"NASA said Friday it is shutting down a $2 billion satellite refueling project," reports UPI, "after criticizing the project's contractor for poor performance." The agency in a statement said it will discontinue the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing 1 project after nearly a decade of work due to "continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges, and a broader community evolution away from refueling unprepared spacecraft, which has led to a lack of a committed partner." [...] The spacecraft would have utilized an attached Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER) to refuel the Landsat, assemble a communications antenna and demonstrate in-space manufacture of a 32-foot carbon fiber composite beam to verify the capability of constructing large spacecraft structures in orbit... An audit from NASA's Inspector General, however, found OSAM-1 was on track to exceed the projected $2.05 billion budget and would not make its December 2026 launch date, laying the blame on the "poor performance of Maxar."

"NASA and Maxar officials acknowledged that Maxar underestimated the scope and complexity of the work, lacked full understanding of NASA technical requirements, and were deficient in necessary expertise," the report read.

The report also noted Maxar was "no longer profiting from their work on OSAM-1," after which the xproject appeared not "to be a high priority for Maxar in terms of the quality of its staffing."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: CACM [Communications of the ACM] Is Now Open Access," proclaims the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in its tear-down-this-CACM-paywall announcement. "More than six decades of CACM's renowned research articles, seminal papers, technical reports, commentaries, real-world practice, and news articles are now open to everyone, regardless of whether they are members of ACM or subscribe to the ACM Digital Library."

Ironically, clicking on Google search results for older CACM articles on Aaron Swartz currently returns page-not-found error messages and the CACM's own search can't find Aaron Swarz either, so perhaps there's some work that remains to be done with the transition to CACM's new website. ACM plans to open its entire archive of over 600,000 articles when its five-year transition to full Open Access is complete (January 2026 target date).
"They are right..." the site's editor-in-chief told Slashdot. "We need to get Google to reindex the new site ASAP."

Google is cracking down on rooted Android devices, blocking multiple people from using the RCS message feature in Google Messages. From a report: Users with rooted phones -- a process that unlocks privileged access to the Android operating system, like jailbreaking iPhones -- have made several reports on the Google Messages support page, Reddit, and XDA's web forum over the last few months, finding they're suddenly unable to send or receive RCS messages. One example from Reddit user u/joefuf shows that RCS messages would simply vanish after hitting the send button. Several reports also mention that Google Messages gave no indication that RCS chat was no longer working, and was still showing as connected and working in Google Messages. In a statement sent to the Verge where we asked if Google is blocking rooted devices from using RCS, Google communications manager Ivy Hunt said the company is "ensuring that message-issuing/receiving devices are following the operating measures defined by the RCS standard" in a bid to prevent spam and abuse on Google Messages. In other words, yes, Google is blocking RCS on rooted devices.

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, 404Media reported Tuesday, citing a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documents. From the report: The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we've reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms' parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent. The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn't supposed to. It is not clear from Gage's post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent.

The U.S. and several international partners endorsed shared principles for developing 6G wireless communication systems, the White House said Monday. From a report: A battle is underway to influence the standards of 6G amid concerns by Western countries and their allies that authoritarian regimes could gain further control over Internet in their countries. Policies around wireless communications influence economic-growth and national security, fueling the race between the U.S. and China -- which claimed earlier this month that it had launched the world's first satellite "to test 6G architecture," per state media.

The governments of the U.S., Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and the U.K. released a joint statement saying that by working together, "we can support open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, resilient, and secure connectivity." They laid out principles including using systematic approaches to cybersecurity, being protective of privacy and creating technologies that are widely available and accessible to developing nations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A law firm acting on behalf of the Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford has asked a state court to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) denying minors access to encrypted communication in Meta's Messenger application. The motion for a TRO follows AG's Ford announcement of civil lawsuits on January 30, 2024 against five social media companies, including Meta [PDF], alleging the companies deceptively marketed their services to young people through algorithms that were designed to promote addiction. Nevada was not a party to the two multi-district lawsuits filed against Meta last October by 42 State Attorney General over claims that the social media company knowingly ignored evidence that its Facebook and Instagram services contribute to the mental harm of children and teens. Meta, which lately has been investing in virtual reality and large language models, is also being sued by hundreds of school districts around the US.

