tech policy

Cisco to Pay $8.6 Million in Settlement Over Vulnerabilities in Video Surveillance Software It Sold to Feds, States

Cisco Systems has agreed to an $8.6 million settlement with the federal government stemming from allegations it “improperly sold video surveillance software with known vulnerabilities to U.S. federal and state governments,” Reuters reported on Wednesday. According to Reuters, the case began eight years ago and underlying claims related to the settlement were unsealed on Wednesday.…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay Jul 31

Oracle Document Claiming an Amazon ‘Conspiracy’ to Win Military Contract Makes It to Trump’s Desk

Aides to Donald Trump presented him with a document identical to one created by a top Washington lobbyist for cloud-computing giant Oracle, Kenneth Glueck, implying that competitor Amazon is only a favored contender for a major contract with the U.S. military due to a far-ranging “conspiracy” orchestrated by Jeff Bezos, CNN reported on Saturday. According…

Commerce Tom McKay Jul 27

Report: FTC to Accuse Facebook of Using 2FA Numbers for Ads, Hiding Facial Recognition Settings

The Federal Trade Commission recently attracted scorn from congressional Democrats for fining world-spanning social network Facebook just $5 billion rather than tens of billions after the company failed to abide by the terms of a 2011 settlement with the agency on user privacy. But the FTC still has more dirt to dish out from its…

Social Media Tom McKay Jul 24

Facebook’s Libra Project Is Getting Hammered From All Sides, With Fed Chair Raising ‘Serious Concerns’

Facebook’s already-troubled Libra cryptocurrency project, which has already run into significant opposition among the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services and the Senate Banking Committee, is running headlong into further resistance from regulators. On Wednesday, Wired reported, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told the House committee that he has “many serious concerns” about Facebook’s pivot…

Social Media Tom McKay Jul 11

Senate Banking Committee Schedules Hearing on Facebook’s Massive Cryptocurrency Project

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee is set to scrutinize Facebook’s cryptocurrency ambitions at a hearing set for July 16, Reuters reported on Wednesday, in yet another sign that legislators are extremely wary (to put it mildly) of the company’s shift into global financial services. According to Reuters, the hearing will “explore” the Libra project “as…

Social Media Tom McKay Jun 19

Blood Feasts, Cashless Stores, and Quantum Computing: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

Excellent news here at Gizmodo, where I presume what’s left of our blogger-chewed Forbidden Sandwich is still festering in the back of a fridge. We have discovered yet more ingredients to add to the mix, including head cheese from an ancient species of Pleistocene wolf found preserved in Siberia, cannabis residue scraped from a brazier…

Tech News Tom McKay Jun 16

House Judiciary Committee Launches Tech Antitrust Inquiry Amid Reports DOJ, FTC May Take Action

Over the past week, the two federal agencies with mandates to enforce antitrust law—the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission—have apparently been divvying up Silicon Valley for potential probes. Reports have indicated that the DOJ has scooped up responsibility for Google and Apple, while the FTC could be going after Amazon and Facebook.…

Tech Policy Tom McKay Jun 3

Trump Admin Creates Web Portal for Supporters to Complain About Getting Banned on Social Media

Donald Trump has made absolutely no secret of his feelings on free speech: He hates it when it’s not servile paeans to him and his agenda. He’s called for opening up “libel laws” to make it easier to sue journalistic outfits, issued (empty) threats to revoke the broadcast licenses of TV outlets that embarrass him,…

Tech News Tom McKay May 15

Report: Trump Expected to Sign Order That Could Bar US Firms From Buying Huawei Telecom Gear

Amid a U.S.-China trade war that, after brief signs of abatement, now seems headed off the rails and continued assertions by U.S. intelligence agencies that Chinese tech giant Huawei poses a national security risk, Donald Trump is poised to sign an executive order that could bar telecommunications companies from buying its equipment, Reuters reported on…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay May 15

Kamala Harris Says ‘We Have to Seriously Take a Look At’ Breaking Up Facebook

California Senator Kamala Harris, one of the (innumerable) Democrats eyeing the White House in a 2020 presidential bid, has joined Massachusetts senator and fellow candidate Elizabeth Warren in calling for antitrust authorities to look at a possible breakup of Facebook. Possible antitrust action against Facebook has been in the news lately after one of the…

Tech Policy Tom McKay May 12

Facebook Argues Against Breaking Up Facebook

On Thursday, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes penned an editorial in the New York Times calling for the company to be broken up, its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp spun off, and future acquisitions banned for several years. Hughes argued that Facebook, and by extension its all-powerful CEO Mark Zuckerberg, suppresses competition by “acquiring, blocking or copying”…

Social Media Tom McKay May 11

Trump Is Very, Very Mad About Facebook’s Latest Purge of Conspiracy Theorists and Far-Right Trolls

This week, Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram banned a number of far-right figures, including white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, in a somewhat clumsily executed effort to rid itself entirely of figures like failed congressional candidate and anti-Semite Paul Nehlen, Infowars founder Alex Jones and associated fringe personality Paul Joseph Watson, internet troll Milo Yiannopoulos, opportunistic…

Tech News Tom McKay May 4

Facebook’s New Chief Lawyer Is a Trump Official Who Helped Create the Patriot Act

