government News of 09/27/20

NASA Commissions Report To Show Its Economic Impact: $64b And 312k Jobs

Perhaps anticipating budget pushback from the federal government, NASA has released its first ever agency-wide economic report , documenting the agency’s impact on the nation’s jobs and cash flow. Everyone knew NASA was impactful, but ...

Hootsuite Says It Will Terminate Its ICE Contract ‘Without Delay’

After disagreements within the company spilled over into public controversy, Hootsuite says it won’t go forward with a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Through an external spokesperson, the company told TechCrunch it ...

TikTok Files For Injunction Against Pending Trump App Ban

TikTok’s fight with the Trump administration doesn’t yet appear to be over, regardless of what the deal that was signed between its parent company ByteDance and Oracle says. Earlier today, the company filed a motion to stop the Commerce ...

California Will Require All Passenger Vehicles Sold In The State Be Zero-Emission By 2035

California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order on Wednesday requiring sales of all new passenger vehicles be zero-emission by 2035. The new order would be a huge boost for electric vehicles, and vehicles using alternative fuels like ...

Dear Sophie: Possible To Still Get Through I-751 And Citizenship After Divorce?

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for ...

China Says It Won’T Approve TikTok Sale, Calls It ‘Extortion’

The September 20 deadline for a purported TikTok sale has already passed, but the parties involved have yet to settle terms on the deal. ByteDance and TikTok’s bidders Oracle and Walmart presented conflicting messages on the future ...

Tech Must Radically Rethink How It Treats Independent Contractors

Adam Jackson Contributor Share on Twitter Adam Jackson is the CEO of Braintrust , the first user-controlled talent network that connects organizations with world-class tech talent. He also co-founded ...

Big Tech Has 2 Elephants In The Room: Privacy And Competition

The question of how policymakers should respond to the power of big tech didn’t get a great deal of airtime at TechCrunch Disrupt last week, despite a number of investigations now underway in the United States ( hi, Google ). It’s also ...

ByteDance Says It Will Own A Majority Of TikTok. Oracle Says ByteDance Will Own 0%. WTF Is This Deal?

You know a deal is signed and going to close when the parties keep fact checking each other and no one can agree on what the deal actually says. We’ve been following the TikTok / Oracle deal for sometime here on TechCrunch, and over the ...

Senate’S Encryption Backdoor Bill Is ‘Dangerous For Americans,’ Says Rep. Lofgren

A Senate bill that would compel tech companies to build backdoors to allow law enforcement access to encrypted devices and data would be “very dangerous” for Americans, said a leading House Democrat. Law enforcement frequently spars with ...

Trump Administration’S WeChat Ban Is Blocked By U.S. District Court

A few days ago, the U.S. Commerce Department published a series of rules that aimed to block the downloading of TikTok and WeChat by American users, following an executive order signed by President Trump back in August. TikTok got a last minute ...

Gangster Capitalism And The American Theft Of Chinese Innovation

It used to be “easy” to tell the American and Chinese economies apart. One was innovative, one made clones. One was a free market while the other demanded payments to a political party and its leadership, a corrupt wealth generating scam that by ...

The TikTok Deal Solves Quite Literally Nothing

Well… that was pointless. After debasing the idea of free commerce in the U.S in the name of a misplaced security concern, stringing along several multi-billion dollar companies that embarrassed themselves in the interest of naked greed, and ...

President Trump Reportedly Has Approved The Oracle Deal For TikTok’S US Operations

President Donald Trump said has has given his stamp of approval “in concept” on the Oracle bid for the U.S. operations of the wildly popular social media app, TikTok, according to a report from Bloomberg . According to the Bloomberg ...

How The NSA Is Disrupting Foreign Hackers Targeting COVID-19 Vaccine Research

The headlines aren’t always kind to the National Security Agency, a spy agency that operates almost entirely in the shadows. But a year ago, the NSA launched its new Cybersecurity Directorate, which in the past year has emerged as one of the ...

Instagram CEO, ACLU Slam TikTok And WeChat App Bans For Putting US Freedoms Into The Balance

As people begin to process the announcement from the U.S. Department of Commerce detailing how it plans, on grounds of national security, to shut down TikTok and WeChat — starting with app downloads and updates for both, plus all of ...

TikTok And WeChat Will Be Banned In The U.S. From Sunday

The Commerce Department announced this morning that it will require mobile app stores to remove popular social media apps TikTok and WeChat. New users will not be able to download these apps, and while existing users will still be able to use their ...

TikTok Rumors Beg The Question: Did Trump Solve Anything?

Over the past 24 hours, rumors picked up by Bloomberg , the Wall Street Journal and CNBC have put some boundaries on what a possible deal between Oracle and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance will look like. In its current incarnation floating ...

Justice Department Says WeChat Users Won’T Be Penalized Under Trump’S Executive Order

In a Wednesday filing in federal court, the United States government said that users who use or download WeChat “to convey personal or business information” will not be subject to penalties under President Donald Trump’s executive ...

Dear Sophie: How Can I Get My 2-Year Foreign Residency Requirement For My J-1 Waived?

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for ...