Sci-Fi

Congress To Hold Another UFO/UAP Hearing (space.com) 137

Longtime Slashdot reader thephydes writes: The hearing will go ahead on November 13 at 11:30 ET (16:30 GMT). Apparently, it will "further pull back the curtain on secret UAP research programs conducted by the U.S. government, and undisclosed findings they have yielded," according to a House statement. It's driven by two republicans, Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), who say: "Americans deserve to understand what the government has learned about UAP sightings, and the nature of any potential threats these phenomena pose. We can only ensure that understanding by providing consistent, systemic transparency. We look forward to hearing from expert witnesses on ways to shed more light and bring greater accountability to this issue." "Expert witnesses in the hearing will include Luis Elizondo, a decorated former counterintelligence officer who has claimed for years that the U.S. government is hiding knowledge of UAP, including materials recovered from crashed flying saucers," reports Space.com. "The House hearing will also include Tim Gallaudet, a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral who observed unidentified submersible objects, arguing that 'these underwater anomalies jeopardize US maritime security.'"

"Other speakers at the hearing include journalist Michael Shellenberger, who has also claimed the U.S. government is hiding UFO crash retrieval programs, and former NASA Associate Administrator of Space Policy and Partnerships Michael Gold, who is a member of NASA's independent UAP study team."
Republicans

Trump Wins US Presidency For Second Time (decisiondeskhq.com) 1605

Major media outlets are beginning to declare former President Trump the winner of the 2024 presidential election, having secured 270 electoral votes. "He becomes the first president in more than 120 years to lose the White House, and then to come back and win it again, after President Grover Cleveland in 1892," notes The Hill. As with previous election announcements on Slashdot, this is your chance to talk about it and what it means for the future of our nation.

In a victory speech, Trump said that he was the leader of "the greatest political movement of all time." He said: "We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible," adding that he would take office with an "unprecedented and powerful mandate." President Trump has vowed a radical reshaping of American government, tasking SpaceX and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk "with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms."

UPDATE 12:30 PM PST: Vice President Kamala Harris has officially conceded the 2024 presidential election, calling former President Trump to offer her congratulations. She's expected to make a concession speech at Howard University at 4:00 PM EST. You can stream the speech here.
Republicans

Internet Users Ask FCC To Ban Data Caps (arstechnica.com) 41

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's been just a week since US telecom regulators announced a formal inquiry into broadband data caps, and the docket is filling up with comments from users who say they shouldn't have to pay overage charges for using their Internet service. The docket has about 190 comments so far, nearly all from individual broadband customers.

Federal Communications Commission dockets are usually populated with filings from telecom companies, advocacy groups, and other organizations, but some attract comments from individual users of telecom services. The data cap docket probably won't break any records given that the FCC has fielded many millions of comments on net neutrality, but it currently tops the agency's list of most active proceedings based on the number of filings in the past 30 days.
"Data caps, especially by providers in markets with no competition, are nothing more than an arbitrary money grab by greedy corporations. They limit and stifle innovation, cause undue stress, and are unnecessary," wrote Lucas Landreth.

"Data caps are as outmoded as long distance telephone fees," wrote Joseph Wilkicki. "At every turn, telecommunications companies seek to extract more revenue from customers for a service that has rapidly become essential to modern life." Pointing to taxpayer subsidies provided to ISPs, Wilkicki wrote that large telecoms "have sought every opportunity to take those funds and not provide the expected broadband rollout that we paid for."

In response to Trump-appointed FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington's coffee refill analogy, internet users "Jonathan Mnemonic" and James Carter wrote, "Coffee is not, in fact, internet service." They added: "Cafes are not able to abuse monopolistic practices based on infrastructural strangleholds. To briefly set aside the niceties: the analogy is absurd, and it is borderline offensive to the discerning layperson."
Republicans

Trump Says Tim Cook Called Him To Complain About the EU (theverge.com) 278

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Donald Trump said Apple CEO Tim Cook called him to discuss the billions of dollars that Apple has been fined in the European Union. Trump made the statement during his appearance on the PBD Podcast -- and said that he won't let the EU "take advantage" of US companies like Apple if reelected. "Two hours ago, three hours ago, he [Cook] called me," Trump said. "He said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion... Then on top of that, they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion." In March, the EU fined Apple around $2 billion after finding that Apple used its dominance to restrict music streaming apps from telling customers about cheaper subscription deals outside the App Store. The EU later won its fight to make Apple pay $14.4 billion in unpaid taxes.

