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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.wired.com/story/federal-trade-commission-removed-blogs-critical-of-ai-amazon-microsoft/

The Trump administration's Federal Trade Commission has removed four years' worth of business guidance blogs as of Tuesday morning, including important consumer protection information related to artificial intelligence and the agency's landmark privacy lawsuits under former chair Lina Khan against companies like Amazon and Microsoft. More than 300 blogs were removed.

On the FTC's website, the page hosting all of the agency's business-related blogs and guidance no longer includes any information published during former president Joe Biden's administration, current and former FTC employees, who spoke under anonymity for fear of retaliation, tell WIRED. These blogs contained advice from the FTC on how big tech companies could avoid violating consumer protection laws.

One now deleted blog, titled "Hey, Alexa! What are you doing with my data?" explains how, according to two FTC complaints, Amazon and its Ring security camera products allegedly leveraged sensitive consumer data to train the ecommerce giant's algorithms. (Amazon disagreed with the FTC's claims.) It also provided guidance for companies operating similar products and services. Another post titled "$20 million FTC settlement addresses Microsoft Xbox illegal collection of kids' data: A game changer for COPPA compliance" instructs tech companies on how to abide by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by using the 2023 Microsoft settlement as an example. The settlement followed allegations by the FTC that Microsoft obtained data from children using Xbox systems without the consent of their parents or guardians.

"In terms of the message to industry on what our compliance expectations were, which is in some ways the most important part of enforcement action, they are trying to just erase those from history," a source familiar tells WIRED.

Another removed FTC blog titled "The Luring Test: AI and the engineering of consumer trust" outlines how businesses could avoid creating chatbots that violate the FTC Act's rules against unfair or deceptive products. This blog won an award in 2023 for "excellent descriptions of artificial intelligence."

The Trump administration has received broad support from the tech industry. Big tech companies like Amazon and Meta, as well as tech entrepreneurs like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, all donated to Trump's inauguration fund. Other Silicon Valley leaders, like Elon Musk and David Sacks, are officially advising the administration. Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employs technologists sourced from Musk's tech companies. And already, federal agencies like the General Services Administration have started to roll out AI products like GSAi, a general-purpose government chatbot.

The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A federal judge has dealt a blow to Elon Musk’s DOGE agenda. On Thursday, Judge William Alsup of San Francisco said that the firing of tens of thousands of federal probationary workers had been based on a “lie” and that the government had conducted the expulsions illegally—further calling the initiative a “sham.” Alsup ordered that the workers be reinstated immediately.

Probationary workers—that is, workers who are new to the workforce and haven’t received more advanced benefits and protections—have suffered massive cuts across the government, as DOGE and the Trump administration have attempted to greatly reduce the federal workforce. The case before Alsup concerns litigation brought by union groups representing those workers.

Alsup’s reinstatement order applies to thousands of federal workers fired from the Defense Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the Treasury Department, and the Department of the Interior. Government Executive reports that some 24,000 employees would regain their jobs as a result of the judge’s decision.

The government’s firing of the employees was illegitimate because the agencies impacted by the cuts were directed by the Office of Personnel Management to do so, Alsup said. The OPM does not have the authority to make such orders, as those orders could only be made by the agencies themselves, the judge concluded.

Many of the cuts in question took place not long after Musk’s DOGE initiative was announced and a team of Musk-linked workers took over the OPM. That team is said to have included numerous current and former employees of Musk, including Amanda Scales, a former Musk employee who was appointed chief of staff at the agency. On January 31, Reuters reported that Musk aides had locked career civil servants out of the computer systems at the agency and were engaged in some sort of undisclosed work involving said systems. Democratic lawmakers subsequently accused Musk of leading a “hostile takover” of the agency.

On February 14, Reuters reported that, as part of the government downsizing initiative being led by Musk, the Trump administration had begun to fire “scores” of government employees, a majority of which were still on probation. A statement from the OPM at the time said that the Trump administration was “encouraging agencies to use the probationary period as it was intended: as a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment.”

Charles Ezell, the acting director of the OPM, met with the heads of numerous federal agencies on February 13 and ordered them to fire tens of thousands of employees, according to the unions representing the workers. The government has claimed that Ezell was not issuing orders and was merely providing “guidance.” However, Alsup recently determined that the OPM had, indeed, ordered the firings, and done so illegally.

