Facebook and its Instagram were returning to service for some users, including in Washington, D.C., after what appeared to be a daylong outage Wednesday. "Anddddd ... we're back," Instagram tweeted at around midnight EDT Wednesday. Many responded they still couldn't access the photo-sharing platform, and we couldn't fully use it then, either. Due to "a server configuration change, many people had trouble accessing our apps and services," Facebook tweeted early Thursday afternoon. "We've now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone’s patience." Until this, the company hadn't updated its tweets after saying almost 24 hours earlier that there wasn't a distributed denial of service attack (see 1903130053). The server change "triggered a cascading series of issues," a spokesperson emailed Thursday afternoon. "Our systems have been recovering over the last few hours." The company didn't comment further Thursday.

Facebook and its Instagram weren't working for some users, including in Washington, D.C. The company's "aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible," it tweeted Wednesday at around 2 p.m. EDT. It later said it's not a distributed denial of service attack. The company didn't comment further.

DOJ, the Commerce Department and 20 other agencies should complete identification and coding for vacant information technology and cybersecurity positions, GAO recommended Tuesday. The recommendations are related to implementation of 2015's Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Assessment Act. Lack of workers is one reason securing federal systems is on GAO’s high risk list.

U.S. antitrust authorities won't oppose Juniper Networks buying wireless cloud company Mist Systems, said an FTC early termination notice dated Monday and released Tuesday. That ends the $405 million deal's Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period.

"All the convenience in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t feel safe using our products and services,” said eero smart home mesh network provider CEO Nick Weaver, reaffirming its "commitment to your privacy head-on.” Guiding principles shared with Amazon, which bought eero, are that customers have a right to privacy, to know what data is being collected in “easy to understand terms” and to have control over their data, he blogged Tuesday. Eero collects network diagnostic information only to improve the performance, stability, and reliability of its products and services and for customer support, he said. The companies have begun building customer experiences together, such as Amazon’s WiFi Simple Setup, he said. Soon, when customers who own both an eero system and an Echo smart speaker set up connected devices bought on Amazon, the devices will look automatically for the eero network and use encrypted credentials to connect, he said: “Gone will be the days of manually setting up each smart product we bring into our homes.”

There’s “substantial” evidence Facebook violated its 2011 FTC consent decree, and Google has “consistently misinformed users” about geolocation practices, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote Chairman Joe Simons. The agency has been “toothless” in policing big tech, Hawley said, urging the FTC to use all resources available to probe privacy allegations. If the agency lacks the appropriate authority, it should explain how to Congress, Hawley said. The FTC didn’t comment.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s report on the 2017 Equifax data breach (see 1903070065) “highlights a glaring lack of cybersecurity preparedness that is, quite frankly, appalling given the highly sensitive consumer data” at stake, said Public Knowledge Cybersecurity Policy Director Megan Stifel Friday. PK urged Congress to pass "comprehensive privacy legislation and examine whether market incentives are sufficient to ensure consumers’ data is adequately protected.”

State attorneys general joined federal agencies in a crackdown on tech support scams, the National Association of Attorneys General said Thursday. Scammers use pop-up messages, phone calls or websites to claim a consumer’s computer is infected, and then ask for personal information or remote access to a victim’s computer to fix the problem. More than 60 percent of consumers faced them last year, said NAAG President and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry (R). “Education, prevention, and enforcement are instrumental in addressing these tech scams.” Sweep participants are DOJ, the FTC and AG offices from Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington, D.C. The sweep includes "criminal charges, criminal proceed seizures, civil injunction lawsuits, and the execution of search warrants," said a DOJ fact sheet.

Opened emails are entitled to the same Stored Communications Act privacy protections as unopened emails, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court ruled Wednesday in docket 18-1306. Patrick Hately alleged David Watts, who was intimately involved with Watts’ ex-girlfriend, Nicole Torrenzano, illegally accessed Watts’ email account. Judge James Wynn wrote the opinion, joined by Judges Roger Gregory and Diana Gribbon Motz. They disagreed with the lower court that "Hately’s previously opened and delivered emails stored by a web-based email service were not in statutorily protected 'electronic storage' under federal law." The jurists sent the case back to the district court. A lawyer for the defendant didn't comment immediately Thursday. New America’s Open Technology Institute said Thursday the decision has broad implications because police will now have to secure a warrant to access email evidence, regardless of how old the emails are or if they have been opened. "A contrary ruling would have meant that spam emails nobody opens are better protected from government access than sensitive, personal messages you open and save,” said Center for Democracy & Technology Freedom, Security and Technology Project Director Greg Nojeim.

U.S. military services should develop cyber mission force training plans with specific personnel requirements to better develop a skilled cyber workforce, GAO said Wednesday. The agency suggested independent assessors evaluate Cyber Command training and that Cyber Command “establish the training tasks covered by foundational training courses and convey them to the services.” DOD “concurred with the recommendations,” GAO said.