Overnight Tech: Justices struggle with cellphone privacy case | Apple issues Mac security fix | Study finds widespread fake net neutrality comments | Fed considers its own digital currency

SCOTUS ON PHONE PRIVACY CASE: Members of the Supreme Court appeared troubled Wednesday that police can search cellphone location histories without a warrant, but struggled with where the line should be drawn on privacy in the digital age.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said most Americans want to avoid a situation where the government can peer into every aspect of their lives, including their whereabouts. She asked whether the government really believes that police should be able to search location history without probable cause.

{mosads}”Right now we’re only talking about the cell sites records, but as I understand it, a cellphone can be pinged in your bedroom,” she said. “It can be pinged at your doctor’s office. It can ping you in the most intimate details of your life. Presumably at some point even in a dressing room as you’re undressing,” she said.

“So I am not beyond the belief that someday a provider could turn on my cellphone and listen to my conversations,” she said.

The case, Carpenter v. U.S., centers on Timothy Carpenter, who is appealing his conviction for a string of armed robberies of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores in Ohio and Michigan in 2010 and 2011.

Carpenter says the FBI violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure by obtaining a history of his cellphone location data without a warrant from his wireless carriers, MetroPCS and Sprint. The government then used that information at trial to convict him.

The government argued Wednesday that it was well within its rights under the Stored Communications Act of 1986 to get a court order for the records. The law allows location data to be searched if the government can show reasonable grounds to believe it will be relevant to a criminal investigation.

The standard is higher to obtain a warrant, with law enforcement officers required to show there is probable cause to believe a crime has occurred.

Carpenter’s attorney Nathan Wessler, of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argued that collection of this information is a search and “disturbs people’s long-standing, practical expectation that their longer-term movements in public and private spaces will remain private.”

But members of both the court’s conservative and liberal wings struggled with where to draw the line between short-term data that should be accessible without a warrant and long-term data that should require one.

Read more here.

 

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LISTEN TO THE HILL’S NEW PODCASTS! In today’s Hillcast PM View, the daily evening update on what went down in Washington: Trump’s latest tweets panic Washington and cause a stir in the media; Alabama Senate hopeful Roy Moore seems to be making a comeback; and the new threat from North Korea is leaving the U.S. with few good options. Host Niv Elis talks to The Hill’s Jonathan Easley, Ben Kamisar, and Rebecca Kheel about what happened today. Listen here.

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APPLE RELEASES SECURITY UPDATE: Apple on Wednesday issued a security update to fix a vulnerability in the latest MacOS operating system that allowed anyone to gain access to a computer without a password.

Cybersecurity researchers discovered the vulnerability in the MacOS High Sierra operating system and publicized it on Tuesday, sending Apple scrambling to find a fix.

According to Turkish researcher Lemi Orhan Ergin, the security flaw allows would-be attackers to log into a system as a “root” user and leave the password field blank. After making several log-in attempts, the individual can gain access to the system.

Read more here.

 

PEW FINDS WIDESPREAD FAKE NET NEUTRALITY COMMENTS: The public comments on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) net neutrality docket are rife with duplicate messages and fake identities, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.

The organization found that of the 21.7 million comments submitted to the FCC on the Obama-era rules this year, just 6 percent were unique. The other 94 percent were duplicate comments. And in some cases thousands of identical messages were submitted simultaneously, suggesting campaigns used “bots” to influence the agency’s public record.

The study also found that 57 percent of the comments were submitted by users with duplicate or temporary email addresses, making it difficult to determine their authenticity in many cases.

Read more here.

 

DRONE ADVOCATES PRESS TO EASE RESTRICTIONS: The drone industry pleaded with Congress on Wednesday to ease restrictions on flight operations, warning that the U.S. is falling behind to other countries that use the emerging technology in innovative ways.

The use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) has exploded in recent years. But even though the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finalized the first-ever rule allowing small commercial drone use last year, there are still strict limits on the types of operations allowed. Those include restrictions on flights over people, nighttime operations and flying beyond the visual line of sight.

