Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Hack targeting hospital chain Ascension is impacting patient care

A college professor wants to use Section 230 against Big Tech

Commerce Department revokes more export licenses to China’s Huawei

Protesters descend on Eurovision, object to Israel’s participation

Emboldened Russia marks Victory Day with parade of nuclear-capable weapons

Deaf baby hears for the first time after ‘groundbreaking’ gene therapy trial

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign

Judge keeps tying Trump to possible intimidation

What extremism looks like to Sean Hannity and his party

RFK Jr’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test

The Trump-Biden battle over the 2017 tax cut

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

Need beauty? These are 7 of the most gorgeous gardens in the D.C. area.

Nationals finally run out of answers and fall to Orioles in 12 innings

4 best things to do with kids in the D.C. area this weekend

5 big travel lessons from a Patagonia CEO-turned-conservationist

Cruise worker accused of stabbing 3 with scissors arrested in Alaska

France tries to shed its rude reputation ahead of the Olympics

Ask Amy: Relatives keep giving me updates on my old family home

Ask Sahaj: My husband wants me to forget all about his emotional affair

Carolyn Hax: Was it wrong to approach late wife’s pal for no-commitment sex?

In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024

How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world

Indy Star bars columnist from Caitlin Clark’s games after awkward exchange

In the campaign against Donald Trump, do the ends justify the means?

The next global crisis could come from the sun. We should prepare now.

The FTC’s noncompete clause rule goes too far

Think you want a dog? Take our quiz to find out if you’re ready.

In Photos: Russians mark 79th Victory Day with military parade

Tornadoes hit Michigan, damage FedEx facility

Trump hush money trial live updates: Witness testimony resumes Friday

Donald Trump

Big Tech news and how to take control of your data and devices

See more coverage in your recommendations

Technology

Tips delivered to your inbox twice weekly

The Tech Friend newsletter

Business and Tech alerts

Alain Jocard

During a combative hearing on Tuesday, House Republicans alleged that Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan was “harassing” Twitter, describing the agency’s months-long probe of Elon Musk’s company as a “shakedown.”

They based their accusations, in part, on a new legal complaint from Twitter asking a federal court to terminate an FTC order restricting the company’s data security practices, alleging that the agency has “spiraled out of control and become tainted by bias.”

House Republicans seized on allegations in the complaint that the FTC attempted to influence Ernst &amp; Young, an independent auditor Twitter hired to assess its compliance with the order.

Yet the complaint — and Republican committee members — omitted key details from that deposition, which paints a stark picture of the chaos and upheaval at Twitter during Musk’s takeover.

David Roque, an Ernst &amp; Young partner, told lawyers during a deposition last month that Ernst &amp; Young contacted Twitter weekly, repeatedly asking the company to pay outstanding invoices totaling $500,000. He said the firm parted ways with the company amid “constant turnover” on Twitter’s executive team.

“There would have been a large burden on a smaller number of people to execute the same control structure,” he told an FTC investigator, who asked how the “resource constraints” would affect Twitter’s data security program. He said the turnover could result in more security mistakes or errors, because remaining staff might be tired or performing tasks that are not familiar.

He also said Ernst &amp; Young was concerned that it would be unable to complete the fieldwork necessary for its assessments, after Twitter repeatedly told the assessor it was not prepared for it to come on-site.

The filings come amid a dramatic standoff between Twitter’s parent company and the FTC, which has warned the company in recent days that its failures to respond to document requests put it out of step with a consent order, which the FTC updated last year <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/25/twitter-fine-ftc/" target=_blank>following allegations </a>the company deceptively used phone numbers and emails to target ads. The agency has also said it will consider Twitter in violation of its order if Musk does not appear for a deposition July 25 in San Francisco. In its complaint, Twitter sought a stay of that appearance.

Twitter’s parent company filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court of Northern California just hours before Khan’s testimony began on Capitol Hill. Khan received a hostile reception from Republicans who have accused her of mismanaging the agency and conducting a politicized probe into Twitter. Her leadership of the FTC has emerged as a political lightning rod at the center of a partisan debate over the future of social media, which has intensified over the last year as Musk took over Twitter and gutted many of the content moderation teams and systems that the company’s prior leadership had in place.

