Trailrunner7 quotes a report from On the Wire: A group of influential lawmakers, including Sen. Ed Markey and Sen. Ron Wyden, are pressing the Trump administration for answers about how an executive order that includes changes to the Privacy Act…
97 Tech Companies Including Apple, Google, Microsoft Call Travel Ban Unlawful In Rare Coordinated Legal Action
An anonymous reader shares a WashingtonPost report: Silicon Valley is stepping up its confrontation with the Trump administration. On Sunday night, technology giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Uber and many others filed a legal brief opposing the administration’s…
Trump's Next Immigration Move To Affect H-1B Visas; Require Tech Companies To Try To Hire Americans First: Bloomberg
AdamnSelene writes: A report in Bloomberg describes a draft executive order that will hit the tech industry hard and potentially change the way those companies recruit workers from abroad. The H-1B, L-1, E-2, and B1 work visa programs would be…
Running For Congress, Brianna Wu Criticizes The FBI's GamerGate Report
An anonymous reader shares this update about programmer/game developer Brianna Wu as well as the FBI’s recently-released report on their GamerGate investigation:Wu has officially unveiled the web site for her campaign for a seat in the U.S. Congress, and says…
USDA Scrambles To Ease Concerns After Researchers Were Ordered To Stop Publishing Publicly Funded Science
Layzej writes: Popular Science reports that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now barred from communicating with the public. [And early this morning, BuzzFeed revealed that] The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has banned scientists and other employees from sharing…
Julian Assange Will Not Hand Himself In Because Chelsea Manning's Release Won't Happen Immediately, Lawyer Says
President Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s prison sentence yesterday, reducing her time required to serve behind bars from 35 years to just over seven years. Prior to the commutation, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange pledged to surrender himself to U.S. authorities if Manning…
Washington Post Retracts Story About Russian Hackers Penetrating US Electricity Grid
Those anonymous U.S. officials who reported Russian hacking code had been found “within the system” of a Vermont power utility must’ve been surprised to learn the code was on a laptop that wasn’t actually connected to the grid. The Washington…
Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources Site No Longer Says Humans Cause Climate Change
The website of Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources has been updated with new language and no longer says that humans and greenhouse emissions cause climate change. Instead, the site says that the causes of global warming “are being debated and…
Congressional Group Says Encryption Backdoors Are a Bad Idea
Members of the bipartisan encryption working group released a year-end report concluding that encryption backdoor laws would do more harm than good.
US Fails To Renegotiate Arms Control Rule For Hacking Tools
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: The Obama administration has failed to renegotiate portions of an international arms control arrangement to make it easier to export tools related to hacking and surveillance software — technologies that can…