Hillicon Valley — Senator raises questions over data sold to US

One senator is calling for a federal investigation into whether a tech company violated privacy laws when it sold consumers’ data to the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, Democrats are asking Amazon to explain how it will keep workers safe one year after a tornado destroyed one of its warehouses in Illinois.

This is Hillicon Valley, detailing all you need to know about tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. 

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Wyden calls for probe of data sales to US agencies

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate whether a sale of Americans’ data by a tech company to taxpayer-funded entities violated privacy laws.

In his letter, Wyden asked the agency to look into whether Neustar, the tech firm, violated privacy rights when it sold sensitive information from consumers to a Department of Defense-funded research project at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“For several years, Neustar knowingly sold sensitive internet metadata which it presumably obtained from unwitting consumers,” the letter said. 

Wyden said that some of the consumers may have been told their information was not going to be shared with third parties.

“Neustar did not take sufficient steps to warn consumers that it no longer intended to honor these promises, and as such, appears to have engaged in business practices substantially similar to those that the FTC has previously argued violated the FTC Act,” he said.   

Read more here. 

THE HILL EXCLUSIVE

Dems press Amazon on collapsed warehouse rebuild

Three Democrats on Thursday asked Amazon to detail how it plans to keep workers safe as one of its warehouses in Illinois that was struck by a tornado and collapsed last year is being rebuilt.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), in a letter shared exclusively with The Hill, pressed Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to explain the “rationale” for Amazon’s “reported failure to improve structural safety” at the facility despite six workers dying at the site during last year’s tornado and subsequent collapse.

The Edwardsville, Ill., warehouse is being built back to its “pre-loss conditions,” without including a storm shelter, local NBC-affiliate KSDK reported this summer citing a permit. The Democrats told Jassy that in doing so he is “once again putting your profits over workers’ safety.”

“As climate change makes severe weather events increasingly prevalent with extreme heat, tropical storms and hurricanes, and fire all posing a significant and mounting threat to workers’ safety, it is more crucial than ever that companies take steps to properly protect their workers against the dangers they may face in the workplace – and Amazon seems historically to not have done so,” they added. 

Amazon does not own the building and the responsibility for reconstructing is on the landlord, according to the company.  

Read more here. 

🛩 MUSK THREATENS LEGAL ACTION ON JET TRACKER 

Elon Musk is threatening to pursue legal action against an individual who set up a bot account on Twitter to track the movements of the billionaire’s private jet. 

Musk had vowed to not ban the account last month, but Twitter on Wednesday suspended it and other jet trackers as the platform updated its doxxing policy to ban the sharing of individuals’ live location information. 

Jack Sweeney, who ran the jet tracker, used publicly available flight data to automate the account, but the new policy bans location information even if it exists in the public domain.

Read more here.

🇸🇦 EX-TWITTER EMPLOYEE SENTENCED OVER SAUDI BRIBES 

A former Twitter employee was sentenced to 42 months in prison on Thursday after he was convicted of accepting bribes from a Saudi Arabian official in exchange for providing the kingdom with user information from the platform. 

Ahmad Abouammo, who worked as a media partnership manager for Twitter’s Middle East and North Africa region, met with a close adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on multiple occasions, accepting thousands of dollars worth of gifts as he provided information about Saudi dissidents’ Twitter accounts, according to court documents. 

A jury in August found Abouammo guilty of acting as a foreign agent without notice, money laundering and falsifying records as well as wire fraud and honest services fraud. He was found not guilty on five other counts of wire fraud and honest services fraud.

“This case revealed that foreign governments will bribe insiders to obtain the user information that is collected and stored by our Silicon Valley social media companies,” U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds wrote in a statement.

“In handing down today’s sentence, the Court emphasized that defendant shared the user information with a foreign government known for not tolerating dissidents, and he did so working with his even more culpable co-defendant who fled the country rather than face trial.” 

Read more here. 

🚫 TRUMP PROPOSES BAN ON GOVERNMENT ‘MISINFORMATION’ LABELS

Former President Trump said Thursday that he’d ban the U.S. government from labeling any domestic speech as “misinformation” or “disinformation” if he returns to the White House.

“I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business or person to censor, limit, categorize or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or disinformation,” Trump said in a pre-taped video shared with the New York Post.

The former president also said he’d fire federal bureaucrats who he perceived to have engaged in domestic censorship.   

“Directly or indirectly, whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are,” he said of those he’d seek to fire.  

Read more here.  

Tech groups ask justices to weigh in on Texas law

Two tech industry groups asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to weigh in on a Texas law that would limit major social media companies’ ability to moderate content on their platforms. 

The Computer and Communications Association (CCIA) and NetChoice petitioned the Supreme Court to review the case over Texas House Bill 20, which seeks to ban social media platforms from “censoring” users based on their political views. 

The law was set to go into effect in December 2021 but has remained tied up in court for the last year over allegations that it violates the First Amendment — arguments that CCIA and NetChoice reiterated in Thursday’s petition to the high court. 

“HB20 infringes the core First Amendment rights of Petitioners’ members by denying them editorial control over their own websites, while forcing them to publish speech they do not wish to disseminate,” CCIA and NetChoice said in the brief. 

Read more here.

👾 BITS & PIECES

An op-ed to chew on: PR is the latest risky business for Sam Bankman-Fried 

Notable links from around the web: 

I Think I Found Kyrsten Sinema’s Side Hustle (Slate / Christina Cauterucci) 

‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes (The New York Times / Alex Vadukul) 

Let’s talk about the Twitter Files (Vox / Andrew Prokop)

One more thing: Senate votes for TikTok ban

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation that would ban the use of TikTok on government phones and devices as part of the push to combat security concerns related to the Chinese-owned social media company.

• The “No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), was passed via unanimous consent late Wednesday, meaning that no member objected to the bill.
  
• The proposal would “prohibit certain individuals from downloading or using TikTok on any device issued by the United States or a government corporation.”

The move comes as state governments, especially those led by Republicans, have taken steps to limit the use of the app on state-owned devices.

Thirteen states overall have taken action against TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based entity. Eleven of those actions have taken place since the beginning of the month.  

Read more here.

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Technology and Cybersecurity pages for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.