Facebook has picked up another government official—this time a legal adviser to Donald Trump’s State Department who once helped craft the much-maligned Patriot Act—to beef up its team, Bloomberg reported on Monday. According to that report, Facebook’s new general counsel Jennifer Newstead has worked at the State Department since 2017, when she came from law…

Social Media Tom McKay Apr 22

Senators Introduce Bill to Stop ‘Dark Patterns’ Huge Platforms Use to Trick Users

Senators Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska) have introduced legislation to ban so-called “dark patterns” tactics designed to trick users into handing over access to their data, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Dark patterns, a term first popularized by the website darkpatterns.org, describe everything from UI elements to technical tricks designed to lure users into…

Tech Policy Tom McKay Apr 9

Mark Zuckerberg: OK, Fine, Regulate Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg—whose company has blundered its way into controversies over everything from user privacy and data breaches to amplification of extremist content and literal genocide as of late—responded to growing criticism of the tech sector by calling for more outside regulation in an op-ed in the Washington Post (and on his own personal…

Social Media Tom McKay Mar 30

Jeff Bezos Nudes, Self-Aware Fish, and Brain Zapping: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

A good rule of thumb if you’re going to threaten to publish nude photos of the richest man on the planet unless he says you’re not working with the Saudi government is: Probably don’t do that! And if for some reason you are reckless enough to do that, you probably shouldn’t do so in writing!…

Tech News Tom McKay Feb 10

T-Mobile CEO John Legere Sure Loves Trump’s Hotels Now, and Boy, What a Coincidence That Is

T-Mobile is still cruising towards a $26 billion merger with Sprint, a deal that would combine the third- and fourth-biggest wireless carriers in the U.S. into one massive company. And after the deal was announced in April 2018, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, T-Mobile executives quickly grew fond of a D.C. hotel run by…

Tech Policy Tom McKay Jan 17

Steve King Demands List of Google Staff So He Can Check If They’re God-Fearing Patriots

Google CEO Sundar Pichai finally swung by the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for a real clown show of a hearing which—including a denial that the company is planning to launch a censored Chinese search engine “right now”—contained little useful information. Instead, it was mostly Republican members of the committee yelling at Pichai for alleged…

Tech News Tom McKay Dec 11

India’s BJP Is Reportedly Using Data From a State-Funded Free Phone Program to Hit Up Voters

India’s right-wing, arch-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is using government-subsidized cell phones that have been handed out to millions of people as a campaign tool, the New York Times reported on Sunday, with the BJP using a $79 million free-phone program in the state of Chhattisgarh to appeal directly to voters. According to the Times…

Politics Tom McKay Nov 18

Cisco to Pay $8.6 Million in Settlement Over Vulnerabilities in Video Surveillance Software It Sold to Feds, States

Oracle Document Claiming an Amazon ‘Conspiracy’ to Win Military Contract Makes It to Trump’s Desk

Report: FTC to Accuse Facebook of Using 2FA Numbers for Ads, Hiding Facial Recognition Settings

Facebook’s Libra Project Is Getting Hammered From All Sides, With Fed Chair Raising ‘Serious Concerns’

Senate Banking Committee Schedules Hearing on Facebook’s Massive Cryptocurrency Project

Blood Feasts, Cashless Stores, and Quantum Computing: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

House Judiciary Committee Launches Tech Antitrust Inquiry Amid Reports DOJ, FTC May Take Action

Trump Admin Creates Web Portal for Supporters to Complain About Getting Banned on Social Media

Report: Trump Expected to Sign Order That Could Bar US Firms From Buying Huawei Telecom Gear

Kamala Harris Says ‘We Have to Seriously Take a Look At’ Breaking Up Facebook

Facebook Argues Against Breaking Up Facebook

Trump Is Very, Very Mad About Facebook’s Latest Purge of Conspiracy Theorists and Far-Right Trolls

Facebook’s New Chief Lawyer Is a Trump Official Who Helped Create the Patriot Act

Senators Introduce Bill to Stop ‘Dark Patterns’ Huge Platforms Use to Trick Users

Mark Zuckerberg: OK, Fine, Regulate Facebook

Jeff Bezos Nudes, Self-Aware Fish, and Brain Zapping: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

T-Mobile CEO John Legere Sure Loves Trump’s Hotels Now, and Boy, What a Coincidence That Is

Steve King Demands List of Google Staff So He Can Check If They’re God-Fearing Patriots

India’s BJP Is Reportedly Using Data From a State-Funded Free Phone Program to Hit Up Voters

Anker’s Soundcore Translation Earbuds Are Now Nearly 7x Cheaper Than AirPods Pro 3 After a Sudden Price Drop on Amazon

Volkswagen Shuts Down Tennessee Plant’s EV Production at the Worst Possible Time

Using Emojis at Work? You’re Not Going to Like This Study 😮

A Terrifying Invasion Feels Eerily Familiar in This Short Horror Story

Shark AI Ultra Robot Vacuum at 51% Off Quietly Undercuts Dyson’s Stick Cleaner Prices

Tubi Manages to Turn People Against Recommendations With Bad AI Branding

Gizmodo’s Favorite Photos From NASA’s Artemis 2 Mission

Lucasfilm Keeps Telling Authors Not to Bring Back Mara Jade

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real

Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 Review: Almost Better than My Ecobee

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

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