Technology Archive

President-elect Joe Biden is about to inherit a trade dispute that gives him an early chance to show whether he is prepared to break not just with Donald Trump, but with the corporate-friendly trade policies championed by his Democratic predecessors. The outgoing administration is set to impose new tariffs over France’s recent decision to tax the revenue of U.S. digital giants like Facebook, Apple and Google, charging that the move discriminates against U.S. companies. For Trump, the fight is a simple matter of protecting the profits of rich American companies against what he sees as a European cash grab. Barack […]

As authorities around the world seek out new tools to fight COVID-19, they are increasingly turning to contact-tracing apps and other technological tools that carry worrying implications for online privacy and digital rights. Meanwhile, a recent report from the watchdog group Freedom House warns that many authoritarian governments are seizing on the pandemic to expand their surveillance powers and crack down on online dissent, while imposing new restrictions on the flow of information across national borders. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Freedom House’s Adrian Shahbaz, one of the report’s co-authors, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to talk about how […]

Many aspects of our response to the coronavirus pandemic have relied on digital technology. Schools and workplaces are moving online, holding classes and meetings using virtual tools. Public health experts are using data analytics and contact tracing apps to slow the contagion. And in some cases, authoritarian governments are using the pandemic as an excuse to impose sweeping restrictions on their citizens that limit their scope for protests and other forms of criticism. According to researchers at the watchdog group Freedom House, the implications of the pandemic for digital rights worldwide are bleak. The organization released a new report last […]

Google recently announced it will enforce rules enabling it to take a 30 percent cut from app purchases in its Google Play Store starting next September, a controversial revenue-generating policy that Apple also uses in its App Store. Both tech giants are facing anti-trust lawsuits over the practice. Also this fall, Ukrainian authorities ordered Apple to remove the apps of Russian propaganda outlets from its store, which Russia’s Foreign Ministry called “another manifestation of the Ukrainian authorities’ repressive policy towards the media.” The move follows other actions by the Ukrainian government in recent years to restrict Russian state media outlets’ […]