An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: On February 1st last year, Montana residents gawked upwards at a large white object hovering in the sky that looked to be another moon. The airborne object was in fact a Chinese spy balloon loaded with cameras, sensors, and other high-tech surveillance equipment, and it set off a nationwide panic as it drifted across the midwestern and southern United States. How much information the balloon gathered -- if any -- remains unknown, but the threat was deemed serious enough that an F-22 U.S. Air Force jet fired a Sidewinder missile at the unmanned balloon on a February afternoon, blasting it to pieces a few miles off the coast of South Carolina. At the same time that the eyes of Americans were fixed on the Chinese intruder in the sky, around 30 cars owned by Chinese companies and equipped with cameras and geospatial mapping technology were navigating the streets of greater Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose. They collected detailed videos, audio recordings, and location data on their surroundings to chart out California's roads and develop their autonomous driving algorithms.

Since 2017, self-driving cars owned by Chinese companies have traversed 1.8 million miles of California alone, according to a Fortune analysis of the state's Department of Motor Vehicles data. As part of their basic functionality, these cars capture video of their surroundings and map the state's roads to within two centimeters of precision. Companies transfer that information from the cars to data centers, where they use it to train their self-driving systems. The cars are part of a state program that allows companies developing self-driving technology -- including Google-spinoff Waymo and Amazon-owned Zoox -- to test autonomous vehicles on public roads. Among the 35 companies approved to test by the California DMV, seven are wholly or partly China-based. Five of them drove on California roads last year: WeRide, Apollo, AutoX, Pony.ai, and DiDi Research America. Some Chinese companies are approved to test in Arizona and Texas as well.

Fitted with cameras, microphones, and sophisticated sensors, self-driving cars have long raised flags among privacy advocates. Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the digital rights nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, called self-driving cars "rolling surveillance devices" that passively collect massive amounts of information on Americans in plain sight. In the context of national security however, the data-hungry Chinese cars have received surprisingly little scrutiny. Some experts have compared them to Chinese-owned social media site TikTok, which has been subjected to a forced divestiture or ban on U.S. soil due to fears around its data collection practices threatening national security. The years-long condemnation of TikTok at the highest levels of the U.S. government has heightened the sense of distrust between the U.S. and China.

Some Chinese self-driving car companies appear to store U.S. data in China, according to privacy policies reviewed byFortune -- a situation that experts said effectively leaves the data accessible to the Chinese government. Depending on the type of information collected by the cars, the level of precision, and the frequency at which it's collected, the data could provide a foreign adversary with a treasure trove of intelligence that could be used for everything from mass surveillance to war planning, according to security experts who spoke withFortune. And yet, despite the sensitivity of the data, officials at the state and federal agencies overseeing the self-driving car testing acknowledge that they do not currently monitor, or have any process for checking, exactly what data the Chinese vehicles are collecting and what happens to the data after it is collected. Nor do they have any additional rules or policies in place for oversight of Chinese self-driving cars versus the cars in the program operated by American or European companies. "It is literally the wild, Wild West here," said Craig Singleton, director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative-leaning national security think tank. "There's no one in charge."

Boeing agreed on Sunday to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud the government in a case linked to crashes of its 737 Max jets in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people -- a stunning turn for the aerospace giant after the Justice Department determined that Boeing failed to live up to terms of a 2021 deal to avoid prosecution. Washington Post adds: Prosecutors alleged that two Boeing pilots concealed key information from the Federal Aviation Administration about a new automated control system on the Max. The system was implicated in both crashes, causing uncontrollable dives. By agreeing to plead guilty to the single felony count just before a midnight deadline Sunday, the company will avoid going to trial in the high-profile case.

The Justice Department filed documents related to the deal in federal court in Texas late Sunday night, setting up a planned hearing where family members -- who have criticized the pending agreement -- will be permitted to speak out. The court subsequently must decide whether to accept the plea agreement. Boeing had already agreed to $2.5 billion in penalties and payouts in 2021. As part of the new deal, the company will pay an additional $487.2 million in penalties, agree to oversight by an independent monitor, spend at least $455 million to strengthen compliance and safety programs and be placed on supervised probation for roughly three years, according to a Justice Department official. The agreement also included one thing crash victims' families long sought: a meeting with Boeing's board of directors.

