To improve transparency of software components and digital security, NTIA Administrator David Redl Wednesday launched a multistakeholder process. The agency seeks input from software vendors, IoT manufacturers, medical device manufacturers, civil society and various sectors. The first meeting is 10 a.m. July 19 at the American Institute of Architects, 1735 New York Ave. NW. “This initiative will highlight the role of enterprise customer to understand how data can be used to better secure organizations,” Redl wrote. “Stakeholders can address the challenges and obstacles in sharing this data.” In Thursday's Federal Register, NTIA says the multistakeholder process is the result of recommendations included in a report to the president on botnets (see 1805300065).

DOJ will appeal a federal judge's decision that President Donald Trump cannot legally block users from his Twitter account for political reasons, said a court filing Monday. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sued Trump in July for blocking users from his @realDonaldTrump account after they criticized him. Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled last month that Trump’s actions violated the First Amendment (see 1805230077). DOJ and the White House didn't comment further Tuesday.

Apple knowingly marketed three generations of defective Apple Watches since 2015 without owning up to the flaw that causes the watch’s screen to “crack, shatter, or detach” from the body of the device, “through no fault of the wearer,” alleged a complaint (in Pacer) filed Monday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. Apple “actively concealed and failed to disclose” the defect to consumers, and “indicates that its internal policy is to deny the existence” of the flaw or claim it’s the result of “accidental damage” from the user, thereby refusing to “honor” any warranty on the product, said the complaint seeking class-action status. Without warranty coverage, consumers “are forced to incur the significant expense of repairing or replacing” their defective watches, it said. Plaintiff Kenneth Sciacca bought his second-generation Apple Watch in December 2016 from an Apple store in Colorado Springs, Colorado, said the complaint. About 15 months later, Sciacca noticed that its screen had become detached from its body when he removed it from its charger, it said. When Sciacca brought the watch to an Apple store in Lone Tree, store employees quoted him $249 to fix it because it wasn’t under warranty, an offer that Sciacca declined, it said. His experience was “identical” to that of “thousands” of other Apple Watch owners who voiced their grievances on Apple’s “Communities” forum, it said. “Apple’s response in each case is the same: it implicitly or expressly blames the consumer.” The company didn’t comment Tuesday.

Two FTC attorneys are immune from a lawsuit filed by a medical records company alleging the duo retaliated after the company criticized the agency over a data security investigation (see 1603080005), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday. Michael Daugherty, owner of LabMD, claimed Ruth Yodaiken and Alain Sheer retaliated after his public criticism of their investigation into the company’s data-security practices making patient records available over public file-sharing. The response violated First Amendment rights, Daugherty claimed. “Qualified immunity protects all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law,” the D.C. Circuit said. “Even if the FTC attorneys sought to retaliate for the public criticism, their actions do not violate any clearly established right absent plausible allegations that their motive was the but-for cause of the Commission’s enforcement action.”

DOJ said a 50-year-old New York City man was charged with one count of cyberstalking and two counts of sending interstate threats to a woman he briefly dated. An affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York said David Waldman stalked the unidentified victim intermittently from April 2014 until his arrest Friday. He sent the woman hundreds of texts, voicemails and emails, and “made voluminous posts on a variety of online platforms, in which he claimed, among other assertions, that she had been diagnosed with bipolar and narcissistic personality disorder, used drugs, and fabricated claims that she had been a victim of child sexual abuse,” DOJ alleged Friday. The victim got restraining orders. Requests for comment sent to various email addresses DOJ linked to Waldman were not returned.

General Motors is “still on track” to launch autonomous vehicles in a "ridesharing network" in 2019, “but as always, we will be gated by safety,” said CEO Mary Barra on a conference call with investors about SoftBank Vision Fund’s $2.25 billion investment in GM Cruise (see 1805310003). That GM is testing AVs in “a complex urban environment” in downtown San Francisco “gives us a dramatic increase in the rate of learning that we have,” the CEO said Thursday. Having all AV development “under one roof” in the GM Cruise subsidiary “is unique in this space, and we think it is a very important ingredient to have the speed at which we can develop these vehicles safely,” she said. SoftBank “affords us a new source of capital as we look to scale this business,” said GM President Dan Ammann.

Facebook is removing its “Trending” news feature in favor of exploring “breaking news” labels and additional news videos, the social network announced Friday. Trending, introduced in 2014 to promote trending news topics, got less than 1.5 percent of clicks to news publishers on average, Facebook Head-News Products Alex Hardiman said: “Over time people found the product to be less and less useful.” The platform also will remove “third-party partner integrations that rely on the Trends” application programming interface. Facebook will test breaking news labels with 80 publishers in North America, South America, Europe, India and Australia; a “Today In” section devoted to the latest local breaking news; and added news videos in the “Watch” section. “We’ve seen that the way people consume news on Facebook is changing to be primarily on mobile and increasingly through news video,” Hardiman wrote.

Worldwide spending on augmented reality and virtual reality will reach $27 billion this year, up 92 percent over 2017, IDC reported Thursday. The consumer industry is projected to remain the biggest spender ($53 billion) on AR/VR products and services through 2022, followed by retail, manufacturing and transportation ($56 billion combined). VR gaming leads use cases, with spending expected to reach $7 billion this year.

The Apple App Store, Google Play Store and YouTube leading the industry in transparency and public disclosure, but Facebook and Instagram “have failed to adopt truly meaningful notice practices and policies that inform users of crucial details,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported Thursday. EFF graded online platforms on “transparency on legal takedown requests, transparency on platform policy takedown requests, providing meaningful notice, allowing appeals, and limiting the geographic scope of takedowns.” Platforms were either awarded a star or not, amounting to a pass-fail test. The Apple App Store, Google Play Store and YouTube received a star in every category. Facebook and Instagram received one star each for “limiting the geographic scope of takedowns.” Reddit earned stars for all categories other than providing meaningful notice, Twitter received three stars and LinkedIn earned one star for allowing appeals.

The federal government needs private sector collaboration to maximize cybersecurity defense, said Assistant Attorney General-National Security John Demers Thursday. Speaking at a FedScoop/FireEye event, Demers cited successful public-private cybersecurity efforts with Yahoo, Google and other private entities that shared cybersecurity interests with law enforcement. Those efforts led to enforcement action against criminals from Russia, Iran, the Islamic State and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, he said. “We will continue to work with other agencies to use all elements of national power to meet this ever-changing and growing challenge,” Demers said. “To adequately protect our shared national cyber security against persistent attack, we will need your help as well.”