"He [Cook] said something that was interesting," Trump said. "He said they're using that to run their enterprise, meaning Europe is their enterprise. "I said, 'That's a lot... But Tim, I got to get elected first, but I'm not going to let them take advantage of our companies -- that won't, you know, be happening.'"
Trump has talked to several Big Tech executives over the past several months. "During an interview this week, Trump said he spoke with Google CEO Sundar Pichai to complain about all the 'bad stories' the search engine shows about him," notes The Verge. "Elon Musk recently spoke at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Trump over the summer 'a few times,' according to the former president."
Bitcoin

The Trumps Have Gone Full Crypto With World Liberty Financial (wired.com) 141

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Eric and Donald Trump Jr., the sons of former president Donald Trump, have pledged to "make finance great again" with a new family-run crypto endeavor called World Liberty Financial. Introduced in a meandering livestream on X Monday, the Trump family and their associates described World Liberty Financial as a crypto platform that would let users conduct transactions without a bank sitting in the middle and extracting fees -- a concept known as decentralized finance, or DeFi. While short on details, Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump both stressed repeatedly that World Liberty Financial's primary goal was to make DeFi more broadly accessible. "It's truly our job to make it understandable," said Eric Trump during the livestream. "We have to make it intuitive, we have to make it user-friendly, and we will." Former President Donald Trump joined the call as well, stressing his pro-crypto stance. "I do believe in it," said Trump of cryptocurrency generally. "It has a chance to really be something special."

The Trumps aren't alone in leading World Liberty Financial. They're joined by crypto veterans Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, as well as Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor and friend of Donald Trump's. In addition to the platform itself, World Liberty Financial will come with a governance token, WLFI, which will provide owners the right to vote "on matters of the platform." Approximately 63 percent of the tokens will be sold to the public; 17 percent are set aside for user rewards, and 20 percent will be reserved for World Liberty Financial team compensation. [...] World Liberty Financial will face steep competition in a DeFi market already crowded with similar services, among them Aave, Compound, Venus Protocol, and others. "DeFi is pretty mature, especially on the over-collateralized side," says Zach Hamilton, founder of crypto startup Sarcophagus and venture partner at VC firm Venture51. But the Trumps need not necessarily do anything novel, if they can capitalize on their mammoth public platform to peddle the new venture. "[World Liberty Financial] is launching with the most free marketing that any crypto company could ever get," says Hamilton. "Trump is the king of living rent free in people's minds."
"I welcome any effort to bring DeFi into the mainstream," says Brad Harrison, CEO of Venus Protocol. "But like the autopilot in a Tesla, DeFi may give the appearance of something that's simple, but the inner workings are complex. Without a solid grasp of its nuances in the hands of seasoned technologists and financial engineers, a new platform risks being more of a branding exercise than a substantive and safe contribution to the space."
The Almighty Buck

Trump Sons Plan Crypto Startup (politico.com) 203

To make America the "crypto capital of the planet," former U.S. President Donald Trump promised crypto-friendly policies, writes Politico, which "could have a new beneficiary: his own family." Trump has vowed to enact an array of pro-crypto policies in a bid to win votes — and campaign cash — from digital asset enthusiasts in recent months. Now, he's weaving the overtures into his pitch for his sons' forthcoming startup... It remains unclear what the Trump sons' crypto venture will look like. They have been teasing their plans to launch it for weeks, in part by positioning it as an alternative to the use of big banks.... ["Be defiant," reads the tagline on their World Liberty Financial home page — with nothing more than its name and the words "Coming soon."]

