After years of advocacy work, the right to repair movement in the US could soon see a significant breakthrough. According to Bloomberg, President Joe Biden will “in the coming days” direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to draft new regulations to empower consumers to repair their devices on their own and at independent shops.

While there aren’t many details on the executive order just yet, it will reportedly mention phone companies as a possible target of regulation. However, farmers are expected be the primary beneficiary. During Tuesday's White House briefing, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the order would give them "the right to repair their own equipment how they like.” White House economic adviser Brian Deese said on Friday that the order is broadly designed to drive “greater competition in the economy, in service of lower prices for American families and higher wages for American workers.”

Over the years, states across the US have tried to pass right to repair legislation. However, companies like Caterpillar, John Deere, and Apple have consistently lobbied against those efforts, claiming they would put consumers at risk by compromising the security and safety of their devices. And to date, no state has passed legislation that makes it easier for consumers to repair their products independently. As Motherboard notes, Biden’s order will mark the first time a president has weighed in on the issue.

The move comes as support for the right to repair movement builds in other parts of the world. In 2020, the European Commission said it would introduce legislation to push manufacturers to create products that are easier to repair and reuse. That same year, the European Parliament voted to direct the Commission to develop and introduce a mandatory labeling system that assigns a reparability score to products.

We’ve reached out to the Consumer Technology Association, which represents electronics manufacturers, for comment. We’ve contacted iFixit as well. We’ll update this article when we hear back from them.

The Department of Defense is canceling its $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract. The Pentagon said it “initiated contract termination procedures” in a press release it shared on Tuesday, noting “the Department has determined that, due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs.”

With JEDI, the Defense Department had planned to modernize its IT infrastructure, but the contract hadn’t moved forward since the Pentagon awarded it to Microsoft in 2019 on account of a legal challenge from Amazon. One month after JEDI went to Redmond, Amazon filed a formal challenge with the US Court of Federal Claims, alleging the Pentagon showed “unmistakable bias” when it evaluated the two companies.

When the lawsuit was eventually unsealed later that same year, it came out that Amazon believed it lost the contract due to interference from former President Donald Trump. According to the company, Trump "launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks to steer the JEDI Contract away from AWS to harm his perceived political enemy — Jeffrey P. Bezos."

Shortly after the Defense Department announced it wasn’t moving forward with JEDI, Microsoft published a blog post on the decision. “We understand the DOD’s rationale, and we support them and every military member who needs the mission-critical 21st century technology JEDI would have provided. The DOD faced a difficult choice: continue with what could be a years-long litigation battle or find another path forward,” the company said. “The security of the United States is more important than any single contract, and we know that Microsoft will do well when the nation does well.”

Microsoft went on to say the episode highlights the need for lawmakers to look at the contract challenge process. "The 20 months since DOD selected Microsoft as its JEDI partner highlights issues that warrant the attention of policymakers: when one company can delay, for years, critical technology upgrades for those who defend our nation, the protest process needs reform," it said.  

We’ve reached out to Amazon for its response to the situation, and we’ll update this article when we hear back from the company.

Alongside the cancelation, the Pentagon announced a new multi-vendor contract called the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC). The agency plans to collect proposals from both Amazon and Microsoft. It contends they're the two vendors best suited to meet its needs, though it also plans to see if other companies can help it modernize its IT infrastructure.  

Developing...

Twitter has lost its liability protections against user-generated content in India due to its failure to comply with the country's IT rules, the Indian government said in a court filing. The move could leave the company's executives vulnerable to criminal charges over objectionable material on its platform, according to TechCrunch.

Indian police have filed at least five cases against the company or its officials, including some related to child pornography and blasphemous content. A report was recently filed to police in the state of Uttar Pradesh against Twitter’s head in India, Manish Maheshwari, over the publication of a map of India that showed the disputed region of Kashmir as a separate country. 

Twitter has been in a standoff with the Indian government over its new internet regulations, called the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, announced in February. They dictate that social media companies must remove content within 36 hours of a legal notice and use automated processes to take down offensive material. Platforms must also appoint three full-time executives — who are required to be Indian residents — for compliances, grievances and coordination with law enforcement. 