ZipNada writes: A federal court in Texas has partially blocked the government's ban on noncompete agreements that was set to take effect September 4. An estimated 30 million people, or one in five American workers, are bound by noncompetes. The employment agreements typically prevent workers -- everyone from minimum wage earners to CEOs -- from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own.

In its complaint, Ryan LLC accused the FTC of overstepping its statutory authority in declaring all noncompetes unfair and anticompetitive. Judge Brown agreed, writing, "The FTC lacks substantive rulemaking authority with respect to unfair methods of competition." Through a statement Wednesday evening, the FTC said its authority is supported by both statute and precedent. "We will keep fighting to free hardworking Americans from unlawful noncompetes, which reduce innovation, inhibit economic growth, trap workers, and undermine Americans' economic liberty," wrote FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar. The FTC has long argued that noncompetes hurt workers.

The FTC has issued warnings to several tech firms, including PC manufacturers ASRock, Gigabyte, and Zotac, regarding potential violations of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. The agency expressed concerns that the companies' warranty and repair policies may be infringing on consumer rights. PCWorld adds: While the specific concerns vary by company, the FTC reminded the three companies that they can't, for example, place stickers on a laptop that caution consumers that opening or repairing the laptop violates warranty policies.

Neither can they state or imply that their products can only be repaired via an authorized service from the company. In the letter sent to Gigabyte (PDF), the FTC said that its staff is "concerned" by the Gigabyte written warranty, which includes the phrase: "If the manufacturing sticker inside the product was removed or damaged, it would no longer be covered by the warranty."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The US Supreme Court has issued a decision that could upend all federal cybersecurity regulations, moving ultimate regulatory approval to the courts and away from regulatory agencies. A host of likely lawsuits could gut the Biden administration's spate of cyber incident reporting requirements and other recent cyber regulatory actions. [...] While the Court's decision has the potential to weaken or substantially alter all federal agency cybersecurity requirements ever adopted, a series of cyber regulatory initiatives implemented over the past four years could become the particular focus of legal challenges. Parties who previously objected to these initiatives but were possibly reluctant to fight due to the Chevron deference will likely be encouraged to challenge these regulations.

Although all existing regulations are still in effect, the upshot for CISOs is almost certainly some degree of uncertainty as the legal challenges get underway. A host of conflicting decisions across the various judicial circuits in the US could lead to confusion in compliance programs until the smoke clears. CISOs should expect some court cases to water down or eliminate many existing cybersecurity regulatory requirements. A host of recently adopted cyber regulations will likely be challenged following the Court's ruling, but some recent regulations stand out as leading candidates for litigation. Among these are:

The Biden administration said Tuesday that it was providing $504 million in implementation grants for a dozen technology hubs in Ohio, Montana, Nevada and Florida, among other locations. From a report: The money would support the development of quantum computing, biomanufacturing, lithium batteries, computer chips, personal medicine and other technologies. The Democratic administration is trying to encourage more technological innovation across the country, instead of allowing it be concentrated in a few metro areas such as San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and New York City.

"The reality is there are smart people, great entrepreneurs, and leading-edge research institutions all across the country," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a call previewing the announcement. "We're leaving so much potential on the table if we don't give them the resources to compete and win in the tech sectors that will define the 21st century global economy."

Today the Wall Street Journal reported that restoring net neutrality to America is "on shakier legal footing after a Supreme Court decision on Friday shifted power away from federal agencies." "It's hard to overstate the impact that this ruling could have on the regulatory landscape in the United States going forward," said Leah Malone, a lawyer at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. "This could really bind U.S. agencies in their efforts to write new rules." Now that [the "Chevron deference"] is gone, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to have a harder time reviving net neutrality — a set of policies barring internet-service providers from assigning priority to certain web traffic...

The Federal Communications Commission reclassified internet providers as public utilities under the Communications Act. There are pending court cases challenging the FCC's reinterpretation of that 1934 law, and the demise of Chevron deference heightens the odds of the agency losing in court, some legal experts said. "Chevron's thumb on the scale in favor of the agencies was crucial to their chances of success," said Geoffrey Manne, president of the International Center for Law and Economics. "Now that that's gone, their claims are significantly weaker."
Other federal agencies could also be affected, according to the article. The ruling could also make it harder for America's Environmental Protection Agency to crack down on power-plant pollution. And the Federal Trade Commission face more trouble in court defending its recent ban on noncompete agreements. Lawyer Daniel Jarcho tells the Journal that the Court's decision "will unquestionably lead to more litigation challenging federal agency actions, and more losses for federal agencies."

