Developers may not use Facebook or Instagram data for surveillance tools under language added Monday to the social sites’ platform policies, Facebook said in a post. “Our goal is to make our policy explicit,” the company said. “Over the past several months we have taken enforcement action against developers who created and marketed tools meant for surveillance, in violation of our existing policies; we want to be sure everyone understands the underlying policy and how to comply.”

World Wide Web Foundation founder Tim Berners-Lee believes internet stakeholders must address concerns about a loss of control over personal data and two other trends “for the web to fulfill its true potential as a tool which serves all of humanity.” Websites’ collection of personal data means “we lose out on the benefits we could realise if we had direct control over this data, and chose when and with whom to share it,” Berners-Lee said Sunday in a WWWF blog post on the 28th anniversary of his proposal for the World Wide Web. “We often do not have any way of feeding back to companies what data we’d rather not share.” Widespread data collection prompted more government intrusion online, which “creates a chilling effect on free speech and stops the web from being used as a space to explore important topics, like sensitive health issues, sexuality or religion,” Berners-Lee said. He urged stakeholders to resist the spread of “fake news” misinformation. Internet users’ increasing reliance on Facebook and other social media platforms that use algorithms to decide how to prioritize the placement of news means “those with bad intentions can game the system to spread misinformation for financial or political gain,” Berners-Lee said. The spread of political advertising on Facebook and other websites is also concerning, he said. “There are suggestions that some political adverts -- in the [U.S.] and around the world -- are being used in unethical ways,” including “to point voters to fake news sites, for instance, or to keep others away from the polls,” Berners-Lee said. “Targeted advertising allows a campaign to say completely different, possibly conflicting things to different groups. Is that democratic?”

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was urged by 44 civil liberties, media and privacy organizations to reject a proposal that would require foreign visitors to provide access to social media accounts as a condition for U.S. entry (see 1702210007). Led by the Center for Democracy & Technology, the coalition sent a letter Friday saying "intensive examination" of travelers' online information could jeopardize U.S. security, is "deeply invasive" and discriminatory, and won't yield any useful information. The groups said foreign governments similarly could demand passwords from U.S. citizens traveling abroad. Any compromised credentials would not only risk people's online security, but also would chill people's freedom of expression, religion and association, the letter said. It added that probing foreign visitors' accounts could expose Americans, who are part of the travelers' social networks, to scrutiny. CDT President Nuala O'Connor in a blog post said she sent the letter and a previous statement -- now signed by 145 associations and experts -- which objected to the proposal shortly after Kelly acknowledged at a hearing it was being considered. The Department of Homeland Security declined comment.

The ICANN board is planning two open meetings during the organization's March 11-16 conference in Copenhagen, ICANN said Thursday. An open meeting Saturday will focus on ICANN's anti-harassment policy, and a Sunday open meeting will focus on the organization's FY 2018 budget and Internet Assigned Numbers Authority operating plan.

“Protecting consumers’ privacy and the security of our devices is a top priority at Samsung,” the company emailed us Wednesday on WikiLeaks’ Tuesday disclosure that the CIA worked secretly with U.K. authorities in 2014 to hack Samsung smart TVs and turn them into covert microphones (see 1703070047). “We are aware of the report in question and are urgently looking into the matter,” Samsung said. Documents that WikiLeaks released, the authenticity of which couldn’t be confirmed, described “Weeping Angel” malware that the CIA planted on Samsung TVs from afar to “suppress” the TV’s LED backlight and “improve the look” of a so-called “Fake-Off mode” that gives the owner the false impression the set is turned off when in fact it's listening in on private conversations.

