Technology

Brief #36—Technology
By Charles A Rubin
The drama surrounding the wild trading and social media fueled speculation in the shares of stocks GameStop, AMC Entertainment, Bed Bath & and Beyond, Blackberry and other underperforming companies has thrust Wall Street near the top of a crowded list of issues that President Joe Biden’s regulatory team needs to tackle early in its term.
The wild fluctuations in these stocks which played out in the waning days of January revealed a new dynamic of Reddit subgroups, trading apps with no business model for profit and sophisticated social media personalities. There is excitement that the individual investor will be able to reap the benefits that had been only available to savvy and secretive Wall Street types. There is equal concern that we are creating bubbles that will seriously damage our economy when it can least sustain any more shocks.

Brief #35—Technology
By Charles A Rubin
In the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol inspired by then President Trump, Twitter and Facebook banned him permanently from their platforms for violations of their terms of service. In the days that followed and in the wake of other individuals being prohibited from using those services, many in the right wing camp moved to services such as Parler and Gab. These services were removed from both the Apple and Android application stores and Parler’s servers, hosted in the Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure, were shut down.

Brief #34—Technology
By Scout Burchill
Facebook has been targeting online “patriot” and militia groups with ads for military gear such as body armor and weapon accessories. Despite a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg from members of Congress, calls from State Attorney Generals, and internal warnings by Facebook employees, research by the Tech Transparency Project reveals that these ads were still targeting users as late as January 17th.

Brief #33—Technology
By Scout Burchill
On January 6th, in the wake of the Capitol Hill riots, Twitter announced that President Donald Trump’s account would be suspended. Twitter followed this up on Friday, January 8th by permanently banning President Trump from its platform “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Other tech platforms almost immediately followed suit, including Reddit, Twitch, Shopify, Snapchat, Discord, Stripe and Facebook, which declared a ban “indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks.” Facebook has since sent this decision to their newly created oversight board for further review.

Brief #32—Technology
By Charles A Rubin
The US Defense Intelligence Agency and other government entities routinely collect cell phone location data on US residents without a warrant, according to a memo reported by The New York Times on Friday January 22, 2021. The agencies buy the information on the open market from data brokers, who often get it from third-party apps running on users’ phones.

Brief #31—Technology
By Charles A Rubin
In December 2020 Solarwinds, a major provider of computer network monitoring software, revealed that several of its servers that were used to distribute software updates to customers had been compromised. The servers had been routinely delivering altered code to computer networks throughout the US government and corporations that gave nefarious actors unfettered access to communications and internal systems. The malware created multiple “backdoors” that could be exploited in the future. Further, this compromise had gone undetected for several months. One month later the full extent of the intrusion is still not fully understood and the amount of information that has been exposed has not been completely assessed.

Brief #30—Technology
By Scout Burchill
As vaccines for the COVID-19 virus begin to be distributed across the country, social media platforms have pledged to combat anti-vaccination misinformation.

Brief #29—Technology
By Charles A Rubin
On December 13, 2020 news broke that computer networks at several US government agencies including the Departments of Treasury and Commerce had been compromised by a state actor.

Brief #28—Technology
By Zach Huffman
Parallel lawsuits from The Federal Trade Commission and multiple state Attorneys General declared Facebook an illegal monopoly and both suits are seeking to break up the social media giant.

Brief #27—Technology
By Scout Burchill
Over the past few months a number of reports and leaks from Amazon have emerged that expose the shocking lengths that the corporation goes to surveil their workers and quell labor organizing efforts.

Brief #26—Technology
By Charles A. Rubin
On November 17, 2020 – two weeks after election day and ten days after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the Presidential race, Christopher Krebs, the head of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, was fired in a tweet by President Trump.

Brief #25—Technology
By Scout Burchill
While the presidential election earlier this November was still brimming with controversy and suspense, major tech companies Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Instacart and Postmates were celebrating a massive victory with the passage of California’s Prop 22.