Friday a White House press secretary issued a statement calling the court's decision "deeply troubling," and arguing that the court had "decided in the favor of special interests".

The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a long-standing legal doctrine in the US, making a transformative ruling that could hamper federal agencies' ability to regulate all kinds of industry. The Verge adds: Six Republican-appointed justices voted to overturn the doctrine, called Chevron deference, a decision that could affect everything from pollution limits to consumer protections in the US.

Chevron deference allows courts to defer to federal agencies when there are disputes over how to interpret ambiguous language in legislation passed by Congress. That's supposed to lead to more informed decisions by leaning on expertise within those agencies. By overturning the Chevron doctrine, the conservative-dominated SCOTUS decided that judges ought to make the call instead of agency experts.

The SEC sued Ethereum software provider ConsenSys over its MetaMask service on Friday, alleging the wallet product was an unregistered broker that "engaged in the offer and sale of securities." From a report: MetaMask also offered an unregistered securities program through its staking service, the SEC alleged in a filing in the courthouse in the Eastern District of New York. The SEC alleged in its lawsuit that it offered staking services for Lido and Rocket Pool as investment contracts, meaning they are also unregistered securities. "Consensys has collected over $250 million in fees," the SEC alleged. You can read the full lawsuit here [PDF].

An anonymous reader shares a report: A top executive at McDonald's says the chain does not have plans to bring back plant-based options after a test of its McPlant burger in San Francisco and Dallas failed. "It was not successful in either market," Joe Erlinger, McDonald's U.S. president, said during the Wall Street Journal Global Food Forum in Chicago on Wednesday.

American consumers are not coming to McDonald's looking for a McPlant burger or other plant-based proteins, Erlinger added. The chain had previously partnered with Beyond Meat to make McPlant burgers and nuggets. Plant-based items are off the menu for now, but Erlinger didn't rule out the possibility that salads could one day make a return. That'll depend on whether customer demand is there.

"If people really want salads from McDonald's, we will gladly relaunch salads," Erlinger said. "But what our experience has proven is that's not what the consumer is looking for from McDonald's." Instead, consumers are looking for french fries, $5 meal deals, and hot, fresh sandwiches, he added.

A former Boeing contractor has filed complaints with federal agencies, alleging safety issues in 787 Dreamliner production and wrongful termination. Richard Cuevas, a veteran mechanic, claims he observed improper drilling of fastener holes in forward pressure bulkheads during his work with Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing's main supplier.

Cuevas warned that these defects could compromise aircraft safety. After reporting concerns to the FAA and his superiors, Cuevas says he was fired. His lawyers have urged investigations into Dreamliner bulkheads and claim unlawful retaliation. Boeing stated they investigated the concerns thoroughly and determined no safety risk.

Many American subscribers are unable to use their phones overseas because all three major U.S. carriers are experiencing outages. According to The Register, the outages have been ongoing for several hours and stem from third-party communications technology company Syniverse. From the report: "Since the onset of these issues, Syniverse has been working closely with our network partners to restore full service," Syniverse, a US-based comms provider that focuses on roaming services, said in a statement confirming the breakdown. "We understand the inconvenience this has caused and appreciate your patience as we navigate this challenge."

"We're one of several providers impacted by a third-party vendor's issue that is intermittently affecting some international roaming service," T-Mo told us. "We're working with them to resolve it." Similarly, AT&T stated: "The AT&T network is operating normally. Some customers traveling internationally may be experiencing service disruptions due to an issue outside the AT&T network. We're working with one of our roaming connectivity providers to resolve the issue." Likewise, Verizon said, "An international third party communications provider is having issues with making voice and data connections with US based customers traveling overseas."

The international roaming outage has hit users' ability to do calls and texts, and reach the internet. According to Verizon, it's not a complete blackout. "70 percent of calls and data connections are going through at this time," the carrier firm told The Register in the past hour or so. Developing...