Trump's sons took over control of their father's business, the Trump Organization, after he became president in 2017, but he retained ownership of the company... It is unclear whether the crypto startup would be launched as part of the Trump Organization or as a separate entity. Either way, ethics experts and watchdogs say the crypto business could create the appearance of a conflict of interest if Trump wins back the White House this fall... From an "optics perspective, it's terrible," said Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush and later ran for Congress as a Democrat. But he said it wouldn't violate any ethics laws.

The family venture is the latest way Trump has embraced the digital asset industry, which is pouring more than $160 million into the 2024 elections as it seeks to help elect allies up and down the ballot. Trump has also marketed his own line of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which are digital images of the former president that fans can purchase for $99... Trump's NFT sales could also raise ethics concerns, said Jordan Libowitz, vice president for communications at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington....

"[P]rior conflicts and illegalities took advantage of preexisting loopholes," said Norman Eisen, an ethics lawyer who served in the Obama White House and later helped build the first impeachment case against Trump. "Here, Trump appears to be promising to create the loopholes while his family is simultaneously designing a business venture to exploit them."

The article notes that Trump promoted his son's crypto venture on X this week with audio from Trump's speech at a crypto conference in July. "He first revealed his pro-crypto leanings — after previously deriding digital currency — at a Mar-a-Lago event in May with supporters who bought his crypto-linked digital trading cards..."

"Trump is also facing new questions about what he would do with his stake in the parent company of the social media service Truth Social," the article adds. (Although this week the stock hit a new low. After losing 50% of its value in six weeks, it's dropped below $20 per share for the first time since it started publicly trading...)
Censorship

Zuckerberg Says He Regrets Not Being More Outspoken About 'Government Pressure' (thehill.com) 288

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret for not being more vocal about "government pressure" to censor COVID-19-related content. He also acknowledged that Meta shouldn't have demoted a New York Post story about President Biden's family before the 2020 election. The Hill reports: Zuckerberg said senior Biden administration officials "repeatedly pressured" Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to "censor" content in 2021. "I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken," he wrote to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). "Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction -- and we're ready to push back if something like this happens again," Zuckerberg added.

The Meta CEO also said the company "shouldn't have demoted" a New York Post story about corruption allegations involving President Biden's family ahead of the 2020 election while waiting for fact-checkers to review it. The social media company has since updated its policies and processes, including no longer demoting content in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers, he noted. Zuckerberg also said in Monday's letter that he does not plan to make contributions to local jurisdictions to support election infrastructure this cycle, like he did during the 2020 election.

The contributions, which were "designed to be non-partisan," were accused of being unfairly distributed between left-leaning and right-leaning areas and labeled "Zuckerbucks" by Republicans. "Still, despite the analyses I've seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other," Zuckerberg said. "My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another -- or to even appear to be playing a role."
House Judiciary Republicans touted the letter as a "big win for free speech," writing on X: "Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things: 1. Biden-Harris Admin 'pressured' Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story."

"Mark Zuckerberg also tells the Judiciary Committee that he won't spend money this election cycle. That's right, no more Zuck-bucks. Huge win for election integrity," it added.
United States

Can the US Regulate Algorithm-Based Price Fixing on Rental Housing? (investopedia.com) 119

"Some corporate landlords collude with each other to set artificially high rental prices, often using algorithms and price-fixing software to do it."

That's a U.S. presidential candidate, speaking yesterday in North Carolina to warn that the practice "is anticompetitive, and it drives up costs. I will fight for a law that cracks down on these practices."

Ironically, it's a problem caused by technology that's impacting some of America's major tech-industry cities. Investopedia reports: Harris proposed a slate of policies aimed at curbing the high cost of housing, which many economists have traced to a long-standing shortage. The affordability situation for both renters and first-time buyers took a turn for the worse starting in 2020 when home prices and rents rose sharply. Harris's plan called for the construction of 3 million new houses to close the gap between how many homes exist in the country, and how many are needed, with the aim of evening out supply and demand and putting downward pressure on prices. This would be accomplished by offering tax incentives to builders for constructing starter homes, by funding local construction, and by cutting bureaucratic red tape that slows down construction projects. Harris would also help buyers out directly, through the first-time buyer credit.

