Huawei has been in hot water lately — governments around the world are banning its network equipment, it allegedly tried to steal technology for 'diamond glass' screens, and its CFO has been charged with wire fraud and conspiracy. A report from Politico claims that the White House is preparing to sign an executive order that would ban U.S. carriers from using Chinese telecom equipment, including products from Huawei.
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Broadcom attempted to purchase Qualcomm back in November, in what would be the single largest takeover of a chipmaker ever. The initial offer was declined by Qualcomm's board of directors, as was every subsequent counter offer. In response, Broadcom attempted to replace some of Qualcomm's board, allowing the purchase to be finalized. After months of turmoil, the White House has officially blocked the acquisition with a new executive order.
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Since the Snowden leaks began back in 2013, there has been a justifiable increase in public scrutiny of the US federal government's attitudes towards surveillance and information access. So when President Obama voiced the opinion that encrypted files should be accessible to law enforcement (presumably via some kind of backdoor or exclusive decryption method), privacy advocates joined security experts in a nationwide groan. Thankfully the administration seems to have changed its tune nine months later.
According to a report by Reuters, White house spokesman Mark Stroh said that the administration is no longer looking to introduce encryption-weakening legislation to Congress.
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So, the last couple of weeks have not been good ones for the Google Maps team. First some public-spirited Android fans decided to prove their pride with a bit of digital vandalism, using the Map Maker tool to show the Bugdroid mascot pissing on an Apple logo somewhere in Pakistan. That little mishap led Google to disable Map Maker submissions altogether. Then earlier this week, users found that searching for certain racist terms in Google Maps would lead to results for the White House, among other similar combinations.
Amazingly, this is not the least classy part of this story.
Google is sorry.
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Two days ago, the White House announced its support for carrier unlocking handsets. The administration promised an FCC/NTIA investigation as well as a willingness to "work with Congress" on legislation to fix the problem. So, we can probably count on the President's support of the new Wireless Device Independence Act, introduced last night by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). The bill, which is only three pages long, has a simple goal: amend the DMCA such that it explicitly allows the unlocking of cell phones, obviating the need for a tri-yearly exemption.
The following language would be added to the DMCA's section on anti-circumvention policies:
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We've been waiting on this for a couple weeks now and the White House has finally come through with its response to the cell phone unlock petition. The short version, for the tl;dr crowd is simple: "The White House agrees." Citing not just smartphones but tablets as well, the Executive branch of the U.S. government states, in no uncertain terms, that there should be no reason that carriers should block a customer from switching carriers once contractual obligations are fulfilled.
The White House also pointed out that it kind of already supported this (sorta) by way of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is itself an agency of the Department of Commerce under the Executive branch.
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In October of 2012, the Library of Congress elected not to renew DMCA exemptions that explicitly allow end users to unlock their cell phones at will, thus ending a six year tradition. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. The quest to do something about it began almost immediately. And by "almost immediately" I mean "nearly three months later and at almost the very last minute."
Still, regardless of when the outrage gained steam, the fact is it did. Quite a bit of steam, in fact. Despite the White House raising the bar for online petitions to 100,000 signatures (after the previous bar of 25,000 resulted in an entertaining, if frivolous response about why the President won't build a Death Star), you did it!
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Hey, did you guys know there's an election coming soon? I know, it's been a pretty low-profile thing, but it's true. Of course, we want to be a well-informed electorate, right? One source of information that should probably be watched to achieve that goal is the White House. Today, the administration of the most powerful office in the country revealed a newly-designed app that will allow mobile users to watch live presidential events, search its stable of blog posts, videos, and press releases, and in a forward-thinking move, makes all this content available on tablets.
In a rather surprising move from the political arena as a whole (though not unheard of, given the current President's affinity for modern technology), the White House app is actually extremely well designed.
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