Policy – Page 11

FCC head Brendan Carr tells Europe to get on board with Starlink

brendan carr, EU, FCC, Policy, satellite broadband, starlink, syndication, Trump / DJ Henderson / April 15, 2025

He also accused the European Commission of “protectionism” and an “anti-American” attitude.

“If Europe has its own satellite constellation then great, I think the more the better. But more broadly, I think Europe is caught a little bit between the US and China. And it’s sort of time for choosing,” he said.

The European Commission said it had “always enforced and would continue to enforce laws fairly and without discrimination to all companies operating in the EU, in full compliance with global rules.”

Shares in European satellite providers such as Eutelsat and SES soared in recent weeks despite the companies’ heavy debts, in response to the commission saying that Brussels “should fund Ukrainian [military] access to services that can be provided by EU-based commercial providers.”

Industry experts warned that despite the positivity, no single European network could yet compete with Starlink’s offering.

Carr said that European telecoms companies Nokia and Ericsson should move more of their manufacturing to the US as both face being hit with Trump’s import tariffs.

The two companies are the largest vendors of mobile network infrastructure equipment in the US. Carr said there had been a historic “mistake” in US industrial policy, which meant there was no significant American company competing in the telecom vendor market.

“I don’t love that current situation we’re in,” he said.

Carr added that he would “look at” granting the companies faster regulatory clearances on new technology if they moved to the US.

Last month, Ericsson chief executive Börje Ekholm told the FT the company would consider expanding manufacturing in the US depending on how potential tariffs affected it. The Swedish telecoms equipment maker first opened an American factory in Lewisville, Texas, in 2020.

“We’ve been ramping up [production in the US] already. Do we need bigger changes? We will have to see,” Ekholm added.

Nokia said that the US was the company’s “second home.”

“Around 90 percent of all US communications utilizes Nokia equipment at some point. We have five manufacturing sites and five R&D hubs in the US including Nokia Bell Labs,” they added.

Ericsson declined to comment.

FCC head Brendan Carr tells Europe to get on board with Starlink Read More »

After Harvard says no to feds, $2.2 billion of research funding put on hold

legal threats, Policy, research funding, Science, trump administration / Shannon Garcia / April 15, 2025

The Trump administration has been using federal research funding as a cudgel. The government has blocked billions of dollars in research funds and threatened to put a hold on even more in order to compel universities to adopt what it presents as essential reforms. In the case of Columbia University, that includes changes in the leadership of individual academic departments.

On Friday, the government sent a list of demands that it presented as necessary to “maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government.” On Monday, Harvard responded that accepting these demands would “allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.” The university also changed its home page into an extensive tribute to the research that would be eliminated if the funds were withheld.

In response, the Trump administration later put $2.2 billion of Harvard’s research funding on hold.

Diversity, but only the right kind

Harvard posted the letter it received from federal officials, listing their demands. Some of it is what you expect, given the Trump administration’s interests. The admissions and hiring departments would be required to drop all diversity efforts, with data on faculty and students to be handed over to the federal government for auditing. As at other institutions, there are also some demands presented as efforts against antisemitism, such as the defunding of pro-Palestinian groups. More generally, it demands that university officials “prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions.”

There are also a bunch of basic culture war items, such as a demand for a mask ban, and a ban on “de-platforming” speakers on campus. In addition, the government wants the university to screen all faculty hires for plagiarism issues, which is what caused Harvard’s former president to resign after she gave testimony to Congress. Any violation of these updated conduct codes by a non-citizen would require an immediate report to the Department of Homeland Security and State Department, presumably so they can prepare to deport them.

After Harvard says no to feds, $2.2 billion of research funding put on hold Read More »

After market tumult, Trump exempts smartphones from massive new tariffs

Apple, Google, Policy, smartphones, syndication, tariffs / Mike M. / April 13, 2025

Shares in the US tech giant were one of Wall Street’s biggest casualties in the days immediately after Trump announced his reciprocal tariffs. About $700 billion was wiped off Apple’s market value in the space of a few days.

Earlier this week, Trump said he would consider excluding US companies from his tariffs, but added that such decisions would be made “instinctively.”

Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the exemptions mirrored exceptions for smartphones and consumer electronics issued by Trump during his trade wars in 2018 and 2019.

“We’ll have to wait and see if the exemptions this time around also stick, or if the president once again reverses course sometime in the not-too-distant future,” said Bown.

US Customs and Border Protection referred inquiries about the order to the US International Trade Commission, which did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The White House confirmed that the new exemptions would not apply to the 20 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports applied by Trump to respond to China’s role in fentanyl manufacturing.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Saturday that companies including Apple, TSMC, and Nvidia were “hustling to onshore their manufacturing in the United States as soon as possible” at “the direction of the President.”

“President Trump has made it clear America cannot rely on China to manufacture critical technologies such as semiconductors, chips, smartphones, and laptops,” said Leavitt.

Apple declined to comment.

Economists have warned that the sweeping nature of Trump’s tariffs—which apply to a broad range of common US consumer goods—threaten to fuel US inflation and hit economic growth.

New York Fed chief John Williams said US inflation could reach as high as 4 percent as a result of Trump’s tariffs.

Additional reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco

After market tumult, Trump exempts smartphones from massive new tariffs Read More »

Apple silent as Trump promises “impossible” US-made iPhones

Apple, china, china tariffs, Donald Trump, Foxconn, IPhone, Policy, tariffs, tim cook, us, us-china trade war / Kelly Newman / April 12, 2025

How does Apple solve a problem like Trump’s trade war?

Despite a recent pause on some tariffs, Apple remains in a particularly thorny spot as Donald Trump’s trade war spikes costs in the tech company’s iPhone manufacturing hub, China.

Analysts predict that Apple has no clear short-term options to shake up its supply chain to avoid tariffs entirely, and even if Trump grants Apple an exemption, iPhone prices may increase not just in the US but globally.

The US Trade Representative, which has previously granted Apple an exemption on a particular product, did not respond to Ars’ request to comment on whether any requests for exemptions have been submitted in 2025.

Currently, the US imposes a 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports, while China has raised tariffs on US imports to 125 percent.

Neither side seems ready to back down, and Trump’s TikTok deal—which must be approved by the Chinese government—risks further delays the longer negotiations and retaliations drag on. Trump has faced criticism for delaying the TikTok deal, with Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) telling The Verge last week that the delay was “against the law” and threatened US national security. Meanwhile, China seems to expect more business to flow into China rather than into the US as a result of Trump’s tough stance on global trade.

With the economy and national security at risk, Trump is claiming that tariffs will drive manufacturing into the US, create jobs, and benefit the economy. Getting the world’s most valuable company, Apple, to manufacture its most popular product, the iPhone, in the US, is clearly part of Trump’s vision. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week that Apple’s commitment to invest $500 billion in the US over the next four years was supposedly a clear indicator that Apple believed it was feasible to build iPhones here, Bloomberg reported.

“If Apple didn’t think the United States could do it, they probably wouldn’t have put up that big chunk of change,” Leavitt said.

Apple did not respond to Ars’ request to comment, and so far, it has been silent on how tariffs are impacting its business.

iPhone price increases expected globally

For Apple, even if it can build products for the US market in India, where tariffs remain lower, Trump’s negotiations with China “remain the most important variable for Apple” to retain its global dominance.

Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC that “Apple could be set back many years by these tariffs.” Although Apple reportedly stockpiled phones to sell in the US market, that supply will likely dwindle fast as customers move to purchase phones before prices spike. In the medium-term, consultancy firm Omdia forecasted, Apple will likely “focus on increasing iPhone production and exports from India” rather than pushing its business into the US, as Trump desires.

But Apple will still incur additional costs from tariffs on India until that country tries to negotiate a more favorable trade deal. And any exemption that Apple may secure due to its investment promise in the US or moderation of China tariffs that could spare Apple some pain “may not be enough for Apple to avoid adverse business effects,” co-founder and senior analyst at equity research publisher MoffettNathanson, Craig Moffett, suggested to CNBC.

And if Apple is forced to increase prices, it likely won’t be limited to just the US, Bank of America Securities analyst Wamsi Mohan suggested, as reported by The Guardian. To ensure that Apple’s largest market isn’t the hardest hit, Apple may increase prices “across the board geographically,” he forecasted.

“While Apple has not commented on this, we expect prices will be changed globally to prevent arbitrage,” Mohan said.

Apple may even choose to increase prices everywhere but the US, vice president at Forrester Research, Dipanjan Chatterjee, explained in The Guardian’s report.

“If there is a cost impact in the US for certain products,” Chatterjee said, Apple may not increase US prices because “the market is far more competitive there.” Instead, “the company may choose to keep prices flat in the US while recovering the lost margin elsewhere in its global portfolio,” Chatterjee said.

Trump’s US-made iPhone may be an impossible dream

Analysts have said that Trump’s dream that a “made-in-the-USA” iPhone could be coming soon is divorced from reality. Not only do analysts estimate that more than 80 percent of Apple products are currently made in China, but so are many individual parts. So even if Apple built an iPhone factory in the US, it would still have to pay tariffs on individual parts, unless Trump agreed to a seemingly wide range of exemptions. Mohan estimated it would “likely take many years” to move the “entire iPhone supply chain,” if that’s “even possible.”

Further, Apple’s $500 billion commitment covered “building servers for its artificial intelligence products, Apple TV productions and 20,000 new jobs in research and development—not a promise to make the iPhone stateside,” The Guardian noted.

For Apple, it would likely take years to build a US factory and attract talent, all without knowing how tariffs might change. A former Apple manufacturing engineer, Matthew Moore, told Bloomberg that “there are millions of people employed by the Apple supply chain in China,” and Apple has long insisted that the US talent pool is too small to easily replace them.

“What city in America is going to put everything down and build only iPhones?” Moore said. “Boston is over 500,000 people. The whole city would need to stop everything and start assembling iPhones.”

In a CBS interview, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested that the “army of millions and millions of human beings” could be automated, Bloomberg reported. But China has never been able to make low-cost automation work, so it’s unclear how the US could achieve that goal without serious investment.

“That’s not yet realistic,” people who have worked on Apple’s product manufacturing told Bloomberg, especially since each new iPhone model requires retooling of assembly, which typically requires manual labor. Other analysts agreed, CNBC reported, concluding that “the idea of an American-made iPhone is impossible at worst and highly expensive at best.”

For consumers, CNBC noted, a US-made iPhone would cost anywhere from 25 percent more than the $1,199 price point today, increasing to about $1,500 at least, to potentially $3,500 at most, Wall Street analysts have forecasted.

It took Apple a decade to build its factory in India, which Apple reportedly intends to use to avoid tariffs where possible. That factory “only began producing Apple’s top-of-the-line Pro and Pro Max iPhone models for the first time last year,” CNBC reported.

Analysts told CNBC that it would take years to launch a similar manufacturing process in the US, while “there’s no guarantee that US trade policy might not change yet again in a way to make the factory less useful.”

Apple CEO’s potential game plan to navigate tariffs

It appears that there’s not much Apple can do to avoid maximum pain through US-China negotiations. But Apple’s CEO Tim Cook—who is considered “a supply chain whisperer”—may be “uniquely suited” to navigate Trump’s trade war, Fortune reported.

After Cook arrived at Apple in 1998, he “redesigned Apple’s sprawling supply chain” and perhaps is game to do that again, Fortune reported. Jeremy Friedman, associate professor of business and geopolitics at Harvard Business School, told Fortune that rather than being stuck in the middle, Cook may turn out to be a key intermediary, helping the US and China iron out a deal.

During Trump’s last term, Cook raised a successful “charm offensive” that secured tariff exemptions without caving to Trump’s demand to build iPhones in the US, CNBC reported, and he’s likely betting that Apple’s recent $500 billion commitment will lead to similar outcomes, even if Apple never delivers a US-made iPhone.

Back in 2017, Trump announced that Apple partner Foxconn would be building three “big beautiful plants” in the US and claimed that they would be Apple plants, CNBC reported. But the pandemic disrupted construction, and most of those plans were abandoned, with one facility only briefly serving to make face masks, not Apple products. In 2019, Apple committed to building a Texas factory that Trump toured. While Trump insisted that a US-made iPhone was on the horizon due to Apple moving some business into the US, that factory only committed to assembling the MacBook Pro, CNBC noted.

Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring suggested that Apple may “commit to some small-volume production in the US (HomePod? AirTags?)” to secure an exemption in 2025, rather than committing to building iPhones, CNBC reported.

Although this perhaps sounds like a tried-and-true game plan, for Cook, Apple’s logistics have likely never been so complicated. However, analysts told Fortune that experienced logistics masterminds understand that flexibility is the priority, and Cook has already shown that he can anticipate Trump’s moves by stockpiling iPhones and redirecting US-bound iPhones through its factory in India.

While Trump negotiates with China, Apple hopes that an estimated 35 million iPhones it makes annually in India can “cover a large portion of its needs in the US,” Bloomberg reported. These moves, analysts said, prove that Cook may be the man for the job when it comes to steering Apple through the trade war chaos.

But to keep up with global demand—selling more than 220 million iPhones annually—Apple will struggle to quickly distance itself from China, where there’s abundant talent to scale production that Apple says just doesn’t exist in the US. For example, CNBC noted that Foxconn hired 50,000 additional workers last fall at its largest China plant just to build enough iPhones to meet demand during the latest September launches.

As Apple remains dependent on China, Cook will likely need to remain at the table, seeking friendlier terms on both sides to ensure its business isn’t upended for years.

“One can imagine, if there is some sort of grand bargain between US and China coming in the next year or two,” Friedman said, “Tim Cook might as soon as anybody play an intermediary role.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Apple silent as Trump promises “impossible” US-made iPhones Read More »

FTC now has three Republicans and no Democrats instead of the typical 3-2 split

ftc, Policy, Trump / DJ Henderson / April 12, 2025

After declaring the FTC to be under White House control, Trump fired both Democratic members despite a US law and Supreme Court precedent stating that the president cannot fire commissioners without good cause.

House Commerce Committee leaders said the all-Republican FTC will end the “partisan mismanagement” allegedly seen under the Biden-era FTC and then-Chair Lina Khan. “In the last administration, the FTC abandoned its rich bipartisan tradition and historical mission, in favor of a radical agenda and partisan mismanagement,” said a statement issued by Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.). “The Commission needs to return to protecting Americans from bad actors and preserving competition in the marketplace.”

Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge thanked Senate Democrats for voting against Meador. “In order for the FTC to be effective, it needs to have five independent commissioners doing the work,” said Sara Collins, the group’s director of government affairs. “By voting ‘no’ on this confirmation, these senators have shown that it is still important to prioritize protecting consumers and supporting a healthier marketplace over turning a blind eye to President Trump’s unlawful termination of Democratic Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya.”

Democrats sue Trump

The two Democrats are challenging the firings in a lawsuit that said “it is bedrock, binding precedent that a President cannot remove an FTC Commissioner without cause.” Trump “purported to terminate Plaintiffs as FTC Commissioners, not because they were inefficient, neglectful of their duties, or engaged in malfeasance, but simply because their ‘continued service on the FTC is’ supposedly ‘inconsistent with [his] Administration’s priorities,'” the lawsuit said.

US law says an FTC commissioner “may be removed by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” A 1935 Supreme Court ruling said that “Congress intended to restrict the power of removal to one or more of those causes.”

Slaughter and Bedoya sued Trump in US District Court for the District of Columbia and asked the court to declare “the President’s purported termination of Plaintiffs Slaughter and Bedoya unlawful and that Plaintiffs Slaughter and Bedoya are Commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission.”

FTC now has three Republicans and no Democrats instead of the typical 3-2 split Read More »

Take It Down Act nears passage; critics warn Trump could use it against enemies

AI, Deepfakes, Policy, take it down act / Beth Washington / April 10, 2025

Anti-deepfake bill raises concerns about censorship and breaking encryption.

The helicopter with outgoing US President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden departs from the East Front of the United States Capitol after the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images

An anti-deepfake bill is on the verge of becoming US law despite concerns from civil liberties groups that it could be used by President Trump and others to censor speech that has nothing to do with the intent of the bill.

The bill is called the Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes On Websites and Networks Act, or Take It Down Act. The Senate version co-sponsored by Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was approved in the Senate by unanimous consent in February and is nearing passage in the House. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce approved the bill in a 49-1 vote yesterday, sending it to the House floor.

The bill pertains to “nonconsensual intimate visual depictions,” including both authentic photos shared without consent and forgeries produced by artificial intelligence or other technological means. Publishing intimate images of adults without consent could be punished by a fine and up to two years of prison. Publishing intimate images of minors under 18 could be punished with a fine or up to three years in prison.

Online platforms would have 48 hours to remove such images after “receiving a valid removal request from an identifiable individual (or an authorized person acting on behalf of such individual).”

“No man, woman, or child should be subjected to the spread of explicit AI images meant to target and harass innocent victims,” House Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said in a press release. Guthrie’s press release included quotes supporting the bill from first lady Melania Trump, two teen girls who were victimized with deepfake nudes, and the mother of a boy whose death led to an investigation into a possible sextortion scheme.

Free speech concerns

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been speaking out against the bill, saying “it could be easily manipulated to take down lawful content that powerful people simply don’t like.” The EFF pointed to Trump’s comments in an address to a joint session of Congress last month, in which he suggested he would use the bill for his own ends.

“Once it passes the House, I look forward to signing that bill into law. And I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody,” Trump said, drawing laughs from the crowd at Congress.

The EFF said, “Congress should believe Trump when he says he would use the Take It Down Act simply because he’s ‘treated badly,’ despite the fact that this is not the intention of the bill. There is nothing in the law, as written, to stop anyone—especially those with significant resources—from misusing the notice-and-takedown system to remove speech that criticizes them or that they disagree with.”

Free speech concerns were raised in a February letter to lawmakers sent by the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Authors Guild, Demand Progress Action, the EFF, Fight for the Future, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, and TechFreedom.

The bill’s notice and takedown system “would result in the removal of not just nonconsensual intimate imagery but also speech that is neither illegal nor actually NDII [nonconsensual distribution of intimate imagery]… While the criminal provisions of the bill include appropriate exceptions for consensual commercial pornography and matters of public concern, those exceptions are not included in the bill’s takedown system,” the letter said.

The letter also said the bill could incentivize online platforms to use “content filtering that would break encryption.” The bill “excludes email and other services that do not primarily consist of user-generated content from the NTD [notice and takedown] system,” but “direct messaging services, cloud storage systems, and other similar services for private communication and storage, however, could be required to comply with the NTD,” the letter said.

The bill “contains serious threats to private messaging and free speech online—including requirements that would force companies to abandon end-to-end encryption so they can read and moderate your DMs,” Public Knowledge said today.

Democratic amendments voted down

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) cast the only vote against the bill in yesterday’s House Commerce Committee hearing. But there were also several party-line votes against amendments submitted by Democrats.

Democrats raised concerns both about the bill not being enforced strictly enough and that bad actors could abuse the takedown process. The first concern is related to Trump firing both Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission.

Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.) called the Take It Down Act an “excellent law” but said, “right now it’s feeling like empty words because my Republican colleagues just stood by while the administration fired FTC commissioners, the exact people who enforce this law… it feels almost like my Republican colleagues are just giving a wink and a nod to the predators out there who are waiting to exploit kids and other innocent victims.”

Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) offered an amendment to delay the bill’s effective date until the Democratic commissioners are restored to their positions. Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) said that with a shorthanded FTC, “there’s going to be no enforcement of the Take It Down Act. There will be no enforcement of anything related to kids’ privacy.”

Rep. John James (R-Mich.) called the amendment a “thinly veiled delay tactic” and “nothing less than an attempt to derail this very important bill.” The amendment was defeated in a 28-22 vote.

Democrats support bill despite losing amendment votes

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said she strongly supports the bill but offered an amendment that she said would tighten up the text and close loopholes. She said her amendment “ensures constitutionally protected speech is preserved by incorporating essential provisions for consensual content and matters of public concern. My goal is to protect survivors of abuse, not suppress lawful expression or shield misconduct from public accountability.”

Dingell’s amendment was also defeated in a 28-22 vote.

Pallone pitched an amendment that he said would “prevent bad actors from falsely claiming to be authorized from making takedown requests on behalf of someone else.” He called it a “common sense guardrail to protect against weaponization of this bill to take down images that are published with the consent of the subject matter of the images.” The amendment was rejected in a voice vote.

The bill was backed by RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), which praised the committee vote in a statement yesterday. “We’ve worked with fierce determination for the past year to bring Take It Down forward because we know—and survivors know—that AI-assisted sexual abuse is sexual abuse and real harm is being done; real pain is caused,” said Stefan Turkheimer, RAINN’s VP of public policy.

Cruz touted support for the bill from over 120 organizations and companies. The list includes groups like NCMEC (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), along with various types of advocacy groups and tech companies Microsoft, Google, Meta, IBM, Amazon, and X Corp.

“As bad actors continue to exploit new technologies like generative artificial intelligence, the Take It Down Act is crucial for ending the spread of exploitative sexual material online, holding Big Tech accountable, and empowering victims of revenge and deepfake pornography,” Cruz said yesterday.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

Take It Down Act nears passage; critics warn Trump could use it against enemies Read More »

Trump boosts China tariffs to 125%, pauses tariff hikes on other countries

china tariffs, consumer technology, Donald Trump, Policy, tariffs, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / April 10, 2025

On Wednesday, Donald Trump, once again, took to Truth Social to abruptly shift US trade policy, announcing a 90-day pause “substantially” lowering reciprocal tariffs against all countries except China to 10 percent.

