The Department of Homeland Security should partner more with "commercial concerns" like Microsoft to help the department fulfill its mission, said Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, speaking Tuesday at a George Washington University streamed event. Responding to a question about cyber from Frank Cilluffo, who directs the university's Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, Kelly said the department's job is protecting dot-gov websites, but it wants to partner "to the greatest degree possible" with business. Kelly said he recently met with Microsoft leadership in Seattle and said executives there are "very, very interested in partnering as we are." Kelly didn't provide further detail but said President Donald Trump is involved in outreach efforts and is organizing an "internal commission" to look at the issue. Microsoft didn't comment but a DHS spokesman emailed that the secretary's comments about Trump's commission were in reference to the White House Office of Innovation led by the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner (see 1703270043). Kelly's speech and discussion with Cilluffo focused on the secretary's wide-ranging mission, including cyber-related issues. Kelly said the internet is helping terrorists spread "hateful" propaganda, recruit soldiers and plan attacks. “And thanks to new and ever improving and proliferating encryption devices and secure communication techniques these individuals are becoming harder and harder and I predict eventually impossible to detect," he said. A recent Tech:NYC policy paper said the Trump administration strongly supports access to device encryption, which the tech industry and privacy advocates oppose (see 1704140034).

Artificial intelligence for “ubiquitous computing” is a “recent development” in the semiconductor industry, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) is well-positioned to “ride on this trend,” CEO Mark Liu said on a Thursday earnings call. “We are in a new era where billions of devices are connected at all times and computing takes place at any time and in any place,” said Liu. That’s what TSM means by ubiquitous computing, he said. In smartphones, for example, more intelligent features such as voice, image recognition and AI for decision-making will further increase handsets’ “computing power and silicon content,” he said. Given the smartphone’s “vast established subscription base,” AI for ubiquitous computing “is the best launch pad for new consumer hardware and software innovation,” he said. The trend of “ubiquitous AI” will show up in many IoT and consumer devices, such as robots, drones, surveillance devices, smart TVs and set-top boxes, he said. “Ubiquitous AI will also be widely used in the fast-developing autonomous car market.” AI will require a “very intensive localized parallel computing capability, which drive up the silicon content” in a device, he said. The “proliferation” of AI will demand “insatiable computing capability from semiconductors,” and TSM is developing “various technologies and innovation platforms” to satisfy this industry trend, he said.

DOJ's Antitrust Division will probably rule this summer that Google "is a 90+% search monopoly that has anticompetitively abused its monopoly position in search," wrote Scott Cleland, chairman of ISP-backed NetCompetition, in a Thursday blog post. The action likely will come in June or July after EU authorities conclude the first of three antitrust cases against the company (see 1604200001 and 1607140001), he said. DOJ will "impose a traditional monopoly nondiscrimination principle remedy that Google treat its shopping comparison competitors as it treats itself," Cleland said. Justice will usurp FTC as the lead antitrust enforcer against Google based on a half-dozen reasons: DOJ has a "very tough" record with Google vs. the FTC's "weak" one; it has criminal and international coordination jurisdiction over cartel enforcement; Makan Delrahim, President Donald Trump's DOJ's antitrust chief nominee, has "institutional trust, clout, and authority" (see 1703280020); and FTC Section 5 authority "has proven to be more liability than institutional advantage." Google didn't comment while DOJ declined to comment.

Justin Ramsey, who allegedly ran telemarketing operations that made millions of robocalls to consumers listed on the National Do Not Call Registry (see 1701130076), settled with the FTC, said the commission in a Thursday news release. Commissioners voted 2-0 to authorize staff to file the proposed stipulated court order that permanently bans Ramsey and his company, Prime Marketing, from placing calls to consumers to sell products and services, initiating calls to numbers listed on the registry and selling data lists containing those numbers. The order was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Ramsey and his company also will pay a $2.2 million civil penalty, which will be suspended upon payment of $65,000, said the FTC. "The full judgment will become due if they are later found to have misrepresented their financial condition," it added. The FTC's January complaint alleged Ramsey and several co-defendants made the robocalls in 2012 and 2013 and then Ramsey, through his new company, continued to make calls from 2014 through 2016. The other defendants previously settled with the FTC, the agency said. Ramsey couldn't be reached for comment.

