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Big Tech Braces for GOP Investigations Over Censorship
In September, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan and 34 of his Republican colleagues sent a letter to Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. In it, they outlined their concerns that Meta suppressed material that would have been politically damaging to Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign. “This letter serves as a formal request to preserve all existing and future records and materials,” they wrote.
The congressmen had no power to make Zuckerberg heed the request, and he didn’t respond. But Jordan was preparing for big changes in the near future. A Republican takeover of the House would likely elevate him to Judiciary Committee chair, a position that would allow him to back up his demands with the threat of a subpoena. Jordan was a key participant in the Benghazi investigation, a sprawling House probe that was bipartisan but used by some Republicans for political purposes, a goal at which Jordan proved particularly adept.
Those plans remain on hold after a surprisingly strong Democratic performance in the midterm elections on Nov. 8, which left the balance of Congress in doubt as of midday Wednesday. The odds are still in favor of Republicans securing a slim majority, which is all they’d need to control House committees.
The goal of a GOP inquiry into Big Tech would not be to bring in CEOs for embarrassing hearings, says a senior aide involved in planning, who asked not to be named when speaking about future committee activity. Rather it would go after documents and compel the testimony of decision-makers at companies such as Meta and Alphabet Inc.’s Google that conservatives don’t like. One person who’s advising tech companies says that they’re taking the potential for GOP-led probes seriously and that the staff involved would be ready to run effective and substantive investigations.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor Declines to Block NYC Public Sector COVID Vaccine Mandate
Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Thursday rejected a request that the Supreme Court block New York City’s public sector COVID-19 vaccine requirement as it applies to employees who have religious objections to the vaccine.
The emergency application from the New Yorkers for Religious Liberty was filed with Sotomayor, who supervises the lower courts that have ruled in the case. Her order rejecting it did not indicate that she had put the matter before the full court.
The challengers argued that they have been forced to choose between the mandate and their public sector jobs. Plaintiffs include firefighters, teachers and police officers. They say that the city has set up a process for individualized exemptions but still denies most exceptions based on religious liberty concerns.
“President Biden’s pronouncement that the pandemic is over has done little to reverse the ongoing constitutional nightmare in New York City,” John Bursch, a lawyer for the challengers, argued. “Moreover, it has been widely reported that a ‘tripandemic’ may loom ahead this winter, greatly increasing the likelihood that the Mandates will remain in place or new ones will replace them.”
Nailed It: Amazon Becomes the First Company Ever to Lose $1 Trillion in Stock Value
Amazon, one of the first companies to join the prestigious $1 trillion dollar valuation club, just passed another, an admittedly less desirable milestone. This week, Jeff Bezos’ Everything Store became the first publicly traded company to lose $1 trillion in market valuation.
The mind-boggling figures, first noted by Bloomberg, are the results of a worsening economy, repeatedly dour earnings reports, and massive stock selloffs. Amazon, valued at $1.882 trillion on June 21, on Thursday reported a comparatively measly $878 billion valuation.
Microsoft, which briefly surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable company last year, wasn’t far behind, with market valuation losses hovering around $900 billion. Combined, the two companies’ declines capture the effect of a lousy year most in tech would like to soon forget.
Those declines aren’t just limited to Amazon and Microsoft. The top five most valuable U.S. tech companies reportedly lost a combined $4 trillion in value this year. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the combined GDPs of Turkey, Argentina and Switzerland.
China Reaffirms Zero-COVID Stance, City of Guangzhou on Edge
China’s new top leadership body reaffirmed Beijing’s “dynamic-zero” COVID-19 policy on Thursday, as case numbers rose and authorities in the city of Guangzhou urged residents to work from home but stopped short of a city-wide lockdown.
In the southern city of Guangzhou, a manufacturing powerhouse that is home to nearly 19 million people, cases hit more than 2,000 for a third straight day and officials have launched mass testing, resisting, for now, a city-wide lockdown of the type that paralyzed Shanghai for two months earlier this year.
Mason Long, who works for a Guangzhou gaming company, said some residents were bracing for a lockdown, with many leaving the city or planning to.
Most of Guangzhou’s 11 districts are under some form of COVID restriction. In Beijing, residents of some areas have been asked to get COVID tests every day this week.
Elon Musk Warns Twitter Employees of ‘Difficult Times Ahead,’ Ends Remote Work: Report
Hours after Twitter CEO Elon Musk admittedly predicted he will do “lots of dumb things” as he learns to helm the new social media platform, he told his employees to brace for “difficult times ahead,” according to a report.
In a mass email Wednesday afternoon, Musk said there was “no way to sugarcoat the message” and that employees should expect changes concerning office policy, according to Bloomberg News.
The email allegedly said Musk will discontinue remote work and will be requiring employees to be in the office for at least 40 hours per week. Any exceptions would need his personal approval.
Musk reportedly said he expected half of Twitter’s revenue to come through a subscription service and his newly proposed verification fee. He also said content creators will be able to monetize their pages to supporters, without further elaboration.
The Company That Verifies Safe Websites in Your Browser Works for the U.S. Government
A company that several major web browsers rely on to verify safe and secure websites has links to U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement, new research has claimed. An expose by The Washington Post (TWP) draws its conclusions from documentation, records and interviews with security researchers.
TrustCor Systems’ Panamanian registration records reveal that it shares personnel with a spyware developer previously identified as having links to Arizona company Packet Forensics, which public records have previously unveiled to have sold “communication interception services” to U.S. agencies “for more than a decade.”
Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla’s supposedly secure browser Firefox and several others all allow TrustCor to sign root certificates for websites it deems as safe and legitimate, directing users to them, instead of potentially convincing fakes.
TrustCor maintains that it has never cooperated with government information requests or monitored users on behalf of a third party. However, the Pentagon is refusing to comment, and Mozilla is demanding answers from TrustCor while threatening to remove its authority.
With $7 Million Raised, Keyo Launches a Biometric Palm Verification Network
Maybe you’ve heard of Keyo. Perhaps you saw the initial round of press the firm did in 2017 — roughly two years after its founding. Or maybe you saw it pop back in 2020, riding the wave of news around Amazon’s lukewarmly received hand-scanner tech. You may have wondered precisely what’s been going on with the Chicago-based firm in the interim.
Fueled by an aggregate of $7 million in seed funding, the Keyo Network had previously been in beta. It’s a combination of hardware and software designed to bring palm scanning to a broad range of different markets and services. Today it’s announcing the Keyo Wave hand-scanner hardware, Keyo mobile app, third-party partner program and the Keyo Identify Cloud, which “enables users to instantly and privately identify themselves based on a simple scan of their hand at any business participating in the Keyo network.”
The notion of replacing more traditional payment methods like cards — or even phones — with hand scanning will continue to attract its share of critics. That will only increase as massive corporations like Amazon adopt such technologies, but there’s little doubt the interest is there, at least with the corporations fueling such change.