Because China retaliated—raising tariffs on US imports to 84 percent on Wednesday—Trump increased tariffs on China imports to 125 percent “effective immediately.” That likely will not be received well by China, which advised the Trump administration to cancel all China tariffs Wednesday, NPR reported.

“The US’s practice of escalating tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake,” the Chinese finance ministry said, calling for Trump to “properly resolve differences with China through equal dialogue on the basis of mutual respect.”

For tech companies, trying to keep up with Trump’s social media posts regarding tariffs has been a struggle, as markets react within minutes. It’s not always clear what Trump’s posts mean or how the math will add up, but after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clarified Trump’s recent post, the stock market surged, CNBC reported, after slumping for days.

But even though the stock market may be, for now, recovering, tech companies remain stuck swimming in uncertainty. Ed Brzytwa, vice president of international trade for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)—which represents the $505 billion US consumer technology industry—told Ars that for many CTA members, including small businesses and startups, “the damage has been done.”

“Our small business and startup members were uniquely exposed to these reciprocal tariffs and the whipsaw effect,” Brzytwa told Ars. “There’s collateral damage to that.”

In a statement, CTA CEO Gary Shapiro suggested that the pause was “a victory for American consumers,” but ultimately the CTA wants Trump to “fully revoke” the tariffs.

“While this is great news, we are hearing directly from our members that the ongoing additional 10 percent universal baseline tariffs and this continued uncertainty, are already hurting American small businesses,” Shapiro said. “CTA urges President Trump to focus his efforts on what he does best, dealmaking. Now is the time to reposition the United States with our allies as a reliable trading partner while growing the American and global economy.”

Trump boosts China tariffs to 125%, pauses tariff hikes on other countries Read More »

Twitch makes deal to escape Elon Musk suit alleging X ad boycott conspiracy

elon musk, online advertising, Policy, twitch, Twitter, twitter ad boycott, X / Shannon Garcia / April 9, 2025

Instead, it appears that X decided to sue Twitch after discovering that Twitch was among advertisers who directly referenced the WFA’s brand safety guidelines in its own community guidelines and terms of service. X likely saw this as evidence that Twitch was allegedly conspiring with the WFA to restrict then-Twitter’s ad revenue, since X alleged that Twitch reduced ad purchases to “only a de minimis amount outside the United States, after November 2022,” X’s complaint said.

“The Advertiser Defendants and other GARM-member advertisers acted in parallel to discontinue their purchases of advertising from Twitter, in a marked departure from their prior pattern of purchases,” X’s complaint said.

Now, it seems that X has agreed to drop Twitch from the suit, perhaps partly because the complaint X had about Twitch adhering to WFA brand safety standards is defused since the WFA disbanded the ad industry arm that set those standards.

Unilever struck a similar deal to wriggle out of the litigation, Reuters noted, and remained similarly quiet on the terms, only saying that the brand remained “committed to meeting our responsibility standards to ensure the safety and performance of our brands on the platform.” But other advertisers, including Colgate, CVS, LEGO, Mars, Pinterest, Shell, and Tyson Foods, so far have not.

For Twitch, its deal seems to clearly take a target off its back at a time when some advertisers are reportedly returning to X to stay out of Musk’s crosshairs. Getting out now could spare substantial costs as the lawsuit drags on, even though X CEO Linda Yaccarino declared the ad boycott was over in January. X is still $12 billion in debt, X claimed, after Musk’s xAI bought X last month. External data in January seemed to suggest many big brands were still hesitant to return to the platform, despite Musk’s apparent legal strong-arming and political influence in the Trump administration.

Ars could not immediately reach Twitch or X for comment. But the court docket showed that Twitch was up against a deadline to respond to the lawsuit by mid-May, which likely increased pressure to reach an agreement before Twitch was forced to invest in raising a defense.

Twitch makes deal to escape Elon Musk suit alleging X ad boycott conspiracy Read More »

Victory for DOGE as appeals court reinstates access to personal data

doge, Policy / Beth Washington / April 9, 2025

A US appeals court ruled yesterday that DOGE can access personal data held by the US Department of Education and Office of Personnel Management (OPM), overturning an order issued by a lower-court judge.

The US government has “met its burden of a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits of their appeal,” said yesterday’s ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. In a 2-1 decision, a panel of judges granted the Trump administration’s motion to stay the lower-court ruling pending appeal.

“The Supreme Court has told us that, unlike a private party, the government suffers an irreparable harm when it cannot carry out the orders of its elected representatives… Judicial management of agency operations offends the Executive Branch’s exclusive authority to enforce federal law,” wrote Court of Appeals Judge Steven Agee, a George W. Bush appointee.

Agee was joined by Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump appointee, in voting to grant the motion to stay pending appeal. Judge Robert King, a Clinton appointee, voted to deny the motion.

Judge “strongly” dissents

In a separate 8-7 vote, the full court denied King’s request for an en banc hearing. King’s dissent said:

Given the exceptional importance of this matter, I sought initial en banc consideration of the government’s motion for a stay pending appeal of the district court’s award of preliminary injunctive relief—an injunction that bars the defendant federal agencies and officials from disclosing to affiliates of the President’s new Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” highly sensitive personal information belonging to millions of Americans. Regrettably, my request for initial hearing en banc has been denied on an 8-7 vote, and the panel majority has granted the government’s motion for a stay pending appeal on a 2-1 vote. I strongly dissent from both decisions.

At stake is some of the most sensitive personal information imaginable—including Social Security numbers, income and assets, federal tax records, disciplinary and other personnel actions, physical and mental health histories, driver’s license information, bank account numbers, and demographic and family details. This information was entrusted to the government, which for many decades had a record of largely adhering to the Privacy Act of 1974 and keeping the information safe. And then suddenly, the defendants began disclosing the information to DOGE affiliates without substantiating that they have any need to access such highly sensitive materials.

Yesterday’s decision overturned a ruling by US District Judge Deborah Boardman in the District of Maryland. Plaintiffs include the American Federation of Teachers; the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers; the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association; the National Federation of Federal Employees; and the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers. There are also six individual plaintiffs who are military veterans.

Victory for DOGE as appeals court reinstates access to personal data Read More »

DOGE gearing up for hackathon at IRS, wants easier access to taxpayer data

doge, IRS, Policy, syndication / Shannon Garcia / April 7, 2025

DOGE has already slashed and burned modernization projects at other agencies, replacing them with smaller teams and tighter timelines. At the Social Security Administration, DOGE representatives are planning to move all of the agency’s data off of legacy programming languages like COBOL and into something like Java, WIRED reported last week.

Last Friday, DOGE suddenly placed around 50 IRS technologists on administrative leave. On Thursday, even more technologists were cut, including the director of cybersecurity architecture and implementation, deputy chief information security officer, and acting director of security risk management. IRS’s chief technology officer, Kaschit Pandya, is one of the few technology officials left at the agency, sources say.

DOGE originally expected the API project to take a year, multiple IRS sources say, but that timeline has shortened dramatically down to a few weeks. “That is not only not technically possible, that’s also not a reasonable idea, that will cripple the IRS,” an IRS employee source tells WIRED. “It will also potentially endanger filing season next year, because obviously all these other systems they’re pulling people away from are important.”