The Nevada court filing to obtain a TRO follows from AG Ford's initial complaint. The legal claim cites a statement from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that argues Meta's provision of end-to-end encryption in Messenger "without exceptions for child sexual abuse material placed millions of children in grave danger." The initial complaint's presumably supporting claims, however, have been redacted in the publicly viewable copy of the document. The motion for a TRO, which also contains redactions, contends that Meta -- by encrypting Messenger -- has thwarted state officials from enforcing the Nevada Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act. "With this Motion, the State seeks to enjoin Meta from using end-to-end encryption (also called 'E2EE') on Young Users' Messenger communications within the State of Nevada," the court filing says. "This conduct -- which renders it impossible for anyone other than a private message's sender and recipient to know what information the message contains -- serves as an essential tool of child predators and drastically impedes law enforcement efforts to protect children from heinous online crimes, including human trafficking, predation, and other forms of dangerous exploitation."

Meta enabled E2EE by default for all users of Messenger in December 2023. But according to the motion for a TRO, "Meta's end-to-end-encryption stymies efforts by Nevada law enforcement, causing needless delay and even risking the spoliation of critical pieces of necessary evidence in criminal prosecutions." The injunction, if granted, would require Meta to disable E2EE for all Messenger users under 18 in Nevada. Presumably that would also affect minors using Messenger who are visiting the Silver State.

CNN reports: AT&T is reimbursing customers for the nearly 12-hour network outage on Thursday, the company announced in a news release. The mobile network will issue a $5 credit to "potentially impacted" AT&T Wireless customers, which it says is the "average cost of a full day of service."
The credit will be applied automatically "within 2 bill cycles," according to an announcement at the URL att.com/makeitright. "We recognize the frustration this outage has caused and know we let many of our customers down."

In a much smaller font, they note that the credit "does not apply to AT&T Business, AT&T Prepaid or Cricket.

More from CNN: AT&T had encountered sporadic service interruptions in the days leading up to the outage, including a temporary 911 outage in some parts of the southeast. While regional disruptions to wireless service happen occasionally, prolonged nationwide outages are rare. The Federal Communications Commission confirmed Thursday it was investigating the incident...

Several hours after service was restored, AT&T released an update stating the outage seemed to be the result of an internal issue, not a cybersecurity threat. "Based on our initial review, we believe that today's outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network," the company said.

On Saturday, AT&T reiterated it was taking steps "to prevent this from happening again in the future," but did not elaborate.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In a press release written with help from ChatGPT, Match Group announced an enterprise agreement with the AI chatbot's maker, OpenAI. The new agreement includes over 1,000 enterprise licenses for the dating app giant and home to Tinder, Match, OkCupid, Hinge and others. The AI tech will be used to help Match Group employees with work-related tasks, the company says, and come as part of Match's $20 million-plus bet on AI in 2024. [...] As for the news itself, Match Group says it will begin using the AI tech, and specifically ChatGPT-4, to aid with coding, design, analysis, build templates, and other daily tasks, including, as you can tell, communications. To keep its corporate data protected, only trained and licensed Match Group employees will have access to OpenAI's tools, it noted.

Before being able to use these tools, Match Group employees will also have to undergo mandatory training that focuses on responsible use, the technology's capabilities, as well as its limitations. The use will be guided by the company's existing privacy practices and AI principles, too. The company declined to share the cost of the agreement or how it will impact the tech giant's bottom line, but Match believes that the AI tools will make teams more productive. Match execs recently spoke of the company's plans for AI during the company's fourth-quarter earnings, noting that, this year, the app maker will use AI technology to both evolve its existing products and build new ones. The company's Shareholder letter explained how AI could help to improve various aspects of the dating app journey. For instance, it could help with profile creation, where Match is testing features like an AI-powered photo picker, and generative AI for help making bios. The company said that AI will also improve its matching abilities and post-match guidance, in areas like conversation starters, nudges, and offering date ideas.