Twitter's resident grievance officer Dharmendra Chatur was the first casualty of the dispute. The exec stepped down from the post in late June. The company has previously stated that it needed more time to comply with the law. Meanwhile, Twitter has bowed to the government's demands to take down accounts with links to the farmers' protests that erupted in India last year. However, it has also drawn the ire of officials over its decision to label tweets by members of the ruling BJP party as "manipulated media." 

After months of threats, the Indian government has now officially declared that Twitter has lost its immunity against user-generated content. In a filing dated July 5th, the IT Ministry told the High Court in New Delhi that its decision was a result of Twitter's breach of the IT act. We have reached out to Twitter for comment.

India's information and technology minister Ravi Shankar recently praised other US tech giants for abiding by the rules. As part of their respective compliance reports, Facebook claimed to have taken action against 30 million pieces of content between May 15th and June 15th; its subsidiary Instagram took down about two million posts during the same period; and Google said it had removed 59,350 objectionable posts.

Tech companies are already at odds with the Hong Kong government, and that tension appears to be on the rise. The Wall Street Journal has learned that the Asia Internet Coalition, a tech alliance including Facebook, Google and Twitter, has quietly warned Hong Kong that companies would stop operating in the territory if officials move forward with data protection law amendments that could hold companies liable for doxxing campaigns.

The tech giants are worried that staff could face criminal investigations or even charges if users share personal info online, even if they didn't mean any harm. That would be a "completely disproportionate and unnecessary response" and could chill free speech, the Coalition wrote. The alliance instead suggested that Hong Kong narrow the scope of violations.

Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data acknowledged the letter's existence, but said that new measures were needed after doxxing pushed the "limits of morality and the law." The Commissioner also insisted that the changed laws would "not have any bearing" on freedom of speech, and wouldn't deter outside investment in the Hong Kong region.

The amendments could be approved by the end of the legislative year.

The concern, as you might guess, is that pro-China officials might abuse the updated laws to silence dissent. Pro-democracy activists doxxed police officers and others frequently during the 2019 protests, and there's a worry that the revised laws could be worded loosely enough that merely sharing a photo of someone in a public space could get both sharers and tech companies in trouble. It could be harder to hold police accountable for violence, or to criticize officials for anti-democratic policies.

Florida's social media 'deplatforming' law that would've taken effect on Thursday has been temporarily blocked by a federal court. US District Judge Robert Hinkle has granted a preliminary injunction to stop "the parts of the legislation that are pre-empted or violate the First Amendment" from being enforced, according to AP and The New York Times. The law would give the state the right to fine social media companies like Facebook up to $250,000 a day if they ban or remove the account of a statewide political candidate. They could also be fined up to $25,000 a day for banning a local office candidate.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proposed the law shortly after Facebook, Instagram and Twitter banned former President Donald Trump. Republican politicians have long accused mainstream social media platforms of having an anti-conservative bias. After the bill successfully went through Florida's legislative house and senate, DeSantis signed it into law back in May. While the law targets the world's biggest social networks, the authors made sure Disney+ won't get caught up in it by making an exemption for theme park owners. As AP notes, the Walt Disney World located outside Orlando is one of the state's biggest employers. 

The entities that filed the lawsuit to challenge the legislation were NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association — lobbying groups that represent Facebook, Google and other tech giants. Judge Hinkle explained that the plaintiffs would likely win the lawsuit on their claim that the new law violates the First Amendment if the case went to trial.

According to Hinkle:

"The legislation compels providers to host speech that violates their standards — speech they otherwise would not host — and forbids providers from speaking as they otherwise would...

The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal. Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate governmental interest."

Maine has passed the strongest statewide law regulating government use of facial recognition to date. The state’s House and Senate voted unanimously in favor of rules that prohibit law enforcement from using the technology unless they have probable cause that an unidentified person in an image committed a serious crime. Once the law goes into effect later this year, it will also limit how police conduct facial ID searches. They won’t have direct access to the tech. Instead, they’ll need to go through the FBI and Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) in the few instances where they’re sanctioned to use it.

Additionally, the law affords citizens the right to sue the state if they believe a government agency has used the technology unlawfully. It also prohibits Maine from deploying facial recognition systems in schools, and mandates that both Maine State Police and the BMV will need to maintain public records of search requests from law enforcement.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the bill “stands in sharp contrast” to Washington state’s SB 6280, the only other statewide law in the US governing the use of facial recognition. That bill was sponsored and primarily written by a current Microsoft employee. It has also been criticized by privacy advocates for giving police too many opportunities to use the technology for surveillance purposes. 