Musk followed along with the hearing on Twitter, tweeting that the exchanges between Khan and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) were “extremely concerning.”

“Insanely illegal overreach by the FTC,” Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1679507880012296192?s=20" target=_blank>tweeted</a>, responding to a tweet from House Republicans sharing excerpts from Twitter’s case.

Read Twitter's motion to terminate the FTC consent order

Jordan called Khan’s leadership a “disaster” in his opening remarks, characterizing her approach as “intimidation followed by inaction.”

During a tense exchange, Jordan pressed Khan on the FTC’s Twitter investigation, asking why she’s “harassing Twitter.” Khan responded that the FTC’s Twitter work “goes back a decade.”

He referenced an excerpt from Roque’s deposition where the partner said the FTC’s communications made him “fe[el] as if the FTC was trying to influence the outcome of the engagement before it even started.”

The deposition also details two meetings between Roque and FTC officials, where he said the FTC asked Ernst &amp; Young about what the assessor knew about the changes at Twitter amid Musk’s takeover. In a January meeting, Roque told lawyers representing Twitter that the FTC gave Ernst &amp; Young a list of areas they wanted the assessor to look at. He described the requests as unusual.

“It was almost as if they were giving us components of our audit program to execute,” he said.

Khan said she was not familiar with the specifics of the deposition. The FTC declined to comment on Twitter’s filing.

But letters included in the court filings show the FTC pushing back on Twitter’s claims. A group of FTC attorneys on Tuesday sent a letter to Musk’s lawyers, calling accusations of bias “completely baseless.” In a letter this month, FTC attorneys wrote that there is “nothing inappropriate” about the agency’s probe and accused Twitter’s lawyers of making a “selective excerpt” from the transcript of the Roque deposition.

“In no way did FTC staff ever attempt to ‘influence’ EY to issue a report concluding there were deficiencies in Twitter’s privacy and information security program,” FTC attorneys Reenah L. Kim, Anne Collesano and Erik Jones wrote in a July letter to Twitter’s lawyers.

Ernst &amp; Young declined to comment, citing “active litigation regarding a former engagement.”

Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) noted the timing of the Twitter filing, just hours before the hearing. She said it was a “pretty lucky coincidence” that the evidence supporting the Republicans’ accusations was released in “such a timely manner.”

House Republicans defend Musk from FTC’s ‘harassment campaign’

The FTC’s investigation of Twitter predated Musk’s ownership of the company. Last year, the agency began probing a complaint from whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/twitter-whistleblower-sec-spam/" target=_blank>alleging that the company buried “egregious deficiencies”</a> in violation of an order that the company reached with the FTC.

Following a 2011 settlement, Twitter agreed to implement, monitor and adjust security safeguards to protect users. But in 2022, the Justice Department accused the company of asking users for their phone numbers in the name of increased security, then using the numbers for marketing. Twitter agreed to<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/25/twitter-fine-ftc/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template" target=_blank> pay a $150 million fine</a> for allegedly breaking the 2011 order, which barred the company from making misrepresentations about the security of personal data.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, criticized Republicans, saying they were wasting taxpayer dollars to protect a tech executive who shares their political views. He defended Khan against accusations that the Twitter probe was politicized.

“Twitter has been in trouble for failing to adequately protect the privacy of its users for more than a decade,” Nadler said. “This work has nothing to do with the new owner of the company and his political views. Protecting user privacy is not political.”

<i>Will Oremus contributed to this report.</i>

Northwestern University, BS in journalism

Cat Zakrzewski is a national technology policy reporter, tracking global efforts to regulate the tech industry. She focuses on AI policy and the battles over free speech online.

Cat Zakrzewski

washpost

Twitter asks court to terminate an FTC order governing its data practices

the-washington-post

FILES-US-TECH-AI-MUSK

Staff

AFP/Getty Images

Help Desk

Artificial Intelligence

Internet Culture

Space

Tech Policy

Tech

prism://prism.query/site,/technology/tech-policy&limit=20

prism://prism.query/two-sites,/technology,/politics/powerpost/the-technology-202?limit=20