The FTC’s sixth policy hearing will focus on the role of data on competition and innovation and antitrust analysis of mergers, the agency announced. Scheduled for Nov. 6-8, speakers include Competition Bureau Deputy Director Gail Levine, Competition Bureau acting Deputy Director Haidee Schwartz, ACT|The App Association Executive Director Morgan Reed, Computer & Communications Industry Association Competition & Regulatory Policy Director Marianela Lopez-Galdos and Software & Information Industry Association Senior Vice President-Public Policy Mark MacCarthy. The seventh policy hearing will focus on algorithms, artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, the agency said. Scheduled for Nov. 13-14, speakers include Competition Bureau Director Bruce Hoffman, National Institute of Standards and Technology Senior Privacy Policy Advisor Naomi Lefkovitz, Microsoft Research Senior Researcher Jennifer Wortman Vaughan and Google Senior Research Scientist Martin Wattenberg.

The FTC should investigate whether Android apps manipulate children into watching advertisements and making purchases, some 20 consumer and health advocates wrote the agency Tuesday. Citing a University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital study, the groups question 135 children’s apps “marketed to or played by children under five.” Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog, Electronic Privacy Information Center and Public Citizen signed. “These apps routinely lure young children to make purchases and watch ads, though they are marketed to parents as appropriate for young children,” they wrote. Google and the FTC didn’t comment.

A federal judge ordered a New Jersey-based hacker to pay $8.6 million in restitution and serve six months of house arrest for leading a cyberattack on Rutgers University’s network, DOJ said Friday. U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp sentenced Paras Jha, 22, for launching “a series of” distributed denial of service attacks on the Rutgers network November 2014-September 2016. The attacks “effectively shut down Rutgers University’s central authentication server, which maintained, among other things, the gateway portal through which staff, faculty, and students delivered assignments and assessments,” DOJ said.

IBM agreed to buy Red Hat in a $34 billion deal. "It changes everything about the cloud market," said IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, saying her company will become the biggest hybrid cloud provider and looking toward a future where companies move business applications there, not just rent cloud computing. Citing concerns about debt IBM will likely take on, Standard & Poor's cut its credit rating a notch and said further downgrade is possible. Monday, the first day of regular trading after the deal, Red Hat stock rose to less than the $190 per share cash price. Red Hat didn't comment. The stock closed 45 percent higher Monday at $169.63, an 11 percent discount to the takeover price.

NTIA shouldn't promote a privacy enforcement framework (see 1810220032) modeled after new laws in Europe and California that limit collection and use of data, Technology Policy Institute Senior Fellow Thomas Lenard commented in docket 180821780-8780-01. “Collecting and analyzing large amounts of data is the basis of much, if not most, of the innovation that has taken place on the internet over the past 20 years,” Lenard said Friday. The current FTC model is “ex post enforcement based on actual harms,” he wrote, and laws in California and the EU “use an ex ante regulatory approach.”

The Department of Homeland Security should establish a civilian cybersecurity corps modeled after the Civil Air Patrol, Coast Guard Auxiliary or volunteer firefighters, New America said in a report Thursday. The corps should be federally funded but run at the state and local levels, wrote cybersecurity policy fellow Natasha Cohen and senior fellow Peter Warren Singer.

The U.S. military should have access to the best technology, and Microsoft will continue bidding on military contracts, while weighing in on ethical debates about autonomous weapons, Microsoft President Brad Smith blogged Friday. Microsoft will advocate for artificial intelligence and other new technologies to be used “responsibly and ethically,” he said. The company recently came under fire internally for bidding on the DOD’s $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud project. Microsoft employees are free to decline assignments on projects they disagree with, Smith said.

The FTC 4-0-1 finalized a settlement free of financial penalty with Uber Friday over allegations the ride-hailing company “deceived consumers” about privacy and data security practices in two separate cases in 2014 and 2016, the agency announced (see 1804120056). Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter called for rulemaking and civil penalty authority to deter future bad behavior and agreed with Commissioner Rohit Chopra that the agency should publicly disclose Uber's third-party reviews moving forward. Uber could be “subject to civil penalties if it fails to notify the FTC of certain future incidents involving unauthorized access to consumer information, which includes both driver and rider information,” the FTC said. The agreement requires Uber to implement a “comprehensive privacy program and for 20 years obtain biennial independent, third-party assessments” certified by the commission. Uber previously reached a $148 million settlement with state attorneys general (see 1809260055). An Uber spokesperson cited the previous statement from Chief Legal Officer Tony West, saying the company will “continue to invest in protections to keep our customers and their data safe and secure.” Chopra cited public comments from the World Privacy Forum and the Electronic Privacy Information Center that the agency should make the required audits and assessments public, rather than require access through Freedom of Information Act requests: “Proactive disclosure would be superior, given the public interest in keeping this company in compliance.” Commissioner Christine Wilson recused herself because she didn’t participate when the commission put the matter out for public comment, a spokesperson said.

Google is committed to creating a safe work environment, and inappropriate behavior merits “serious consequences,” CEO Sundar Pichai emailed employees Thursday in response to sexual misconduct claims against Android co-founder Andy Rubin, who resigned in 2014. “We are dead serious about making sure we provide a safe and inclusive workplace,” Pichai wrote. “We want to assure you that we review every single complaint about sexual harassment or inappropriate conduct, we investigate and we take action.” Vice President-People Operations Eileen Naughton co-signed the message. It cites Google terminating 48 people in the past two years for sexual harassment, including 13 employees in senior positions, who didn't receive exit packages.

Some 40 civil and human rights groups recommended policies Thursday for internet platforms to combat “hateful” online activity (see 1810190054). Recommendations include: prohibition of hateful activities; sufficient enforcement personnel; an easy-to-use appeal process; transparency reports; experts to train staff; and independent boards to judge progress. The groups, which included Color of Change, Free Press and the Southern Poverty Law Center, said they will grade platforms on those criteria for the next several months. Google and Facebook are major internet platforms that in the past few months started issuing comprehensive transparency reports for taking down content that violates community guidelines, New America’s Open Technology Institute reported. Community guideline-based decisions made OTI’s list of most common takedown categories. Others were: government and legal content demands; copyright requests; trademark requests; network shutdowns and service interruptions; and right-to-be-forgotten delisting requests. OTI surveyed 24 international and 46 U.S. internet companies and telcos. OTI said 35 “reported on content-related demands and takedowns.” Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft scored well on the transparency report, but Apple, Amazon, AT&T and Verizon didn't. Facebook reported in all but one category: right-to-be-forgotten delisting requests. Google reported in all but the trademark requests category. Microsoft reported in all but trademark requests and network shutdowns and service interruptions. Twitter reported in all but network shutdowns and service interruptions and right-to-be-forgotten delisting requests. Apple, Amazon, AT&T and Verizon reported in one of six categories: government and legal content demands.