A legal rights group has sued Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to force his government to publish the agreement that allowed Twitter to return to the West African country last month following a seven-month ban. In June 2021, Nigeria suspended Twitter after the company removed a tweet from President Buhari that threatened punishment for local dissidents. At the time, Twitter said it was “deeply concerned” by the country’s actions, noting it considered an open internet as “an essential human right in modern society.”

On January 13th, Nigeria lifted the ban after the company agreed, among other conditions, to open a local office and work with the government to co-develop a code of conduct. On Sunday, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) filed a lawsuit with the country’s High Court to compel President Buhari and Information Minister Lai Mohammed to publish a copy of that agreement.

“Publishing the agreement with Twitter would promote transparency, accountability, and help to mitigate threats to Nigerians’ rights online, as well as any interference with online privacy and freedom of expression,” SERAP said. “Any agreement with social media companies must meet the constitutional requirements of legality, necessity, proportionality and legitimacy.”

SERAP said it had attempted to obtain a copy of the agreement through a freedom of information request. It’s suing partly because the government came back with an “unsatisfactory” response to that request. Minister Mohammed allegedly told the group details on the arrangement were already “in the public space,” and did not forward a copy of its terms.

We’ve reached out to Twitter for comment.

As Reuters notes, SERAP was among several groups that went to court to fight Nigeria’s ban of Twitter. The Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States is scheduled to decide whether to rule on that case this week.

As anti-vaccine groups in the US attempt to stage their own version of Canada’s disruptive “Freedom Convoy,” foreign content mills have worked to bolster those efforts for their own gains. This week, Facebook parent company Meta told Reuters and NBC News it recently removed several “trucker convoy” groups and pages run by scammers in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Romania and other countries.

The company said many of those groups had recently changed their names to adopt ones that involved terms like “trucker,” “freedom,” and “convoy” in hopes of taking advantage of the sudden interest in the rallies occurring across the border. Many of those same pages included links to websites that sold pro-Trump and anti-vaccine merchandise. At the same time, most of the accounts that took part in those groups were tied to real people. And so you have a situation where foreign players are trying to monetize radicalized individuals.

“Voicing opposition to government mandates is not against Meta’s policies,” a Meta spokesperson told the network. “However, we have removed multiple groups and Pages for repeatedly violating our policies prohibiting QAnon content and those run by spammers in different countries around the world.”

The company said it would monitor the situation. “We continue to see scammers latch onto any hot-button issue that draws people’s attention, including the ongoing protests,” a spokesperson for Meta told Engadget. “Over the past week, we’ve removed groups and pages run by spammers from different countries around the world who used abusive tactics to mislead people about the origin and popularity of their content to drive them to off-platform websites to monetize ad clicks.”

In the more than two weeks since the “Freedom Convoy” descended on Ottawa, Ontario, Canada’s capital has been paralyzed by anti-vaccine protestors who have used their trucks and cars to block entry into the city’s downtown core. The protest has attracted a motley crew of far-right individuals and groups, including Canada’s QAnon “Queen.” In Toronto and other cities throughout the country, police have warned healthcare workers not to wear their scrubs in public while the rallies continue. Those same protests have also clogged up critical border crossings between the US and Canada, prompting the Biden administration to push the federal government to take action.

According to NBC News, anti-vaccine groups in the US plan to stage similar protests in cities across the country. On Facebook, Telegram and voice chat app Zello, those groups have called on their members to travel to Washington DC and Los Angeles on March 5th. The involvement of foreign actors attempting to bolster those efforts mirrors in some ways what happened in 2016 when Russia meddled with the presidential election.

The CIA has been conducting a secret mass surveillance program that affects Americans' privacy, according to a newly declassified letter (PDF) by US Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.). In the letter dated April of 2021, the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the agency to tell the public the kind of records it collected, the amount of American records' maintained and the nature of the CIA's relationship with its sources. 

The Senators also asked the Director of National Intelligence to declassify the studies conducted by a watchdog called the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), which prompted the letter in the first place. PCLOB did in-depth examinations of two CIA counterterrorism-related programs back in 2015 as part of a larger oversight review of Executive Order 12333, a Reagan-era EO that extends the powers of US intelligence agencies. 

