David Waldman, 49, of Inwood, New York, pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York to cyberstalking a woman he briefly dated (see 1806010065), DOJ said. Sentencing is Nov. 22.

Facebook said it removed 652 suspicious pages, groups and accounts mostly linked to Iran that targeted the U.S., U.K., Middle East and Latin America. Also Tuesday, Twitter announced suspension of 284 accounts suspected of “coordinated manipulation,” many originating from Iran. It credited FireEye with giving a tip about Liberty Front Press, a network linked to Iranian state media. Twitter said it's “committed to engaging with other companies and relevant law enforcement entities” for this ongoing issue. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Facebook’s announcement is further evidence foreign enemies are actively using social media to divide the U.S.: “Iranians are now following the Kremlin’s playbook from 2016. While I’m encouraged to see Facebook taking steps to rid their platforms of these bad actors, there’s clearly more work to be done.” Warner looks forward to testimony from Facebook, Twitter and Google Sept. 5 (see 1807260050).

Comcast added Yale Assure smart locks to its library of Xfinity Home smart home devices, it announced Tuesday. Four locks will be available to Comcast’s Xfinity Home customers in different form factors in a choice of three finishes, Derrick Dicoi, executive director-product management, told us. A Yale Zigbee network module ($50) is required for integration, and customers who already own a compatible Assure Lock can buy the Yale module and add it to the Xfinity platform. The compatible Yale smart locks range $129-$169, a company spokeswoman said. Kwikset and August also have smart locks in the Xfinity Home library, and garage access is available through the Chamberlain MyQ smart garage door openers, part of Comcast’s strategy to give customers a wide choice of offerings that have been vetted to work with the Xfinity Home platform, said Dicoi. Yale smart lock options include key-free or keyed locks in touch-screen and push-button versions, said the companies. The locks can be controlled by Android and iOS apps, enabling users to remotely lock and unlock doors, check lock status and create rules to receive a notification if the door is unlocked after a designated time, they said.

The State Department should “swiftly” push for the appointment of an official to be ombudsman for the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield (see 1808090015), tech groups told Secretary Mike Pompeo Monday. ACT|The App Association, BSA|The Software Alliance, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Engine, the Information Technology Industry Council, the Internet Association and the Software & Information Industry Association were among groups urging appointment of an undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment. The individual holding that position serves as ombudsman to the Privacy Shield. The Privacy Shield is “indispensable” to the U.S. economy and EU relations, they wrote: “While the duties of the Ombudsperson are currently being carried out, having a senior political appointee in the role is important.” Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans, Environment and Science Judith Garber, set to be the next ambassador to the Republic of Cyprus, is acting ombudsman. A State Department spokesman said the agency hopes to have someone in the position “as soon as possible” but deferred to the White House on when the undersecretary will be named.

Despite Facebook efforts to promote it, the company's ad-supported Watch on-demand video service is gaining only modest traction, The Diffusion Group said Tuesday. It said its survey of 1,632 adult Facebook users about their awareness and use of the Watch tab found half hadn't heard of the video service and 24 percent have heard of it but never used it. It said 14 percent of those surveyed use Watch at least weekly, and 6 percent at least once a day. TDG said despite the slow build of Watch, Facebook still has big long-term potential as a large-scale video provider and Watch was never intended to generate massive audiences.

