Cyber Week in Review: November 22, 2024

There will be no Cyber Week in Review next Friday, November 29. The Week in Review will return on Friday, December 6. Happy Thanksgiving!

Justice Department releases proposed final judgment in Google antitrust case

The U.S. Justice Department filed its proposed final judgment in its antitrust case against Google with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier this week. Judge Amit Mehta had ruled in August that Google’s actions around its search engine constituted an illegal monopoly, although the court has yet to decide on a penalty. In its request, the Justice Department asked Mehta to force Google to divest its Chrome web browser from the company, and barring that, impose limits on Google’s ability to coordinate between search and its other business units. The proposed judgment would also curb Google’s ability to pay other companies to make its search engine the default on their devices. Google has signed contracts to pay billions of dollars annually to incentivize companies to make Google’s search engine the industry standard, including a nearly $20 billion payment to Apple in 2022 to make Google Search the default on Apple’s Safari browser. The Department also requested curbs on Google’s ability to preference its own search engine over its competitors: the requested judgment includes a rule that if Google is found to be preferencing its search engine in its Android mobile operating system, it will be required to divest Android as well. Finally, the Department is also seeking to curb Google’s ability to leverage its dominance in search to extend its AI efforts. The judgment would require Google to allow web publishers to opt out of having their data used to train Google’s AI models. Google is expected to file a counterproposal in the next month, and Judge Mehta is expected to issue a final ruling on any penalties by August 2025.

U.S. District Court orders the release of NSO Group documents

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ordered the release of a set of documents that illuminate how spyware maker NSO Group operated and ran several of its main spyware offerings. The release comes as part of a lawsuit filed in 2019 by WhatsApp, a messaging application run by Meta, against NSO over NSO’s alleged violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and WhatsApp’s terms of service. The documents detail a suite of tools, dubbed “Hummingbird,” that NSO used against WhatsApp, along with two of the exploits that were key to Hummingbird, “Eden” and “Heaven.” Hummingbird was a family of malware vectors, exploits used to plant other NSO spyware which can extract call logs, messages, contact information, and other information from a device. WhatsApp issued a series of patches that eventually blocked Hummingbird, but, according to the documents, the NSO team continued to develop exploits targeting WhatsApp’s service even after the company sued NSO in 2019. Aside from providing a better understanding of NSO’s technical exploits, the documents also shed light on how NSO operated its spyware, including nearly ten cases where it shut off a customer’s access to its Pegasus spyware for abuse of the spyware. NSO has long denied involvement in target selection for its spyware, but WhatsApp has argued that the documents and testimony from NSO employees show that the company is intimately involved in these targeting decisions; in the filing, WhatsApp argued that NSO’s customers input the phone number of a targeted device and NSO “controls every aspect of the data retrieval and delivery process” in the operation of Pegasus.

United States hosts first meeting of AI Safety Institute Network in San Francisco

The U.S. government hosted the first meeting of the International Network of AI Safety Institutes in San Francisco this week, with officials from eleven different countries, major AI developers, and academics gathering to discuss AI safety and governance considerations. The meeting led to several outcomes, with the countries setting a mission statement for the network and selecting the United States as the inaugural chair of the network, although it is unclear what responsibilities that will entail. The countries also announced $11 million in research funding commitments for mitigating risks in synthetic content and published an inaugural testing pre-deployment test of a frontier AI model, Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet. According to some attendees, the technical level meetings at the convening focused on three key AI safety issues: managing risks from AI-generated content, testing foundation models, and conducting risk assessments of foundation models. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei emphasized the convergence between innovation and safety in AI development, and noted how AI safety and innovation can be mutually reinforcing. The prospect of the upcoming U.S. leadership change hung over the event, although the organizers noted the bipartisan nature of their work. Donald Trump and his team have outlined a different view of AI safety than Biden administration officials, with Trump promising to repeal Biden’s 2023 Executive Order on AI on his first day in office.

Donald Trump taps Brendan Carr as nominee for FCC chair

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Brendan Carr, currently the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to become the next chairman of the FCC. Carr will likely take a significantly different approach to the FCC enforcement mission than his predecessor, Jessica Rosenworcel. In his section of the controversial Project 2025, Carr said the FCC should prevent major technology companies’ “attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.” Carr also wrote that the FCC should eliminate immunities under Section 230 of the Communications Act, which prevents service providers and users from being held liable for content provided by participants on a platform. Section 230 is a major shield for most social media platforms, preventing them from being prosecuted or sued for content posted on their platform. Despite Carr’s opposition to Section 230, experts said it would likely be difficult for the agency to roll back the protections provided by the law; the Supreme Court’s decision to end Chevron deference, which had previously given government agencies wide latitude to interpret regulations, will likely prevent the FCC from rolling back Section 230 without congressional action. Carr will undertake other initiatives beyond Section 230 as well; he has said he will allow further consolidation in the television industry, arguing that the FCC should relax ownership caps for television stations, allowing large companies to buy up more local stations.

China hosts the tenth annual World Internet Conference

This week, China’s Cyberspace Administration held the 2024 World Internet Conference (WIC) summit in Wuzhen, Zhejiang. The tenth annual conference was themed “Embracing a People-centered and AI-for-good Digital Future: Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace,” and included subforums on AI governance, global data cooperation, and the Global Development Initiative. The conference hosted technology exhibitions, bilateral ministerial meetings, and an entrepreneurs’ forum. The conference launched an AI Committee, led by Alibaba Cloud founder Wang Jian, which will bring together over 170 domestic and international experts from academic research institutes, think tanks, and industry to collaborate on AI innovation and safety. Language in speeches at the forum echo China’s broader language on multilateral and cooperative governance. China presents a deliberate alternative to cooperation with the United States on technology standard-setting, calling on a “brighter digital future,” respect for individual countries’ policy objectives, and emphasis on consensus-building. China has accelerated efforts to build its influence in technology governance in recent years, particularly pushing cross-border data flow and establishing collaborations with countries in the Global South. Just this week, while Xi and Brazilian President Lula met and elevated ties, China launched an Open Science initiative with South Africa, the African Union, and Brazil.

Maya Schmidt is the intern for the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program.