The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Facebook’s motion to stay the mandate in a lawsuit alleging the platform violated a federal robotexting law (see 1908220030). The company sought to stay the mandate “pending the filing and disposition of its petition for a writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court.” Facebook’s certiorari petition includes two substantial questions about robodialing and speech, it argued. The Thursday order didn’t include reasoning for denial.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau recent advisory on misusing emergency alerting raises the question whether false alert penalties could apply to streaming, blogged Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford Wednesday. The advisory asks the public to report false uses of emergency alert system tones and wireless emergency alerts, he noted. Since streaming programming is accessible on wireless handsets -- phones -- rules could be seen as applying to streaming services and podcasters, “even if Internet programmers are not otherwise subject to FCC rules,” Oxenford said. “These warnings suggest that online programmers should be warned that use of EAS or WEA tones in their programming could receive the unwanted attention of the FCC.”
Ticketmaster should ban facial recognition technology at festivals and concerts, Fight for the Future said Tuesday. The campaign has some tie-ins to Washington: Musicians and groups including Thievery Corporation, from the District of Columbia area, back the request, while Washington’s Summer Meltdown Festival said it will honor it. "@Ticketmaster and others" shouldn't "use #facialrecognition at festivals and concerts,” tweeted guitarist Tom Morello. TicketMaster didn’t comment.
Facebook tightened its self-harm policy to no longer allow graphic images of cutting, it said Tuesday, World Suicide Prevention Day. It made searching on Instagram for such content more difficult, and it won't be recommended in Explore. It's prohibiting content that could promote eating disorders, and it will continue to send resources to people whose content promotes self-harm or eating disorders. The company is exploring ways to share public data from its platform about how people talk about suicide, starting with giving academic researchers access to a social monitoring tool. And it said it's adding guidelines from a youth mental health research organization, for when someone searches for suicide or self-injury content.
The Trump administration will request nearly $1 billion in nondefense spending on artificial intelligence R&D for FY 2020, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios announced Tuesday. “This uniquely American ecosystem must do everything in its collective power to keep America’s lead in the AI race and build on our success,” Kratsios said at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Center for Data Innovation event. “Our future rests on getting AI right.” He noted the federal government in 2016 spent a billion dollars on AI R&D, including defense spending. AI will support jobs, drive economic growth and advance national security, he said. He contrasted U.S. strategy with authoritarian regimes' use of the technology, saying the administration’s AI strategy is rooted in rule of law. Other countries are using the technology to “surveil their population, limit free speech, and violate fundamental rights,” he said. President Donald Trump's February executive order mandates agencies to “prioritize investments” in AI R&D (see 1902110054).
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is collecting comment on its privacy framework through Oct. 24 (see 1906280040), said a release Monday.
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.