For renters, Harris said she would crack down on companies that own many apartments, who she said have "colluded" to raise rents using pricing algorithms. She also called for a law blocking large investors from buying houses to rent out, a practice she said was driving up prices by competing with individual private buyers. Harris's focus on corporate crackdowns extended to the food business, where she called for a "federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries," without going into specifics about what exact behavior the ban would target.

Investopedia reminds readers that the executive branch is just one of three branches of the U.S. government: Should Harris win the 2024 election and become president, her ideas are still not guaranteed to be implemented, since many would require the support of Congress. Lawmakers are currently divided with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and Democrats in control of the Senate.
Republicans

FBI Investigating After Trump Campaign Says It Was Hacked (thehill.com) 75

Over the weekend, former President Donald Trump's campaign said that it had been hacked, with internal documents reportedly obtained illegally by foreign sources to interfere with the 2024 election. While the Trump campaign claimed that Iran was responsible, it is unclear who exactly was behind the incident. The FBI said it was aware of the allegations and confirmed Monday that it is "investigating this matter." The Hill reports: U.S. agencies have thus far failed to comment on the claims that Iran was responsible for the hack, even as recent intelligence community reports have noted growing Iranian efforts to influence the U.S. election. "This is something we've raised for some time, raised concerns that Iranian cyber actors have been seeking to influence elections around the world including those happening in the United States," John Kirby, the White House's national security communications adviser, told reporters Monday. "These latest attempts to interfere in U.S. elections is nothing new for the Iranian regime, which from our vantage point has attempted to undermine democracies for many years now."

A report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released last month noted Iranian efforts designed to "fuel distrust in U.S. political institutions and increase social discord." "The IC has observed Tehran working to influence the presidential election, probably because Iranian leaders want to avoid an outcome they perceive would increase tensions with the United States. Tehran relies on vast webs of online personas and propaganda mills to spread disinformation," the report states, including being particularly active on exacerbating tensions over the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Republicans

Trump's Campaign 'Says It Has Been Hacked', Reports CNN (cnn.com) 210

CNN reports: Former President Donald Trump's campaign said Saturday in a statement that it had been hacked.

Politico reported earlier Saturday that it had received emails from an anonymous account with documents from inside Trump's campaign operation. "These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process," Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to CNN.

Cheung pointed to a recent report published by Microsoft that said Iranian operatives had ramped up their attempts to influence and monitor the US presidential election by creating fake news outlets targeting liberal and conservative voters and by trying to hack an unnamed presidential campaign... Still, it's not clear whether Iran was responsible for the hack. CNN has reached out to the Iranian mission to the United Nations for comment...

Politico reported it had received emails that contained internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official and a [271-page] research dossier the campaign had put together on Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The dossier included what the Trump campaign identified as Vance's potential vulnerabilities...

In 2016, days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee server.

The Internet

Low-Income Homes Drop Internet Service After Congress Kills Discount Program (arstechnica.com) 240

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The death of the US government's Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is starting to result in disconnection of Internet service for Americans with low incomes. On Friday, Charter Communications reported a net loss of 154,000 Internet subscribers that it said was mostly driven by customers canceling after losing the federal discount. About 100,000 of those subscribers were reportedly getting the discount, which in some cases made Internet service free to the consumer. The $30 monthly broadband discounts provided by the ACP ended in May after Congress failed to allocate more funding. The Biden administration requested (PDF) $6 billion to fund the ACP through December 2024, but Republicans called the program "wasteful."

Republican lawmakers' main complaint was that most of the ACP money went to households that already had broadband before the subsidy was created. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel warned that killing the discounts would reduce Internet access, saying (PDF) an FCC survey found that 77 percent of participating households would change their plan or drop Internet service entirely once the discounts expired. Charter's Q2 2024 earnings report provides some of the first evidence of users dropping Internet service after losing the discount. "Second quarter residential Internet customers decreased by 154,000, largely driven by the end of the FCC's Affordable Connectivity Program subsidies in the second quarter, compared to an increase of 70,000 during the second quarter of 2023," Charter said.

