a news release the aim is to give device and software makers and healthcare and social service providers a “broader perspective” in how such systems can transform the delivery of information in a way that balances privacy, security and accessibility issues. More than 47 million Americans are 65 or older, with 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day for the next 15 years, CTA said. It said people 60 and older will account for about 22 percent of the global population by 2050, vs. only 12 percent now. The new initiative will examine how mobile, smart home appliances, robotics and wearable devices could improve services such as proactive alerts about medications, exercise and dietary reminders, among other “in-home” technology applications. It will also study how weather conditions and traffic patterns affect people’s social activities.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, criticized the Office of Personnel Management Thursday for not providing what he views as sufficient information to the committee on data that contractor CyTech gathered in an inspection of OPM’s networks prior to the June disclosure of two breaches that exposed personally identifiable information (PII) stored on the networks. The breaches, revealed in June, exposed Social Security numbers and other PII belonging to more than 21 million people who were involved in federal background checks. OPM wiped information that CyTech’s CyFIR digital forensics tool gathered during the OPM networks inspection before the agency returned the tool to CyTech. “We’ve been asking for months” for the information CyTech gathered in its inspection of OPM’s networks, Chaffetz said Thursday during a House Oversight hearing. “It’s in your systems. We know it because we’re looking at hard copies. And we’re checking to see if you give it to us as well. And you’re not. And that’s why you’re going to be back before this committee.” OPM has attempted to “provide a response to every question that's been asked,” said Office of Congressional, Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs Director Jason Levine. “We do expect another set of documents coming” in January “if not in the next couple weeks.” OPM has in the past “been challenged with this level of a document production” but is now prioritizing document requests to Congress, Levine said.