The FCC wants to make it significantly easier for consumers to unlock their phones from their carriers, proposing that all devices must be unlockable just 60 days after purchase. From a report: How this will mesh with current plans and phone buying trends, however, is something the agency is hoping to learn before putting such a rule into effect. Mobile phones purchased from a carrier are generally locked to that carrier until either the contract is up or the phone is paid off. But despite improvements to the process over the years (unlocking was flat-out illegal not long ago), it still isn't quite clear to all consumers when and how they can unlock their phone and take it to the carrier (or country) of their choice.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, or NPRM, in a press release today. "When you buy a phone, you should have the freedom to decide when to change service to the carrier you want and not have the device you own stuck by practices that prevent you from making that choice," she wrote. "That is why we are proposing clear, nationwide mobile phone unlocking rules." Specifically, the release says, carriers would simply have to provide unlocking services 60 days after activation. A welcome standard, but it may run afoul of today's phone and wireless markets.

The Supreme Court decided to press pause on the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to prevent smog-forming pollutants from drifting across state borders. From a report: Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, and various trade organizations including fossil fuel industry groups asked the Supreme Court to issue a stay on the plan while they contest the EPA's actions in lower courts. SCOTUS agreed to put the plan on hold today in its opinion on Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency. Five justices voted in favor of halting implementation for now, while the remaining justices dissented.

"If anything, we see one reason for caution after another," Justice Neil Gorsuch writes in his opinion. While the stay is temporary, the decision signals that the conservative-leaning Supreme Court is likely to rule in favor of states opposing the EPA's plan if the issue makes it to the nation's highest court again for a final decision on the plan's legal merit. That could make it harder to improve air quality across the nation since air pollutants typically don't stay in one place.

Publicly traded crypto exchange Coinbase, in connection with History Associates Incorporated, has filed two civil lawsuits against the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for their failure to comply with FOIA requests. From a report: The Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, grants the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information that's controlled by the U.S. government. Generally speaking, agencies have 20 days to respond -- not necessarily satisfy -- these requests. And even when government agencies do furnish documents, they can redact anything that falls under certain exemptions: Information related to national security, internal personnel, trade secrets, law enforcement, or financial institution records.

Late last year, Coinbase hired History Associates Incorporated, a private historical research firm, to submit a FOIA request on its behalf. The San Francisco crypto exchange was seeking copies of "Pause Letters" sent to financial institutions asking them to indefinitely cease all "crypto-related activities," according to the complaint. The letters were described in a report from the FDIC's Office of Inspector General (OIG), but never shared publicly. The OIG said the letters presented a "risk that the FDIC would inadvertently limit financial institution innovation and growth in the crypto space." The FDIC refused to provide History Associates or Coinbase with the letters.

The US Conference of Mayors, which speaks for the administrations of more than 1,400 cities with a population of at least 30,000 people, adopted a resolution over the weekend at its annual meeting that voiced an objection to HR 3557, a draft law known as the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2023. From a report: The bill, which was introduced by House Rep Earl Carter (R-GA) last May and is awaiting further consideration by Congress, is ostensibly designed to make it easier for telcos to build infrastructure and run additional cables on state and locally managed land, ideally allowing fast broadband connectivity to reach more and more folks.

Rep Carter went as far as saying his proposals will ensure "more Americans have access to internet and the United States can maintain its competitive edge against China." Meanwhile, the mayors say HR 3557 strips local governments of authority to oppose bad projects. What raises particular ire are provisions in the draft law that would provide a very short window for opposition. What we have here, basically, is a classic example of one side trying to strip away what is perceived to be bureaucracy and red tape, and the other side insisting that checks and balances are sorely needed.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected to impose limits on the way President Joe Biden's administration may communicate with social media platforms, overturning a lower court decision in a case brought by Missouri, Louisiana, and five individuals. In a 6-3 ruling, the court found plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue, unable to show a "concrete link" between officials' conduct and harm suffered.

The case centered on whether the administration coerced platforms to censor disfavored speech when alerting them to content violating their policies, particularly regarding elections and COVID-19. The administration argued it sought to mitigate online misinformation hazards. Plaintiffs claimed platforms suppressed conservative-leaning speech under government pressure. The Justice Department contended that government officials have long used their platform to express views on public matters.

The Biden administration is investigating China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom over concerns the firms could exploit access to American data through their U.S. cloud and internet businesses by providing it to Beijing, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The companies still have a small presence in the United States, for example, providing cloud services and routing wholesale U.S. internet traffic. That gives them access to Americans' data even after telecom regulators barred them from providing telephone and retail internet services in the United States.