(Corcos also made it clear to IRS employees that he wanted to kill the agency’s Direct File program, the IRS’s recently released free tax-filing service.)

DOGE’s focus on obtaining and moving sensitive IRS data to a central viewing platform has spooked privacy and civil liberties experts.

“It’s hard to imagine more sensitive data than the financial information the IRS holds,” Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a digital civil rights organization, tells WIRED.

Palantir received the highest FedRAMP approval this past December for its entire product suite, including Palantir Federal Cloud Service (PFCS), which provides a cloud environment for federal agencies to implement the company’s software platforms, like Gotham and Foundry. FedRAMP stands for Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program and assesses cloud products for security risks before governmental use.

“We love disruption and whatever is good for America will be good for Americans and very good for Palantir,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp said in a February earnings call. “Disruption at the end of the day exposes things that aren’t working. There will be ups and downs. This is a revolution, some people are going to get their heads cut off.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

DOGE gearing up for hackathon at IRS, wants easier access to taxpayer data Read More »

The speech police: Chairman Brendan Carr and the FCC’s news distortion policy

cbs 60 minutes, fcc chairman brendan carr, fcc news distortion policy, Features, Policy / Shannon Garcia / April 7, 2025

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr

FCC invokes 1960s-era policy to punish media after decades of minimal enforcement.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr delivers a speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on March 3, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | AFP

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is taking a hard line against broadcast TV stations accused of bias against Republicans and President Trump. To pressure broadcasters, Carr is invoking the rarely enforced news distortion policy that was developed starting in the late 1960s and says the FCC should consider revoking broadcast licenses.

The FCC has regulatory authority over broadcasters with licenses to use the public airwaves. But Carr’s two immediate predecessors—Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel and Republican Ajit Pai—both said that punishing stations based on the content of news programs would violate the First Amendment right to free speech.

Rosenworcel and Pai’s agreement continued a decades-long trend of the FCC easing itself out of the news-regulation business. Two other former FCC chairs—Republican Alfred Sikes and Democrat Tom Wheeler—have urged Carr to change course.

Carr has multiple probes in progress, and his investigation into CBS over the editing of an interview with Kamala Harris has drawn condemnations from both liberal and conservative advocacy groups that describe it as a threat to the Constitutional right to free speech. One plea to drop the investigation came in a March 19 letter from conservative groups including the Center for Individual Freedom, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

“While we understand the concerns that motivate the complaint, we nonetheless fear that an adverse ruling against CBS would constitute regulatory overreach and advance precedent that can be weaponized by future FCCs,” the letter said. The letter argued that “Democrats and leftwing activist groups have repeatedly worked to weaponize” the government against free speech and that the FCC should “help guard against future abuses by Democrats and leftwing organizations by streamlining license renewals and merger reviews and eliminating the news distortion and news hoax rules.”

“The flimsiest of complaints”

Andrew Jay Schwartzman, an expert on media law and senior counselor for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, told Ars that “the CBS complaint is utterly lacking in merit. What is alleged doesn’t come within light-years of a violation of any FCC policy.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), an advocacy group, called Carr’s investigation of CBS “a political stunt,” an “illegitimate show trial,” and an “unconstitutional abuse of regulatory authority.” Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers from Carr about what they call “bogus investigations” designed to “target and intimidate news organizations and broadcasters in violation of the First Amendment.”

The CBS investigation was also lambasted in comments submitted by Christopher Terry, a professor of media law and ethics at the University of Minnesota, and J. Israel Balderas, a journalism professor at Elon University who is also a First Amendment attorney and a former FCC media advisor.

“The agency under Brendan Carr appears to be, based on the flimsiest of complaints, pursuing media outlets critical of Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign, while ignoring similar complaints from the public about Trump-friendly media outlets,” Terry and Balderas wrote. “Being the speech police is not the FCC’s job, but enforcing any restrictions in a selective, much less a partisan, way is problematic, and likely to lead to extensive legal actions challenging FCC authority.”

FCC’s long shift away from news regulation

The FCC has historically regulated broadcast news with the Fairness Doctrine, which no longer exists, and the news distortion policy, which is still in place. The Fairness Doctrine was introduced in 1949 to guarantee “that the public has a reasonable opportunity to hear different opposing positions on the public issues of interest and importance in the community.” This requirement to air contrasting views remained in place until 1987.

After losing a court case brought by a TV station, the FCC was forced to reconsider its enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine and decided to repeal it. The Reagan-era FCC concluded that the Fairness Doctrine “violates the First Amendment” and works against the public interest. “Despite the physical differences between the electronic and print media, their roles in our society are identical, and we believe that the same First Amendment principles should be equally applicable to both,” the FCC said at the time.

US regulation of broadcast news continued to be lessened through a series of commission decisions and court rulings. “Even the relaxation of non-content regulations, such as the extension of stations’ license terms from three to eight years, and adoption of rules that make challenges to license renewals by the public or potential competitors almost impossible, have bolstered broadcasters’ editorial rights against outside review,” said a 2001 article by Santa Clara University professor Chad Raphael in the journal Communication Law and Policy.

The FCC’s general shift away from regulating news content made it surprising that the news distortion policy survived, Raphael wrote. “Given this deregulatory trend, it is remarkable that the Commission has preserved its little-known rules against licensees’ deliberately distorting the news… The distortion rules have drawn scant commentary in the regulatory literature, especially in contrast to the outpouring of debate over their cousin, the Fairness Doctrine,” the article said.

But the FCC never issued many findings of news distortion, and such findings have been nearly nonexistent in recent decades. Raphael’s analysis found 120 decisions on news distortion between 1969 and 1999, and only 12 of them resulted in findings against broadcasters. Those 12 decisions were generated by eight cases, as several of the cases “generated multiple decisions as they went through the appeals process.”

“The number of reported decisions drops off dramatically after 1976, and there is only one finding of distortion after 1982, when the Reagan-era FCC began to remove content regulations on broadcast news,” Raphael wrote. The one post-1982 finding of distortion was issued in a letter of admonishment to NBC in 1993 “for staging a segment of a Dateline NBC report on unsafe gas tanks in General Motors trucks,” Raphael wrote.

GM investigated the incident and NBC “admitted to staging the explosion, made an on-air apology to GM, fired three producers who contributed to the segment, and eventually dismissed its news president,” he wrote. The FCC itself sent the letter quietly, with “the first mention of this action appearing in a 1999 decision rejecting a challenge to NBC’s license renewals.”

Investigations rare, penalties even rarer

The rare findings of news distortion were usually accompanied by other infractions. “Most penalties consisted of issuing letters of admonishment or censure that did not figure heavily in subsequent license renewals, all of which were successful,” Raphael wrote.

Despite Raphael’s paper being nearly a quarter-century old, it’s practically up to date. “Since the time of Raphael’s study, it appears that the Commission has only considered allegations of news distortion in a very small number of cases,” said a 2019 paper by Joel Timmer, a professor of film, television, and digital media at Texas Christian University.

Timmer found eight post-1999 cases in which news distortion allegations were considered. Most of the allegations didn’t get very far, and none of them resulted in a finding of news distortion.

