By Eliana Pfeffer
Security contractors recently discovered preinstalled software in some Android phones that monitors where users go, whom they talk to and what they write in text messages. The American authorities say it is not clear whether this represents secretive data mining for advertising purposes or a Chinese government effort to collect intelligence. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/us/politics/china-phones-software-security.html?_r=0
In an order released last week, the Eleventh Circuit temporarily delayed enforcement of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) order in the LabMD case. http://www.natlawreview.com/article/eleventh-circuit-court-stays-enforcement-ftc-s-labmd-order
On Monday, both Google and Facebook altered their advertising policies to explicitly prohibit sites that traffic in fake news from making money off lies. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/technology/social-medias-globe-shaking-power.html
By collecting and analyzing data points from social media, MogIA correctly predicted the last three US election results. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ai-tool-successfully-predicted-trump-win-still-ai-experts-are-skeptical/
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released guidelines for internet of things cybersecurity, the second federal agency to do so on Tuesday. http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/306171-dhs-offers-guide-to-internet-of-things-security
In an open letter to President Elect Donald Trump, IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty outlined several bi-partisan steps she thinks the new administration could employ to help create jobs. http://fortune.com/2016/11/15/ibm-ceo-letter-to-trump/
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Monday that he has no plans to change the LAPD’s stance on immigration enforcement, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to toughen federal immigration laws and deport millions of people upon taking office. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-los-angeles-police-immigration-20161114-story.html Similarly, Mayor de Blasio last week suggested that New York City would fight to prevent the future president from accessing ID-related data, which contains personal information on undocumented immigrants. http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/15/13640344/trump-president-immigration-data-idnyc-new-york-city
France plans to create a single, unified database holding the biometric data from the passports and identity cards of 60 million citizens. http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/11/france-id-database-biometric-data-60-million-citizens/