Reuters found no evidence the companies intentionally provided sensitive U.S. data to the Chinese government or committed any other type of wrongdoing. The investigation is the latest effort by Washington to prevent Beijing from exploiting Chinese firms' access to U.S. data to harm companies, Americans or national security, as part of a deepening tech war between the geopolitical rivals. It shows the administration is trying to shut down all remaining avenues for Chinese companies already targeted by Washington to obtain U.S. data.

It's been a 1,000 years since there was a significant volcanic eruption from Mount Rainier, CNN reminds readers. It's a full 60 miles from Tacoma, Washington — and 90 miles from Seattle. Yet "more than Hawaii's bubbling lava fields or Yellowstone's sprawling supervolcano, it's Mount Rainier that has many U.S. volcanologists worried."

"Mount Rainier keeps me up at night because it poses such a great threat to the surrounding communities, said Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist and ambassador for the Union of Concerned Scientists, on an episode of CNN's series "Violent Earth With Liv Schreiber." The sleeping giant's destructive potential lies not with fiery flows of lava, which, in the event of an eruption, would be unlikely to extend more than a few miles beyond the boundary of Mount Rainier National Park in the Pacific Northwest. And the majority of volcanic ash would likely dissipate downwind to the east away from population centers, according to the US Geological Survey. Instead, many scientists fear the prospect of a lahar — a swiftly moving slurry of water and volcanic rock originating from ice or snow rapidly melted by an eruption that picks up debris as it flows through valleys and drainage channels.

"The thing that makes Mount Rainier tough is that it is so tall, and it's covered with ice and snow, and so if there is any kind of eruptive activity, hot stuff ... will melt the cold stuff and a lot of water will start coming down," said Seth Moran, a research seismologist at USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington. "And there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people who live in areas that potentially could be impacted by a large lahar, and it could happen quite quickly." The deadliest lahar in recent memory was in November 1985 when Colombia's Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted. Just a couple hours after the eruption started, a river of mud, rocks, lava and icy water swept over the town of Armero, killing over 23,000 people in a matter of minutes... Bradley Pitcher, a volcanologist and lecturer in Earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University, said in an episode of CNN's "Violent Earth"... said that Mount Rainier has about eight times the amount of glaciers and snow as Nevado del Ruiz had when it erupted. "There's the potential to have a much more catastrophic mudflow...."

Lahars typically occur during volcanic eruptions but also can be caused by landslides and earthquakes. Geologists have found evidence that at least 11 large lahars from Mount Rainier have reached into the surrounding area, known as the Puget Lowlands, in the past 6,000 years, Moran said.
Two major U.S. cities — Tacoma and South Seattle — "are built on 100-foot-thick (30.5-meter) ancient mudflows from eruptions of Mount Rainier," the volcanologist said on CNN's "Violent Earth" series.

CNN's article adds that the US Geological Survey already set up a lahar detection system at Mount Rainier in 1998, "which since 2017 has been upgraded and expanded. About 20 sites on the volcano's slopes and the two paths identified as most at risk of a lahar now feature broadband seismometers that transmit real-time data and other sensors including trip wires, infrasound sensors, web cameras and GPS receivers."

TikTok revealed it offered the U.S. government a "kill switch" in 2022 to address data protection and national security concerns, allowing the government to shut down the platform if it violated certain rules. The disclosure was made as it began its legal fight against legislation that will require ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban. The BBC reports: "This law is a radical departure from this country's tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down," they argued in their legal submission. They also claimed the US government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022, and pointed to the "kill switch" offer as evidence of the lengths they had been prepared to go.

TikTok says the mechanism would have allowed the government the "explicit authority to suspend the platform in the United States at the US government's sole discretion" if it did not follow certain rules. A draft "National Security Agreement", proposed by TikTok in August 2022, would have seen the company having to follow rules such as properly funding its data protection units and making sure that ByteDance did not have access to US users' data. The "kill switch" could have been triggered by the government if it broke this agreement, it claimed.

In a letter - first reported by the Washington Post - addressed to the US Department of Justice, TikTok's lawyer alleges that the government "ceased any substantive negotiations" after the proposal of the new rules. The letter, dated 1 April 2024, says the US government ignored requests to meet for further negotiations. It also alleges the government did not respond to TikTok's invitation to "visit and inspect its Dedicated Transparency Center in Maryland." Further reading: TikTok Says US Ban Inevitable Without a Court Order Blocking Law