Student privacy policies of 152 education technology services, particularly on data retention, encryption, de-identification and aggregation, "exhibited concerning trends," said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a report Thursday. EFF surveyed more than 1,000 K-12 students, parents, teachers, administrators and others, and investigated the 152 distinct apps, software and services reported to be in use in classrooms. It said 118 of the 152 services put privacy policies online. Of the 118, 78 mentioned data retention practices, 51 mentioned de-identification or aggregation of user data and 46 said they used encryption. Some companies mentioned are Evernote, Google and Microsoft. At Google, "digital literacy is very important and we’ve been investing in it for years,” a spokeswoman emailed us. The other companies didn't immediately comment.

THX joined the Streaming Video Alliance, an industry group focused on solving streaming challenges and creating best practices, to bring its audio experience to the streaming market, it said in a Wednesday announcement. As a member, THX will participate in industry workgroups, including ones focused on quality of experience, which THX called a key component of the audio and video streaming certification program it launched with Conviva this year.

Technology is poised to disrupt the car purchase process in much the same way it shook up how consumers shop for some other products, said Mark O’Neil, chief operating officer at Cox Automotive, at a National Automobile Dealers Association/J.D. Power event. The automotive market, a business segment that did less than 1 percent of consumer transactions digitally last year, could see as much as 20 percent of sales online by 2022, he said Tuesday here in New York. “If you think about any retail category out there, the consumer inevitably wins in getting it their way.” Meeting with a salesperson, securing financing and haggling over price and trade-in value could be eliminated by having consumers do those steps themselves from home on a dealer’s website, said O'Neil. Consumers are more comfortable with technology every day and will expect to be able to do more online, he said.

Walmart, after abandoning its $49-per-year Amazon Prime-like membership program in February less than a year after launch (see 1701310045), came up with a new way to reward online customers that’s outside of the e-commerce giant’s turf. In a Wednesday blog post, Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart U.S. eCommerce, announced the retailer’s discount program for customers who shop online and pick up the items in store. For customers who prefer home delivery, Walmart will ship items in two days for free, giving customers the free two-day shipping benefit of Amazon Prime without a membership fee. Walmart is leveraging its summer $3 billion purchase of Jet.com for the Pickup Discount program, said Lore, Jet.com's founder. In a post aimed at customers, Mark Ibbotson, executive vice president-central operations of Walmart U.S., said the company is testing pickup solutions including drive-through windows and in-store kiosks. He described the kiosk as a “high-tech vending machine” for online orders that scans a barcode sent to a customer’s smartphone.

Websites that offer free content like movies, TV shows and sports are likely hiding malware that can hijack individuals' computers, steal personal data and hit them with a barrage of advertising, wrote Will Maxson, FTC assistant director-Marketing Practices Division, in a Wednesday blog post. "We recently downloaded movies from five sites that offered them for free. In all five cases, we ended up with malware on our computer. Generally, it served up a slew of unwanted ads." He said downloading pirated content is illegal. Maxson said it's also not a good idea to provide credit card information if some sites ask for it since they may not be legitimate businesses.

ICANN Senior Vice President-Contractual Compliance and Consumer Safeguards Jamie Hedlund urged stakeholders to provide feedback to the organization and its Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review Team on contractual compliance issues. ICANN is collecting comments on CCT-RT’s draft report on whether the organization’s new generic top-level domains program has promoted competition, consumer trust and consumer choice in the domain name system, and whether the gTLD program’s procedures are effective. Hedlund said the Registry Stakeholder Group and the Generic Names Supporting Organization’s IP Constituency already submitted recommendations to ICANN on contractual compliance issues that are “clear and specific and can be assessed for feasibility, cost and effort.” CCT-RT plans to issue a report after it reviews feedback that will detail “changes that we will undertake as well as a rationale for not undertaking others,” Hedlund said in a blog post.