Across all ISPs, there were 23 million US households enrolled in the ACP. Research released in January 2024 found that Charter was serving over 4 million ACP recipients and that up to 300,000 of those Charter customers would be "at risk" of dropping Internet service if the discounts expired. Given that ACP recipients must meet low-income eligibility requirements, losing the discounts could put a strain on their overall finances even if they choose to keep paying for Internet service. [...] Light Reading reported that Charter attributed about 100,000 of the 154,000 customer losses to the ACP shutdown. Charter said it retained most of its ACP subscribers so far, but that low-income households might not be able to continue paying for Internet service without a new subsidy for much longer.

Power

Bipartisan Consensus In Favor of Renewable Power Is Ending (arstechnica.com) 236

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the most striking things about the explosion of renewable power that's happening in the U.S. is that much of it is going on in states governed by politicians who don't believe in the problem wind and solar are meant to address. Acceptance of the evidence for climate change tends to be lowest among Republicans, yet many of the states where renewable power has boomed -- wind in Wyoming and Iowa, solar in Texas -- are governed by Republicans. That's partly because, up until about 2020, there was a strong bipartisan consensus in favor of expanding wind and solar power, with support above 75 percent among both parties. Since then, however, support among Republicans has dropped dramatically, approaching 50 percent, according to polling data released this week. [...] One striking thing about the new polling data, gathered by the Pew Research Center, is how dramatically it skews with age. When given a choice between expanding fossil fuel production or expanding renewable power, Republicans under the age of 30 favored renewables by a 2-to-1 margin. Republicans over 30, in contrast, favored fossil fuels by margins that increased with age, topping out at a three-to-one margin in favor of fossil fuels among those in the 65-and-over age group. The decline in support occurred in those over 50 starting in 2020; support held steady among younger groups until 2024, when the 30-49 age group started moving in favor of fossil fuels.

Democrats, by contrast, break in favor of renewables by 75 points, with little difference across age groups and no indication of significant change over time. They're also twice as likely to think a solar farm will help the local economy than Republicans are. Similar differences were apparent when Pew asked about policies meant to encourage the sale of electric vehicles, with 83 percent of Republicans opposed to having half of cars sold be electric in 2032. By contrast, nearly two-thirds of Democrats favored this policy. There's also a rural/urban divide apparent (consistent with Republicans getting more support from rural voters). Forty percent of urban residents felt that a solar farm would improve the local economy; only 25 percent of rural residents agreed. Rural residents were also more likely to say solar farms made the landscape unattractive and take up too much space. (Suburban participants were consistently in between rural and urban participants.) What's behind these changes? The single biggest factor appears to be negative partisanship combined with the election of Joe Biden. Among Republicans, support for every single form of power started to change in 2020 -- fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear. Among Democrats, that's largely untrue. Their high level of support for renewable power and aversion to fossil fuels remained largely unchanged. The lone exception is nuclear power, where support rose among both Democrats and Republicans (the Biden administration has adopted a number of pro-nuclear policies).

Bitcoin

Crypto Industry Super PAC Is 33-2 In Primaries, With $100 Million For House and Senate Races (cnbc.com) 18

A super PAC called Fairshake, funded primarily by top cryptocurrency companies, achieved several wins in congressional primaries and plans to spend over $100 million to support pro-crypto candidates in the general elections. CNBC reports: Fairshake and its two affiliated political action committees, one for Republicans, one for Democrats, quietly racked up half a dozen other wins Tuesday as the candidates they backed glided to victory, although none of the races were competitive. They included Rep. John Curtis, who won the Republican nomination for Utah's open Senate seat. Created last year as part of a joint effort between more than a dozen crypto firms, Fairshake PAC has emerged as one of the top-spending PACs in the 2024 election cycle. Fairshake and its two affiliated PACs have put more than $37 million so far into advertisements in primary races, according to AdImpact. Despite a broad mission to defend the entire $2.2 trillion crypto market, Fairshake is funded by a very small set of donors.

