The FTC launched a website that will spotlight the work of a new "economic liberty" task force, said a Thursday news release. Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen mentioned the task force in several speeches, saying it will focus on removing or narrowing occupational licensing regulations when they don't have a public safety or health rationale (see 1702230012). In a blog post, Ohlhausen wrote about examples of "excessive occupational licensing," saying the task force will "increase awareness of this vexing problem."

Many new members joined a DOD-created cybersecurity trade association, the Consortium for Command, Control, Communications and Computer Technologies, said a Thursday notice in the Federal Register. New members included companies, universities and consultants, among them AT&T, Brocade, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cornell University, George Mason University and Tuscaloosa.

The DOJ indicted two Russian intelligence agents and two Russia-hired hackers Wednesday for their roles in the 2014 Yahoo data breach that resulted in the theft of information on 500 million Yahoo accounts. That breach and a 2013 breach, both disclosed last year, collectively compromised 1.5 billion user accounts. Yahoo has been dealing with congressional inquiries, lawsuits and a $350 million price reduction in the Verizon deal to acquire the company (see 1612150010, 1612230029 and 1702210024). Among the indicted were Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev and Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, both agents with Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), DOJ said. The department said it also indicted Russian national Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan and Canadian-Kazakh national Karim Baratov, and that FSB hired both. The defendants face a combined 47 charges, including conspiracy, computer fraud, aggravated identity theft, trade secret theft and economic espionage, DOJ said. The defendants “targeted Yahoo accounts of Russian and U.S. government officials, including cyber security, diplomatic and military personnel,” said acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord during a news conference. “They also targeted Russian journalists; numerous employees of other providers whose networks the conspirators sought to exploit; and employees of financial services and other commercial entities.” McCord said Belan has been on the FBI's most wanted cyber criminals list for more than three years and faced charges in the U.S. on two other occasions for hacking e-commerce companies. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., praised DOJ Wednesday for the indictments, which he said are “yet another reminder that American businesses must invest in robust cyber defenses, be more willing to share threat information, and be much more upfront with consumers when their defenses fail.” Warner said in a statement he continues to believe Yahoo “had a responsibility to be more forthcoming in publicly reporting this breach sooner than it did, and both the public and private sectors often move too slowly to address the growing threats posed by cyber criminals.”

President Donald Trump should order the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to “responsibly disclose” any cyber vulnerabilities they've identified in U.S. devices and software, said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Vice President Daniel Castro in a Monday blog post. It responded to WikiLeaks’ posting last week of more than 8,700 documents purporting to originate from the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, including some unverified files about how the agency could use smart TVs and other devices as surveillance tools (see 1703070047). The documents “validate concerns that U.S. spy agencies are stockpiling cybersecurity vulnerabilities,” Castro said. “The intelligence community uses undisclosed vulnerabilities to develop tools that can penetrate the computer systems and networks of its foreign targets. Unfortunately, since everyone uses the same technology in today’s global economy, each of these vulnerabilities also represents a threat to American businesses and individuals.” Full disclosure of stockpiled vulnerabilities will help the private sector patch “security holes,” Castro said.

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.”