Today, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) proposed a new bill, called the Protect Reporters from Excessive State Suppression (PRESS) Act, that would protect journalists’ data records from being seized by the government. This comes several months after the Justice Department admitted that it acquired phone and email records from reporters at The Washington Post, CNN and the New York Times in order to identify sources.

Wyden said in a statement that there needed to be rules “protecting reporters from government surveillance” and that it should be “written into black-letter law.” He said: “The Trump administration spied on reporters it suspected of no crimes in its hunt to identify their sources and prevent the American people from learning the truth about Trump’s lawlessness and corruption.”

Even though Biden’s DOJ had initially defended the use of subpoenas, the president soon said it was wrong, putting a stop to the practice. Attorney General Merrick Garland had also requested new rules be put in place around cases involving reporters. He also met with executives from the aforementioned three news organizations to discuss the situation.

While most states have some form of shield law for reporters, the federal government does not. One of the problems with prior attempts at this legislation had to do with how a journalist is defined plus what kind of activities should be protected. A federal law, for example, would have to figure out how to safeguard journalist’s privacy while also protecting national security interests. 

Wyden’s bill proposes that journalists be shielded from court-ordered disclosures of sources, but allows for exceptions if the information would prevent terrorism, identify terrorists, or if it would prevent violence or death.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is calling on its sister agency to implement stricter regulation related to automated vehicle technology. In a letter it sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) at the start of February (via CNBC), the NTSB says the regulator “must act” to “develop a strong safety foundation.” What’s notable about the document is that NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt frequently cites Tesla in a negative light to support his department’s suggestions. The automaker is referenced 16 times across the letter’s 15 pages.

For instance, in one section, Sumwalt writes of NHTSA’s “continued failure” to implement regulations that would prevent driver-assist systems like Autopilot from operating beyond their intended use. “Because NHTSA has put in place no requirements, manufacturers can operate and test vehicles virtually anywhere, even if the location exceeds the AV control system’s limitations,” Sumwalt writes. “For example, Tesla recently released a beta version of its Level 2 Autopilot system, described as having full self-driving capability. By releasing the system, Tesla is testing on public roads a highly automated AV technology but with limited oversight or reporting requirements.”

This is not the first time the NTSB has criticized both Tesla and its sister agency. When it held a hearing last year on the deadly 2018 crash that killed Apple developer Walter Haung, Sumwalt expressed frustration with both the NHTSA and Tesla. “Government regulators have provided scant oversight,” he said of the former while blasting the automaker for not responding to its recommendations. But there’s little the agency can do beyond issuing recommendations. As part of its role in investigating traffic accidents, it does not have the authority to regulate or even enforce any of the safety measures it suggests. That responsibility falls to the NHTSA. Under the Trump administration, the agency has mostly let state regulators decide how to approach the question of automated vehicle technologies.

A new bill aims to make high-speed internet more accessible everywhere in the US, including far-flung locations and underserved communities. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn has introduced the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act (PDF), which will spend $94 billion to ensure that unserved and persistent poverty communities have access to affordable high-speed internet. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), co-chairperson of the Senate Broadband Caucus, has also introduced the bill in the Senate.

Out of its total budget, $80 billion will be spent on deploying broadband infrastructure nationwide, while prioritizing unserved and underserved rural, suburban and urban areas. Providers whose networks were built from that money will then be required to offer affordable plans to consumers. The bill will also authorize the spending of $5 billion over five years on a new program that would provide low-interest financing for broadband infrastructure build out projects. The Emergency Broadband Benefit, which provides a $50 monthly discount on internet plans for low-income Americans and $75 for customers on tribal lands, will get an additional $6 billion in funding. $2 billion will go to the Emergency Connectivity Fund for students that need internet connection, and a portion of the money will also go towards funding for WiFi on school buses. 

In the lawmakers' announcement, they said the legislation was a product of extensive collaboration between Clyburn's House Rural Broadband Task Force, Chairman Frank Pallone of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senator Klobuchar. 

Clyburn said in a statement:

"Access to broadband today will have the same dramatic impact on rural communities as the rural electrification efforts in the last century. When I formed the Rural Broadband Task Force, our mission was to address the digital divide. The disparate effects of that divide have been amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic and exposed the urgency of ensuring universal access to high-speed internet. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House and Senate to enact the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act."