Of the $160 million in total contributions Fairshake has raised since it was founded, around $155 million -- or 94% -- can be traced back to just four companies: Ripple, Andreesen Horowitz, Coinbase and Jump Crypto. But it's not just money that the crypto industry plans to deploy this fall. The nonprofit Stand With Crypto says it has collected more than 1.1 million email addresses of crypto "advocates" it hopes to engage all the way to the ballot box. The strength of the crypto groups is getting noticed on Capitol Hill, especially among lawmakers who are facing tough elections in 2025, where a few thousand voters, or a hefty donation, could make a difference in not only a race but in which party controls each chamber. [...]

In the coming months, the group doesn't plan to spend on the presidential race, but rather the House and Senate, according to a Fairshake spokesperson. Both of those chambers are in play for 2025. Fairshake has yet to start spending in the general election cycle, but several officials in the industry said they are keeping an eye on states such as Ohio and Montana, where Democratic incumbents who are bearish on crypto face challengers who have embraced the technology. [...] Ads funded by Fairshake deliver messages that are typically less about a candidates' support for or opposition to crypto, and more about broader issues that resound with voters, such as fairness and integrity.

United States

New York Bans 'Addictive Feeds' For Teens (theverge.com) 40

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) signed two bills into law on Thursday that aim to protect kids and teens from social media harms, making it the latest state to take action as federal proposals still await votes. From a report: One of the bills, the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act, will require parental consent for social media companies to use "addictive feeds" powered by recommendation algorithms on kids and teens under 18. The other, the New York Child Data Protection Act, would limit data collection on minors without consent and restrict the sale of such information but does not require age verification. That law will take effect in a year.

States across the country have taken the lead on enacting legislation to protect kids on the internet -- and it's one area where both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree. While the approaches differ somewhat by party, policymakers on both sides have signaled urgent interest in similar regulations to protect kids on the internet. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), for example, signed into law in March a bill requiring parents' consent for kids under 16 to hold social media accounts. And in May, Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) signed a broad privacy bill into law, as well as the Maryland Kids Code banning the use of features meant to keep minors on social media for extended periods, like autoplay or spammy notifications.

United States

Senate Passes Bill To Support Advanced Nuclear Energy Deployment (reuters.com) 151

The U.S. Senate has passed a bill to accelerate the deployment of nuclear energy capacity, including by speeding permitting and creating new incentives for advanced nuclear reactor technologies. From a report: Expanding nuclear power has broad bipartisan support, with Democrats seeing it as critical to decarbonizing the power sector to fight climate change and Republicans viewing it as a way to ensure reliable electricity supply and create jobs. A version of the bill had already passed in the House of Representatives and it will now go to President Joe Biden for a signature to become law. It passed the Senate 88-2 votes.

"In a major victory for our climate and American energy security, the U.S. Senate has passed the ADVANCE Act with overwhelming, bipartisan support," said Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat, who is Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Today, we sent the ADVANCE Act to the president's desk because Congress worked together to recognize the importance of nuclear energy to America's future and got the job done," said Republican Shelley Moore Capito, a ranking member of the committee.

The Internet

An Effort To Fund an Internet Subsidy Program Just Got Thwarted Again (theverge.com) 18

Bipartisan agreement on government internet subsidies seems unlikely as Democrats and Republicans propose conflicting bills to reauthorize the FCC's spectrum auctions. The Democratic bill aims to fund the now-defunct Affordable Connectivity Program, while the Republican version does not. "While some Republicans supported earlier efforts to extend the subsidy program, those efforts did not go through in time to keep it from ending," notes The Verge. From the report: The Senate Commerce Committee canceled a Tuesday morning markup meeting in which it was set to consider the Spectrum and National Security Act, led by committee chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA). When she introduced it in April, Cantwell said the bill would provide $7 billion to continue funding the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), the pandemic-era internet subsidy for low-income Americans that officially ran out of money and ended at the end of May. The main purpose of the bill is to reauthorize the Federal Communications Commission's authority to run auctions for spectrum. The proceeds from spectrum auctions are often used to fund other programs. In addition to the ACP, Cantwell's bill would also fund programs including incentives for domestic chip manufacturing and a program that seeks to replace telecommunications systems that have been deemed national security concerns. The markup was already postponed several times before.