“The court finds that Office of Personnel Management did direct all agencies to terminate probationary employees with the exception of mission critical employees,” Alsup recently said.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.wired.com/story/doge-government-salaries-elon-musk/

Engineers and executives at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are drawing healthy taxpayer-funded salaries—sometimes from the very agencies they are cutting.

[...] Jeremy Lewin, one of the DOGE employees tasked with dismantling USAID, who has also played a role in DOGE's incursions into the National Institutes of Health and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is listed as making just over $167,000 annually, WIRED has confirmed. Lewin is assigned to the Office of the Administrator within the General Services Administration.

Kyle Schutt, a software engineer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is listed as drawing a salary of $195,200 through GSA, where he is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Administrator. That is the maximum amount that any "General Schedule" federal employee can make annually, including bonuses. "You cannot be offered more under any circumstances," the GSA compensation and benefits website reads.

Nate Cavanaugh, a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur who has taken a visible internal role interviewing GSA employees as part of DOGE's work at the agency, is listed as being paid just over $120,500 per year. According to DOGE's official website, the average GSA employee makes $128,565 and has worked at the agency for 13 years.

When Elon Musk started recruiting for DOGE in November, he described the work as "tedious" and noted that "compensation is zero." WIRED previously reported that the DOGE recruitment effort relied in part on a team of engineers associated with Peter Thiel and was carried out on platforms like Discord.

Since Trump took office in January, DOGE has overseen aggressive layoffs within the GSA, including the recent elimination of 18F, the agency's unit dedicated to technology efficiency. It also developed a plan to sell off more than 500 government buildings.

Although Musk has described DOGE as "maximum transparent," it has not made its spending or salary ranges publicly available. Funding for DOGE had grown to around $40 million as of February 20, according to a recent ProPublica report. The White House did not respond to questions about the salary ranges for DOGE employees or how the budget is allocated to pay them.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The FCC runs an $8 billion federal subsidy program to help bring phone and broadband services to lower income homes and schools called the Universal Service Fund. The program was historically a bipartisan thing, until the extremist Trump administration came to town.

Driven by a fake right wing consumer group called “Consumers’ Research,” the Trumplican-stacked Fifth Circuit court of appeals recently took the radical step of ruling the entire program unconstitutional. The ruling, which ignored past Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court precedent, effectively declared the USF an unconstitutional, illegal tax, something seven court dissenters said was a preposterous leap.

Now the Supreme Court has stated they’ll hear the case, which will ultimately determine whether federal efforts to expand broadband access to poor, rural neglected communities is effectively illegal or not.

Not too surprisingly, 15 MAGA loyal Attorneys General, apparently with nothing better to do, have thrown their support behind the effort to effectively make helping poor people afford broadband illegal:

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

United States president Donald Trump last Friday issued a memorandum that suggests imposition of tariffs on nations that dare to tax big tech companies.

The memorandum mentions the digital services taxes (DSTs) were introduced to capture profits from revenue that tech companies generate in one country but collect in another. Netflix is often cited as an example of why such taxes are needed, because many of its customers around the world paid their subscriptions to an entity in The Netherlands. Governments argued that was inappropriate because Netflix was selling to their citizens, who consumed the vid-streamer’s services in their territory, and that a Netflix subscription therefore represented economic activity in their jurisdictions that should be taxed like any other.

Another reason DSTs were considered was that Netflix’s Netherlands scheme, like many other structures used by Big Tech companies, are legal-but-cynical tax efforts at reducing their tax bills to levels well below those local companies pay.

The OECD developed measures to prevent multinational companies using such tactics, and they have been widely adopted without stopping all of Big Tech’s tax tricks. DSTS were pitched as necessary – perhaps temporarily – while the OECD approach was developed, and adopted.

Trump’s opposition to DSTs is not new: the Biden administration felt they disproportionately targeted US businesses and threatened 25 percent tariffs if they were not removed. The UK and Europe dropped some of the taxes, as did India.

Tariffs are now back on the agenda for remaining digital services taxes. As outlined in a Friday memorandum, Trump stated: “My Administration will not allow American companies and workers and American economic and national security interests to be compromised by one-sided, anti-competitive policies and practices of foreign governments. American businesses will no longer prop up failed foreign economies through extortive fines and taxes.”

