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Hot on the heels of Cisco who have certified a number of their session border controllers for Microsoft Teams Direct Routing, we now get official news that some Avaya Session Border Controllers will be certified for Microsoft Teams Direct Routing in 2020 Q3.

This will mean customers with these Avaya SBC’s will be able to leverage them to directly connect to a PSTN carrier and to interop PSTN calls between Microsoft Teams Phone System and Avaya. No details yet of which models and versions, will be certified. It will possibly be the Avaya Session Border Controller for Enterprise, also know as the Sipera E-SBC.

Microsoft works with each Direct Routing certified vendor to:

• Jointly work on the SIP interconnection protocols.
• Perform tests using a third-party lab. Only devices that pass the tests are certified.
• Run daily tests with all certified devices in production and pre-production environments. Validating the devices in pre-production environments guarantees that new versions of Direct Routing code in the cloud will work with certified SBCs.
• Establish a joint support process with the SBC vendors.

When certified, the relevant models will appear on the official Microsoft list here.

To find out when they are certified you can sign up for my blog updates here.

Microsoft Roadmap reference 66465

• Fitness tracker maker Garmin is slowly coming back online after a reported ransomware attack caused a multi-day outage of the company's services.
• The company's system status dashboard shows that its Garmin Connect service has resumed functionality, but many features are limited.
• Garmin has also said there's no indication that customer data has been compromised as a result of the outage.
• The company has not said what caused the outage and hasn't made any mention of ransomware, but reports from ZDNet and TechCrunch suggest ransomware is to blame. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Fitness tracker maker Garmin is slowly coming back online after an outage believed to be caused by a ransomware attack brought down its app, website, and call centers.

The company's system status dashboard shows that its Garmin Connect service, which customers use to manage their devices and track health data, has regained some functionality but is still limited. Leaderboard statistics in the app's challenges section may be delayed, for example, and the app's daily summary feature is delayed. Workouts are also not syncing to devices at this time.

The company says that "Garmin Connect recovery is underway," although it did not specify when it expects service will return to normal. 

Garmin says on its website that it's unable to receive any calls, emails, or online chats, noting also that some features and service remain unavailable to customers. In addition to impacting its line of consumer fitness trackers, the outage is also said to have affected the company's aviation products.

The company hasn't revealed much about the outage, but did say there's no indication that consumer data including activity, payment, or any other personal information was compromised. Customers also shouldn't have to worry about losing any health and wellness data gathered by Garmin devices. Such data is stored on the device and should appear in the app once it starts syncing again, the company says. 

Garmin has not said much about the cause of the outage, nor has it confirmed whether a ransomware attack was involved. Garmin did not immediately respond to Business Insider's questions whether the outage was caused by a ransomware attack or when it estimates its services will be fully functional again. 

Some Garmin users have said on Twitter that they've begun noticing some services resuming. Others, however, have expressed frustration about the situation or shared their workarounds. 

On July 23, ZDNet reported that Garmin had shut down its services to grapple with the aftermath of a ransomware attack. The BBC and TechCrunch have also since reported that a ransomware attack was behind the outage, also saying that a new type of ransomware called WastedLocker may have been used. 

Cybersecurity software company Malwarebytes reports that WastedLocker is commonly used by a malware exploitation gang called Evil Corp, and that the ransomware is usually targeted at specific organizations. 

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Last week, independent business owner Cassie LaBelle posted a Twitter thread about her packages being delayed. Like many small business owners, LaBelle relies on the United States Postal Service to deliver mail, including parcels, in a timely and affordable manner. The thread, which as of this writing has more than 36,000 retweets, said the typically reliable USPS has been faltering in recent weeks.

“I can't even count the number of packages I sent domestic via USPS that experienced significant delays over the past few years because the number was so small,” she wrote, but “Since DeJoy took over the USPS? 5-10% of my mail is taking WEEKS to be delivered. Some have been stuck in the system for OVER A MONTH.”

LaBelle is referring to USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who took over the job on June 15 and also happens to be a top Trump donor. A month into his job, DeJoy issued a memo first reported by the Washington Post mentioning the Post Office’s dire financial condition and announced a slate of new policies. The item that was the most widely reported was that the Post Office would now accept delayed mail to save costs.

There has been a lot of confusion—and sometimes outright misinformation—over what DeJoy’s policies are actually doing. Some, like LaBelle, are blaming him for USPS’s current struggles.

But the reality is more complicated. In interviews with seven postal workers from around the country, all of whom requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation for speaking to the press, Motherboard heard many of the same concerns LaBelle expressed: that DeJoy may try to intentionally disrupt USPS services in order to sabotage the mail-in ballot system ahead of the November elections, that he is hellbent on privatizing the USPS, and that he is in cahoots with Trump. But at the same time, they dismissed the possibility he is responsible for current or past package delays. When asked how they knew this, the postal workers told Motherboard that they have been having delivery issues on and off for months, long before DeJoy took over. The far simpler explanation, they said, is there are just too many packages right now for them to handle.

That being said, postal workers are leery of DeJoy’s actions partly because, given the USPS’s current state and past actions by Congress, it’s hard to tell the difference between cost-cutting in the name of efficiency and intentionally sabotaging the USPS. As one letter carrier from Ohio put it, a political loyalist running the post office “is the trojan horse that Republicans have wanted for 20-plus years.”

Do you work for the USPS? Know something we should know? Email Aaron Gordon at aaron.gordon@vice.com.

DeJoy’s July 10 memo, titled “Pivoting For Our Future,” caught the media’s attention because of one particularly inflammatory line. “One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that—temporarily—we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks (in P&DCs [Processing and Distribution Centers]), which is not typical,” the memo stated.

But the rest of the memo paints a picture of a new boss trying to attack one particular source of rising costs: overtime payments due to “late and extra trips.”

This problem is not a figment of DeJoy’s imagination. The USPS system was hardly operating at peak efficiency even before COVID hit. In January, the USPS Office of Investigator General conducted site visits at 16 processing and distribution facilities around the country. It found that, for the 2019 fiscal year, 17 percent of mail volume “was not processed on time to meet its target delivery date,” about 20 percent of transportation trips left processing facilities late, and carriers were late returning from their delivery rounds 18 percent of the time. All of this resulted in an estimated $1.1 billion in overtime payments related to inefficiency and delays, continuing an ongoing trend in USPS’s reliance on overtime to meet delivery goals.

Why the reliance on overtime? Because the USPS has slashed its workforce over the last decade due to the fiscal troubles stemming from the passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act in 2006. This law required the USPS to pre-pay billions of dollars a year into a fund for health benefits its future workforce will need, a requirement no other federal entity—or, for that matter, private company—has. In recent years, USPS stopped paying into this fund because it could no longer afford to.

As a result of this fiscal kneecapping—along with the concurrent decline in first-class mail straining the USPS’s finances as it was—the USPS undertook a decade-long cost-cutting effort to hire fewer workers and pay them less. Between 2009 and 2018, USPS cut its workforce by 77,000 people, pays new hires less, and increasingly relies on “non-career employees” who get paid by the hour, have no set schedule, and have fewer benefits, according to the Government Accountability Office. These measures collectively saved the USPS about $2.5 billion a year between 2016 to 2018, less than half of what its annual health pre-pay requirements are under the 2006 law.

Nevertheless, employee compensation is still a higher percentage of USPS’s costs compared to FedEx and UPS (72 percent according to a Government Accountability Office report). Surely, the USPS’s massive 634,000-strong workforce has real inefficiencies that, if addressed, would lead to savings. But the USPS also has to do something FedEx and UPS don’t. It is legally obligated to deliver the mail to every single person in the country, a fundamentally laborious task.

This is why it’s not fair to compare FedEx and UPS’s compensation numbers to USPS’s in such an apples-to-apples fashion. In fact, it’s a total fallacy to discuss all of these shipping companies with respect to USPS like they’re totally separate, because they’re heavily reliant on one another. UPS, FedEx, and Amazon all use USPS to some degree for handling the delivery of packages, and in turn USPS use contractors including FedEx to get packages between distribution points. Insofar as FedEx and UPS might pay a smaller share of its revenue to workers, it’s largely because they use the post office for the most laborious and least profitable part of the shipping process.

Partly as a result of this interconnectedness, USPS is hardly the only one experiencing delivery issues over the last several months. UPS has had serious delays in the Bay Area and FedEx has struggled to adapt to a mostly commercial delivery business to more residential service. Even Amazon Prime went through a few months where many deliveries took far more than two days and the company had to impose strict limits on who could order what.