Cantwell blamed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, for standing in the way of the legislation. "We had a chance to secure affordable broadband for millions of Americans, but Senator Cruz said 'no,'" Cantwell said in a statement late Monday. "He said 'no' to securing a lifeline for millions of Americans who rely on the Affordable Connectivity Program to speak to their doctors, do their homework, connect to their jobs, and stay in touch with loved ones -- including more than one million Texas families." In remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Cantwell said her Republican colleagues on the committee offered amendments to limit the ACP funding in the bill. She said the ACP shouldn't be a partisan issue and stressed the wide range of Americans who've relied on the program for high-speed connections, including elderly people living on fixed incomes and many military families. "I hope my colleagues will stop with obstructing and get back to negotiating on important legislation that will deliver these national security priorities and help Americans continue to have access to something as essential as affordable broadband," she said.

Cruz has his own spectrum legislation with Sen. John Thune (R-SD) that would reauthorize the FCC's spectrum auction authority, with a focus on expanding commercial access to mid-band spectrum, commonly used for 5G. But it doesn't have the same ACP funding mechanism. Some large telecom industry players prefer Cruz's bill, in part because it allows for exclusive licensing. Wireless communications trade group CTIA's SVP of government affairs, Kelly Cole, told Fierce Network that the Cruz bill "is a better approach because it follows the historical precedent set by prior bipartisan legislation to extend the FCC's auction authority." But other tech groups like the Internet Technology Industry Council (ITI), which represents companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta, support Cantwell's bill, in part because of the programs it seeks to fund.

United States

Health Officials Tried To Evade Public Records Laws, Lawmakers Say 184

House Republicans this week accused officials at the National Institutes of Health of orchestrating "a conspiracy at the highest levels" of the agency to hide public records related to the origins of the Covid pandemic. And the lawmakers promised to expand an investigation that has turned up emails in which senior health officials talked openly about trying to evade federal records laws. From a report: The latest accusations -- coming days before a House panel publicly questions Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a former top N.I.H. official -- represent one front of an intensifying push by lawmakers to link American research groups and the country's premier medical research agency with the beginnings of the Covid pandemic.

That push has so far yielded no evidence that American scientists or health officials had anything to do with the coronavirus outbreak. But the House panel, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, has released a series of private emails that suggest at least some N.I.H. officials deleted messages and tried to skirt public records laws in the face of scrutiny over the pandemic. Even those N.I.H. officials whose job it was to produce records under the Freedom of Information Act may have helped their colleagues avoid their obligations under that law, several emails suggest. The law, known as FOIA, gives people the right to obtain copies of federal records.
Bitcoin

Former FTX Executive Ryan Salame Sentenced To 7.5 Years In Prison (apnews.com) 14

Former FTX executive Ryan Salame has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison, "the first of the lieutenants of failed cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried to receive jail time for their roles in the 2022 collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange," reports the Associated Press. From the report: Salame, 30, was a high-ranking executive at FTX for most of the exchange's existence and, up until its collapse, was the co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets. He pleaded guilty last year to illegally making unlawful U.S. campaign contributions and to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The sentence of 7 1/2 years in prison, plus three years of supervised release, was more than the five to seven years prosecutors had asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to impose on Salame in their pre-sentencing memo.

While Salame was a high-level executive at FTX, he was not a major part of the government's case against Bankman-Fried at his trial earlier this year and did not testify against him. In a bid for leniency, Salame said during the sentencing hearing that he cooperated and even provided documents that aided prosecutors in their cross examination of Bankman-Fried, as well as in his own prosecution. Along with helping Bankman-Fried hide the holes in FTX's balance sheet that ultimately led to the exchange's failure, Salame was used as a conduit for Bankman-Fried to make illegal campaign contributions to help shape U.S. policy on cryptocurrencies. On the surface, Bankman-Fried mostly gave political contributions to Democrats and liberal-leaning causes, while Salame gave contributions to Republicans and right-leaning causes. But ultimately the funds that Salame used for those contributions came from Bankman-Fried.