The FCC technically has no rule or regulation against news distortion. “Instead, it has a news distortion policy, developed ‘through the adjudicatory process in decisions resolving challenges to broadcasters’ licenses,'” Timmer wrote.

The FCC dismissed an allegation of news distortion over broadcast networks incorrectly projecting that Al Gore would win Florida in the 2000 presidential election, he wrote. The FCC said the incorrect projections were “not a sufficient basis to initiate such an investigation.”

The FCC did investigate an allegation of news distortion in 2007. Two reporters at Florida station WTVT alleged a violation when their employer failed to air reports on the use of synthetic bovine growth hormone by dairy farmers. “The reporters alleged that station management and ownership demanded changes in their report as a result of pressure from Monsanto, the company that produces BGH,” but the FCC decided it was “a legitimate editorial dispute” and not “a deliberate effort to coerce [the reporters] into distorting the news,” Timmer wrote.

There was also a 2007 case involving a Detroit TV station’s report “that a local official and several prominent local business people consorted with prostitutes during a fishing trip to Costa Rica,” Timmer wrote. “It was alleged that a reporter from WXYZ-TV actually paid prostitutes to stay at the hotel at which the trip’s participants were staying, then falsely reported that the participants consorted with them. While the FCC acknowledged that, if true, this could constitute staging of the news, there was a lack of extrinsic evidence to establish that the licensee, its top management, or its news management were involved in an attempt to deliberately distort or falsify the news, causing the news distortion claim to fail.”

Timmer’s paper summarized the FCC’s post-1999 news distortion enforcement as follows:

In addition to the post-1999 cases already discussed—those involving reporting on bovine growth hormone, erroneous projections that Al Gore would win Florida in the 2000 presidential election—and reporting regarding prostitutes in Costa Rica with a public official and business people—charges of news distortion were raised and discussed in only a handful of instances. In addition to these three cases, there were five other cases since 1999 in which the Commission considered allegations of news distortion. In only two of the eight cases was there any detailed discussion of news distortion claims: the BGH story and the story involving prostitutes in Costa Rica. Significantly, in none of the cases was news distortion found to have occurred.

Terry told Ars that he’s not aware of any news distortion findings since the 2019 paper.

The FCC has a separate broadcast hoax rule enacted in 1992. As of 2000, “no broadcaster had ever been fined pursuant to the rule, nor had any stations lost their licenses for violating the rule,” and “it appears that the FCC has considered allegations of broadcast hoaxes only three times since 2000, with none of those cases resulting in the FCC finding a violation of the rule,” Timmer wrote.

The 60 Minutes investigation

In one of her last official acts before Trump’s inauguration and her departure from the FCC, Rosenworcel dismissed complaints of bias against Trump related to ABC’s fact-checking during a presidential debate, the editing of a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Harris, and NBC putting Harris on a Saturday Night Live episode. Rosenworcel also dismissed a challenge to a Fox station license alleging that Fox willfully distorted news with false reports of fraud in the 2020 election that Trump lost.

Carr quickly revived the three complaints alleging bias against Trump, which were filed by a nonprofit law firm called the Center for American Rights. Of these, the ABC and CBS complaints allege news distortion. The NBC complaint alleges a violation of the separate Equal Time rule. The complaints were filed against individual broadcast stations because the FCC licenses stations rather than the networks that own them or are affiliated with them.

Carr has repeatedly expressed interest in the complaint over 60 Minutes, which alleged that CBS misled viewers by airing two different responses to the same question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one on 60 Minutes and the other on Face the Nation. CBS’s defense—which is supported by the unedited transcript and video of the interview—is that the two clips show different parts of the same answer given by Harris.

On February 5, the Carr-led FCC issued a public notice seeking comment on the CBS investigation. The FCC’s public notices aren’t generally seen by many people, but the FCC tried to encourage participation in this proceeding. The agency temporarily added a banner message to the top of the consumer complaints page to urge the public to submit comments about the 60 Minutes interview.

“Interested in adding your comments to the proceeding investigating news distortion in the airing of a ’60 Minutes’ interview with then Vice President Kamala Harris?” the banner message said, linking to a page that explained how to submit comments on the proceeding.

Former chairs blast Carr

One filing was submitted by the former chairs Sikes and Wheeler, plus three other former FCC commissioners: Republican Rachelle Chong, Democrat Ervin Duggan, and Democrat Gloria Tristani. “These comments are submitted to emphasize the unprecedented nature of this news distortion proceeding, and to express our strong concern that the Federal Communications Commission may be seeking to censor the news media in a manner antithetical to the First Amendment,” the bipartisan group of former FCC chairs and commissioners wrote.

The FCC has historically “enforced the [news distortion] policy very rarely, and it has adopted guardrails requiring that complaints be summarily dismissed in all but the most exceptional circumstances,” they wrote, adding that there are no exceptional circumstances warranting an investigation into CBS.

“The Commission’s departures from its typical practice and precedent are especially troubling when viewed in context. This Administration has made no secret of its desire to revoke the licenses of broadcasters that cover it in ways the President considers unfavorable,” the filing said.

Pointing to the Raphael and Timmer analyses, the former FCC leaders wrote that the agency “issued findings of liability on news distortion in just eight cases between 1969 and 2019—and in fact in just one case between 1985 and 2019. None of the cases that found news distortion concerned the way a broadcaster had exercised its editorial discretion in presenting the news. Instead, each case involved egregious misconduct, including the wholesale fabrication of news stories.”

The FCC’s news distortion policy applies a multi-part test, the group noted. A finding of news distortion requires “deliberate distortion” and not mere inaccuracy or differences of opinion, “extrinsic evidence (i.e., beyond the broadcast itself) demonstrating that the broadcaster deliberately distorted or staged the news” and that “the distortion must apply to a ‘significant event,’ rather than minor inaccuracies or incidental aspects of the report.” Finally, FCC policy is to “only consider taking action on the broadcaster’s license if the extrinsic evidence shows the distortion involved the ‘principals, top management, or news management’ of the licensee, as opposed to other employees.”

The FCC has historically punished licensees only after dramatic violations, like “elaborate hoaxes, internal conspiracies, and reports conjured from whole cloth,” they wrote. There is “no credible argument” that the allegations against CBS “belong in the same category.”

CBS transcript and video supports network

Kamal Harris smiles while sitting for a television interview. — Kamala Harris on *60 Minutes*. Credit: CBS

The Center for American Rights complaint says that an FCC investigation of”extrinsic evidence” could include examining outtakes to determine whether “the licensee has deliberately suppressed or altered a news report.” The complaint criticized CBS for not providing the complete transcript of the interview.

In late January, the Carr-led FCC demanded that CBS provide an unedited transcript and camera feeds of the interview. CBS provided the requested materials and made them available publicly. The transcript supports CBS’s defense because it shows that what the Center for American Rights claimed were “two completely different answers” were just two different sentences from the same response.

“We broadcast a longer portion of the vice president’s answer on Face the Nation and broadcast a shorter excerpt from the same answer on 60 Minutes the next day. Each excerpt reflects the substance of the vice president’s answer,” CBS said.

The Center for American Rights complained that in one clip, Harris answered the question about Netanyahu by saying, “Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”

In the second clip, Harris responded to the question by saying, “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

“Same interview, same question, two completely different answers,” the Center for American Rights’ complaint said.