According to The Wall Street Journal, surveillance activities conducted under EO 12333 — like the CIA's bulk program — aren't subject to the same oversight as those under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The publication also notes that that the CIA isn't legally allowed to conduct domestic spying, but some Americans' information get scooped up in certain instances. One example is if they're communicating with an overseas target via phone or the internet. Intelligence agencies are required to protect any information from the US, as well, such as redacting Americans' names unless they're pertinent to the investigation. According to the Senators, PCLOB noted problems with how the CIA handled and searched Americans' information under the program.

The Senators said the existence of the program was hidden not just to the public, but also to the Congress. An intelligence official told The New York Times, though, the the Intelligence Committee already knew about the data collection. It's the program's tools for storying and querying that collected data, which are discussed in PCLOB's reports, that it may not know the details of.

While both the Senators' letter and one of PCLOB's studies have now been released, they've both been heavily redacted. It's impossible to tell, based on the documents that came out, what kind of information was collected and what the nature of the program was. Or is — it's also unclear whether the program is still ongoing or if the CIA has already ended it. The CIA said in a statement:

"CIA has kept, and continues to keep, the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence (SSCI) and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) fully and currently apprised of its intelligence programs, to include the activities reviewed by PCLOB. Moreover, all CIA officers have a solemn obligation to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans. CIA will continue to seek opportunities to provide better transparency into the rules and procedures governing our collection authorities to both Congress and the American public."

The Senate today approved legislation that would keep companies from requiring forced arbitration in cases of sexual misconduct or harassment. The passage is a significant victory for the #MeToo movement, essentially allowing millions of women to take workplace sexual misconduct cases to court rather than settling matters internally. The legislation, which passed unanimously on Thursday, is now headed to President Joe Biden’s desk for a signature.

“No longer will survivors of sexual assault or harassment in the workplace come forward and be told that they are legally forbidden to sue their employer because somewhere in buried their employment contracts was this forced arbitration clause," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) in a news conference. Gillibrand, a vocal champion in the realm of sexual harassment law, authored the bill along with Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC). 

Notably, the bill had unanimous support among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress; a rare feat in this current political climate. As Politiconotes, many GOP lawmakers have warmed up to the issue of workplace sexual harassment following a surge of interest in the #MeToo movement. Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson even urged Republican lawmakers to support the bill. 

Many companies have forced arbitration clauses in their employment contracts, which requires employees to give up their right to appear in court if they are harmed by their employer. Instead, the worker and the employer must settle the disputes in a process known as arbitration, which is often private and run by a third party.

More public awareness of the male-dominated, sexist culture in Silicon Valley, as well as activism by employees, has forced many tech companies to re-evaluate their sexual harassment policies. A number of Big Tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft have ended forced arbitration in recent years after facing backlash. Major video game developers such as Riot Games and Activision Blizzard have followed suit. Microsoft even lobbied in support of legislation to end forced arbitration.

Many in favor of forced arbitration believe it allows companies and employees to save money on court costs. But proponents of the practice argue that it inherently benefits the perpetrator, basically barring plaintiffs from speaking publicly about workplace harassment and keeping any testimony, evidence or documents used in the arbitration process completely secret.

Another bill has been introduced in the Senate that takes aim at the spread of misinformation on social media platforms. The proposed legislation seeks to direct the Federal Trade Commission to look into ways of reducing "the harm of algorithmic amplification and social media addiction on covered platforms."

The full text of the bipartisan bill, which was co-authored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) hasn't been published on the Senate website as yet. According to The Verge, were the Social Media NUDGE Act to become law, the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine would look into content-neutral ways to add "friction" to sharing things on social media platforms. The legislation would prompt the FTC to codify the findings and possibly require social media platforms to implement them.

The overarching goal is to impede the spread of misinformation and other harmful material. Some measures along these lines are already in place. Twitter, for instance, asks users if they want to read the contents of a link before retweeting it. The idea is that people will be more informed about what they're sharing with their followers.

The Social Media NUDGE Act has been referred to the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Unlike similar proposals, it wouldn't require any changes to Section 230, a provision of the Communications Decency Act 1996 that shields online platforms from accountability for their users' activity.

