Not everything online is fun

Google refuses to remove an app that enables Saudi men to control women’s movements

Google has decided not to remove the controversial Saudi government app Absher from its Play Store after a probe found that the app did not violate its terms of service. The app reinforces Saudi laws that allow men to control women’s movements.

Last month, 14 members of Congress wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, asking both companies to stop hosting the app, and both launched internal investigations into it.

After Google’s investigation, the company told the office of Congresswoman Jackie Speier, one of the letter’s signatories, that they concluded the app doesn’t violate any agreements. Apple’s is still ongoing.

Sponsored by the Saudi government, Absher allows citizens to complete a variety of bureaucratic tasks, from renewing driver’s licenses to obtaining a male guardian's permission for women to seek a job – something legally required in Saudi Arabia.

Some Saudis say the app saves time and makes bureaucratic tasks more manageable, but American lawmakers seem to disagree. Senator Ron Wyden, who sent a separate letter to Apple and Google, said, ”American companies should not enable or facilitate the Saudi government’s patriarchy.”

Elizabeth Warren proposes to break up the Big Four

This week, Elizabeth Warren proposed breaking up Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook as part of a plan to regulate tech platforms as utilities. The Massachusetts senator has been a longtime critic of the consolidation of economic power by the tech giants, and now she’s making their break-up a key component of her presidential platform.

Warren suggests that we should view companies with annual global revenue above $25 billion that provide a marketplace, an exchange, or third-party connectivity as “platform utilities”. One goal is to prohibit these companies from owning both the platform and any participants on that platform. She also suggests that platform utilities would not be allowed to transfer or share data with third parties.

The other major part of Warren's plan would use existing antitrust laws to "unwind anti-competitive mergers" such as Amazon's purchases of Whole Foods and Zappos, Facebook's acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, and Google's purchases of Waze, Nest, and DoubleClick. Warren writes, "Unwinding these mergers will promote healthy competition in the market , which will put pressure on big tech companies to be more responsive to user concerns, including about privacy".

The move from text to messaging apps has made the NSA shut down one of its surveillance programs

The system that analyses Americans’ domestic calls, texts and the linked metadata has quietly been shut down by the National Security Agency. The NSA has not used the system in months, and the Trump administration might not try to renew its legal authority when it expires at the end of the year.

The purpose of the program, initiated by President George W. Bush’s administration in the weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks, has been to analyse social links to hunt for associates of known terrorism suspects. Edward Snowden disclosed the program’s existence to the public in 2013 – sparking a growing awareness of how both governments and private companies harvest and exploit personal data.

The way intelligence analysts have obtained access to Americans’ phone call and text records has evolved. With the rise of messaging apps, the program is likely less helpful, since it's no longer telcos but messaging platform providers who own this data.