Hillicon Valley — Amazon union vote kicks off in NY
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Amazon workers in Staten Island, N.Y., will vote this week on whether they want to be represented by the Amazon Labor Union.
Meanwhile, experts say a new law requiring critical sectors to report cyber breaches is a long overdue step.
Let’s get to it.
NY Amazon workers chart union path
Employees of Amazon’s main Staten Island, N.Y., facility had been organizing for safer working conditions for more than a year when they decided to form a union last April.
When it came to picking what nationwide organization to join, the leaders of what is now the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) decided to stick with what had worked for them thus far and forgo affiliation in favor of staying independent.
“We looked at the way Amazon attacks organizing efforts and we wanted to construct something completely from scratch that we thought would be very, very difficult for them to combat,” Connor Spence, vice president of membership at the ALU, told The Hill Tuesday.
Workers at the facility, JFK8, are voting this week on whether they want to be represented by the ALU, an organization helmed by current and former employees of the site not tied to any larger labor group.
New cyber law seen as ‘a good first step’
A new law requiring critical sectors to report cyber breaches is “a good first step” but long overdue, experts said, as it is the first federal-wide mandate of its kind.
Prior to the federal law, there were state-based requirements for reporting hacks that some experts said presented a regulatory burden for companies as they tried to comply with different state regulations.
Reed Loden, vice president of security at Teleport, said that having a uniform mandate where businesses can report to one authority instead of 50 makes it much easier to report cyber breaches.
“That was really annoying because that’s 50-plus different laws and regulations that [companies] had to follow,” Loden said.
FACEBOOK VS. TIKTOK
Facebook hired a Republican consulting firm to run a campaign aimed at turning public sentiment against TikTok through op-eds and letters to the editor in regional news outlets and the promotion of stories about alleged TikTok trends that reportedly originated on Facebook, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The campaign sought to portray the popular video sharing platform as a danger to American children and society, the Post reported, citing internal emails.
Operatives on the campaign were also encouraged to use TikTok’s popularity to deflect from antitrust and privacy concerns facing Meta.
CYBERCRIME BILL HEADS TO BIDEN
The House passed bipartisan cybersecurity legislation on Tuesday that would improve the way the federal government tracks, measures and analyzes cyber crime.
The Better Cybercrime Metrics Act, which the House approved in a bipartisan 377-48 vote, will help U.S. law enforcement agencies better identify cyber threats, prevent attacks and prosecute cyber crime.
All 47 “no” votes came from Republicans.
“Our nation is under constant attack from cyber criminals. And with a range of new threats emanating from adversaries around the world — including the Russian Federation, Congress has an obligation to move legislation forward that can better protect the American people, their data, their finances, and their personal information,” said. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) following the passage of the bill on the House floor.
Waymo on the streets
U.S.-based autonomous driving company Waymo has announced plans to test driverless cars in the city of San Francisco, Calif.
In a statement on Wednesday, the company said the driverless vehicles will only be available to their employees but they hope to expand the service to the public and members of its Trusted Tester program in the future.
Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., started testing driverless vehicles in the Phoenix area in 2017 and introduced fully autonomous public rides three years later.
“We’re particularly excited about this next phase of our journey as we officially bring our rider-only technology to San Francisco—the city many of us at Waymo call home,” Waymo CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a statement.
$600M IN CRYPTO STOLEN
Hackers exploited a cryptocurrency exchange network in a virtual game called Axie Infinity to steal more than $600 million from the system.
The attacker broke into the Ronin network, essentially a bridge that transfers cryptocurrency in and out of the game, by exploiting a backdoor in the virtual network on March 23, according to a Tuesday blog post from Sky Mavis, the makers of Axie Infinity.
The unknown person or group stole 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5M USDC, a cryptocurrency linked to the U.S. dollar, which in total is worth around $625 million.
BITS & PIECES
An op-ed to chew on: We need to focus on semiconductor trust, right now
Lighter click: polite Regency girl era
Notable links from around the web:
- How War in Ukraine Roiled Facebook and Instagram (The New York Times / Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel)
- Etsy sellers will go on strike in April and want customers to boycott (The Verge / Mia Sato)
- Group backed by tech giants claims thousands of members. Many have never heard of it. (Politico / Emily Birnbaum)
One last thing: Biden boosts antitrust
The Biden administration is throwing its weight behind efforts to boost antitrust enforcement as federal agencies take on the market power of tech giants.
President Biden’s $5.8 trillion budget proposal requests $227 million in increased funding for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) combined — a bump advocates and agency leaders say is needed to tackle cases against the nation’s wealthiest companies.
In addition to the request for increased funding, the DOJ sent letters to top lawmakers on the House and Senate Judiciary committees endorsing a key antitrust bill, a move that some advocates said could sway lawmakers who are hesitant to back the seemingly stalled legislation.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s technology and cybersecurity pages for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you Thursday.
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