Overnight Tech: Dems seek more concessions on net neutrality bill | Massive phishing attack hits Gmail users | Facebook expanding effort to block violent content
DEMOCRATS WANT CONCESSIONS ON NET NEUTRALITY BILL: Democrats in Congress say they’re not interested in cutting a net neutrality deal with Republicans, arguing that their counterparts across the aisle aren’t offering enough concessions.
Even as the net neutrality battle focuses on Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to curb the rules, observers say bipartisan legislation is necessary to establish a firm set of rules that can’t simply be overturned the next time FCC leadership changes parties.
Democrats in both the House and Senate say Republicans need to yield more ground, particularly regarding FCC jurisdiction over broadband providers.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) has a draft of net neutrality legislation in the works, but said on Wednesday that it would be “impractical” to move forward with it unless Democrats get on board.
{mosads}A net neutrality bill would need 60 votes in the Senate, meaning that at least some Democrats would have to sign onto a Republican bill. None have indicated interest in doing so thus far.
“I am not currently on a compromise posture,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told reporters on Tuesday. He said that if Republicans offered a compromise it either had to label broadband providers as “common carriers,” giving the FCC jurisdiction to regulate them fully on net neutrality rules, or offer something similar. He said he hadn’t seen an option that would achieve the latter yet.
Senate Commerce’s top Democrat, Bill Nelson (Fla.), whom Senate Republicans see as being more amenable to a compromise than other Democrats, shared Schatz’s perspective.
“That lasting finality can only come from legislation, which is why I have been open to finding a true bipartisan solution on this issue,” Nelson said in a Senate Commerce Hearing on Wednesday morning.
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DEMS WORRY ABOUT ONLINE FREE SPEECH: A House Democrat is accusing Republicans of trying to stifle free speech on the internet with their effort to kill the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules.
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said eliminating the rules would give internet service providers control over online speech and make it harder to share views that big business disagrees with.
“Republicans in Washington want to jeopardize the fundamental freedoms that we enjoy by using an open internet,” he said in remarks at the New America think tank on Wednesday. “Without the FCC’s net neutrality rules, in my opinion, large corporate interests can begin to choke off conversations they don’t like and they can speed up the ones they do.”
He accused Republicans of cheering on censorship, referencing an incident last year when GOP leadership cut off camera feeds of the House floor during a Democratic sit-in over gun control.
FACEBOOK HIRING 3,000 MORE EMPLOYEES TO DELETE VIOLENT CONTENT: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that the company will hire 3,000 new employees to review its videos for crime and suicides. The increase comes on top of the 4,500 employees Facebook already has to review content reported to be in violation of the company’s community standards.
The expansion follows a recent murder in Cleveland and murder of a baby in Thailand, both of which were broadcast on Facebook Live. Numerous individuals had also broadcast their own suicides on the platform.
“These reviewers will also help us get better at removing things we don’t allow on Facebook like hate speech and child exploitation,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post announcing the new hires.
DROPBOX BEEFS UP LOBBYING: Dropbox is picking up a new lobbying firm to help it push its agenda on Capitol Hill.
The cloud computing company will be employing Crossroads Strategies, a 7-year-old D.C. lobbying firm headed by John Green, a former longtime Senate aide and founder of the Federalist Group, another government relations firm.
Crossroads is the third lobbying group that Dropbox has brought on this year. The San Francisco-based company had previously hired the Glover Park Group and Franklin Square Group to lobby on its behalf.
WIDESPREAD PHISHING ATTACK HITS GOOGLE USERS: A phishing email attack was launched Wednesday targeting people with Google accounts, drawing wide attention on social media. A number of Twitter users, many of them journalists, reported receiving phishing emails asking them to click on a shared Google Doc.
“Beware of the phishing attempts hitting the inboxes of newsroom employees,” Samantha Barry, a CNN reported, tweeted. “They’re appearing as shared google docs. Do not click.”
Screen grabs of phishing emails shared on social media showed that the messages appear to come from a contact familiar to the target.
TECH EXECS EXPECT MORE AUTOMATION: A new study found that a majority of technology executives believe a significant portion of jobs will be automated within the next five years.
According to a new study conducted by the Consumer Technology Association, a Washington, D.C., trade association representing technology companies, 7 percent of tech executives polled believe that at least some job functions would be automated within the next half-decade. Forty-four percent believe that most will be automated in that same time frame.
The executives who participated in the study were split roughly 50/50 between small and large technology companies. Fifty-five percent of executives polled also said that they strongly agreed with the statement that they would automate jobs at their own companies “to remain competitive.”
FACEBOOK SHOWS STRONG Q1: Facebook released its first quarter financial report on Wednesday, revealing a revenue haul that exceeded expectations, according to Axios. The report shows that the social media platform raked in $8.03 billion through the first three months of the year and now has 1.94 billion active monthly users.
ON TAP:
The Center for Strategic and International Studies is hosting an event on U.S. and Japanese cooperation on cybersecurity at 2:00 p.m.
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