During a high-profile hearing that focused largely on antitrust issues, members of the House Judiciary Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law Subcommittee on July 29 also grilled four major tech company CEOs on a range of other policy issues including privacy and misinformation. […]

Less than two weeks before the chief executive officers of Google and Apple are scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee, the chairman of a different House panel is asking the companies’ CEOs to take steps to ensure smartphone applications do not compromise national security. […]

Apple and Google are launching the Exposure Notification application programming interface (API) that will enable apps created by public health agencies to work more effectively in contact tracing of COVID-19. […]

Microsoft released seven “privacy principles” for technologies developed for the COVID-19 pandemic, including the standard to delete data as soon as it is no longer needed for the emergency, and called for Federal privacy legislation. […]

Two senior House Democrats cautioned over the weekend that privacy concerns need to be front and center in the development of technology by Apple and Google to contact trace COVID-19 coronavirus cases. […]

Here’s an overview of some of the latest COVID-19 coronavirus developments on the government and tech fronts: […]

In an April 3 letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Democratic senators are questioning the data privacy of the company’s COVID-19 coronavirus screening website despite Apple’s promises not to collect identifying health information. […]

TechNet, a bipartisan network of innovation economy CEOs and senior executives, announced Oct. 9 that it added four new members: Brighton Park Capital, Jyve, SmileDirectClub, and Teladoc Health. […]

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) announced May 1 that it has signed on to the Trump administration’s Pledge to America’s Workers. […]

The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) industry consortium have come up with validation software that can be used with any device and could go a long way to securing the supply chain for computing devices. […]

Apple CEO Tim Cook yesterday called for the Federal Trade Commission to take a larger role in protecting online consumer data by creating and overseeing a data-broker clearinghouse under which all brokers would have to register so that consumers could track how their data has been sold or deleted. […]

Jon Callas has left his post as a senior security expert at Apple to become a technology fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), according to a report from Reuters. […]

Apple CEO Tim Cook lavished praise Wednesday on the European Union’s data privacy rules embodied in the General Data Protection Regulation implemented in May, and at the same time made a strong case for the U.S. government to put in place similar protections for U.S. citizens.  […]

Apple announced on Wednesday that the company will allow users in the United States to download the data that Apple has collected about them–a feature previously only available to citizens of the European Union. […]

Senators Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked the chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer in an Oct. 9 letter whether the company has ever found evidence of tampering of components or firmware that targeted the company’s products, among other questions stemming from a Bloomberg Businessweek article reporting that chips made by a Chinese firm and allegedly used by numerous U.S. companies and government agencies were engineered to enable backdoor data transmissions to China.  […]

Apple told congressional leaders in a letter dated today that a story last week by Bloomberg Businessweek–reporting that chips made by a Chinese firm and used in Apple equipment were engineered to enable backdoor data transmissions to China–is “not true.” […]

A gaggle of tech and communications sector bellwethers presented a united front today at a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on data privacy and protection issues, saying they support a bill to address those issues but sharing strong preferences for federal legislation that would preempt state law and appoint the Federal Trade Commission as the chief watchdog. […]

The software industry group BSA | The Software Alliance offered its support for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Act in the Senate. […]

Apple later this year will launch an online portal for law enforcement officials to submit “lawful request for data, track outstanding requests, and obtain responsive data” from the tech company. […]

Research firm Gartner said Tuesday that Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei has surpassed Apple to become the second-largest provider of smartphones globally, edging out Apple in market share for the first time ever. […]

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]

Even as Apple went public yesterday with a new mobile device operating system intended to close security loopholes that law enforcement agencies were using to access locked devices, one digital forensics firm said it found a workaround to bypass the new security features for a cost of about forty bucks. […]

House members on Thursday reintroduced a bipartisan bill that would prevent states from requiring technology companies to include encryption “backdoors” in their products that would allow governments to access data stored on those products. […]

The FBI currently has a backlog of nearly 7,000 crime-connected phones that its experts are unable to crack. And it’s going to get much worse, law enforcement leaders say. […]

The White House is celebrating Made in America Week, while many U.S.-based technology companies advocate for H-1B visas to sponsor foreign workers who engineer some of the nation’s most lucrative technology products. […]

On the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, Apple can say that it’s the most secure phone on the market for an affordable price, while the Federal government still turns to BlackBerry. Apple phones have been encrypted since the 2014 release of iOS 8. […]

Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple, explained in a memo that he chose to meet with President-elect Donald Trump in order to insert his opinion on human rights, privacy, security, and the environment. […]

Google Chromebooks are gaining in classroom popularity over Apple’s iPad, according to a recent survey from Front Row Education, a creator of individualized math and ELA resources. […]

U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith championed the use of data as a means of bridging the gender divide. […]

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced a significant expansion of the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley-based experimental technology unit, including dedicated funding pipelines, a new partnership leadership structure, and plans to stand up a second unit in Boston. […]