But the CBS transcript and video shows that Harris spoke these two sentences as part of one answer to the question. CBS aired the two sentences in different clips, but neither contradicts the other.

Center for American Rights stands by complaint

The Center for American Rights declined to comment on the transcript and video when contacted by Ars, but it pointed us to the final comments it submitted in the FCC proceeding. The filing argues for an expansive approach to regulating news distortion, saying that “slanting the news to benefit one political candidate violates the distortion doctrine.”

“The core of our concern is that 60 Minutes‘ slice-and-dice journalism was an act of slanting the news to favor a preferred candidate and part of a pattern of CBS News consistently favoring a candidate and party… The Commission is uniquely positioned as the relevant authority with the power to investigate to determine whether CBS engaged in intentional news slanting,” the filing said.

The Center for American Rights filing also complained that “Fox and Sinclair [we]re subject to relentless regulatory pressure under the prior chair… but then everyone screams that the First Amendment is being eviscerated when CBS is subject to attention under the same policy from the new chair.”

“‘Selective enforcement’ is when Fox and Sinclair are constantly under regulatory pressure from Democrats at the FCC and in the Congress and from their outside allies, but then unchecked ‘press freedom’ is the sacrosanct principle when CBS allegedly transgresses the same lines when Republicans are in power,” the group said, responding to arguments that punishing CBS would be selective enforcement.

As previously mentioned in this article, Rosenworcel rejected a news distortion complaint and license challenge that targeted Fox’s WTXF-TV in Philadelphia. “Such content review in the context of a renewal application would run afoul of our obligations under the First Amendment and the statutory prohibition on censorship and interference with free speech rights,” Rosenworcel’s FCC said.

The conservative Sinclair Broadcasting Group was fined $48 million for portraying sponsored TV segments as news coverage and other violations in the largest-ever civil penalty paid by a broadcaster in FCC history. But that happened under Republican Ajit Pai, the FCC chair during Trump’s first term. Pai’s FCC also blocked Sinclair’s attempt to buy Tribune Media Company.

Carr defended his investigation of CBS in a letter to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “During the Biden Administration, the FCC and Democrats across government repeatedly weaponized our country’s communications laws and processes. In contrast, I am restoring the FCC’s commitment to basic fairness and even-handed treatment for all,” Carr wrote.

Carr said he “put the CBS complaint on the same procedural footing that the Biden FCC determined it should apply to the Fox complaint.” By this, he means that the previous administration held a proceeding to consider the Fox complaint instead of dismissing it outright.

“The Biden FCC’s approach to the Fox petition stands in stark contrast to the approach the Biden FCC took to the CBS petition. Unlike the Fox petition, the Biden FCC just summarily dismissed the CBS one,” Carr wrote. Carr also said the Biden-era FCC “fail[ed] to process hundreds of routine Sinclair license renewals” and that the FCC is now “clearing and renewing those licenses again.”

The Fox case involved very different allegations than the CBS one. While CBS is facing investigation for airing two parts of an interviewee’s answer in two different broadcasts, a Delaware judge ruled in 2023 that Fox News made false and defamatory statements claiming that Dominion Voting Systems committed election fraud by manipulating vote counts through its software and algorithms. Fox subsequently agreed to pay Dominion $788 million in a settlement instead of facing trial.

Carr could test FCC authority in court

The Rosenworcel FCC said the CBS complaint was meritless in its dismissal. “Opening a news distortion enforcement action under Commission precedent—as rare as it is—turns on the important question of whether any information or extrinsic evidence was submitted to the Commission indicating an ‘intentional’ or ‘deliberate’ falsification of the news,” the decision said. “The Complaint submitted fails to do so. The Commission simply cannot wield its regulatory authority in a manner completely inconsistent with long-settled precedent that the Commission not ‘second guess’ broadcast decisions.”

The comments submitted by former chairs and commissioners said the “transcript confirms that the editing choices at issue lie well within the editorial judgment protected by the First Amendment.” TechFreedom, a libertarian-leaning think tank, told the FCC that “if the new standard for triggering a news distortion analysis is that any edits of raw interview video can be subject to challenge, then the FCC will spend the next four years, at least, fielding dozens, hundreds, thousands of news distortion complaints. Since every taped interview is edited, every taped interview that is aired will be ripe for an FCC complaint, which will have to be adjudicated. The news distortion complaint process will be weaponized by both political parties, and the business of the FCC will grind to a halt as it will have to assign more and more FTEs [full-time employees] to processing these complaints.”

Although CBS appears to have a strong defense, Carr can make life difficult for broadcasters simply by opening investigations. As experts have previously told Ars, the FCC can use its rules to harass licensees and hold up applications related to business deals. Carr said in November that the news distortion complaint over the 60 Minutes interview would factor into the FCC’s review of CBS owner Paramount’s transfer of TV broadcast station licenses to Skydance.

Jeffrey Westling, a lawyer who is the director of technology and innovation policy at the conservative American Action Forum, has written that the high legal bar for proving news distortion means that cases must involve something egregious—like a bribe or instructions from management to distort the news. But Westling has told Ars it’s possible that a “sympathetic” court could let the FCC use the rule to deny a transfer or renewal of a broadcast license.

“The actual bounds of the rule are not well-tested,” said Westling, who argues that the news distortion policy should be eliminated.

An FCC webpage that was last updated during Rosenworcel’s term says the FCC’s authority to enforce its news distortion policy is narrow. “The agency is prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press,” the FCC said, noting that “opinion or errors stemming from mistakes are not actionable.”

1960s FCC: “No government agency can authenticate the news”

The high bar set by the news distortion policy isn’t just about issuing findings of distortion—it is supposed to prevent many investigations in the first place, the Rosenworcel FCC said in its dismissal of the CBS complaint:

Indeed, the Commission has established a high threshold to commencing any investigation into allegations of news distortion. It is not sufficient for the Complainant to show that the material in question is false or even that the Licensee might have known or should have known about the falsity of the material. A news distortion complaint must include extrinsic evidence that the Licensee took actions to engage in a deliberate and intentional falsification of the news.

The comments submitted by Terry and Balderas said that “case law is clear: news distortion complaints must meet an extraordinary burden of proof.”

“The current complaint against CBS fails to meet this standard,” Terry and Balderas wrote. “Editing for clarity, brevity, or production value is a standard journalistic practice, and absent clear evidence of deliberate fabrication, government intervention is unwarranted. The current complaint against CBS presents no extrinsic evidence whatsoever—no internal memos, no whistleblower testimony, no evidence of financial incentives—making it facially deficient under the extrinsic evidence standard consistently applied since Hunger in America.”

Hunger in America was a 1968 CBS documentary that the FCC investigated. The FCC’s decision against issuing a finding of news distortion became an important precedent that was cited in a 1985 court case that upheld another FCC decision to reject an allegation of news distortion.

“The FCC’s policy on rigging, staging, or distorting the news was developed in a series of cases beginning in 1969,” said the 1985 ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “In the first of these, Hunger In America, CBS had shown an infant it said was suffering from malnutrition, but who was actually suffering from another ailment.”

The 1960s FCC found that “[r]igging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest” but also that “in this democracy, no government agency can authenticate the news, or should try to do so.” As the DC Circuit Court noted, in Hunger in America and “in all the subsequent cases, the FCC made a crucial distinction between deliberate distortion and mere inaccuracy or difference of opinion.”