The shared networks make it difficult to identify where delays are actually coming from. Even the USPS letter carriers I spoke to often had no idea why packages were delayed. They guessed there were backlogs at distribution facilities, especially ones in cities hit harder by COVID, but didn’t know for sure. A report by the Portland Press Herald in Maine claims letter carriers are being told by their local postmaster to delay mail and first-class packages to ensure Amazon deliveries are made on time. None of the carriers Motherboard spoke to said they had been told to do the same, but they added it would hardly be the first time different regions were doing things differently. Along those lines, a key finding of the June OIG report was a lack of standard operating procedures or “best practices” across facilities.

What is clear is that USPS is trying to do more with less. It is delivering somewhere between 60 and 80 percent more packages than it typically does this time of year and for a longer sustained period, in many cases without the staffing increases that typically accompany the similarly busy Christmas rush. The only way the USPS has been able to manage is to have the existing workforce work longer and pay them the accompanying overtime to do it.

According to the USPS employees Motherboard spoke to, it’s too early to say what impact DeJoy’s policies will have. For example, it takes time for distribution facilities to get so backed up that packages get delayed for weeks. Whether or not DeJoy’s plan works, it won’t fix what ails the post office. Only Congress can do that, and few are optimistic about that.

Google plans to keep 200,000 full-time and contract employees working remotely until at least July 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported. Other tech firms have announced long-term plans to keep employees working from home due to restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic, but Google would be the first to extend remote working into the middle of next year.

According to the WSJ, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, made the call last week following a meeting with top company executives.

Google had previously announced plans to reopen some offices for a limited number of employees starting on July 6th, but it made the return to physical offices optional. Pichai made the decision to establish a more specific time...

Continue reading…

• Big Tech is playing defense in the nation's capital as the Trump administration and Congress scrutinize the biggest companies on a slew of issues ranging from data privacy and security to antitrust concerns. 
• The CEOs of Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple testified virtually in late July before the U.S. House's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. The Democrat-led panel is nearing the end of a year-long probe into whether the companies have too much control over the market or unfairly edged out competitors.
• It's a dizzying time full of uncertainty and high stakes — a perfect time for this Insider list of the tech industry's most important lobbyists, lawmakers, regulators, and policy figures stationed in Washington.
• Giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook have snapped up alumni from the George W. Bush and Obama administrations to navigate the fast-changing playing field. Some have actually been expanding their footprint in DC for years.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Big Tech is finding Washington to be an unfriendly place during the Donald Trump era.

Several major companies are under congressional or federal scrutiny. Executives once praised as American innovators are now accused of building platforms and services that undermine competition, privacy, and free speech.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both parties use major tech and and social media companies as rhetorical punching bags.  Trump himself has weaponized the major social media platforms to advance disinformation and attack his enemies while at the same time using them as political foils. 

The stakes are big. In late July, the House Judiciary's antitrust subcommittee grilled the leadership of Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple as part of a year-long probe into whether the companies have too much control over the market or unfairly edged out competitors.

While the most famous names in the industry — think Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos — often draw the most scrutiny and attention in Washington, behind the scenes their companies and others have planted roots in DC by hiring small armies of lobbyists, public policy experts and communications professionals. Congressional staffers and former senior aides in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations are particularly hot commodities. 

To help navigate this increasingly cut-throat world, Insider put together this guide of the most important people at the intersection of tech, politics, and policy in Washington.

We'll continue to update this list throughout the year.

(Is there someone we should include in this article? Contact kepstein@businessinsider.com)

Joel Kaplan, vice president of global public policy at Facebook

Kaplan's Washington connections were cast into the spotlight when he showed up in October 2018 to support his good friend Brett Kavanaugh during a Senate hearing on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's sexual assault allegations against the Supreme Court nominee. 

His presence at the hearing sparked internal outrage at the social network, though Kaplan didn't back down. He even threw a party for Kavanaugh after the confirmation vote.

Kaplan joined Facebook in 2011 as one of the company's most high-profile Republican operatives. He served in the George W. Bush White House, where he overlapped with Kavanaugh, and also clerked for Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia in 1999.

At Facebook, Kaplan's role has become increasingly important as the company addresses the reckoning that its platform was used as a pipeline for disinformation and foreign interference during the 2016 presidential campaign. It's also faced calls for regulation from the Trump administration and allies who believe that Silicon Valley is biased against conservatives. 

Kaplan has advocated against algorithm and moderation changes that would have undercut conservative publishers and users, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reported. 

Karan Bhatia, vice president of government affairs and public policy at Google

Bhatia has led Google's DC office and its policy division since 2018. He joined at a tumultuous time for the company as Congress and regulators placed increasing scrutiny on Silicon Valley titans. 

In July 2019, Senate lawmakers from both parties grilled Bhatia over Google's algorithm and advertising practices. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz demanded to know if the company's leadership leaned "left or right?" Bhatia responded that the company wasn't politically biased.  

A lawyer by training, Bhatia spent six years in the Bush administration, with stints at the Commerce and Transportation departments before Bush appointed him deputy US trade representative in 2006. He led negotiations for the US - Korea Free Trade Agreement.  After the Bush years, Bhatia joined General Electric for a decade as a top public policy official, before making the switch to Google in 2018.

Jay Carney, senior vice president of corporate affairs at Amazon

President Barack Obama's former press secretary joined Amazon in 2015 as its top spokesman and now leads the DC policy shop and a team of in-house lobbyists. He's also in charge of all corporate communications.

Amazon's lobbying spending has skyrocketed in recent years as the company faced pressure from both the left and the right. Politicians as ideologically divergent as Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the trillion-dollar company to task on everything from its labor practices to CEO Jeff Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post, which has relentlessly investigated the Trump administration.

As Amazon seeks to become the purveyor of everything, it must deal with an ever-growing list of industries, regulations, and federal agencies. The online retail giant is under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and House of Representatives for possible antitrust activity.

Carney's career path has been somewhat unexpected. He started out as a journalist, including a 20-year stint writing for Time Magazine.

Fred Humphries, corporate vice president for US government affairs at Microsoft

Microsoft has a long history in Washington; its founder, Bill Gates, was famously one of the first tech titans to testify before Congress in 1998. It didn't go too well.

Two years later, Fred Humphries joined Microsoft as its director of state governmental affairs and helped craft its strategy for reaching out to public officials. He had a successful career in politics before joining Microsoft, serving as an aide to former Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-MO) and chief of staff to Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA), and southern political director for the Democratic National Committee.

Humphries became Microsoft's corporate vice president for US government affairs in 2015, and he's now the company's policy chief and top lobbyist in Washington. He directs its policy initiatives both internally and externally on a host of issues, including trade, privacy, cloud computing, and cybersecurity.

Monique Meche, Vice President, Global Public Policy and Philanthropy at Twitter

Several of the companies on this list have come under the president's ire, but none has poked Trump this year quite like Twitter.

The platform has taken a more aggressive stance against Trump's frequent 280-character bites of disinformation, slapping warning labels on some inflammatory tweets or fact checks beneath others. Unsurprisingly, Trump has been incensed, yet he continues to tweet apace. The social network's moves also led to pressure on its rival, Facebook, to add similar warnings to Trump's most incendiary posts. 

Into this fray comes Monique Meche, Twitter's newly minted top employee in Washington with a resume full of public policy roles at some of the country's most prominent tech companies, including Netflix, Amazon, and Waymo, Google's self-driving car subsidiary.

At Twitter, Meche oversees its worldwide public policy, philanthropy, and government efforts.  Her DC office also provides training and support to lawmakers who use the platform to communicate with the public.

Nicole Isaac, senior director of North America policy at LinkedIn

Isaac heads up LinkedIn's public policy initiatives and manages outreach to federal and state governments. She's been with the company for more than five years, rising through the ranks of its policy team until taking the lead in 2018.

Before she went to work for the internet's premier professional networking site, Isaac worked at the White House during the Obama administration. She was a special assistant to the president for legislative affairs, working as a liaison between the White House and Congress on a host of policy issues. She'd also worked as a legislative aide for Vice President Joe Biden.

Tim Powderly, director of federal government affairs at Apple

Apple's top lobbyist, Cynthia Hogan, recently departed the tech powerhouse to join her old boss Joe Biden's presidential campaign and advise the presumptive Democratic nominee as he vets potential running mates.

Stepping into the top Apple DC role is Tim Powderly, a longtime company executive and former top Democratic staffer on House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. Powderly served as the congressional panel's senior counsel before joining Apple in 2011.

Powderly often responds to lawmaker's inquiries about the company, most recently from Democratic Senators with concerns about the security of Apple's new COVID-19 screening tools.

Like many of its peers, Apple faces policy battles on multiple fronts, including an antitrust investigation by the Federal Trade Commission as well as a separate inquiry from the House. Apple has also tangled with the federal government over encryption, government access to user data, and requests to unlock iPhones of mass shooting suspects.