A bill that House Democrats introduced in October aims to limit Section 230 protections for "malicious" algorithms by making platforms liable when algorithms are "knowingly or recklessly" used to recommend content that results in physical or "severe emotional" harm. Another bill that was introduced in November would direct platforms to offer users an option to view content without being impacted by recommendation algorithms.

In the Senate, Klobuchar co-sponsored a bill that was submitted last February, which seeks to limit the protections social media platforms have under Section 230. None of these bills have passed their respective committees as yet.

The Biden administration has announced a $5 billion plan to help states build half a million EV charging stations by 2030 — five times the current number. The goal is to allow EV owners to find a charging port anywhere within 50 miles of their location across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. "It’s going to help ensure that America leads the world on electric vehicles," Biden said. 

The idea is to build on the "Alternative Fuel Corridor" created by 40 states along interstate highways across the country. To oversee the effort, the White House recently unveiled a new agency called the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. The $5 billion will come from the new National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, which will also distribute an additional $2.5 billion in discretionary grants later on. 

A total of $615 million will be distributed this year alone, with states having until August 1 to apply. The money can only be used for battery-electric vehicles only, not hydrogen or other alternative energy vehicles. States can team up with private enterprises to build and maintain the stations. 

Americans need to know that they can purchase an electric vehicle and find convenient charging stations when they are using Interstates and other major highways.

The aim with the charging network is to reassure potential EV buyers that they'll be able to charge their cars while travelling. "Americans need to know that they can purchase an electric vehicle and find convenient charging stations when they are using Interstates and other major highways," said Deputy Federal Highway Administrator Stephanie Pollack in a statement. 

The White House is also pushing for the charging stations to be built domestically. To that end, it touted a company called Tritium that plans to produce up to 30,000 DC fast chargers per year in Tennessee, creating 500 local jobs. The government will also direct 40 percent of funding to underserved and rural areas. The agency released a state-by-state disbursement plan that shows the largest funding levels going to Texas, California and Florida — the three most populous states.

It's all part of a larger plan to reduce US carbon emissions, as the transportation sector is responsible for a third of greenhouse gas pollution. To that end, the Biden administration wants half the vehicles sold in the US to be EVs or plug-in hybrids by 2030. 

Four Democratic senators and House representatives have called on several government departments to stop using Clearview AI’s facial recognition system. The Government Accountability Office said in August that the Departments of Justice, Defense, Homeland Security and the Interior were all using the contentious technology for “domestic law enforcement." Sens. Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley and Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Pressley urged the agencies to refrain from using Clearview's products and other facial recognition tools.

“Clearview AI’s technology could eliminate public anonymity in the United States,” the lawmakers wrote to the agencies in their letters, which were obtained by The Verge. They said that, combined with the facial recognition system, the database of billions of photos Clearview scraped from social media platforms "is capable of fundamentally dismantling Americans’ expectation that they can move, assemble or simply appear in public without being identified."

Those lawmakers have been trying to "prohibit biometric surveillance by the federal government without explicit statutory authorization" over the last couple of years. Jayapal introduced a House bill last year to that effect. The legislation has been referred to the Judiciary and Oversight and Reform committees. Sen. Ron Wyden also introduced a bill last April aimed at blocking law enforcement and intelligence agencies from buying data from Clearview AI. The Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act drew bipartisan support, but has yet to move forward in the Senate.

Other federal agencies, including the Departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, have used or planned to use facial recognition technology, according to the GAO report. The Inland Revenue Service said this week it will ditch a facial recognition system it was using for verification purposes, following a backlash fromlawmakersand others.

Clearview, meanwhile, has been the subject of investigations, lawsuits and scrutiny in the US, UK, Australia, Europe and elsewhere. In November, the company was fined £17 million for breaching UK data protection laws. 

A report last year suggested that employees from more than 1,803 government bodies, such as police departments and public schools, used Clearview's services without approval. The company's CEO, Hoan Ton-That, said in the past that Clearview had contracts with thousands of 2,400 police agencies and departments. Some jurisdictions and law enforcement departments have banned the company's tech.