“All of these measures violate American sovereignty and offshore American jobs, limit American companies’ global competitiveness, and increase American operational costs while exposing our sensitive information to potentially hostile foreign regulators,” the Memorandum adds.

The document also calls for US authorities to consider DSTs in its report on the OECD tax measures mentioned above, which Trump also feels unjustly penalize American businesses.

The Memorandum instructs the US Trade Representative to “identify tools the United States can use to secure among trading partners a permanent moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions.” Just when those tools will be identified, and implemented, is unknown.

However the administration’s intent is clear: Big Tech should not be taxed by any nation other than the US, which itself struggles to tax its top tech companies thanks to the tax minimization schemes the OECD deal was designed to dent.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

President Trump, speaking at a press briefing held in Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, was asked about plans for tariffs on semiconductor chips and pharmaceuticals. He responded that the tariff is set to start at 25%, "and it'll go very substantially higher over the course of a year." Trump has not revealed a timeline for when the proposed tariff might come into effect, but he did say he would give impacted semiconductor and pharmaceutical companies time to build factories in the U.S. before imposing tariffs.

The announcement follows a declaration made by the Trump administration, which claims that the U.S. will create and manufacture the "most powerful" AI chips.

"But we want to give them time to come in because, you know, when they come into the United States and they have their plant or factory here, there is no tariff. So we want to give a little bit of a chance." Trump said. This is likely offering manufacturers, such as Samsung and TSMC, leeway to get set up in the U.S. It takes 38 months to build a fab in the U.S. due to factors like attaining permits, alongside lengthy construction times. Therefore, tariffs may only come into force once companies have been given enough time to set up manufacturing on American soil. Multiple rumors have claimed that TSMC may be accelerating plans to build its Arizona plant to minimize the impact of the tariff.

The U.S. government is seeking to lower the reliance on imported semiconductors and shift its focus to local foundries. Taiwanese factories can currently create more advanced chips, and no current facility in the U.S. can create a similar product. With homegrown foundries on the mind, it was also reported that the administration was pushing for TSMC and Intel to create a joint venture on American soil in hopes that its production in the U.S. may be able to catch up to Taiwan's dominance.

The CHIPS and Science Act award for chip designers and manufacturers was initially intended to lure awardees over to manufacturing semiconductors in the U.S. However, the Trump administration reportedly wishes to assess and change the requirements for the grant.

The suggested tariffs are already set to impact wallets, with Acer CEO Jason Chen announcing that laptop pricing is set to rise by 10% for U.S. customers. Chen further claimed that some manufacturers may use the tariff as an "excuse" to push prices even further.

With the tariff currently set at a proposed 25% or higher, it could lead to price increases for several other product categories. The proposed tariffs would pose pricing challenges for the likes of Nvidia, AMD, and Apple. In fact, Acer announced yesterday that it would increase its pricing by 10% due to the new tariffs.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

DOGE as a National Cyberattack - Schneier on Security:

In the span of just weeks, the US government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history—not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role. And the implications for national security are profound.

First, it was reported that people associated with the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had accessedtheUSTreasury computer system, giving them the ability to collect data on and potentially control the department's roughly $5.45 trillion in annual federal payments.

Then, we learned that uncleared DOGE personnel had gained access to classified data from the US Agency for International Development, possibly copying it onto their own systems. Next, the Office of Personnel Management—which holds detailed personal data on millions of federal employees, including those with security clearances—wascompromised. After that, Medicaid and Medicare records were compromised.

Meanwhile, only partially redacted names of CIA employees were sent over an unclassified email account. DOGE personnel are also reported to be feeding Education Department data into artificial intelligence software, and they have also started working at the Department of Energy.

This story is moving very fast. On Feb. 8, a federal judge blocked the DOGE team from accessing the Treasury Department systems any further. But given that DOGE workers have already copied data and possibly installed and modified software, it's unclear how this fixes anything.

In any case, breaches of other critical government systems are likely to follow unless federal employees stand firm on the protocols protecting national security.

The systems that DOGE is accessing are not esoteric pieces of our nation's infrastructure—they are the sinews of government.

For example, the Treasury Department systems contain the technical blueprints for how the federal government moves money, while the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) network contains information on who and what organizations the government employs and contracts with.

