Amazon acknowledged a “ruff start” to Prime Day Tuesday in an e-mailed statement after it resorted to cute puppy graphics when it was unable to handle the onslaught of traffic at launch Monday afternoon. “Some customers are having difficulty shopping, and we’re working to resolve this issue quickly,” a spokeswoman emailed us. In the first hour and first 10 hours of Prime Day, U.S. customers ordered more items than at the equivalent points in 2017, she said. “We know some customers were temporarily unable to make purchases,” the company said, promising “hundreds of thousands of new deals today.” Amazon tried to reward Prime members with a “special thank you,” sending a Tuesday afternoon email offering a chance to download all six Amazon First Reads Kindle books for free through midnight. When we attempted to order, we encountered an error message akin to the fail messages reported Monday: “We're sorry! We had a problem processing your order. If you don't receive your book, please call our customer service line.” Other Prime users reported ordering glitches. Marist College promoted a June poll with NPR on Prime ownership in a Tuesday tweet: “44% of adults told @NPR/@MaristPoll they use Amazon Prime. They must have been pretty upset yesterday when @amazon site crashed on Prime Day!"
NTIA said as part of its BroadbandUSA program, it will host monthly webinars “to engage the public and stakeholders with information to accelerate broadband connectivity, improve digital inclusion, strengthen policies and support local priorities.” The series will address topics including “best practices for improving broadband deployment, digital inclusion, workforce skills, and e-government,” says an NTIA Federal Register notice Tuesday. The webinars will be from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern time on the third Wednesday of every month, beginning Oct. 17 and continuing through Sept. 18, 2019.
A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., charged 12 Russian intelligence officers with federal crimes for hacking into Democratic Party computer networks in an effort to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, said DOJ Friday. The defendants are members of the GRU, a Russian Federation intelligence agency within the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian military, said DOJ. They allegedly hacked into networks for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic National Committee and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, and leaked information on the internet, identifying themselves as "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0.”
Facial recognition technology deserves “thoughtful government regulation,” blogged Microsoft President Brad Smith Friday. Computers identifying faces through cameras and photos raises “issues that go to the heart of fundamental human rights protections like privacy and freedom of expression,” said Smith. Government and industry should determine acceptable uses, he said, with policymakers balancing public safety and democratic freedoms. Smith listed benefits: efficient photo cataloging; authorities identifying missing people and criminal suspects; and smart device security. He listed drawbacks: potential for continuous, nonconsensual government surveillance; mass unauthorized data gathering from events; commercial exploitation of surveillance systems to sell products; and racial bias. He recommended policymakers launch a “bipartisan and expert commission” to guide legislative efforts. Industry deciding alone is “an inadequate substitute for decision making by the public and its representatives,” Smith said. “A world with vigorous regulation of products that are useful but potentially troubling is better than a world devoid of legal standards.”
Voxx Automotive partnered with UniKey Technologies to bring keyless products and vehicle access systems to the automotive market, said the companies Thursday. Voxx brings its phone-as-a-key technology that lets drivers use a smartphone as a key fob; UniKey’s contributions are Bluetooth location capability, communications and secure cloud services expertise, and a digital key sharing platform. The companies received a contract from an electric vehicle maker for a keyless solution to be delivered next year, they said. Target use cases are family key-sharing and car-sharing services and similar uses by car rental firms and auto fleet operators.
The departments of Justice, Energy and Homeland Security have mostly complied with eight recommendations “to develop and document policies, procedures and monitoring capabilities” addressing IT supply chain risk, said GAO Thursday. Energy and Justice fully implemented the recommendations, but DHS implemented two recommendations and “could not demonstrate that it had fully implemented the recommendation to develop and implement a monitoring capability to assess the effectiveness of the security measures,” said GAO.
Lawmakers can't ignore cost to innovation when considering stringent privacy regulations, said the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Wednesday. Senior Policy Analyst Alan McQuinn and Vice President Daniel Castro said that if European digital advertising revenue grew at the same rate as in the U.S., the EU, where "strict privacy regulations reduce the revenue digital companies can earn from online ads," would have had an additional 11.7 billion euros flow through its digital ecosystem 2012-17. The report suggested a three-part test for adopting potential privacy regulations: Lawmakers should “target specific, substantial harms,” “directly limit those harms,” and “the costs of the regulations must be outweighed by their countervailing benefits.”
ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization plans to launch an “expedited policy development process” by the end of July for a proposed framework that would let third-parties access nonpublic domain registry data, said U.S. Council for International Business Vice President-ICT Policy Barbara Wanner in a newer blog post that was revised from Friday’s version (see 1807060026). She characterized this outcome from last week’s ICANN meeting as a positive development and described setting the “ambitious timeline” as “significant” progress.
Amazon continued its Prime marketing blitz Tuesday, widening its net to Whole Foods customers. Amazon said it's adding Echo and Fire TV products to Whole Foods shelves. Best Buy, meanwhile, blogged Monday that it added voice-only deals via Alexa. Retail marketing platform company Bluecore said that last year, 20 percent of products discounted by Amazon during Prime Day were available elsewhere for less. Prime Day “fuels non-Amazon purchases,” it said, saying consumers discovered products on Amazon and bought elsewhere. Electronics retailers saw the biggest spike, 26 percent, on orders averaging $50 or less, it said, with Statista saying 26.1 percent of 2017 Prime Day shoppers bought a device. Target announced Tuesday its Drive Up service, which it tested in hometown Minneapolis last year, expanded in big and midsize Midwest and other cities including Chicago; Indianapolis; Lansing; Louisville; Erie, Pennsylvania; and South Charleston, West Virginia. More than 800 stores offer the service. Customers order by app, and are notified when the order is ready -- “usually within one hour,” said the retailer.
The Communications Workers of America Monday joined Freedom From Facebook, a campaign urging the FTC to break up Facebook’s “monopoly” (see 1805210051). “It’s time for the FTC to hold Facebook accountable, impose strong privacy rules on the platform, and break up the monopoly,” said CWA Strategic Research Associate Brian Thorn. Facebook didn't comment.