Michael Beckerman, vice president and head of US public policy at TikTok

TikTok has become the country's hottest new app, with its primarily young creators going viral for their synchronized dances and presidential lip syncs. With all that attention has come increased scrutiny.

The Trump administration and some Republican lawmakers believe that behind the whimsical veneer lies a national security threat —  a claim the company denies.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance Inc., a China-based internet company, and some Republican officials are worried about the security of user data and influence from Beijing. In November 2019, the US government opened an investigation of ByteDance following its acquisition of another popular app. More recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the administration was "looking into" shutting down TikTok in the US and GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida tweeted that the app "should not exist" and "patriots should delete it."

The Democratic National Committee has also warned campaigns and staff about downloading TikTok onto their personal devices.

Enter Michael Beckerman, the longtime head of the Internet Association trade group, who TikTok hired in February to lead its budding D.C. bureau.

Beckerman has a track record of advocating for internet policy. As president of the Internet Association, he helped represent internet titans like Twitter, Amazon, and Facebook in the public policy sphere. The trade group deals with a host of policy concerns revolving around privacy, copyrights, and more.

He's also a former top GOP aide on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee and in 2019 testified before Congress to advocate for national data privacy laws. The Capitol Hill experience will come in handy should lawmakers call for the company to appear before them in the future.

Jon Berroya, interim president and CEO of the Internet Association

Berroya took the helm of the Internet Association from Beckerman, who left earlier this year to join TikTok.

The leading internet lobbying group has swelled to more than 40 members, which include heavy hitters like Doordash, Zillow, Reddit, Twitter, Microsoft and Lyft. The Internet Association advocates for policy positions on a range of issues facing its companies, including federal laws governing user privacy and copyright law.

In June, Berroya testified before the Senate Judiciary's subcommittee on intellectual property on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Section 512, which protects websites from liability if their users post material that infringes on copyrights.

Victoria Espinel, CEO of BSA, the Software Alliance

What the Internet Alliance is for internet companies, the Software Alliance is for...well, software. The trade group counts companies like IBM, Slack, and Salesforce among its members and advocates for its members' interests on copyright, cybersecurity, privacy, artificial intelligence, and more. 

During the Bush administration, Espinel was a US trade representative focused on intellectual property and innovation, and later joined Obama's White House as his adviser on intellectual property. 

Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission

Though technology policy is now regulated through multiple agencies, the FCC is the big one. As chairman, Pai has a great deal of power over how the government approaches and regulates the internet and providers.

Pai joined the FCC as an Obama appointee in 2012, but it was Trump's decision to elevate him to chairman in 2017 that thrust him into the spotlight. Pai's appointment sparked controversy, with supporters of net neutrality — the principle that internet providers must allow traffic to flow equally and not throttle it based on website or price —  viewing him as a death knell for their cause.

At the end of that year, the FCC officially scrapped their net neutrality rules.

Under Pai, the FCC is also occupied with building up the nation's 5G infrastructure. And in June, the FCC designated Chinese telecom companies Huawei and ZTE as national security threats due to their ties to the Chinese government, Pai said.

Joseph Simons, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission

The FTC also handles some of the government's most pressing technology issues.

In February, it opened a major antitrust investigation into mega-companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet. The agency's five commissioners requested that these companies disclose information on their acquisitions dating back to 2010.

Facebook, in particular, has been in the agency's crosshairs. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal from the 2016 presidential election, the FTC slammed the social network with an unprecedented $5 billion — yes, billion, with a "b" — fine for its failure to protect users' privacy. The FTC also demanded that Facebook must conduct a privacy review of new products and place more stringent guardrails on third parties that seek to use its data. In July 2019, Facebook disclosed on an earnings call that the FTC had launched an antitrust investigation into the company.

Simons has made a lengthy career as an expert in antitrust issues in both the public and the private sector. In the late 1980s, he rose up the ranks at the FTC's Bureau of Competition and served as its chair from 2001-2003. Before Trump nominated him to lead the FTC in 2017, Simons was a partner at the mega-lawfirm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, where he also handled antitrust cases.

The FTC has four additional commissioners who each have a pivotal say over the industry: Noah Joshua Phillips, Rohit Chopra, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, and Christine S. Wilson. 

Rep. David Cicilline

The New York Times recently called Cicilline "Big Tech's Biggest Threat", and for good reason. As Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's subpanel on antitrust, commercial and administrative law, he has the authority to investigate the major tech companies. 

And he's using it. 

At the Rhode Island congressman's direction in June 2019, the House launched a wide ranging probe of potential antitrust activity by companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. 

The subcommittee has since held a series of hearings, including an October 2019 session with antitrust experts to examine how major tech companies' business practices affect consumer privacy. 

California Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo

The Silicon Valley-area Democratic representatives have played a big role in shaping policy around data security, innovation, and government surveillance. 

Both deal with a wide range of tech policy issues like privacy, data security, and surveillance through their committee assignments. Eshoo serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on communications and technology, and is a co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Internet Caucus. Lofgren has been a longtime supporter of government surveillance reform and establishing better rules for how the U.S government can collect Americans' data. 

In October, the two Democrats unveiled the Online Privacy Act, a bill that seeks to create a federal agency to protect users' data and privacy, creates user rights, and compels technology companies to improve how they protect people's information. However, it is still stuck in committee.

Sen. Josh Hawley

The 40-year old freshman Republican senator has made policing Big Tech and the social media platforms one of his signature issues. His primary target is TikTok, the video sharing and editing app that has become America's meme factory du jour. Hawley and other conservatives see it as a potential national security threat.

Hawley has introduced bills that would ban federal employees from using TikTok and another directs the secretary of state to launch a review of how foreign apps such as TikTok use Americans' data and also limit that use.

But the Missouri senator's rhetorical broadsides — he's seen as a potential 2024 presidential contender once Trump is out of politics — haven't yet translated into effective policy. His bills are nowhere close to becoming law, though they are translating into headlines for Hawley and pressure for TikTok, which may find itself joining its peers in a Capitol Hill hearing room.

• Google reportedly gathered data on competitor's apps by tracking how they were being used on people's Android devices, according to a new investigation from The Information.
• The revelation could factor into ongoing antitrust investigations against Google, which are probing whether the company used its hardware and software advantages to quash competition.
• It's also reminiscent of a Facebook product called Onavo that was marketed as a VPN app but quietly sent data from users' devices back to Facebook. Facebook later discontinued the app after blowback.
• Google said in a statement that, while it did access competing apps' data using Android, it has made similar metrics available to external developers.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Google reportedly gathered data from people's Android devices that showed how competitors' apps were being used, according to a new investigation from The Information.

The revelation shines light on one tactic Google used to stay abreast of competitors — and it could complicate ongoing antitrust investigations into the company in the US and abroad. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet, is set to testify before members of Congress this month as a House subcommittee nears the end of its investigation.

Google reportedly used data gathered through the previously unreported program to plan the release of its TikTok competitor in India, tracking how frequently Android users in the market opened apps like TikTok and how long they spent browsing the apps.

A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that Google has gathered usage data on apps through a public software program that has also been made available to third-party developers, and added that Google also uses this data to improve its services.

"For example, Google uses this app usage information— which is obtained solely via this API—to enable Android's Adaptive Battery feature, which allocates battery power to the apps people use most frequently," the spokesperson said. "The API doesn't obtain any information about in-app activity and our collection of this data is disclosed to and controllable by users."

While developers can use this tool to see data on devices where there app is installed and they've been granted access, Google can use the same tool to access data on any Android phone that has Google apps installed.

The tool is reminiscent of Onavo, a controversial app purchased by Facebook in 2018 that the company used to gather usage data on competing apps. Onavo — which was marketed as a VPN app — also quietly gleaned information from the smartphones of people who downloaded it and sent it back to Facebook. Facebook later discontinued the app after it was removed from the Apple app store following backlash.

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In this session, Dave starts with the question, does hardware matter anymore in software powered meetings?

Timeline:

1:10 – Why does hardware matter?
3:55 – With Microsoft Teams Rooms, Zoom Rooms, and Cisco Webex Rooms all becoming compatible with each other, does this mean the hardware is becoming commoditized?
6:50 – As we move towards an appliance world, from an IT Admin’s perspective does the operating system matter?
9:28 – What is the role of the channel partner when it comes to room systems? How does an enterprise know whether they need a channel partner or not?
12:05 – Do hardware vendors conflict with software vendors when features can be implemented in both environments?
15:10 – What can you do better using hardware than the software vendors?
16:03 – Dave asks Simon more information on Neat’s air quality monitoring solution
17:35 – How does a room system effect a desktop user’s experience?
20:48 – What kinds of problems are you currently working on to solve? Where is the industry going and has the pandemic changed the plan?
24:41 – Are we going to need 8k cameras to support the future manipulation of video?