What makes this situation unprecedented isn't just the scope, but also the method of attack. Foreign adversaries typically spend years attempting to penetrate government systems such as these, using stealth to avoid being seen and carefully hiding any tells or tracks. The Chinese government's 2015 breach of OPM was a significant US security failure, and it illustrated how personnel data could be used to identify intelligence officers and compromise national security.

In this case, external operators with limited experience and minimal oversight are doing their work in plain sight and under massive public scrutiny: gaining the highest levels of administrative access and making changes to the United States' most sensitive networks, potentially introducing new security vulnerabilities in the process.

But the most alarming aspect isn't just the access being granted. It's the systematic dismantling of security measures that would detect and prevent misuse—including standard incident response protocols, auditing, and change-tracking mechanisms—by removing the career officials in charge of those security measures and replacing them with inexperienced operators.

The Treasury's computer systems have such an impact on national security that they were designed with the same principle that guides nuclear launch protocols: No single person should have unlimited power. Just as launching a nuclear missile requires two separate officers turning their keys simultaneously, making changes to critical financial systems traditionally requires multiple authorized personnel working in concert.

This approach, known as "separation of duties," isn't just bureaucratic red tape; it's a fundamental security principle as old as banking itself. When your local bank processes a large transfer, it requires two different employees to verify the transaction. When a company issues a major financial report, separate teams must review and approve it. These aren't just formalities—they're essential safeguards against corruption and error. These measures have been bypassed or ignored. It's as if someone found a way to rob Fort Knox by simply declaring that the new official policy is to fire all the guards and allow unescorted visits to the vault.

canopic jug writes:

Several sites are noticing a joke (for now) petition for Denmark to take pesky California off the US' hands:

Have you ever looked at a map and thought, "You know what Denmark needs? More sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates." Well, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make that dream a reality.

Let's buy California from Donald Trump!

Yes, you heard that right.

California could be ours, and we need your help to make it happen.

See also English language articles like "Danes offer to buy California to spite Trump's Greenland aims: 'We'll bring hygge to Hollywood'" at The Guardian and "Petition for Denmark to buy California for $1 trillion surpasses 200,000 signatures" at CBS, among others.

I think we need a "Humor" topic. Can you better this?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A federal judge appointed by a Republican President has castigated Trump administration officials — and ordered them to immediately restore public health websites that they abruptly abruptly shut down.

The lawsuit against the website removal, brought by a group of physicians known as Doctors for America, concerns sites operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. Doctors for America says the scrubbing of the sites makes it more difficult for them to treat patients.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, appointed by George W Bush, agreed. He ordered the government to restore the pages by the end of the day of his ruling (Tuesday Feb. 11).

The TL;DR of Bates' ruling? It "was done without any public rationale, recourse or ability to challenge the decisions, despite laws and regulations that typically require them," as Politico summarized.

Sites removed by Trump officials concern HIV care, plus information on contraception drugs and student health. In their lawsuit filed against the Office for Personnel Management, HHS, CDC, and the FDA, Doctors for America says the removal of websites offering them guidance on these subjects is creating confusion, which eats up time that is better spent treating patients.

Justice Department attorneys defended the government's decision to remove the sites, saying doctors could still access the information by using the Wayback Machine, which archives offline websites. But that didn't fly with the judge.

"The Wayback Machine does not capture every webpage, and there is no information to suggest that is has archived each removed webpage," Bates wrote. "Additionally, pages archived on the Wayback Machine do not appear on search engines. In other words, a particular archived webpage is only viewable to a provider if the provider knows that the Wayback Machine exists and had recorded the pre-removal URL of the requested webpage."

Original Submission

TheReaperD writes:

News of mass immigration arrests has swept across the US over the past couple of weeks. Reports from Massachusetts to Idaho have described agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) spreading through communities and rounding people up. Quick Google searches for Ice operations, raids and arrests return a deluge of government press releases. Headlines include "ICE arrests 85 during 4-day Colorado operation", "New Orleans focuses targeted operations on 123 criminal noncitizens", and in Wisconsin, "ICE arrests 83 criminal aliens".

But The Guardian took a closer look at these Ice reports tells a different story.

All the archived Ice press releases soaring to the top of Google search results were marked with the same timestamp and read: "Updated: 01/24/2025".

So, it looks like rather than actually doing any immigration raids, they're simply changing the timestamps on [some] raids dating back to 2008 to claim credit again for raids they did long [ago]. Once again, hype over substance.

Original Submission