Executives from Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Oracle will meet at the White House Thursday to discuss American leadership in tech and innovation, said a government official: Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian and Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman will attend. The companies and organizations didn't comment.
Deploying autonomous and connected cars will lead to higher penetration of electric vehicles, an Edison Electric Institute event was told Friday. Representatives from automakers, including General Motors and Nissan, said goals include cutting traffic congestion and accidents, along with vehicle emissions. Launching autonomous vehicles will bring electric vehicles into higher-profile public view and "really pushes the EV forward," said Dan Turton, GM vice president-North American policy. Mentioning a semi-autonomous driving feature amid Nissan's goal of "intelligent mobility," Michael Arbuckle, senior manager-EV sales and marketing strategy, said the manufacturer is "also going to enhance" autonomy and connectivity in its vehicles. After saying to audience laughter that "frankly, I am happy to be talking about anything besides trade policy," Bryan Jacobs, BMW vice president-government and external affairs, said in Q&A that "open and free trade is a formula for success." Components that go into vehicles "have to be unencumbered as they move from one place to another," he added. "We are all in on this. We are unapologetically free traders. ... The trading regime that’s currently in place is really beneficial to companies like ours." An Energy Department official later sought to describe the outlook "to increase affordable mobility choices." There are "a wide range of futures due to autonomy and interconnectivity," Alex Fitzsimmons, the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office chief of staff, said of diverse forecasts related to energy usage: "We’re all striving toward the same goal of affordable mobility for all."
Facebook exempting media organizations from labeling and archiving of political advertising in the U.S. and the U.K. is a positive step in recognizing journalism’s role as society’s fourth estate, News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern said Thursday (see 1806110034).
Securing against botnets requires collective action from government, internet and communications stakeholders, industry officials said Thursday, releasing a report. The Council to Secure the Digital Economy cybersecurity coalition between tech and communications groups warns against “prescriptive, compliance-focused regulatory requirements.” Government’s role isn't regulation that stymies response to threats, Information Technology Industry Council CEO Dean Garfield said during a panel. The goal should be to cut back 90-95 percent of threats because no amount of collaboration will be able to eradicate all threats, CTA CEO Gary Shapiro said. There’s no higher cause than addressing threats to the digital economy, USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter argued, saying the cyber group plans to release an annual report: “This isn’t one and done.” Threats are increasing as the value of the tech sector grows, Garfield said. Shapiro called it a multi-factorial problem with multi-factorial solutions. Botnets can turn “everyday products into an army of devices capable of transmitting torrents of Internet traffic capable of knocking targeted networks offline,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said during a separate appearance Thursday. He encouraged the private sector to continue searching for “constructive solutions." The Commerce and Homeland Security departments released a road map highlighting focus areas for government and the private sector: the IoT, enterprise, internet infrastructure, technology development and awareness/education.
Eight people with ties to Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan were indicted for “causing tens of millions of dollars in losses in digital advertising fraud,” DOJ said Tuesday. Charges included wire fraud, computer intrusion, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Three defendants arrested abroad await extradition, and the others remain at large, DOJ said. The FBI was authorized to seize 31 internet domains and “information from 89 computer servers, that were all part of the infrastructure for botnets engaged in digital advertising fraud activity,” Justice said.
Artificial intelligence will benefit society enormously and doesn’t pose the humanity-threatening, science fiction-based scenarios Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned about, said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation President Robert Atkinson in a Fox Business opinion Tuesday. Atkinson dismissed Musk’s Terminator-like scenarios in which robotics control humans, while playing up the benefits of autonomous vehicles and smartphones. Tesla didn't comment.
Investigate “deceptive and misleading” location-tracking practices of Android users by Google, more than 75 consumer groups wrote the FTC Tuesday. Citing a Norwegian Consumer Council report, the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) claimed Google “manipulates and nudges users” into constant tracking via location history and activity online and through apps, which is applied across all Google accounts and violates the EU’s general data protection regulation. Among claims: users are pushed into location history tracking without knowing, misled about the extent of data collection, and default settings are hidden. TACD includes the Center for Digital Democracy, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Electronic Privacy Information Center. A Google spokesperson emailed that location history is turned off by default, and users can edit, delete or pause it. If paused, depending on individual settings, the company might collect and use location data to “improve your Google experience,” the spokesperson said: “We’re constantly working to improve our controls, and we'll be reading this report closely to see if there are things we can take on board.” The FTC received the letter, its spokesperson said.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology released for comment by Jan. 11 draft cybersecurity guidelines for cloud computing. NIST seeks feedback any “gaps” in the draft.
Recent FTC comments to NTIA unfairly favor corporate interests concerning opt-in data privacy proposals, 15 consumer and privacy groups wrote the commission Monday. The FTC cited “unintended consequences” of deploying an opt-in model, which would require users to authorize data collection, citing an advertising industry survey (see 1811130058). The FTC should have taken a “broader look at the evidence, rather than relying on a self-serving study by one stakeholder,” the groups wrote. They included Center for Digital Democracy, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center and Public Knowledge. The FTC didn’t comment.
Top facial recognition technology is now at least 99.8 percent accurate, signaling “massive gains” for the technology in the past five years, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reported Wednesday. Error rates are below 0.2 percent for the most accurate algorithms analyzing quality portrait photos in galleries of more than 12 million people, said the report. Microsoft was among the top performers.