Overnight Tech: Lawmakers push Trump on digital records | Wikileaks offers to help tech counter CIA hacks | Uber to stop using controversial software

HOUSE OVERSIGHT PUSHES WH ON TRUMP TWEETS: The leaders of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday raised concerns that President Trump may be violating federal law by deleting his tweets.

In a letter addressed to White House counsel Donald McGahn, committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) expressed concern over the White House’s digital record-keeping practices.

“Many of the messages sent from [Trump’s] Twitter account are likely to be presidential records and therefore must be preserved,” the two wrote. “It has been reported, however, that president Trump has deleted tweets, and if those tweets were not archived it could pose a violation of the Presidential Records Act.”

Trump’s penchant for deleting tweets has caused consternation among archivists, with some questioning its legality.

Chaffetz and Cummings also noted their unease with encrypted apps White House staffers have been using, which the lawmakers believe may pose a risk to record keeping and transparency.

{mosads}”Recent news reports suggest federal employees may increasingly be turning to new forms of electronic communication, including encrypted messaging applications like Signal, Confide and WhatsApp that could result in the creation of presidential or federal records that would be unlikely or impossible to preserve,” the letter read.

The two noted the risk that undetermined security of the apps posed, citing a BuzzFeed article which quoted security experts who criticized Confide’s cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

Read more here.

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WIKILEAKS PROMISES TO HELP TECH COMPANIES AGAINST CIA: WikiLeaks will give technology companies access to information it has about the CIA’s hacking tools, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Thursday. Assange said the organization will give details to let technology companies “develop fixes” before the information is published more widely.

“We have decided to work with them,” Assange said during an online press conference on Thursday. “To give them some exclusive access to some of the technical details we have, so that fixes can be pushed out.”

His comments come after WikiLeaks on Tuesday published a massive trove of documents purportedly pertaining to the CIA’s hacking programs — the first of many document dumps the site says it has coming on the intelligence agency.

Read more here.

FCC TO INVESTIGATE AT&T OUTAGE: Federal Communications Chairman Chairman Ajit Pai on Wednesday said his agency is investigating an issue that left some AT&T customers unable to call 911. Both Pai and AT&T tweeted that the problem has since been resolved.

“We’re receiving reports of widespread AT&T 911 call outages,” Pai wrote on Twitter just before 10 p.m. Wednesday. “@FCC public safety staff are investigating. I’ll post more info once available.” Shortly before that, AT&T tweeted that they were working on the issue. An AT&T spokesman had no additional information to share but reiterated that the problem had been fixed.

“We take our 911 obligations to our customers very seriously and will be sharing additional information with the FCC,” AT&T said in a statement.

Read more here.

ANOTHER ZUCKERBERG ON THE WAY: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that his wife Priscilla Chan is pregnant with their second child. In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg wrote that the two will be having a girl.

“When Priscilla and I first found out she was pregnant again, our first hope was that the child would be healthy,” he wrote. “My next hope was that it would be a girl. I cannot think of a greater gift than having a sister and I’m so happy Max and our new child will have each other.”

UBER TO STOP USING SOFTWARE TO AVOID REGULATORS: Uber will stop using its “Greyball” software to avoid scrutiny from government officials, the company announced Thursday. A New York Times report last week revealed that Uber had used the program for years to avoid government stings aimed at testing whether the company was operating illegally.

The Greyball system allowed Uber to make sure that regulators looking to test Uber would instead see a fake version of the Uber app, complete with ghost cars that didn’t actually exist.

“We have started a review of the different ways this technology has been used to date,” said Uber’s chief security officer Joe Sullivan. “In addition, we are expressly prohibiting its use to target action by local regulators going forward. Given the way our systems are configured, it will take some time to ensure this prohibition is fully enforced.”

Read more here.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

WSJ: Tech companies scrambling after WikiLeaks trove

Airbnb turns a profit, raises $1 billion, Axios reports

China to US: Stop hacking us

Bloomberg: Facebook comes after Snapchat again

Pentagon hires former lobbyist for Peter Thiel’s company

FBI still investigating computer link between Trump Organization, Russian bank: report

Ex-Trump adviser: My phone was possibly tapped

GOP senator questions whether DOJ ‘aggressively’ pursuing WikiLeaks head

Republican: US is ‘too easy’ on leakers

Health industry plays catch-up on cybersecurity

ACLU challenges warrant to search Facebook page of Dakota Access opponents