government News of 01/28/20

The Pentagon Pushes Back On Huawei Ban In Bid For ‘Balance’

Huawei may have just found itself an ally in the most unexpected of places. According to a new report out of The Wall Street Journal , both the Defense and Treasury Departments are pushing back on a Commerce Department-led ban on sales from the ...

Google’S Dataset Search Comes Out Of Beta

Google today announced that Dataset Search , a service that lets you search for close to 25 million different publicly available datasets, is now out of beta. Dataset Search first launched in September 2018. Researchers can use these datasets, ...

UK Watchdog Sets Out “Age Appropriate” Design Code For Online Services To Keep Kids’ Privacy Safe

The UK’s data protection watchdog has today published a set of design standards for Internet services which are intended to help protect the privacy of children online. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been working on the ...

India Likely To Force Facebook, WhatsApp To Identify The Originator Of Messages

New Delhi is inching closer to recommend regulations that would require social media companies and instant messaging app providers operating in the nation to help law enforcement agencies identify users who have posted content — or sent messages ...

Capella Space Reveals New Satellite Design For Real-Time Control Of High-Resolution Earth Imaging

Satellite and Earth observation startup Capella Space has unveiled a new design for its satellite technology, which improves upon its existing testbed hardware platform to deliver high-resolution imaging capable of providing detail at under 0.5 ...

Marijuana Delivery Giant Eaze May Go Up In Smoke

The first cannabis startup to raise big money in Silicon Valley is in danger of burning out. TechCrunch has learned that pot delivery middleman Eaze has seen unannounced layoffs, and its depleted cash reserves threaten its ability to make payroll ...

Amazon’S Fresh $1b Investment In India Is Not A Big Favor, Says India Trade Minister

India’s trade minister isn’t impressed with Amazon’s new $1 billion investment in the country. A day after Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos announced that his company is pumping in an additional $1 billion into its India operations, ...

The US Government Should Stop Demanding Tech Companies Compromise On Encryption

In a tweet late Tuesday, President Trump  criticized Apple for refusing “to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements.” Trump was specifically referring to a locked iPhone that belonged to a Saudi ...

Buttigieg’S CISO Resigns, Leaving No Known Cybersecurity Chiefs Among The 2020 Candidates

Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has lost his campaign’s chief information security officer, who cited “differences” with the campaign over its security practices. Mick Baccio, who served under the former South Bend ...

US Patents Hit Record 333,530 Granted In 2019; IBM, Samsung (Not The FAANGs) Lead The Pack

We may have moved on from a nearly-daily cycle of news involving tech giants sparring in courts over intellectual property infringement, but patents continue to be a major cornerstone of how companies and people measure their progress and create moats ...

India Orders Investigation Into Alleged Anti-Competitive Practices By Amazon And Walmart’S Flipkart

India ordered a large-scale investigation into Flipkart and Amazon India on Monday after a retail trade group alleged that the e-commerce giants were indulging in anti-competitive practices to gain foothold in the country. Competition Commission of ...

India’S Top Court Rules Indefinite Internet Shutdown In Kashmir Unwarranted And Amount To Abuse Of Power

India’s top court ruled on Friday that the indefinite shutdown of the internet in Kashmir was unwarranted and demonstrated “abuse of power” by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi -led government. India cut internet access in Kashmir in ...

Twitter’S New Reply Blockers Could Let Trump Hide Critics

What if politicians could only display Twitter replies from their supporters while stopping everyone else from adding their analysis to the conversation? That’s the risk of Twitter’s upcoming Conversation Participants tool it’s ...

Facebook And EBay Pledge To Do More To Tackle Trade In Fake Reviews After Pressure From UK Regulator

Facebook and eBay have made commitments to do more to stop fake reviews being sold on their platforms after coming under pressure from a UK markets regulator — even as fresh examples of the problem have been found on Facebook-owned Instagram. ...

GitHub, Mozilla, And Cloudflare Appeal India To Be Transparent About Changes In Its Intermediary Liability Rules

Microsoft’s GitHub, Mozilla, and Cloudflare have urged India to be transparent about the amendments it is making to an upcoming law that could affect swathes of companies and the way more than half a billion people access information online. ...

Homeland Security Warns Businesses To Brace For Iranian Cyberattacks

Homeland Security is warning U.S. companies to “consider and assess” the possible impacts and threat of a cyberattack on their businesses following heightened tensions with Iran. It’s the first official guidance published by the ...

China Roundup: TikTok Receives Most Government Requests From India And US

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. This week, TikTok, currently the world’s hottest social media app, ...

India’S Ruling Party Accused Of Running Deceptive Twitter Campaign To Gain Support For A Controversial Law

Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling party in India, has been accused of running a highly deceptive Twitter campaign to trick citizens into supporting a controversial law. First, some background: The Indian government passed the Citizenship ...

Here’S Where California Residents Can Stop Companies Selling Their Data

California’s new privacy law is now in effect, allowing state residents to take better control of the data that’s collected on them — from social networks, banks, credit agencies and more. There’s just one catch: the companies, ...

Google Has Little Choice To Be Evil Or Not In Today’S Fractured Internet

Well, we got to January 2nd before the latest angry resignation published by a tech executive on Medium. Today’s installment comes from Ross LaJeunesse, who was head of international relations at Google and served for more than a decade in ...