That has prevented drones from being used for commercial package deliveries, which are already taking place in other countries and could provide a huge business opportunity for tech giants like Amazon and Google.

Drone operators are allowed to apply for a waiver from the restrictions and the FAA just launched a pilot program allowing local governments to partner with the private sector to test expanded drone operations.

But drone advocates told a House panel on Wednesday that the waivers are not being approved quickly enough.

“I’d like to see more flights. Beyond the visual line of sight in areas where there is no population… those things should be proceeding almost immediately,” Juan J. Alonso, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, told a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing. “Maybe a little more pressure needs to be applied to FAA, otherwise other countries are going to over take us.”

While the industry said speeding up the waiver process would be beneficial, they said the ideal scenario would be for the FAA to implement new rules lifting some of the restrictions.

Read more from The Hill’s Melanie Zanona here.

 

AT&T: MERGER IS ‘PRO-CONSUMER’: AT&T is pushing back on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) arguments against its proposed merger with Time Warner.

In its formal response to the DOJ on Tuesday, the company said that, because the television industry has changed with the rise of platforms like Netflix and Hulu, the merger deal is actually “a pro-competitive, pro-consumer response to an intensely competitive and rapidly changing video marketplace.”

DOJ has said it fears that after the merger AT&T could use its leverage in owning both Time Warner and DirecTV to withhold programming from other distributors. Time Warner currently owns several prominent networks like CNN, TBS and TNT.

Read more here.

 

WASHINGTON STATE SUES UBER: Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) is suing Uber for failing to disclose a massive data breach that left the personal information of 57 million people exposed.

Ferguson said the ride-sharing company violated state law by not informing consumers that their information had been stolen in the 2015 breach.

“Washington law is clear: When a data breach puts people at risk, businesses must inform them,” Ferguson said in a statement on Tuesday. “Uber’s conduct has been truly stunning. There is no excuse for keeping this information from consumers.”

The law requires companies to disclose data breaches to affected consumers and the attorney general’s office within 45 days. Ferguson says that Uber did not notify his office until this month, more than a year after the breach.

Read more here.

 

OFFICIAL SAYS FED CONSIDERING DIGITAL CURRENCY: The Federal Reserve is considering adopting its own digital currency similar to bitcoin, according to the president and CEO of the Fed’s New York branch.

William Dudley said during a conference on Wednesday that the Fed is exploring digital currency options, but warned that any implementation would be far off in the future, according to Dow Jones.

It would be “very premature” to speculate when the Fed could make such a decision, Dudley said, adding that he views bitcoin and other similar digital currencies as “more of a speculative activity” than a stable object of value.

Read more here.

 

SNAPCHAT REDESIGNS APP: Snap Inc. on Wednesday unveiled the planned redesign for its app, which aims to address long-standing criticism that Snapchat is too hard for some users to figure out.

The app will now more clearly delineate between content created by users’ friends and content from professional creators and publishers.

The app is also ditching its layout arranging a user’s friends alphabetically. Instead, Snapchat will introduce a “dynamic Friends page,” which will use an algorithm to arrange a user’s friends by who they talk to the most.

Snapchat’s signature camera homepage, which allows users to take pictures as soon as they open the app, will remain the same.

Read more on the changes here.

 

ON TAP:

The House Energy and Commerce committee will hold a hearing on identity verification “in a post-breach world” at 10:15 a.m.

The Tech Policy Institute will hold an event on antitrust at 10:30 a.m.

The House Energy and Commerce committee will hold a hearing on online sex trafficking at 2:00 p.m.

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Bloomberg: Coinbase loses bid to block IRS probe of bitcoin gains

Wired: Adidas’s robot powered sneaker factory

Gizmodo: Comcast’s subtle change on net neutrality

Stratechery: Trying again on net neutrality

The Ringer: Is Tumblr over?