The judge also chastised Salame for pulling $5 million in cryptocurrencies out of FTX as the exchange was failing. "You tried to withdraw tens of millions more," Kaplan said. "It was me first. I'm getting in the lifeboat first. To heck with all those customers."

Republicans

Trump Promises He'd Commute the Life Sentence of 'Silk Road' Founder Ross Ulbricht (semafor.com) 283

In 2011 Ross Ulbricht launched an anonymous, Tor-hidden "darknet" marketplace (with transactions conducted in bitcoin). By 2015 he'd been sentenced to life in prison for crimes including money laundering, distributing narcotics, and trafficking in fraudulent identity documents — without the possibility of parole.

Today a U.S. presidential candidate promised to commute that life sentence — Donald Trump, speaking at the national convention of the Libertarian Party as it prepares to nominate its own candidate for president.

Commuting Ulbricht's life sentence is "a top demand" of a political movement that intends to run its own candidate against Trump, reports Semafor: "On day one, we will commute the sentence," Trump said, offering to free the creator of what was once the internet's most infamous drug clearinghouse. "We will bring him home." His speeches more typically include a pledge to execute drug dealers, citing China as a model.

"It's time to be winners," said Trump, asking rhetorically if third party delegates wanted to go on getting single-digit protest votes. "I'm asking for the Libertarian Party's endorsement, or at least lots of your votes...."

"I've been indicted by the government on 91 different things," Trump said. "So if I wasn't a libertarian before, I sure as hell am a libertarian now."

More coverage from NBC News: At times, Trump turned on the crowd, criticizing libertarians' turnout at previous elections. "You can keep going the way you have for the last long decades and get your 3% and meet again, get another 3%," Trump said following jeers from the crowd.
Another high-profile supporter for commuting Ulbricht's sentence is actor-turned documentary maker Alex Winter. Best known for playing slacker Bill S. Preston Esq in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its sequels, Winter also directed, wrote, and co-produced the 2015 documentary Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and the Silk Road (narrated by Keanu Reeves).

Writing earlier this month in Rolling Stone, Winter called Silk Road "inarguably a criminal operation" but also "a vibrant and diverse community of people from around the world. They were not only there for drugs but for the freedom of an encrypted and anonymous space, to convene and discuss everything from politics to literature and art, philosophy and drugs, drug recovery, and the onerous War on Drugs..." It's my firm opinion, and the opinion of many prison-system and criminal-law experts, that [Ulbricht's] sentence is disproportionate to his charges and that he deserves clemency. This case indeed reflects just one of the millions of unjust sentences in the long and failed War on Drugs... No matter what one thinks of Ulbricht, Silk Road, or the crimes that may have been committed, 10 years in prison is more than sufficient and customary punishment for those offenses or sins. Ross Ulbricht should be free.
AI

US Lawmakers Advance Bill To Make It Easier To Curb Exports of AI Models (reuters.com) 30

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to advance a bill that would make it easier for the Biden administration to restrict the export of AI systems, citing concerns China could exploit them to bolster its military capabilities. From a report: The bill, sponsored by House Republicans Michael McCaul and John Molenaar and Democrats Raja Krishnamoorthi and Susan Wild, also would give the Commerce Department express authority to bar Americans from working with foreigners to develop AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security. Without this legislation "our top AI companies could inadvertently fuel China's technological ascent, empowering their military and malign ambitions," McCaul, who chairs the committee, warned on Wednesday.

"As the (Chinese Communist Party) looks to expand their technological advancements to enhance their surveillance state and war machine, it is critical we protect our sensitive technology from falling into their hands," McCaul added. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The bill is the latest sign Washington is gearing up to beat back China's AI ambitions over fears Beijing could harness the technology to meddle in other countries' elections, create bioweapons or launch cyberattacks.

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