With help from Clothilde Goujard, Bjarke Smith-Meyer and Leah Nylen
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— G-7 huddle: Global leaders are in London today, seeking solutions to combat harmful and illegal content online.
— Tax talks: Estonia’s opposition to the global tax deal remains a hurdle, as policymakers fight to make major corporations (read: tech giants) pay more in taxes.
— Just say no: Advocacy groups are keeping up their pressure on Apple, demanding the iPhone maker cancel its plans to scan user devices for child sexual abuse material.
IT’S WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 8. WELCOME TO MORNING TECH. I’m your host, Benjamin Din. It seems like companies are pretty split on bringing people back to the office right now or putting it off for a few months. If you’re back in the office, have you been enjoying it?
Got a news tip? Email me at [email protected] and find me on Twitter @benjamindin. Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [email protected]. Anything else? Team info below. And don’t forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.
G-7 TAKES ON HARMFUL DIGITAL CONTENT — G-7 interior and security ministers, as well as international security officials like Interpol Secretary-General Jürgen Stock, will use the two-day summit in London to discuss issues such as the digital proliferation of child sexual abuse-related content and violent extremism online.
Representing the United States: Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security John Tien and Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, among other DHS officials.
— The agenda-setter: U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel, who will chair the summit, is determined to put more pressure on online platforms. Patel’s agency said she will call on her counterparts to “back the U.K. approach in holding the internet technology giants to account if harmful content continues to be posted across their platforms and if they neglect public safety when designing their products.” Patel will also launch a fund to develop technologies that can detect images depicting child abuse in end-to-end encrypted messaging services.
The U.K. has increased scrutiny over platforms’ responsibility to protect their users. For example, Patel has called for Facebook to abandon its plan to roll out encryption to all of its platforms and wants online platforms to develop age-verification systems for its users, to increase protections for children. The U.K. has also released an Age Appropriate Design Code, a set of digital standards for protecting minors’ digital privacy that fully went into effect in the U.K. last week — and is coveted by prominent lawmakers on the Hill.
— Kid-friendly crowd: Patel’s call isn’t likely to be controversial. The mood in Europe, the U.S. and Canada leans in her favor, especially when it comes to protecting children online. (That is, after all, one part of the privacy debate that lawmakers on the Hill can all get behind.)
ESTONIA NONCOMMITTAL ON GLOBAL TAX DEAL — Estonia is still skeptical about a global bid to introduce an international minimum effective corporate tax rate of 15 percent. On Tuesday, the country’s finance minister, Keit Pentus-Rosimannus, said the July deal signed by 130 countries is “too vague, with a number of details that could prove harmful to a small open economy such as ours.”
Those concerns are shared by fellow EU members Ireland and Hungary, two other countries that have lower corporate tax rates. Their governments view those rates as a key incentive to lure businesses to set up shop in their countries, and they’re reluctant to give that up — even if it means holding up the deal, as the EU requires unanimous support for tax decisions. The OECD will meet in October to iron out the fine print of the global tax accord, where Estonia said it hoped some changes could be made.
Pentus-Rosimannus’ statement followed her meeting with OECD boss Mathias Cormann and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Raimondo, who was in Estonia for the Tallinn Digital Summit, also met Tuesday with Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas. The two “exchanged views on preserving the attractiveness of Estonia’s investment environment and the value of Estonia supporting global efforts to reach a global tax agreement in the OECD,” according to a Commerce Department readout of the meeting.
WHAT RAIMONDO HAD TO SAY ABOUT THE TTC — The first formal meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council on Sept. 29-30 will be held in Pittsburgh, Raimondo said Tuesday at the digital summit. Although the agenda is still being finalized, she said the group, which was set up to coordinate digital and trade policies across the Atlantic, will discuss semiconductors, the troubled EU-U.S. data transfer agreement known as Privacy Shield, supply chain security and “the proper way to regulate platform companies.”
CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS DEMAND FULL STOP FROM APPLE — Digital rights advocacy groups are calling on Apple today to cancel its plans to scan users’ devices for evidence of child sexual abuse material. The company announced late last week that it would delay its plans to implement the new anti-child abuse features and spend the next few months gathering feedback for improvements.
The groups — Fight for the Future, OpenMedia and the Electronic Frontier Foundation — will be joined by security technologist Bruce Schneier today to deliver petitions with more than 56,000 signatures to Apple, calling on it to drop those plans completely. Evan Greer, the director of Fight for the Future, said in a statement that Apple’s original plans would undercut encryption, and the company should instead focus on expanding it.