Carr: FCC “not close” to dismissing complaint

Despite this history of non-enforcement except in the most egregious cases, Carr doesn’t seem inclined to end the investigation into what seems to be a routine editing decision. “Carr believes CBS has done nothing to bring the commission’s investigation to an end, including a fix for the alleged pervasive bias in its programming, according to people with knowledge of the matter,” said a New York Post report on March 28.

The report said the Paramount/Skydance merger “remains in FCC purgatory” and that the news distortion investigation is “a key element” holding up FCC approval of the transaction. An anonymous FCC official was quoted as saying that “the case isn’t close to being settled right now.”

We contacted Carr and will update this article if we get a response. But Carr confirmed to another news organization recently that he doesn’t expect a quick resolution. He told Reuters on March 25 that “we’re not close in my view to the position of dismissing that complaint at this point.”

The speech police: Chairman Brendan Carr and the FCC’s news distortion policy Read More »

NJ teen wins fight to put nudify app users in prison, impose fines up to $30K

ai csam, ai deepfakes, Artificial Intelligence, nudify apps, Online Privacy, Policy / Beth Washington / April 6, 2025

Here’s how one teen plans to fix schools failing kids affected by nudify apps.

When Francesca Mani was 14 years old, boys at her New Jersey high school used nudify apps to target her and other girls. At the time, adults did not seem to take the harassment seriously, telling her to move on after she demanded more severe consequences than just a single boy’s one or two-day suspension.

Mani refused to take adults’ advice, going over their heads to lawmakers who were more sensitive to her demands. And now, she’s won her fight to criminalize deepfakes. On Wednesday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a law that he said would help victims “take a stand against deceptive and dangerous deepfakes” by making it a crime to create or share fake AI nudes of minors or non-consenting adults—as well as deepfakes seeking to meddle with elections or damage any individuals’ or corporations’ reputations.

Under the law, victims targeted by nudify apps like Mani can sue bad actors, collecting up to $1,000 per harmful image created either knowingly or recklessly. New Jersey hopes these “more severe consequences” will deter kids and adults from creating harmful images, as well as emphasize to schools—whose lax response to fake nudes has been heavily criticized—that AI-generated nude images depicting minors are illegal and must be taken seriously and reported to police. It imposes a maximum fine of $30,000 on anyone creating or sharing deepfakes for malicious purposes, as well as possible punitive damages if a victim can prove that images were created in willful defiance of the law.

Ars could not reach Mani for comment, but she celebrated the win in the governor’s press release, saying, “This victory belongs to every woman and teenager told nothing could be done, that it was impossible, and to just move on. It’s proof that with the right support, we can create change together.”

On LinkedIn, her mother, Dorota Mani—who has been working with the governor’s office on a commission to protect kids from online harms—thanked lawmakers like Murphy and former New Jersey Assemblyman Herb Conaway, who sponsored the law, for “standing with us.”

“When used maliciously, deepfake technology can dismantle lives, distort reality, and exploit the most vulnerable among us,” Conaway said. “I’m proud to have sponsored this legislation when I was still in the Assembly, as it will help us keep pace with advancing technology. This is about drawing a clear line between innovation and harm. It’s time we take a firm stand to protect individuals from digital deception, ensuring that AI serves to empower our communities.”

Doing nothing is no longer an option for schools, teen says

Around the country, as cases like Mani’s continue to pop up, experts expect that shame prevents most victims from coming forward to flag abuses, suspecting that the problem is much more widespread than media reports suggest.

Encode Justice has a tracker monitoring reported cases involving minors, including allowing victims to anonymously report harms around the US. But the true extent of the harm currently remains unknown, as cops warn of a flood of AI child sex images obscuring investigations into real-world child abuse.

Confronting this shadowy threat to kids everywhere, Mani was named as one of TIME’s most influential people in AI last year due to her advocacy fighting deepfakes. She’s not only pressured lawmakers to take strong action to protect vulnerable people, but she’s also pushed for change at tech companies and in schools nationwide.

“When that happened to me and my classmates, we had zero protection whatsoever,” Mani told TIME, and neither did other girls around the world who had been targeted and reached out to thank her for fighting for them. “There were so many girls from different states, different countries. And we all had three things in common: the lack of AI school policies, the lack of laws, and the disregard of consent.”

Yiota Souras, chief legal officer at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, told CBS News last year that protecting teens started with laws that criminalize sharing fake nudes and provide civil remedies, just as New Jersey’s law does. That way, “schools would have protocols,” she said, and “investigators and law enforcement would have roadmaps on how to investigate” and “what charges to bring.”

Clarity is urgently needed in schools, advocates say. At Mani’s school, the boys who shared the photos had their names shielded and were pulled out of class individually to be interrogated, but victims like Mani had no privacy whatsoever. Their names were blared over the school’s loud system, as boys mocked their tears in the hallway. To this day, it’s unclear who exactly shared and possibly still has copies of the images, which experts say could haunt Mani throughout her life. And the school’s inadequate response was a major reason why Mani decided to take a stand, seemingly viewing the school as a vehicle furthering her harassment.

“I realized I should stop crying and be mad, because this is unacceptable,” Mani told CBS News.

Mani pushed for NJ’s new law and claimed the win, but she thinks that change must start at schools, where the harassment starts. In her school district, the “harassment, intimidation and bullying” policy was updated to incorporate AI harms, but she thinks schools should go even further. Working with Encode Justice, she is helping to push a plan to fix schools failing kids targeted by nudify apps.

“My goal is to protect women and children—and we first need to start with AI school policies, because this is where most of the targeting is happening,” Mani told TIME.

Encode Justice did not respond to Ars’ request to comment. But their plan noted a common pattern in schools throughout the US. Students learn about nudify apps through ads on social media—such as Instagram reportedly driving 90 percent of traffic to one such nudify app—where they can also usually find innocuous photos of classmates to screenshot. Within seconds, the apps can nudify the screenshotted images, which Mani told CBS News then spread “rapid fire” by text message and DMs, and often shared over school networks.

To end the abuse, schools need to be prepared, Encode Justice said, especially since “their initial response can sometimes exacerbate the situation.”

At Mani’s school, for example, leadership was criticized for announcing the victims’ names over the loudspeaker, which Encode Justice said never should have happened. Another misstep was at a California middle school, which delayed action for four months until parents went to police, Encode Justice said. In Texas, a school failed to stop images from spreading for eight months while a victim pleaded for help from administrators and police who failed to intervene. The longer the delays, the more victims will likely be targeted. In Pennsylvania, a single ninth grader targeted 46 girls before anyone stepped in.

Students deserve better, Mani feels, and Encode Justice’s plan recommends that all schools create action plans to stop failing students and respond promptly to stop image sharing.

That starts with updating policies to ban deepfake sexual imagery, then clearly communicating to students “the seriousness of the issue and the severity of the consequences.” Consequences should include identifying all perpetrators and issuing suspensions or expulsions on top of any legal consequences students face, Encode Justice suggested. They also recommend establishing “written procedures to discreetly inform relevant authorities about incidents and to support victims at the start of an investigation on deepfake sexual abuse.” And, critically, all teachers must be trained on these new policies.

“Doing nothing is no longer an option,” Mani said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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