It didn't take long for the Internal Revenue Service to respond to pressure to drop facial recognition. The agency has told Senator Ron Wyden it plans to back away from using facial recognition for verification purposes. Wyden cautioned the transition would "take time" and didn't provide a schedule, but he saw this as evidence the Biden administration knew privacy and security weren't "mutually exclusive" concepts.

We've asked ID.me, the company slated to provide facial recognition to the IRS, for comment. Under the plan, the IRS would have used the technology to authenticate users hoping to file taxes online or otherwise use the IRS' internet services. The approach was intended as a fraud prevention tool, and would have been available by the summer.

The about-face comes after a wave of recent political pressure. While the Treasury Department was already reconsidering the use of facial recognition tech at the IRS, the service encountered opposition from Republican senators, House Democrats and civil liberties groups concerned about a range of issues. They've been worried about the privacy of uploading sensitive data, historical biases in facial recognition, susceptibility to cyberattacks, inaccessibility to people without broadband and a lack of audits and other forms of accountability. Wyden sent a letter to the IRS mere hours before the organization signalled its change of heart.

There's no indication yet as to whether the IRS will replace the facial recognition system with another upgraded security measure. Whether or not it does, this may represent a significant victory for those hoping to ban federal uses of facial recognition. Although this might not lead to a total ban, it could prompt other government institutions to limit or resist uses of the technology.

It's not just Republican senators upset over the Internal Revenue Service's plans to adopt ID.me facial recognition. Democratic House Representatives Ted Lieu, Anna Eshoo, Pramila Jayapal and Yvette Clarke have sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig demanding his agency drop plans to use facial recognition starting this summer. They're concerned the plan will compromise privacy and security by forcing uploads of sensitive data to a database that could be a "prime target" for cyberattacks like the one that exposed license plates at Customs and Border Protection in 2019.

The members of Congress were also worried about lingering accuracy and bias problems with facial recognition systems. While ID.me maintains its technology is equitable and inclusive, the Democrats pointed to a National Institute of Standards and Technology study that showed many more false positives for Asian and Black faces, even in one-to-one matching systems like the one ID.me sometimes uses. The requirement for facial recognition also discriminated against those who couldn't afford "reliable" broadband and video capabilities, according to the letter.

Transparency was also a point of contention. The House reps were concerned ID.me backtracked on claims it didn't use potentially more invasive one-to-many face recognition tech, and that the IRS wasn't transparent regarding its contract.

The House group asked the IRS to answer several questions on top of rethinking its policy. The politicians wanted the tax service to explain the methodology leading to the contract, including examples of fraud that would justify facial recognition and the lack of disclosures surrounding ID.me's tech. Lieu and allies similarly wanted to know if the IRS had taken measures to address the potentials for bias and security breaches. There was no deadline for answering these questions.

Letters like this won't guarantee action. There's no immediate threat of legislation or other efforts that could force the IRS to change course. They do reflect mounting bipartisan (and bicameral) opposition to the service's facial recognition strategy, though, and they come as part of a broader effort to ban the technology at the federal level. If politicians deem the IRS' response inadequate, they might escalate their legislative efforts.

The price of removing Chinese equipment from American wireless networks is likely to cost more than the government had anticipated. According to Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, US carriers have requested approximately $5.6 billion in reimbursements to “rip and replace” their existing Huawei and ZTE infrastructure.

In 2019, the FCC voted unanimously to ban US carriers from using the Universal Service Fund to subsidize the cost of purchasing networking equipment from companies deemed a “national security threat.” The first two firms the agency added to that list were Huawei and ZTE. In 2020, former President Donald Trump signed the Secure and Trusted Telecommunications Networks Act, mandating that carriers replace equipment from the two manufacturers.

That same year, the FCC established a program to reimburse smaller telecom operators for replacing equipment the law had deemed a risk to national security. At the time, the agency estimated it would cost carriers more than $1.8 billion to comply with the order, and it subsequently set aside $1.9 billion to cover reimbursements.

“While we have more work to do to review these applications, I look forward to working with Congress to ensure that there is enough funding available for this program to advance Congress’s security goals and ensure that America will continue to lead the way on 5G security,” Rosenworcel said.

US carriers sent 181 applications to the FCC for funding support before the filing window closed on January 28th, 2022. As things stand, the agency only has enough money to grant about a third of all the requests it received.