Thanks for watching, if you’d like more like this, don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel.

You can also join in the conversation on our Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages. 

Over the last few decades, companies like Securus have managed to obtain a cozy, government-supported monopoly over prison phone and teleconferencing services. Like any monopoly, this has pretty traditionally resulted in not only sky high rates -- upwards of $14 per minute for phone calls -- but comically poor service as well. Because these folks are in prison, and as we all know everybody in prison is always guilty, drumming up enough sympathy to convert into political momentum has long proven difficult, so regulatory fecklessness has proven easy to come by.

Recent efforts to do something about it were scuttled by FCC boss Ajit Pai, whose former clients included Securus. Pai not only routinely opposed efforts by ex-FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn to drive change in the prison telco sector, one of his very first acts as FCC boss was to pull the rugs out from underneath his own lawyers as they tried to support those reforms in court. The suddenly rudderless FCC ultimately and unsurprisingly lost due to a challenge by Global Tel*Link, which obviously wanted the status quo to remain intact. So now, while the FCC has the authority to cap interstate calling rates, the courts have declared it lacks the authority to regulate intrastate prison calling rates.

So it was odd to see Pai take to Twitter this week to first profess his breathless support for prison telco monopoly price gouging reform (clearly not true), and then state the fact his hands are tied in terms of actually doing something about it (something he's largely responsible for):

Lawyers who actually followed this saga from gestation were.... not impressed:

Responding to complaints, Pai yesterday sent a letter to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), proclaiming that this is "unfortunately a problem the FCC is powerless to address," and "calling for states to take action." The same states he's ironically been trying to argue lack the authority to protect consumers from telecom monopoly harm in other areas of telecom, like residential monopolies, net neutrality, and consumer privacy.

But however bad residential telecom is, prison telecom is worse. Securus and other such companies are part of a dangerously cozy and captive market, where prisons get paid upwards of $460 million annually in "concession fees" (read: kickbacks) to score exclusive, lucrative prison contracts. In this comically absurd environment, the service pricing and quality are just about what you'd expect. Government oversight of these businesses has been virtually non-existent, despite accusations that these companies have allowed some law enforcement to monitor what should be privileged attorney client communications and that they have been embroiled in location data scandals.

Last week, hackers took control of dozens of Twitter accounts and made them post the same tweet, a call to send bitcoins to a wallet with an unlikely promise to send back more cryptocurrency.   

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mike Bloomberg, Apple, Jeff Bezos, Wiz Khalifa, as well as several cryptocurrency companies are among the victims of the massive hack. On Wednesday, Twitter reached out directly to the victims via email informing them of the hack, apologizing for it, and suggesting a series of actions to make sure the compromised accounts stay safe. As Motherboard reported, hackers used an internal user administration tool to take control of the accounts.

Earlier Thursday, Twitter revealed that the hackers accessed the Direct Messages inbox of up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, and they downloaded the accounts’ “Your Twitter Data”—an archive of information on the account, including tweets, DMs, Moments, media, and more—of eight of all the hacked accounts, according to a series of updates on its Twitter Support account. 

Do you know anything else about these account hijackings, or insider data abuse at other companies? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, lorenzofb on Wickr, OTR chat at lorenzofb@jabber.ccc.de, or email lorenzofb@vice.com.

Motherboard has obtained a copy of the email that Twitter sent to users affected by the massive hack. The email was sent to Motherboard by a confirmed victim of the hack, Kucoin, who said this is the first email they received from Twitter about the breach. The victim also said they were not among those whose DMs were accessed.  

Notably, Twitter said it would not automatically delete tweets that were posted by hackers, but made them invisible to the public. Affected users were asked to manually delete them if they want to:

“Hello, 

We are contacting you to follow-up on the recent unauthorized activity on your account. Unfortunately, your account was one of the subset of accounts that we confirmed was targeted during the recent security incident we experienced. Our investigation is ongoing and we will continue sharing updates as we learn more, but we wanted to communicate an important update directly with you at this time:

Upon regaining access to your account, you will see the Tweets that were posted by the person with unauthorized access to your account. These Tweets are only visible to you. You are able to delete these at your discretion. Our policy is that we do not delete Tweets without explicit permission from the account holder. If you need help deleting these Tweets, we are able to do so with your permission.

We have taken actions to secure your account and our internal systems to prevent this from happening again. We also highly recommend you examine your settings and all recent actions performed by your account, including but not limited to: Tweets, Retweets, Likes, Follows, or Direct Messages. We also recommend checking your settings to make sure all of your preferences are accurate. As always, we also encourage you to ensure that 2-factor authentication is enabled on your account. If it was enabled prior to your account being locked—it will have been disabled once your account was locked and will need to be re-enabled manually.

We’re acutely aware of our responsibilities to the people who use our service and to society more generally. We’re embarrassed, we’re disappointed, and more than anything, we’re sorry. We know that we must work to regain your trust, and we will support all efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice. We hope that our openness and transparency throughout this process, and the steps and work we will take to safeguard against other attacks in the future, will be the start of making this right. 

Regards, Twitter”

A Twitter spokesperson said that the company is “communicating directly with impacted account owners on how their account was impacted as part of this incident.”

Subscribe to our cybersecurity podcast, CYBER.

The personal data of hundreds of thousands of Instacart users is being sold on the dark web for around $2 per person, according to a report from BuzzFeed.

The publication says information including “names, the last four digits of credit card numbers, and order histories” appearing to belong to 278,531 Instacart accounts is available to buy. (Though it’s impossible to verify that this number doesn’t include duplicates or incorrect data.) BuzzFeed did confirm with two Instacart users that the order date, transaction amount, and credit card numbers included in the cache matched their recent purchases. The data also includes users’ emails addresses.

Instacart denies that there’s been a data...

Continue reading…

• Twitter shares spiked about 6% in pre-market trading on Thursday after the social network reported record growth in daily active users in the second quarter.
• The company added 20 million users in the period, fueling a 34% year-on-year increase in its userbase to 186 million.
• However, its earnings fell short of Wall Street forecasts as revenue fell 19%, and it posted a net loss of $1.2 billion.
• CEO Jack Dorsey also described last week's hack — which saw celebrities like Elon Musk and Bill Gates have their accounts compromised — as "a very public and disappointing security issue."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

  ---

Twitter stock jumped about 6% in pre-market trading after the social-media group revealed a record increase in users in the second quarter.

However, its revenue and profits fell short of the consensus forecasts of analysts polled by Bloomberg.

Here are the key numbers:

• Revenue: $683 million versus $705 million estimated.
• Operating income: $124 million loss versus $49.2 million loss estimated.
• EPS: -$1.56 versus -$0.16 estimated.

Twitter's revenues fell 19% as advertising sales tumbled 23% due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Combined with higher costs, that meant the company posted a net loss of $1.2 billion — a sharp swing from the $1.1 billion in net income it made in the second quarter of 2019.

More positively, Twitter grew its average daily active user base by 34% year-on-year to 186 million, as it added 20 million users in the three months to June 30.

The robust growth followed a 24% increase in its users to 166 million in the first quarter.

Twitter's bosses attributed the latest increase to people signing up to join a global conversation about current events, as well as product improvements.

"The elevated usage of our service presents a tremendous opportunity to serve the public conversation and to be where even more people go to see what's happening," CEO Jack Dorsey said in his quarterly shareholder letter.

Dorsey also addressed the hacking of several high-profile Twitter accounts including Joe Biden, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffett last week.

"Twitter suffered a very public and disappointing security issue," he said in the letter.

The company "moved quickly to address what happened" and has improved its resiliency to social-engineering attempts, rolled out additional safeguards to its systems, and continues to cooperate with law enforcement as they investigate the matter, he added.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

Twitter believes the perpetrators of last week’s unprecedented attack on the company accessed the direct message (DM) inbox of an elected official in the Netherlands, the company said Wednesday evening. The revelation comes as part of the company’s ongoing investigation into last Thursday’s attack that allowed attackers to hijack the accounts of some of the service’s most high-profile users, including politicians Barack Obama and Joe Biden, to tweet a bitcoin scam.

In total, Twitter said it believes attackers accessed the DMs of up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, including that elected official. Twitter has “no indication” that other elected officials had their DMs accessed as part of the attack, however.

Continue reading…

• Retired US Army Gen. Russel Honoré, the three-star general who commanded the military's response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, sharply criticized the Department of Homeland Security for wearing military uniforms.
• "That uniform represents the cloth of our nation for people who don't draw overtime, who serve around the world at the direction of the national command authority," Honoré said to MSNBC.
• The optics of federal agents, who wore US Army uniforms in crackdowns on protesters, have concerned top Pentagon officials and lawmakers. Some armed activists have also worn pieces of the Army's uniform or carried with them military-style gear to protests, making it even more difficult to differentiate civilians from law enforcement.
• "Federal agents who are wearing camouflage in our streets and carrying out the orders of our corrupt president against Americans obviously have no understanding of our military's most basic values — to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States," Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, a former US Marine Corps infantry officer, told Insider.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Retired US Army Gen. Russel Honoré, the three-star general who commanded the military's and Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, sharply criticized the Department of Homeland Security's controversial methods to quell to the ongoing protests in Portland, Oregon.