CTA identified 380 tariff codes that would cause “significant harm” to the consumer technology industry’s member companies and to consumers resulting from the third installment of Trade Act Section 301 duties against Chinese imports, blogged Sage Chandler, CTA vice president-international trade, Tuesday. She cited codes identifying items that allow access to the internet, including servers, desktop computers, printed circuit assemblies and connected devices. Connected devices cover a "vast array of tech products" including e-readers, smartwatches, speakers and fitness devices, plus the components and the infrastructure products that make them work, such as modems, routers and gateways, Chandler said. Tariffs, as a remedy to shortcomings in Chinese national policy and practice, are more likely to cause “adverse short- and long-term consequences to our economy than incentivize change in China's discriminatory IP practices,” she said. If enacted, new tariffs affecting $200 billion in trade will continue the “destructive ripple effect” the Trump administration started with the first round of tariffs that affected the tech industry and the U.S. economy as a whole, Chandler said. Products on the proposed tariff list “disproportionately impact small companies, many of which manufacture and assemble in the United States, and startup companies that design and engineer U.S. intellectual property.” A CTA study said 25 percent tariffs on printed circuit board assemblies and connected devices will cause price increases of up to 6 percent, even affecting products made entirely with U.S. labor and components. CTA estimates those increases will cause a consumer spending drop of 12 percent. “Price shock and drop in demand have the potential to devastate our industry,” said Chandler, with the impact of a 25 percent tariff on connected devices alone expected to cost American consumers an extra $3.2 billion annually. “That contradicts USTR's stated aim in the product selection process of avoiding goods commonly purchased by American consumers,” she said. Technology tariffs are “counterproductive,” said the trade specialist, at a time when the U.S. is looking to achieve “digital integration, advanced telecommunications technology and increase internet access for rural populations.” Tariffs are taxes on Americans, not foreign governments, she said, and they "undermine the competitiveness of American companies.” Tech firms that testified Tuesday in a second day of public hearings on the tariffs were asked about the practicality of sourcing products from countries other than China. Brilliant Home Technology did an "evaluation" of where it could source products other than from China, and did so "before we knew about tariffs," said CEO Aaron Emigh. The company found quality in Vietnam and Indonesia couldn't match Chinese standards, he said. India could manufacture the product well, but since most of the components come from China, extending the supply chain in that way would introduce risks Brilliant felt weren't worth it, he said. "In our estimation it was not practical to manufacture anywhere outside of China," he said.

About 75 percent of U.S. households connected to the internet “had significant concerns about online privacy and security risks in 2017,” the U.S. Census Bureau said in a NTIA survey released Monday. Nearly a third of online households said those concerns “caused them to hold back from some online activities,” and 20 percent said they “experienced an online security breach, identity theft or a similar crime during the past year,” the survey, which was conducted in November 2017, said.

Minnesota’s Lake County is seeking bids by Nov. 2 for Lake Connections, a fiber broadband network that got about $66 million in stimulus funding in the early 2010s, the county said in a Friday official notice published in the Northshore Journal. The county last month got a $3.5 million opening bid by Pinpoint Holdings for the network that was built with a $56 million loan and $10 million grant from the Rural Utilities Service. The $3.5 million bid will be the baseline bid for the public sale process, said County Administrator Matthew Huddleston. Lake County owes RUS about $48.5 million, but they executed a memorandum of understanding “in which RUS agreed to accept the sale price of Lake Connections in full satisfaction of the outstanding indebtedness owed to RUS,” said Huddleston. In 2011, Mediacom challenged the RUS Broadband Infrastructure Program project as not financially viable, prompting a congressional investigation (see 1303140055 and 1205070046), and former RUS administrator Jonathan Adelstein, now Wireless Infrastructure Association president, testified that the government would seek full repayment of the loan to Lake County in event of a default (see 1205170068).

A federal court should deny Facebook’s attempt to block a lawsuit claiming the platform is liable for advertisements that violate fair-housing law through ad targeting filters, DOJ argued Friday. Facebook’s argument that the Communications Decency Act immunizes it from the Fair Housing Act “rests on the faulty premise that it is merely an interactive computer service,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman argued in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The groups suing Facebook are the National Fair Housing Alliance, Fair Housing Justice Center, Housing Opportunities Project for Excellence and the Fair Housing Council of Greater San Antonio. Citing the groups’ argument, Berman said Facebook “creates and harvests user data to develop profiles for each user, categorizing them into groups based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and other criteria.” He argued the platform could be liable for advertisers that discriminate against potential renters and buyers based on filtering mechanisms for race, sex, religion and other personal information. Facebook didn’t comment.

The FTC shouldn't shift the focus of its antitrust efforts from protecting consumers to protecting companies from competition, Computer & Communications Industry Association CEO Ed Black said Monday. Summarizing comments to the agency about upcoming public hearings on consumer protection and competition (see 1808030030), Black said laws that promote innovation have made the U.S. the “focal point of the digital economy.” The FTC’s comment deadline was Monday. Opt-out rules on data privacy enable companies to monetize “a greater pool of consumer information, while still empowering consumers with a choice about whether or not they want their data collected and used,” Free State Foundation representatives commented. However, rules for health, financial services and other sensitive records should require opt-in clauses, the foundation said. The Content Creators Coalition told the FTC artists are in “desperate need of help to rein in digital platforms. … We are a group of independent creators who have virtually no chance of protecting our work and getting due compensation without government intervention.” The coalition cited what it called anticompetitive abuses from platforms like Google, YouTube and Facebook. Freedom From Facebook continued its call for the FTC to break up Facebook and the social media entities it controls, and encourage “competition based on serving users, not on which company most efficiently sells user data to the highest bidder.”