Three top-tier X-class solar flares launched off the sun between Wednesday and Thursday. The first two occurred seven hours apart, coming in at X1.9 and X1.6 magnitude respectively. The third, the most powerful of the current 11-year "solar cycle," ranked an impressive X6.3. From a report: Solar flares, or bursts of radiation, are ranked on a scale that goes from A, B and C to M and X, in increasing order of intensity. They usually originate from sunspots, or bruiselike discolorations on the surface of the sun. Sunspots are most common near the height of the 11-year solar cycle. The current cycle, number 25, is expected to reach its peak this year. The more sunspots, the more opportunities for solar flares.

Solar flares and accompanying coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, can influence "space weather" across the solar system, and even here on Earth. CMEs are slower shock waves of magnetic energy from the sun. Flares can reach Earth in minutes, but CMEs usually take at least a day. All three of the X-class solar flares disrupted shortwave radio communications on Earth. But the first two flares did not release a CME; the verdict is still out regarding whether the third flare did. High-frequency radio waves propagate by bouncing off electrons in Earth's ionosphere. That's a layer of Earth's atmosphere between 50 and 600 miles above the ground.

When a solar flare occurs, that radiation travels toward Earth at the speed of light. It can ionize additional particles in the lower ionosphere. Radio waves sent from devices below it then impact that extra-ionized layer and lose energy, and aren't able to be bent by ions at the top of the ionosphere. That means signals can't travel very far, and radio blackouts are possible. Three back-to-back radio blackouts occurred in response to the trio of flares, but primarily over the Pacific and Indian oceans. They were rated "R3" or greater on a 1 through 5 scale. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center, that results in a "wide area blackout of [high frequency] radio communication, [and] loss of radio contact for about an hour on sunlit side of Earth." Low-frequency navigation signals, like those used on aircraft traveling overseas, can be degraded too.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A judge has dismissed (PDF) a complaint from a parent and guardian of a girl, now 15, who was sexually assaulted when she was 12 years old after Snapchat recommended that she connect with convicted sex offenders. According to the court filing, the abuse that the girl, C.O., experienced on Snapchat happened soon after she signed up for the app in 2019. Through its "Quick Add" feature, Snapchat "directed her" to connect with "a registered sex offender using the profile name JASONMORGAN5660." After a little more than a week on the app, C.O. was bombarded with inappropriate images and subjected to sextortion and threats before the adult user pressured her to meet up, then raped her. Cops arrested the adult user the next day, resulting in his incarceration, but his Snapchat account remained active for three years despite reports of harassment, the complaint alleged.

Two years later, at 14, C.O. connected with another convicted sex offender on Snapchat, a former police officer who offered to give C.O. a ride to school and then sexually assaulted her. The second offender is also currently incarcerated, the judge's opinion noted. The lawsuit painted a picture of Snapchat's ongoing neglect of minors it knows are being targeted by sexual predators. Prior to C.O.'s attacks, both adult users sent and requested sexually explicit photos, seemingly without the app detecting any child sexual abuse materials exchanged on the platform. C.O. had previously reported other adult accounts sending her photos of male genitals, but Snapchat allegedly "did nothing to block these individuals from sending her inappropriate photographs."

Among other complaints, C.O.'s lawsuit alleged that Snapchat's algorithm for its "Quick Add" feature was the problem. It allegedly recklessly works to detect when adult accounts are seeking to connect with young girls and, by design, sends more young girls their way -- continually directing sexual predators toward vulnerable targets. Snapchat is allegedly aware of these abuses and, therefore, should be held liable for harm caused to C.O., the lawsuit argued. Although C.O.'s case raised difficult questions, Judge Barbara Bellis ultimately agreed with Snapchat that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act barred all claims and shielded Snap because "the allegations of this case fall squarely within the ambit of the immunity afforded to" platforms publishing third-party content. According to Bellis, C.O.'s family had "clearly alleged" that Snap had failed to design its recommendations systems to block young girls from receiving messages from sexual predators. Specifically, Section 230 immunity shields Snap from liability in this case because Bellis considered the messages exchanged to be third-party content. Snapchat designing its recommendation systems to deliver content is a protected activity, Bellis ruled. Despite a seemingly conflicting ruling in Los Angeles that found that "Section 230 didn't protect Snapchat from liability for allegedly connecting teens with drug dealers," Bellis didn't appear to consider it persuasive. She did, however, critique Section 230's broad application, suggesting courts are limited without legislative changes, despite the morally challenging nature of some cases.