Several members of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, which operates under the DHS, wore the US Army's camouflage uniform as they patrolled Portland's streets last week in a mission officials said was to protect federal buildings that were vandalized by demonstrators.

The CBP agents, who were also kitted with the same woodland camouflage uniforms US troops wear in combat, were shown in numerous videos and pictures detaining and beating demonstrators. One video uploaded to social media channels showed an individual suspected of assault or property destruction being whisked away in an unmarked minivan, prompting state and congressional leaders to demand an investigation.

"That uniform represents the cloth of our nation for people who don't draw overtime, who serve around the world at the direction of the national command authority," Honoré said to MSNBC on Tuesday. "And is not to be used as an instrument of protest suppression."

"That uniform is designed to blend into terrain, not to make you look like a warrior," Honoré added, referring to the distinct woodland camouflage pattern designed to obscure troops' outlines in battlegrounds like Afghanistan. "They're wearing these uniforms as a function of intimidation to look like warriors."

'Get the hell out of our uniforms'

Following President Donald Trump's decision to broaden the duties of federal agencies to curb the protests across the country, specialized federal law enforcement units have been given paramilitary-like roles to suppress demonstrators.

Federal agents from agencies like the CBP's immediate-response force, also known as the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), were mobilized in an effort to protect federal buildings, despite resistance from state and local leaders. These units and other federal law enforcement agencies often wear the US Army's camouflage uniform — BORTAC in particular has deployed to austere environments in the past, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

But concerns have grown as pictures of the uniformed personnel in Portland beating protesters with batons were widely publicized amid the federalized crackdown. The optics of the federal agents, who were confused with US service members, have concerned top Pentagon officials due to its implication.

US Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, previously highlighted his concerns, saying there needs to be clear "visual distinction" between the two organizations.

"You want a clear definition between that which is military and that which is police, in my view," Milley said during a congressional hearing earlier in July. "Because when you start introducing the military, you're talking about a different level of effort there."

Gen. Honoré likened the federal agents' actions against protesters as a "lawless group" who were "literally beating them with batons."

"Police don't do this, what kind of bull---- is this," Honoré said. "Get the hell out of our uniforms."

Unit patches

The DHS and CBP have disputed the suggestion that their agents at the scene were unidentifiable "masked stormtroopers."

CBP commissioner Mark Morgan on Tuesday pointed out that his agents wore patches to identify their agency, and that "it is offensive to refer to these dedicated men and women that are out there as law enforcement professionals."

Examples of their patches worn on their uniforms or protective vests include a unique string of numbers and letters for internal purposes; a distinct "POLICE" velcro patch; or the CBP's own logo.

But both the Army's uniforms and law enforcement patches are also available for purchase online by the general public, fueling concerns that a renegade group would be able to mimic the same tactics used by the federal agents — particularly in the scenario with unmarked minivans seen in recent videos.

And for many observers, including seasoned US service members and civil-rights groups, the visibility of the patches are often overshadowed by the military uniforms or even obscured by the fog of war during a time of crisis.

Members of specialized response teams, such as BORTAC, previously wore distinct uniforms depending on their location and circumstance. BORTAC members wore an olive-green uniform, without a camouflage pattern, that is currently worn by ordinary Border Patrol officers.

More patches, more confusion.

Several people have already been arrested after they were accused of posing as members of the military and law enforcement during the George Floyd protests.

In Los Angeles, Gregory Wong was taken into custody after he wore similar attire to a National Guard member ABC7 reported, citing sources. Wong, who was armed with an AR-15-type rifle and a pistol, was spotted by actual National Guard members after he fell into formation with them, the outlet said.

At a protest in Las Vegas, Zachary Sanns was charged with false impersonation of a federal officer, according to 8 News Now. Prosecutors reportedly said he stood on alongside police officers while armed with an AR-15-type rifle and wearing tactical gear.

Other activists, such as members of the Boogaloo movement, have also worn pieces of the Army's uniform or carried with them military-style gear to the same protests throughout the country — adding to the confusion in identifying actual law enforcement agents from others groups.

Members of movements like the Boogaloo and the Three Percenters militia often wear several velcro patches on their outfits in a similar arrangement to that of active-duty US service members, making themselves difficult to identify for those unfamiliar with military customs and regulations.

Some of these visibly armed activists also wear the same specialty patches worn by US troops upon completion of the military's specialty schools, such as the US Army's Airborne or Ranger School, likely in reference to their past achievements if they previously served in the military.

A Pentagon spokesman on Tuesday echoed Gen. Milley's view and said Defense Secretary Mark Esper has made the Trump administration aware of his concerns with the appropriation of the US military's uniforms.

"We saw this take place back in June, when there were some law enforcement that wore uniforms that make them appear military," Defense Department spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said to reporters, referencing the George Floyd protests throughout the country earlier this year.

"The secretary has a expressed a concern of this within the administration, that we want a system where people can tell the difference," he added.

Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, a former US Marine Corps infantry officer, questioned the presence of camouflage uniforms on urban streets and likened it to "the president's secret police."

"Federal agents who are wearing camouflage in our streets and carrying out the orders of our corrupt president against Americans obviously have no understanding of our military's most basic values — to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States," Moulton said to Insider.

"The use of these shadow forces by President Trump and the acting DHS secretary is deeply disrespectful to our military men and women in uniform who risk their lives abroad to fight for the rights our Constitution guarantees us.

"We shouldn't just tell these police officers to change out of camouflage, we should do away with BORTAC ... so that federal law enforcement masquerading as military can never again be used as the president's secret police," Moulton added.

Join the conversation about this story »

If AT&T sent you an email telling you to upgrade your phone — or else — would you write it off as a scam? Well, that’s just what the company did this week, as reported by Android Police.

Under the big, blue, bold, all-caps heading “UPDATE NEEDED,” the carrier is telling some customers that their devices are “not compatible with the new network” and that they “need to replace it to continue receiving service.”

Here’s the email:

One big problem here: despite what it sounds like, these customers don’t actually need to swap out their phones until early 2022, AT&T confirms to The Verge.

As Android Police suggested earlier, what AT&T is actually doing...

Continue reading…

Following a rocky civil rights audit, Facebook is creating teams to make its platforms work better for everyone.

Facebook has announced it’s building teams that will study racial bias baked into the algorithms used on its platform and on Instagram, which it owns. The move is a significant acknowledgment that the algorithms driving two of the most influential social media platforms can be discriminatory.

Instagram will create an “equity team” charged with tasks like analyzing the enforcement of its harassment policies and studying its algorithms for racial bias, the Wall Street Journal reports. Facebook spokesperson Stephanie Otway told Recode that the team will continue to work with Facebook’s Responsible AI team to study bias, and added that Facebook will also create a similar equity team.

“The racial justice movement is a moment of real significance for our company,” Vishal Shah, a vice president of product at Instagram, said in a statement. “Any bias in our systems and policies runs counter to providing a platform for everyone to express themselves.”

Algorithmic bias can be pervasive and impact how a platform treats users by affecting the content and ads they see as well as the way their own posts get filtered. Users can have trouble spotting algorithmic bias on their own since, for example, most can’t necessarily compare their News Feed with those of other users. Researchers, civil rights groups, and politicians have sounded alarm bells about algorithmic bias on its platforms, and now Facebook is devoting more resources to addressing the problem.

Notably, the Facebook news comes amid an advertising boycott of the platform organized by major civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League, and just two weeks after the company shared the results of its civil rights audit, which panned Facebook for failing to address racism and misinformation on its site.

Ahead of the boycott, Instagram acknowledged and pledged to deal with algorithmic bias on its platforms more directly. As demonstrations against police brutality and racism swept across the United States in mid-June, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced that the company would look into racial bias on Instagram, including in its account verification policies and approach to content filtering and distribution.

“While we do a lot of work to help prevent subconscious bias in our products, we need to take a harder look at the underlying systems we’ve built, and where we need to do more to keep bias out of these decisions,” Mosseri wrote at the time.

We don’t know much about the new efforts yet. Facebook’s Otway emphasized that these initiatives are still in the early stages and said the new team will be charged with reviewing a wide variety of issues that marginalized groups may encounter on the Instagram platform. As an example, she suggested that the company will get behind tools that focus on supporting minority-owned businesses.

