Hillicon Valley: Senators press Amazon over workplace safety amid outbreak | Lyft expands to deliveries | Dems seek election security funds in stimulus package

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Welcome! Follow our cyber reporter, Maggie Miller (@magmill95), and tech reporter, Chris Mills Rodrigo (@chrisismills), for more coverage.

 

SENATORS PRESS AMAZON ON WORKPLACES: A group of senators sent a letter to Amazon Friday pressing the online retailer about workplace safety at its distribution facilities amid the spread of coronavirus.

The letter to CEO Jeff Bezos closely follows the first reported case of the novel coronavirus among Amazon employees, which was at a New York warehouse that has since closed.

“Any failure of Amazon to keep its workers safe does not just put their employees at risk, it puts the entire country at risk,” Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) wrote in the letter.

“Americans who are taking every precaution… might risk getting infected with COVID-19 because of Amazon’s decision to prioritize efficiency and profits over the safety and well-being of its workforce.”

The lawmakers pointed to reports in BuzzFeed News detailing shortages of disinfecting supplies, continued crowded meetings and strict write-up policies that would disincentivize proper sanitary habits.

“It is our understanding that if a warehouse employee coughs or sneezes, they can either take the time to wash their hands and risk being written up for falling short of their shipping expectations, or meet their shipping expectations and put themselves and their colleagues at risk,” the senators wrote.

Amazon pushes back: A spokesperson for Amazon told The Hill that the claims in the lawmakers’s letter are “unfounded.”

“Like all businesses grappling with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it is not easy as supplies are limited, but we are working hard to keep employees safe while serving communities and the most vulnerable,” they said in a statement.

“We have taken extreme measures to keep people safe, tripling down on deep cleaning, procuring safety supplies that are available, and changing processes to ensure those in our buildings are keeping safe distances.”

Read more on the senators’ concerns here.

 

LYFT EXPANDS DELIVERY: Lyft announced Friday it is expanding its services to include delivery of medical supplies and food to vulnerable populations as coronavirus spreads.

The ride-share giant is partnering with governments and healthcare providers for contactless delivery of medical supplies and test kits.

Additionally, Lyft drivers will be able to pick up meals for distribution to seniors and children who previously received reduced price lunch. This program will begin in the Bay Area, but Lyft is planning to scale it up.

Lyft previously announced it would be stopping shared rides to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Read more on the changes at Lyft here.

 

SENATORS CALL FOR ELECTION SECURITY STIMULUS: Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Chris Coons (Del.) urged the leaders of the House and Senate on Friday to include election security funding in an upcoming coronavirus funding package. 

“As Congress prepares additional legislation to protect the American people from COVID-19 and provide financial relief, we also must protect our elections,” Klobuchar and Coons wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). 

“Americans are facing unprecedented disruptions to their daily lives, and we need to make sure that in the midst of this pandemic people do not lose their ability to vote,” the senators emphasized.

Klobuchar, the lead Democrat on the elections-focused Senate Rules Committee, and Coons highlighted a report released by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice that called on Congress to appropriate around $2 billion to states to allow the November elections to go forward following the coronavirus pandemic. 

The senators noted that this amount would be around 0.2 percent of the more than $1 trillion supplemental appropriations package that Congress is considering to provide aid to Americans and businesses in the midst of the national crisis caused by the spread of coronavirus. 

The money would be used to fund printing mail-in ballots, purchase cleaning supplies for polling sites, and to recruit and train election workers. 

Read more here.

 

GOP LAWMAKERS CALL FOR CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY TWITTER BAN: Two Republican lawmakers on Friday called on Twitter to ban the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from its platform following a surge in Chinese misinformation around the coronavirus. 

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey strongly urging him to remove the CCP from the platform, and to block access to Twitter for any other foreign officials that ban the use of Twitter in their countries. 

“While the coronavirus pandemic is afflicting families, governments, and markets around the world, the Chinese Communist Party is waging a massive propaganda campaign to rewrite the history of COVID-19 and whitewash the Party’s lies to the Chinese people and the world,” Gallagher and Sasse wrote. 

Twitter is blocked in China, Iran, and North Korea, but according to the lawmakers the CCP spreads misinformation on the platform outside of China, an issue Gallagher and Sasse heavily criticized.

“By banning Twitter in China, the Chinese Communist Party is keeping its citizens in the dark,” they wrote. “By putting propaganda on Twitter, the Chinese Communist Party is lying to the rest of the world.”

The lawmakers asked that Dorsey respond to several questions around how Twitter decides which officials are allowed to access the platform, how Twitter views tweets from the CCP and how Twitter rationalizes allowing the CCP to tweet out misinformation. 

Read more on their letter here.

 

IRELAND REVIEWING 3D PRINTED VENTILATOR: Health officials in Ireland are set to review a prototype 3D-printed ventilator next week created by an open-source hardware project started to address shortages driven by the spread of coronavirus.

“We have six prototypes that are ready to be manufactured and tested with validation by the [Health Service Executive] likely from next week,” Colin Keogh, a 3D printing expert at University College Dublin and an early member of the Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies project, told The Irish Times.

While Ireland is not currently facing a shortage of the ventilators, which are often needed to treat COVID-19 cases, getting approval from the country’s regulatory body could lead to deployment elsewhere down the road.

“Developed countries may be able to cope with COVID-19, but emerging nations may find it that much harder to overcome,” Keogh said. “So our overarching goal is to develop a functional medical device that will be certified for use in extreme emergencies.”

Other countries are facing ventilator shortages already.

Read more here.

 

YOUTUBE, NETFLIX REDUCE STREAM QUALITY: Netflix and YouTube have announced that they would be reducing their quality of streaming in Europe to lessen the strain on the continent’s internet capabilities during the coronavirus pandemic.

The moves comes after European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton, who oversees the EU internal market, implored streaming services to switch all streams to standard definition in a Wednesday tweet. 

“To beat #COVID19, we #StayAtHome,” Breton tweeted. “Teleworking & streaming help a lot but infrastructures might be in strain. To secure Internet access for all, let’s #SwitchToStandard definition when HD is not necessary.”

YouTube said on Friday that it would be switching to standard definition in Europe for the next 30 days.

“We will continue working with member state governments and network operators to minimize stress on the system, while also delivering a good user experience,” YouTube said in a statement to Bloomberg.

Read more here.

 

A LIGHTER CLICK: “Let’s circle back”

 

AN OP-ED TO CHEW ON: Broadband network expansion has to tackle digital privacy protection

 

NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:

‘We’re all going to get sick eventually’: Amazon workers are struggling to provide for a nation in quarantine (Verge / Josh Dzieza)

Working from home can make people more productive. Just not during a pandemic. (Recode / Rani Molla)

How the major conferences are adapting due to coronavirus (Protocol / Sofie Kodner) 

The Coder and the Dictator (New York Times / Nathaniel Popper and Ana Vanessa Herrero)