Princeton professor and technology law researcher Jonathan Mayer has been appointed as the Justice Department's first chief AI officer. The Verge reports: Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that appointing an AI officer was important for the department to "keep pace with rapidly evolving scientific and technological developments." One of Mayer's responsibilities will be to build a team of technical and policy experts around cybersecurity and AI. Mayer will also serve as the department's chief science and technology advisor and help recruit tech talent.

Mayer held technology roles in government before his new Justice Department gig, according to his bio in Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. He served as an adviser on technology law and policy to Vice President Kamala Harris when she was still in the Senate. Mayer was also the chief technologist in the enforcement office of the Federal Communications Commission.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN Business: AT&T's network went down for many of its customers across the United States Thursday morning, leaving customers unable to place calls, text or access the internet. By a little after 3 pm ET, roughly 11 hours after reports of the outage first emerged, the company said that it had restored service to all impacted customers. "We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them," AT&T said in a statement. The company added that it is "taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future."

The Federal Communications Commission confirmed Thursday afternoon that it is investigating the outage. The White House says federal agencies are in touch with AT&T about network outages but that it doesn't have all the answers yet on what exactly led to the interruptions. Although Verizon and T-Mobile customers reported some network outages, too, they appeared far less widespread. T-Mobile and Verizon said their networks were unaffected by AT&T's service outage and customers reporting outages may have been unable to reach customers who use AT&T.

Thursday morning, more than 74,000 AT&T customers reported outages on digital-service tracking site DownDetector, with service disruptions beginning around 4 am ET. That's not a comprehensive number: It tracks only self-reported outages. Reports had been rising steadily throughout the morning but leveled off in the 9 am ET hour. By 12:30 pm ET, the DownDetector data showed some 25,000 AT&T customers still reporting outages. By 2 pm ET, fewer than 5,000 customers were still reporting issues. Earlier Thursday, AT&T acknowledged that it had a widespread outage but did not provide a reason for the system failure. By late morning, AT&T said most of its network was back online, and it confirmed Thursday afternoon that service was fully restored. According to an anonymous industry source, the issue for the outage appears to be related to how cellular services hand off calls from one network to the next, a process known as peering. They said there's no indication that it was the result of a cyberattack or other malicious activity.

The FCC confirmed that it is investigating the incident. "We are aware of the reported wireless outages, and our Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is actively investigating," the FCC said in a statement posted on X. "We are in touch with AT&T and public safety authorities, including FirstNet, as well as other providers."

A spacecraft containing pharmaceutical drugs that were grown on orbit has finally returned to Earth today after more than eight months in space. From a report: Varda Space Industries' in-space manufacturing capsule, called Winnebago-1, landed in the Utah desert at around 4:40 p.m. EST. Inside the capsule are crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat HIV/AIDS. It marks a successful conclusion of Varda's first experimental mission to grow pharmaceuticals on orbit, as well as the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on U.S. soil, ever. The capsule will now be sent back to Varda's facilities in Los Angeles for analysis, and the vials of ritonavir will be shipped to a research company called Improved Pharma for post-flight characterization, Varda said in a statement. The company will also be sharing all the data collected through the mission with the Air Force and NASA, per existing agreements with those agencies.

The first-of-its-kind reentry and landing is also a major win for Rocket Lab, which partnered with Varda on the mission. Rocket Lab hosted Varda's manufacturing capsule inside its Photon satellite bus; through the course of the mission, Photon provided power, communications, attitude control and other essential operations. At the mission's conclusion, the bus executed a series of maneuvers and de-orbit burns that put the miniature drug lab on the proper reentry trajectory. The final engine burn was executed shortly after 4 p.m. EST. Photon burned up in the atmosphere as planned while the capsule, protected by a heat shield and with the aid of a parachute, continued to land.