The company seems especially willing to invest in efforts analyzing the role of bias in its systems after its recently concluded civil rights audit highlighted two pilot programs at the company: a Facebook-built tool called Fairness Flow and a fairness consultation process launched in December. The auditors also called for Facebook to establish “processes and guidance designed to prompt issue-spotting and help resolve fairness concerns” that employees company-wide must follow.

“The company certainly has the resources to be more proactive and aggressive in its actions, to be a leader,” Kelley Cotter, a graduate student who studies public understanding of algorithms at Michigan State University, told Recode at the time of the audit. “That Facebook still appears to be in an ‘exploratory’ phase after years and years of civil rights complaints evidences its reluctance to prioritize public values like equity and justice over its private interests.”

Automated tools can discriminate in myriad ways. Bias can be inherent in algorithms and artificial intelligence based on who builds these technologies, which assumptions are programmed into them, how they’re trained, and how they’re ultimately deployed. One notable source of this bias can come from data: If an algorithm is trained using a database that isn’t representative of a particular demographic group, it’s very possible the algorithm will be inaccurate when applied to people who are part of that group.

Algorithmic bias can have life-changing and dangerous impacts on people’s lives. Résumé-screening algorithms can learn to discriminate against women, for example. Facial recognition systems used by police can also have racial and gender biases, and they often perform worst when used to identify women with darker skin. In June, we learned of the first known false arrest of a Black man living in Michigan caused by a facial recognition system.

On social media platforms built by Facebook, there’s concern that bias could show up anywhere an automated system makes decisions, including in how Instagram filters content and whose posts get flagged by Facebook’s content moderation bots.

There’s also concern that the lack of racial diversity among Facebook’s employees could hinder its efforts to make its product more equitable. Just under 4 percent of roles at Facebook are held by Black employees, and just over 6 percent are held by Hispanic employees, according to the company’s diversity report. Facebook would not share statistics on the racial diversity of the teams that work on its algorithms and artificial intelligence. According to Nicol Turner Lee, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, “Without representative input, the company may find itself generating trade-offs that further the differential treatment or disparate impacts for communities of color.”

Meanwhile, the capacity these systems have to be discriminatory is why some say the algorithms themselves need to be externally audited, which Facebook thus far has not opted to do.

Facebook “seems to plan to keep the results of its research in-house,” Nicolas Kayser-Bril of Algorithm Watch told Recode after the announcement of the new teams. “It is unlikely that, were the new ‘equity and inclusion team’ to make claims regarding discrimination or the remediation thereof, independent researchers will be able to verify them.”

After all, Facebook can say it’s improving its algorithms again and again, but it’s not clear how those outside the company, including Facebook and Instagram users, would ever know if the changes were actually making an overall difference.

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Slack says it has filed an anti-competitive complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission. “The complaint details Microsoft’s illegal and anti-competitive practice of abusing its market dominance to extinguish competition in breach of European Union competition law,” says Slack in a statement. Slack alleges that Microsoft has “illegally tied” its Microsoft Teams product to Office and is “force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers.”

“Microsoft is reverting to past behavior,” claims David Schellhase, general counsel at Slack. “They created a weak, copycat product and tied it to their dominant Office product, force installing it and blocking its removal, a carbon copy...

Continue reading…

• Slack said on Wednesday that it had filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission over its Teams chat software
• The complaint accuses Microsoft of engaging in anticompetitive practices by tying its Teams office chat app to its popular Office 356 productivity suite.
• It comes as major tech firms like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have been scrutinized over antitrust concerns, which Microsoft has largely dodged until now.
• Microsoft is Slack's biggest competitor in the work communication software space, and both have grown throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as more people have been working remotely. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Workplace communication software maker Slack said on Wednesday that it had filed a competition complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission over its Teams software, a move that comes as tech giants have faced increased scrutiny over their size and influence on the market. 

Slack is accusing Microsoft of engaging in anticompetitive practices by tying its Teams chat and collaboration app — which directly competes with Slack — to its popular Office 365 productivity suite. 

"We're confident that we win on the merits of our product, but we can't ignore illegal behavior that deprives customers of access to the tools and solutions they want," Jonathan Prince, vice president of communications and policy at Slack, said in a press release. "Slack threatens Microsoft's hold on business email, the cornerstone of Office, which means Slack threatens Microsoft's lock on enterprise software."

The European Commission will have to review Slack's complaint before deciding whether to launch an investigation into Microsoft. 

Microsoft's Teams app is Slack's biggest competitor in the workplace communication software space. Both companies have boomed during the coronavirus pandemic as businesses around the world were forced to shift to remote work arrangements. Microsoft said in March that it had added 12 million daily active users for Teams in a single week, while Slack said around the same time that it had added 7 million new paid users since February. 

"Teams and Slack are in a fierce battle for market share," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives previously told Business Insider's Paayal Zaveri, adding: "This trend is accelerating and is probably going to continue to accelerate over the coming months as more employees around the world are working remote."

Microsoft was the subject of a historic antitrust battle in the late 1990s, when Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that its dominance of the PC market deemed it a monopoly. But it has dodged the mounting scrutiny that other large American tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have faced in recent years.

The CEOs of these companies are set to testify before Congress about possible antitrust practices on July 27.

Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, has recently been outspoken about the importance of facilitating competition in the tech industry when it comes to app stores. He was recently tapped by the House of Representative's antitrust subcommittee to share his perspective ahead of the July 27  hearing given Microsoft's experience, according to reports from Bloomberg and The Information.

During that conversation, Smith is said to have raised concerns about the way Apple, a Microsoft competitor, manages its App Store. The App Store has come under scrutiny for potentially anticompetitive behavior.

"The time has come, whether we are talking about DC or Brussels, for a much more focused conversation about the nature of app stores, the rules that are being put in place, the prices and the tolls that are being extracted and whether there is really a justification in antitrust law for everything that has been created," Smith also previously said during a livestreamed Politico event on June 18.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

Last week, Honda announced it will no longer sell the Fit in the United States. On its own, this is hardly big news. Car companies discontinue models all the time only to release the “all new” Something-Or-Other a year or two later that is basically indistinguishable from the car they just discontinued.

But the Fit news is different, because they already announced the all new Something-Or-Other, and it’s a newer Fit and it isn’t coming to the US. The announcement also doubles as the final nail in the coffin for an entire category of cars that have existed for generations. The subcompact car is basically dead in the US now. As my former colleague at Jalopnik wrote, the Fit joins the Chevy Sonic, Ford Fiesta, and Toyota Yaris on the chopping block, while the Kia Rio, Hyundai Accent, and Chevy Spark are likely on their way out.

Some car companies, like Ford, GM, and Chrysler are, in fact, no longer car companies in the strictest sense. In the not too distant future, they plan on only selling SUVs, pickup trucks, and vans.

In the US, car companies only market small vehicles during times of high gas prices. Otherwise, they tout how wonderful it is to own big, expensive vehicles, which, incidentally, have the highest profit margins.

But, in a country where participating in society fundamentally requires one to own a vehicle, small cars are a great, relatively affordable way to get around that are more fun to drive than, say, a Chevy Equinox. Look no further than the discontinued Fit, an all-purpose car with solid fuel efficiency (by American standards) that gives you everything you need and nothing you don’t. It’s a hatchback so you can fit a lot of stuff in it by folding down the seats. A brand-new Fit starts at around $16,000 and you can count on it to last more than a decade. Millions of people who buy SUVs every year do not need more than what a Fit offers.

But, I don’t blame anyone for passing on the Fit, because car companies put a lot of energy and engineering expertise into making their “family vehicles” capable of traveling 180 mph. But subcompacts can be so much better than what's been offered in the U.S. And I have a proof, because in many countries they are better.

If you ever want to get upset over the boring, terrible, expensive cars on offer in America, go to the UK version of any automaker’s website. Take Honda, for example. Internationally the Fit is known as the Jazz. In the UK, instead of being killed off, the Jazz got an exciting redesign and is a hybrid. As a result, it’s a little more expensive, but would still likely sell for under $20,000 in the US, which would make it the cheapest hybrid on the market (for Honda models that sell in both countries, the US and UK versions have roughly the same prices in their respective currencies; the Jazz hybrid starts at £19,000).

It’s not just Honda. The Volkswagen Up, which does not exist in the US, is basically a slightly smaller gas-only version of the Jazz that gets up to 60 miles per gallon (!!!) and starts at just over £13,000. It also comes in a cheaper two-door and electric version. (Like Honda, Volkswagen’s prices are also roughly the same between the US and UK versions of cars available in both countries). You cannot find a brand-new car in the US for $13,000, nor a non-hybrid with that kind of fuel economy. In both cases, you’re looking at something like the Fit-like Mitsubishi Mirage, which starts at $14,000 and is the most fuel-efficient gas car in the country at something like 40 mpg.