— Changes for Apple: In the past week and a half, the iPhone maker has made some concessions in the face of criticism and increased regulatory pressure from multiple governments. As part of a settlement to end a Japanese antitrust investigation, Apple announced last week it would allow developers of “reader” apps, such as content companies like Netflix and Spotify, to provide links in their Apple apps to their websites for users to sign up for a paid account, thus avoiding Apple’s 30 percent app store fee. Those changes are expected to go into effect globally early next year and will be a hit to the company’s bottom line.
FTC SETS ITS SIGHTS ON HEALTH APPS — The FTC is set to announce today its next open meeting scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 15. The agenda for next week is still in the works, but one potential item, individuals with knowledge of their plans tell POLITICO’s Leah Nylen, is a policy statement on healthcare apps.
— Context: The FTC has been looking to take a harder line on policing privacy violations by health apps, as our colleagues on the e-health beat reported earlier this year. In January, the FTC went after the company behind Flo, a free fertility app downloaded by millions of people worldwide, for sharing reproductive health data with the likes of Google and Facebook, despite assuring customers the information would be kept private.
DOUBLE THE FUN — POLITICO is hosting its first-ever tech summit, also set for next Wednesday. Join us for the virtual event, titled “At a Digital Crossroads — Washington and Silicon Valley,” where we’ll explore the evolving relationship between the power corridors of Washington and the tech sector.
— What to expect: Members of Congress, federal officials, tech executives, tech policy experts and activists will discuss what the Biden administration agenda and tech legislation moving on the Hill mean for innovation, marketing competition, consumer privacy and content moderation. We’ll also cover the global tech race, particular between U.S. and China, as well as racial equity efforts in tech — both among policymakers and in the tech ecosystem.
— The speaker list (so far): Acting FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto, the CEOs of tech trade groups NetChoice, Chamber of Progress and the Internet Association, and more. We’ll keep you posted on other additions as the event approaches.
For now, register to attend and submit audience questions: https://bit.ly/915tech
Raylene Yung will be the executive director of the Technology Modernization Fund, according to the General Services Administration. The TMF could see a second $1 billion boost to its coffers, FCW reports. … Shannon Taylor is joining Intel as head of technology and manufacturing policy. She was previously SVP and senior counsel for government affairs at the Information Technology Industry Council and is a House Energy and Commerce alum. … Belinda E. Nixon has joined Perkins Coie as a partner in the firm’s technology transitions and privacy law practice and communications industry group. She is an FCC alum, where she was deputy division chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau’s competition and infrastructure policy division. … Doug Field is back at Ford, where he joins as chief advanced technology and embedded systems officer. He was most recently Apple’s VP of special projects and was SVP of engineering at Tesla.
Alethea Group has hired Lee Foster to be SVP, Nina Jankowicz to be director of external engagement, Kate laval as VP of impact and Dave Gosselin as VP of engineering. Foster previously was with FireEye, Jankowicz is a global fellow at the Wilson Center, LaVail most recently was senior director of performance and intelligence for McDonald’s global impact function, and Gosselin previously was software architect for SciDB at Paradigm4.
Farah Zaman | joins the Network Advertising Initiative as VP and general counsel. She was previously chief privacy officer at Meredith Corp. and held senior global privacy counsel roles at Colgate-Palmolive and Nielsen. … Peder Ulander will join MongoDB as CMO, after serving as head of enterprise and developer marketing at Amazon Web Services. … Erika reynoso is now senior PR manager for sustainability at Amazon. She previously managed government relations PR and CSR storytelling at Wells Fargo. … Jesse Barba has joined ed-tech company Chegg as head of government affairs and policy, their first hire in Washington. He most recently was senior director of external affairs at Young Invincibles, and is a Cassidy & Associates and Marcia Fudge alum.
Are they watching? “How Facebook Undermines Privacy Protections for Its 2 Billion WhatsApp Users,” ProPublica reports.
Reality check: Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ trial is set to begin today. But don’t let that fool you: Criminal prosecutions in Silicon Valley have dropped significantly, NYT reports.
Gimme a slice: The tech industry wants a bigger role in defense, but not everyone agrees. WSJ has more.
ICYMI: “Encryption poised to hamper Jan. 6 investigators’ phone records push,” POLITICO’s Nicholas Wu reports.
Uncharted territory: In South Korea, some developers are wondering: What’s coming after the new app store law? WSJ has more.
The AI files: Two reports out this morning address the future of AI — but in different ways. Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program takes a look at how the AI sector is growing geographically and what that means for the future, while the Open Tech Institute examines how to increase fairness, accountability and transparency in AI systems.
Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([email protected]), Heidi Vogt ([email protected]), John Hendel ([email protected]), Alexandra S. Levine ([email protected]), Leah Nylen ([email protected]), Emily Birnbaum ([email protected]), and Benjamin Din ([email protected]). Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [email protected]. And don’t forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.
SEE YOU TOMORROW!
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