In a warning issued Wednesday, the FDA said it has not authorized or approved any smartwatch or smart ring to measure blood glucose levels. The use of these devices can lead to inaccurate measurements and errors in managing diabetes that can be life-threatening, the agency said. From a report: These unauthorized devices are different from smartwatch apps that display data from FDA-approved continuous glucose monitoring devices that pierce the skin. The FDA did not name specific brands but said the sellers of these unauthorized smartwatches and smart rings advertise using âoenon-invasive techniquesâ to measure blood glucose without requiring people to prick their fingers or pierce their skin. However, these devices do not directly test blood glucose levels, the agency said, urging consumers to avoid buying them for that purpose.

The agency also advised health care providers to discuss the risk of using unauthorized blood glucose measuring devices with their patients and to help them select an appropriate authorized device for their needs. âoeThe agency is working to ensure that manufacturers, distributors, and sellers do not illegally market unauthorized smartwatches or smart rings that claim to measure blood glucose levels,â the FDA said in the statement. âoeIf your medical care depends on accurate blood glucose measurements, talk to your health care provider about an appropriate FDA-authorized device for your needs." .

Apple is rolling out an upgrade to its iMessage texting platform to defend against future encryption-breaking technologies. From a report: The new protocol, known as PQ3, is another sign that U.S. tech firms are bracing for a potential future breakthrough in quantum computing that could make current methods of protecting users' communications obsolete. "More than simply replacing an existing algorithm with a new one, we rebuilt the iMessage cryptographic protocol from the ground up," an Apple blog post published on Wednesday reads. "It will fully replace the existing protocol within all supported conversations this year."

The Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker says its encryption algorithms are state-of-the-art and that it has found no evidence so far of a successful attack on them. Still, government officials and scientists are concerned that the advent of quantum computers, advanced machines that tap in to the properties of subatomic particles, could suddenly and dramatically weaken those protections. Late last year, a Reuters investigation explored how the United States and China are racing to prepare for that moment, dubbed "Q-Day," both by pouring money into quantum research and by investing in new encryption standards known as post-quantum cryptography. Washington and Beijing have traded allegations of intercepting massive amounts of encrypted data in preparation for Q-Day, an approach sometimes dubbed "catch now, crack later." More on Apple's security blog.

Internet service provider Cox Communications has been cleared of a $1 billion jury verdict in favor of several major record labels that had accused it of failing to curb user piracy. "The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, ruled on Tuesday that the amount of damages was not justified and that a federal district court should hold a new trial to determine the appropriate amount," reports Reuters. From the report: A Virginia jury in 2019 found Cox, the largest unit of privately-owned Cox Enterprises, liable for its customers' violations of over 10,000 copyrights belonging to labels including Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group. The labels' attorney Matt Oppenheim said that the appeals court "affirmed the jury's verdict that Cox is a willful infringer," and that "the evidence of Cox's complete disregard for copyright law and copyright owners has not changed." "A second jury will get to hear that same compelling evidence, and we fully expect it will render a significant verdict," Oppenheim said.

More than 50 labels teamed up to sue Cox in 2018, in what was seen as a test of the obligations of internet service providers (ISPs) to thwart piracy. The labels accused Cox of failing to address thousands of infringement notices, cut off access for repeat infringers, or take reasonable measures to deter pirates. Atlanta-based Cox had told the 4th Circuit that upholding the verdict would force ISPs to boot households or businesses based on "isolated and potentially inaccurate allegations," or require intrusive oversight of customers' internet usage. Other ISPs, including Charter Communications, Frontier Communications and Astound Broadband, formerly RCN, have also been sued by the record labels.