Car companies say these small cars don’t sell well enough or make enough money in the US. It is true that smaller cars have low profit margins, especially compared to SUVs and pickups. This is perfectly illustrated by the fact that Honda’s entry-level vehicle will now be the “compact crossover” HR-V that is just a slightly taller and longer out-of-proportion Fit and costs $4,000 more.

It is also true that subcompacts don’t sell well in the US. The Fit, for example, sold the best of all of them, peaking at 80,000 in 2008 when the economy was bad and gas prices were high. But it has been slowly declining since, down to just 35,000 last year. By comparison, Honda sold more than 384,000 CR-Vs, a “small” SUV, last year.

And I get why. The CR-V costs only a few thousand dollars more than the Fit, gets a little worse gas mileage but not much, has all-wheel drive which many Americans convince themselves they need even though they don’t, and has more space and the higher riding position which people like. Plus, Americans don’t care as much about gas mileage because gas in the United States is highly subsidized and therefore cheap compared to other countries. No wonder so few people buy the Fit.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Even without a conversation about the fossil fuel subsidies, better subcompact cars with real value propositions exist. They’re just across the ocean. As Americans go into deeper and deeper debt to buy bigger, more expensive cars that cost more to own, a cheap, reliable, fuel-efficient car will look better and better, especially as the prospects for a post-COVID economic recovery look increasingly shaky.

In announcing the discontinuation of the Fit, Gary Robinson, assistant vice president of product planning, told Automotive News he thinks Honda still has a car for everyone. “I get it that there are people who will be disappointed, but I have complete confidence that what we're going to be able to offer people in the marketplace, they're not losing anything.”

The narrative car companies are telling here is that the marketplace no longer wants subcompacts even as they withhold better, more exciting subcompacts from the marketplace. I think they’re wrong, and people would buy the better subcompacts here, too. Unfortunately, we’ll never find out.

Correction: this post has been updated to reflect that the Kia Rio, Hyundai Accent, and Chevy Spark have not yet been discontinued. Jalopnik wrote they are "on their way out."

• Two recent studies signal major breakthroughs in solar energy that could make solar panels cheaper and more efficient.
• In the first, researchers uncovered a method of converting low-wavelength light that's invisible to the human eye into electricity, suggesting more energy can be harvested from sunlight.
• Another study suggests that silicon solar panels could be replaced with a material called perovskites, which is cheaper and more lightweight.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

New discoveries in solar energy could make it cheaper and more efficient to transform sunlight into electricity, potentially reshaping the renewable energy market.

The breakthroughs were featured in two recent studies, published in Nature Energy and Nature Photonics and first reported by The Independent. While solar is traditionally seen as less energy-efficient than other resources, the new discoveries could change that.

The first study, led by researchers at RMIT University, Australia's UNSW, and the University of Kentucky, found that low-energy light that's invisible to the human eye can be "upconverted" using oxygen to generate electricity, which could allow solar panels to generate more energy using the same amount of sunlight.

"I'm very hopeful and think that we can improve the efficiency quickly. I think it's quite exciting for everyone,"  UNSW professor and lead researcher Elham Gholizadeh said in a statement.

Another recent study led by the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan found that solar panels may be more inexpensive and efficient if built with a material called perovskites rather than silicon, which most current solar panels are made of.

Both studies are preliminary — the methods involved have yet to be tested more broadly. But scientists hope their breakthroughs can pave the way for more efficient solar power in the commercial sector.

"Scaling up is very demanding; any defects in the material become more pronounced so you need high-quality materials and better fabrication techniques," Luis Ono, one of the Okinawa Institute study's authors, said in a statement.

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At Microsoft Inspire today, the company made several Dynamics 365 announcements, including Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, a real-time customer feedback tool that could compete with Qualtrics, the company SAP bought in 2018 for a cool $8 billion.

Microsoft General Manager Brenda Bown says that as more customers move online during the pandemic, it’s more important than ever to capture real-time customer feedback that you can combine with other data to build a more complete picture of the customer that could lead to more successful interactions in the future.

“Customer Voice is a feedback management solution, and it’s designed to empower businesses and organizations to build better products, deliver better experiences to customers and really build the relationships for the customers with that feedback management tool,” Bown told TechCrunch.

The data gets shared with Microsoft’s customer data platform (CDP), and is built on top of Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. The latter provides a way to customize the Customer Voice tool to meet the needs of an individual company.

Brent Leary, partner and co-founder at CRM Essentials, says this solves the problem of getting feedback as the interaction is happening. He adds that being able to share that data directly with the CDP makes it even more valuable.

“Customer feedback has to be done as close to the interaction/transaction as possible and as frictionless as possible for it to really work, or else customers won’t give it to you. And then the data has to be integrated into the CDP with all the other data automatically to really be of use. And having a platform to handle both the feedback capture and the data integration optimizes the likelihood of this happening,” Leary said.

The company also announced Dynamics 365 Connected Store, a set of tools designed to help stores manage in-store and curbside traffic, among other things. As the pandemic limits the number of people in a store at one time, using sensors and cameras, Connected Store can help managers understand and manage the number of people inside the store at any given time to help aid in social distancing.

It can also help add a level of automation to curbside pickup, letting an employee know when the customer has pulled up. “It alerts the employee and they can bring out the order for a more seamless and quick pickup. And obviously this scenario is super important today because of [more people wanting] contactless pickup,” Bown said.

Finally, the company announced a fraud protection component. She says that Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection helps protect businesses online or in physical stores from fraudulent activities, which she says is even more important as more transactions are conducted digitally. New capabilities include account protection and loss prevention tooling.

Inspire is the company’s annual partner conference, which is being held virtually this year. Bown says by running it virtually, the company can involve even more partners than a typical in-person conference because companies that couldn’t previously attend because of cost and distance are able to participate this year.

The workplace is rapidly evolving, and as we’re emerging from the time of “remote everything,” it’s clear that the ways we stay in touch and collaborate are also changing. The workplace of the future will accommodate hybrid scenarios in which some people may work from the office while others may work remotely, or some fluid combination of the two. Organizations will need meeting rooms that serve as hubs for hybrid work.

Effective meeting room experiences enable users to start or join a meeting quickly for maximum productivity. Proactive management, real-time monitoring, and remediation keep rooms functional, up-to-date, and secure.

Today, we’re excited to launch Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium. This offering builds on the Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard experience and management capabilities available from the Teams Admin Center by combining intelligent software, dedicated experts, and enhanced insights from across organizations to continuously improve the meeting room experience.

With Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium, we provide 24/7 management and monitoring of your room operating system and software, surfacing insights and alerts around any action needed on-site and taking remote action on your behalf as permitted. Today’s offering is just the beginning, and we look forward to expanding with additional premium experiences in the future. 

Using Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium and leveraging our partner ecosystem, we can address all your meeting room operational needs including: 1) great device setup, 2) ongoing management and monitoring, and 3) on-site support.

Let’s take a closer look at the core components of the offering:

24/7 Intelligent operations
Around-the-clock software and machine learning to automate updates, detect and manage incidents, and scale rooms efficiently.

• Real-time monitoring to quickly detect and troubleshoot issues
• Automated update management saves you time and resources
• Real-time alerts to notify you where and how to act
• Proactive remediation resolves certain incidents on your behalf

Dedicated experts
A team of experts provide 24x7 service operations, tiered support, and incident resolution assistance.

• Incident diagnosis with prescriptive guidance on cause and actions required
• Automated and support engineer assistance on troubleshooting
• Single point escalation support for all hardware vendors
• Integration with ServiceNow

Enhanced insights
Benefit from rich analytics, reporting, and proven learnings at scale across many customers.

• Proven learnings at scale that continually improve the operational experience
• Reports and dashboards on daily operations and room performance including inventory, room health, and room reliability
• Insights and recommendations on room usage and incident trend history
• Full transparency on all operations taken on your behalf, and alerts that need your attention using the dedicated admin portal

Our partner ecosystem plays a key role in helping us bring these end-to-end meeting room experiences to life. The rapid adoption of Microsoft Teams and increased demand in meeting rooms represent a significant opportunity for partners to grow their businesses with meeting room offerings and to assist customers by providing additional services, capabilities, and on-site support. We’re excited to announce collaboration with partners—including AVI-SPL, Datavision, NTT, UnifiedCommunications.com, and Yorktel—who plan to integrate with Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium as their engine for Teams management, while offering additional solutions and value.

Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium is currently available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada (excluding Quebec), Denmark, Finland, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.

To learn more, please visit https://rooms.microsoft.com.

Firstline Workers are, and have always been, the backbone of the world economy. This has become even more obvious in the face of the pandemic. While some Firstline Workers are returning to work as parts of the world reopen, others have been on the job throughout the last several months. They are the essential workers who have kept hospitals up and running, staffed grocery stores’ curbside pick-up, and been out in the field keeping services up and running.

