FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel at State of the Net 2015. Photo: Internet Education Foundation/flickr/CC
Open internet advocates on Thursday applauded the Federal Communications Commission’s long-anticipated vote to revive net neutrality rules and reestablish FCC oversight of broadband.
The 3-2 vote along party lines to reclassify broadband as a public service under Title II of the Communications Act came seven months after FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcelannounced the push in the wake of the U.S. Senate confirming Commissioner Anna Gomez.
The discussions over AI’s political leanings and efforts to fight bias are important. Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industry’s approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards?
“We are many people and youths who want to express our frustration over what decision-makers are doing right now: They don’t care about our future and aren’t doing anything to stop the climate crisis,” one young activist said.
Climate strikers march in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 19, 2024. (Photo: Albin Haglund via Greta Thunberg/X)
Ahead of Earth Day, young people around the world are participating in a global strike on Friday to demand “climate justice now.”
In Sweden, Greta Thunberg joined hundreds of other demonstrators for a march in Stockholm; in Kenya, participants demanded that their government join the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty; and in the U.S., youth activists are kicking off more than 200 Earth Day protests directed at pressing President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.
“As FANFSA and the 702 reauthorization move to the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber need to take a stand for the rights of people in the United States,” said one advocate.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act on April 17, 2024. Image: PickPik
While applauding the U.S. House of Representatives’ bipartisan passage of a bill to ensure that “law enforcement and intelligence agencies can’t do an end-run around the Constitution by buying information from data brokers” on Wednesday, privacy advocates highlighted that Congress is trying to extend and expand a long-abused government spying program.
The House voted 219-199 for Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (FANFSA), which won support from 96 Democrats and 123 Republicans, including the lead sponsor, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Named for the constitutional amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, H.R. 4639 would close what campaigners call the data broker loophole.
“This is an extraordinarily inappropriate time for Google to experiment with which voters might or might not see news about elected officials and candidates for office.”
Google_headquarters. Photo: Anthony Quintano/flickr/CC
California reporters and union leaders are calling out Google for blocking news content for some users amid consideration of a landmark proposal that would make tech giants pay media outlets for links they share—which some experts warn won’t solve the journalism industry’s financial problems.
To prepare for potential passage of the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), Google is “beginning a short-term test for a small percentage of California users,” Jaffer Zaidi, the tech giant’s VP for global news partnerships, explained in a Friday blog post.
“The House has voted to allow the intelligence agencies to violate the civil rights and liberties of Americans for years to come,” said the ACLU’s senior policy counsel.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaking with attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s 2023 Annual Leadership Summit at the Venetian Convention & Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC
The U.S. House on Friday passed legislation to expand a major mass spying authority after voting down a bipartisan push to attach a search warrant requirement to the heavily abused surveillance law.
The bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years passed by a vote of 273-147, with 59 Democrats and 88 Republicans voting no. More Democrats voted for the bill than Republicans.
In a move that advocates said will save Oregon residents money while supporting small businesses and reducing waste of electronic devices, Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek on Wednesday signed the Right to Repair Act, a law that passed earlier this month despite Apple’s lobbying efforts.
The Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), applauded the signing of the bill, which requires manufacturers to provide Oregonians and small repair businesses with access to the parts, tools, and information needed to fix personal electronics and household appliances.
Predator B Drone. Photo: Jonathan Cutrer/flickr/CC
The watchdog group Public Citizen on Tuesday led a letter urging Pentagon leaders “to clarify that the Replicator Initiative will not involve the development and deployment of autonomous weapons systems,” also known as “killer robots.”
Last September, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks “asserted that the development of all-domain, attributable autonomy systems (ADA2) is an essential way for the Pentagon to maintain its comparative cutting-edge and keep up with the technological advancements of other states,” notes the letter, which was addressed to her and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“How can Greenpeace’s activists paddling on kayaks be a threat to the environment, but the plundering of the oceans be a solution to the climate catastrophe?”
Greenpeace kayaktivists hold up a sign reading “stop deep-sea mining” during a November 2023 protest near a Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. exploration ship in the Pacific Ocean. (Photo: Martin Katz/Greenpeace/X)
As the International Seabed Authority kicked off its annual summit in Jamaica on Monday to discuss rules for extracting minerals from the ocean floor, Greenpeace—which could be expelled from the United Nations body over a demonstration targeting a mining company—is urging the ISA to “stop deep-sea mining, not protests.”
Representatives of 167 nations are gathering in Kingston to draft the regulatory framework for deep-sea mining, which ISA member states agreed to work out by July 2025. Although there are no current commercial deep seabed mining operations, the ISA has issued exploration licenses to state-owned companies and agencies in China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, and South Korea, and to private corporations including U.K. Seabed Resources, a subsidiary of U.S. military-industrial complex giant Lockheed Martin.