Encrypted messaging app Signal has launched new feature allowing users to conceal their phone numbers and instead use usernames, in a move aimed at boosting privacy protections long sought by cybersecurity experts and privacy advocates. From a report: Rather than give your phone number to other Signal contacts as the identifier they use to begin a conversation with you, in other words, you can now choose to be discoverable via a chosen handle -- or even to prevent anyone who does have your phone number from finding you on Signal.

The use of phone numbers has long been perhaps the most persistent criticism of Signal's design. These new privacy protections finally offer a fix, says Meredith Whittaker, Signal's executive director. "We want to build a communications app that everyone in the world can easily use to connect with anyone else privately. That 'privately' is really in bold, underlined, in italics," Whittaker tells WIRED. "So we're extremely sympathetic to people who might be using Signal in high-risk environments who say, 'The phone number is really sensitive information, and I don't feel comfortable having that disseminated broadly.'"

Cox, the cable television and internet service provider, convinced a U.S. appeals court to throw out a $1 billion jury verdict in favor of several major record labels that had accused it of failing to curb user piracy, setting the stage for a new trial on the matter. From a report: The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia ruled on Tuesday that the amount of damages was not justified and that a federal district court should hold a new trial to determine the appropriate amount. A Virginia jury in 2019 found Cox, the largest unit of privately owned Cox Enterprises, liable for its customers' violations of over 10,000 copyrights belonging to labels including Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group. More than 50 labels teamed up to sue Cox in 2018, in what was seen as a test of the obligations of internet service providers (ISPs) to thwart piracy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that weakening end-to-end encryption disproportionately risks undermining human rights. The international court's decision could potentially disrupt the European Commission's proposed plans to require email and messaging service providers to create backdoors that would allow law enforcement to easily decrypt users' messages. This ruling came after Russia's intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSS), began requiring Telegram to share users' encrypted messages to deter "terrorism-related activities" in 2017, ECHR's ruling said. [...] In the end, the ECHR concluded that the Telegram user's rights had been violated, partly due to privacy advocates and international reports that corroborated Telegram's position that complying with the FSB's disclosure order would force changes impacting all its users.

The "confidentiality of communications is an essential element of the right to respect for private life and correspondence," the ECHR's ruling said. Thus, requiring messages to be decrypted by law enforcement "cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society." [...] "Weakening encryption by creating backdoors would apparently make it technically possible to perform routine, general, and indiscriminate surveillance of personal electronic communications," the ECHR's ruling said. "Backdoors may also be exploited by criminal networks and would seriously compromise the security of all users' electronic communications. The Court takes note of the dangers of restricting encryption described by many experts in the field."

Martin Husovec, a law professor who helped to draft EISI's testimony, told Ars that EISI is "obviously pleased that the Court has recognized the value of encryption and agreed with us that state-imposed weakening of encryption is a form of indiscriminate surveillance because it affects everyone's privacy." [...] EISI's Husovec told Ars that ECHR's ruling is "indeed very important," because "it clearly signals to the EU legislature that weakening encryption is a huge problem and that the states must explore alternatives." If the Court of Justice of the European Union endorses this ruling, which Husovec said is likely, the consequences for the EU's legislation proposing scanning messages to stop illegal content like CSAM from spreading "could be significant," Husovec told Ars. During negotiations this spring, lawmakers may have to make "major concessions" to ensure the proposed rule isn't invalidated in light of the ECHR ruling, Husovec told Ars. Europol and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) said in a statement: "Solutions that intentionally weaken technical protection mechanisms to support law enforcement will intrinsically weaken the protection against criminals as well, which makes an easy solution impossible."

Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Apple's response to Beeper Mini -- the app that briefly brought iMessage to Android. From a report: During the State of the Net Conference on Monday, Carr said the FCC should look into whether Apple's move "complies with the FCC's Part 14 rules" about accommodating users with disabilities.

Beeper Mini launched last year, allowing Android users to gain access to iMessage features, including blue message bubbles and the ability to send high-quality photos and videos. However, Apple quickly blocked Beeper Mini users and continued to shut down attempts to make the app work, leading its developers to eventually just give up. The FCC's Part 14 rules lay out requirements that "advanced communications service," such as iMessage, must follow to ensure they're accessible.