Take CenturyLink, a global service company whose field technicians use Microsoft Teams, Shifts and the Power Platform to deliver faster customer service on equipment that keeps entire neighborhoods connected to the internet despite COVID-related challenges. Learn more here.

As organizations continue to refocus their operations to support and empower employees while maintaining business continuity, we have been working to create and improve capabilities in Microsoft Teams to support their efforts. These capabilities help you to better connect the Firstline Workforce with your corporate offices, digitize manual processes, equip them with the right devices and, accelerate their onboarding, all on a foundation of security that you expect from Microsoft 365.

Connect Firstline teams wherever they are

Whether working in back-to-back shifts where hand-offs cannot occur in person, connecting with corporate employees or consulting with remote company experts - Microsoft Teams has your Firstline Workers covered.

Walkie Talkie, a push-to-talk experience, enables clear, instant and secure voice communication over the cloud, turning employee- or company-owned Android smartphones and tablets into a walkie-talkie. This native built-in app in Teams reduces the number of devices employees must carry and helps lower costs for IT. Customers who currently use analog radio devices would no longer need to worry about crosstalk or eavesdropping from outsiders nor the limited range of radio as Walkie Talkie works over WIFI or cellular data. And for Firstline teams not yet enabled with a push-to-talk experience, Walkie Talkie in Teams enables instant team communication with pre-configured channels set to have the right conversation with the right people.

Availability: Walkie Talkie in Teams is now in public preview. It can be installed by using App Setup Policies. Customers interested in deploying Walkie Talkie can get started here.

As the world applauds Firstline Workers for the jobs they are doing, internal steps to engage, recognize and appreciate employees can go a long way in improving their job satisfaction and promoting a positive work culture. Coming later this summer, customizable Praise badges will open the possibility to promote your company values in celebration of every success and foster greater comradery during a time of disconnect.

Availability: Customizable Praise Badges will be coming later this summer. Praise badges are on-by-default and require administrator action to disable in the Office 365 admin center. Learn more about Praise here.

Digitize manual processes so your workforce can focus on what matters

Today, managers spend hours creating schedules and manually cross checking every shift to make sure the schedule is conflict-free. Coming later this year, Shifts schedule assistance will alert managers if conflicts occur anywhere in the schedule and they will receive conflict warnings when approving schedule change requests. This alerting saves managers time, makes shift scheduling more efficient and reduces inaccuracies that lead to employees not turning up for their shift.

Availability: Shifts schedule assistance will be coming later this summer. Learn more about Shifts here.

We are also adding Time clock to the Teams web and desktop apps in addition to the existing mobile experience, so employees can clock in and out from whatever device they are using. This provides a hybrid time clock experience so Firstline Workers can start their shift from wherever their work is. And, with the geo-fencing capabilities, organizations can manage where employees can and cannot clock in and out of – to make sure everyone is in the right place.

Availability: If you already have Time Clock enabled - simply go to the Shifts App in Microsoft Teams and get started! To learn more about Time Clock and how to set it up, go here.

As the need for corporate offices to better communicate and work with their Firstline Workforce becomes top of mind,  Task publishing lets companies create tasks at the corporate level and push those tasks to targeted teams across their Firstline Workforce. For example, leadership for a nationwide retailer can create tasks for the reopening of their stores, send that list to only the affected store locations, and then track progress against the assigned tasks. Store managers can easily assign tasks to individual employees, while Firstline Workers can see a simple prioritized list of those tasks on their personal or company-issued mobile device.

Availability: If you’re interested in getting the private preview of Tasks Publishing for your organization please fill out this form to nominate your company.

Equip your team with the right devices

Through an integration between Teams and RealWear head-mounted devices, field workers can remain 100% hands-free using a voice-controlled user interface while maintaining situational awareness in loud and hazardous environments. Firstline Workers using RealWear HMT-1 and HMT-1Z1 devices can collaborate with a remote expert using video calling in Teams. Users can access chats, remote assist capabilities, and other resources using only voice commands, as well as conduct calls and field operations completely hands-free. By showing what they see in real-time, field workers can accelerate the time to resolve issues and reduce the risk of an expensive downtime.

Availability: The Teams app for the RealWear HMT-1 series of head-mounted wearable computers is now available in public preview – and can be downloaded directly from the RealWear Foresight app platform.

Customers have a range of options to choose from for push-to-talk enabled devices that integrate with Teams Walkie Talkie. BlueParrott announced the C300-XT MS and B450-XT MS wireless headsets and Klein Electronics has updated models of Triumph and Valor wired headsets. Samsung announced the Galaxy XCover Pro, a rugged push-to-talk ready phone optimized for a variety of industries .

Devices from left to right: Klein Valor, Klein Triumph, BlueParrott B450-XT MS, BlueParrott C300-XT MS, Samsung XCover Pro

Availability: For customers interested in deploying Walkie Talkie with a device partner, you can get started by working with launch partners BlueParrott, Samsung, and Klein to select the right devices.

Accelerate onboarding so everyone is on the same page, quickly

Training and onboarding are under heightened pressure amidst COVID-19. Everyone needs to be highly aware of new practices and conditions, and communication to your Firstline Workforce is essential. Yammer Communities in Teams mobile app helps Firstline teams share knowledge across teams and departments as well as crowdsource solutions and best practices at the edges of the organization. You can also engage your Firstline Workers with company-wide announcements and live events that employees can access anywhere. With Yammer Communities, Firstline teams can stay connected to what is happening in their communities.
Availability: Starting today, users with the Communities app installed in the Teams web or desktop clients will also see the Communities app in mobile. Admins pinning the app for their users will now also see the app appear in mobile. For info on how to install the Communities app, go here.

Protect your organization while simplifying IT management for Firstline
Firstline Worker and Firstline Manager policy packages provide IT administrators with pre-defined policies and policy settings tailored for their Firstline workforce. This creates a simple, centralized, and consistent way to manage your Firstline workforce, no matter how big.

Availability: These new policy packages will be available by default in the IT Admin Center and in PowerShell. Learn more about setting up and customizing the policy packages for Firstline Workforce here.

Shifts audit logs, delivers IT admins a unified view and ability to search for Shifts activities such as clocking in or out and editing Shifts to ensure smooth compliance operations.

Availability: Shift Audit Logs is now generally available. To learn more about what Shifts activities are logged and how to get started, please go here.

Looking ahead
This is just the next step in our journey to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We’ll continue to develop and innovate purpose-built Firstline Worker capabilities and experiences in collaboration with our customers, industry leaders and device partners that simplify work, reduce costs and bring people together. Please visit our website to learn more about how Microsoft 365 can empower your Firstline Workforce.

• On July 14, the UK announced that from next year it will be illegal for telecoms operators to buy 5G equipment from Huawei. Operators must remove all existing Huawei 5G kit by 2027.
• The Observer reports that, in the days before the announcement, government officials briefed Huawei that the motivations behind the decision were partly geopolitical. The Trump administration was exerting pressure on the UK, they reportedly said.
• They also hinted the ban could be revisited if Trump loses the 2020 election and pressure from the US abates.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The UK is bracing Huawei for a potential reversal of its 5G equipment ban should Donald Trump lose November's presidential election, according to a report by The Observer newspaper.

On July 14, the UK government announced it would next year ban telecoms companies from buying Huawei 5G equipment, and mandate they remove all existing Huawei 5G kit by 2027. Culture minister Oliver Dowden said the UK ban was designed to be "irreversible." This followed a May announcement from the US government that it would stop US companies from selling semiconductors to Huawei. 

According to the Observer report, UK officials told Huawei that the decision was partially driven by pressure from the US. They suggested the ban could be revisited if Donald Trump fails to win the 2020 presidential election, and US pressure abates.

The Observer did not give any detail about its sources, and Huawei did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment. 

The US claims Huawei acts as a proxy for the Chinese government to spy, and has been vocally lobbying allied countries, including the UK, to ban Huawei's 5G equipment since early 2019.

After the latest US sanctions, related to semiconductors, culture minister Olivia Dowden said the UK "can no longer guarantee the safety" of Huawei's kit. The UK's announcement constituted a U-turn — in January, the UK announced that it would allow Huawei to play a limited role in building out the country's 5G network, despite US pressure. 

In a statement issued after the announcement of the ban on July 14, a Huawei spokesperson told Business Insider: "Regrettably our future in the UK has become politicized, this is about US trade policy and not security."

"We will conduct a detailed review of what today's announcement means for our business here and will work with the UK government to explain how we can continue to contribute to a better connected Britain," the spokesperson added. Less than a week after the 5G decision was announced, Huawei revealed it will build three retail "experience" stores in the UK.

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