Amazon’s acknowledgment of a glitch with the Alexa voice assistant Tuesday night into Wednesday was far less detailed than social media comments chronicling the snafu. We first noticed the brownout when we summoned Alexa for the weather forecast; while our Echo lit up to indicate it was listening, Alexa didn’t respond to requests for the weather, a joke or the news. Far more connected Alexa users lost control of lights and more, we found from social media posts. Twitter user Kunai Bajaj wondered if the Alexa outage was related to the Amazon Web Services disruption last week. Facebook user Howie Cooperstein blamed a failed software update for “connected but useless” Alexa Echo devices. A friend weighed in saying his Echo speaker wouldn’t control the lights but did play music. Twitter user AndrewChoy thought the outage might be a political statement and said: “Ok @amazon, supporting #adaywithoutwomen is noble but taking Alexa offline is a bit much." Many Alexa users took the hitch in stride. Said Twitter user Andrew Lee: “Fine, I'll turn off the lights myself." In response to our questions on what happened, what caused the flameout and how many devices were affected, an Amazon spokeswoman only emailed us: "Yesterday evening we had an issue that impacted some Alexa customers’ ability to interact with the service. The Alexa service is now operating normally.”

TechNet and the Web Enabled Retailers Helping Expand Retail Employment (WE R HERE) Coalition said Tuesday they will work to increase opposition to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed Marketplace Sales Tax, which would require “marketplace providers” to collect New York’s state and local sales taxes on any items shipped into the state from out-of-state sellers. Cuomo, a Democrat, included the online sales tax proposal in the FY 2018 executive budget he released in January. TechNet and WE R HERE cited a Mercury survey done on their behalf that found 69 percent of surveyed state citizens oppose the proposal. The Marketplace Sales Tax proposal “sends a clear signal to small and emerging online marketplaces: come to New York at your own peril,” said TechNet Executive Director-Northeast Region Matthew Mincieli in a news release. “We know the Governor and the Legislature want to help the tech industry thrive, but this proposal is not the way to do it. We urge our leaders in Albany to remove this proposal from the final adopted budget.”

Amazon turned over data collected through an Echo device owned by the defendant in an Arkansas murder case, confirmed Nathan Smith, Benton County, Arkansas, prosecuting attorney, in an email Tuesday. "I am pleased that we will have access to the data from the Defendant's Echo device since the Defendant consented to its release," he said, referring to James Bates, who was charged with the 2015 murder of Victor Collins (see 1701060025). "As with any case, our obligation is to investigate all of the available evidence, whether the evidence proves useful or not. Since this case is ongoing, I cannot comment on the specifics of the recording or whether it will be used in court," said Smith. The case drew the attention of privacy advocates, who say intelligent personal digital assistants may be involved in future court cases. Amazon didn't comment. Multiple news stories said the company handed over the data Friday.

Samsung representatives didn’t comment Tuesday on WikiLeaks’ disclosure that the CIA worked secretly with U.K. authorities in 2014 to hack Samsung smart TVs and turn them into covert microphones. The CIA also developed “numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones,” WikiLeaks said of the 8,000-plus pages of CIA materials it released online Tuesday, the authenticity of which couldn’t be confirmed. “Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user's geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone's camera and microphone,” WikiLeaks said in a news release. In the case of the hacking of Samsung smart TVs, documents of “engineering notes” purported to be from a joint U.S.-U.K. “workshop” in June 2014 describe malware code-named “Weeping Angel” that can “suppress” the TV’s LED backlight to “improve the look” of a so-called “Fake-Off mode” that gives the owner the false impression the set is turned off when in fact it's listening to private conversations. A to-do list under the heading of “Future Work” expresses frustration that Samsung’s internet firmware updates may remove the Weeping Angel “implant” or “portions of the implant,” the documents say. CIA engineers also expressed concern that a blue LED on the back of the Samsung TV “remains powered when in Fake-Off mode” and thus threatened to tip off the unsuspecting owner, the documents say. Apple and Google representatives also didn’t comment Tuesday on the aspects of the leaked documents that describe how the CIA hacked iOS and Android smartphones from afar.

For the 11th consecutive year, internet-related fraud complaints led the list of consumer grievances lodged last year in New York, said the state attorney general's office in a Monday news release. The AG's office said there were 4,605 internet-related complaints -- about 23 percent of the total 19,746 fraud complaints recorded -- which included problems about internet services and providers, data privacy and security and consumer fraud. No. 2 on the list were automobile complaints followed by consumer-related services, which include security systems and tech repairs.