With help from Leah Nylen, John Hendel and Cristiano Lima
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— A new kind of medical surveillance: Some hospitals are using Apple Watches to measure psychological strain on health care workers during the pandemic. Our new Future Pulse newsletter explores this issue and others at the intersection of health and tech.
— Can a privacy notice be an easy read? Facebook is out with a paper outlining a “people-centered” revamp to its privacy approach, and one of the company’s chief privacy officers said regulators should consider offering incentives for companies that adopt better designs.
— Foray into the NDAA: House lawmakers are angling to tack several tech and telecom priorities onto the National Defense Authorization Act as proposed amendments — including around banning TikTok on federal devices and the 5G fight over Ligado.
GREETINGS, TECHLINGS: IT’S WEDNESDAY. WELCOME TO MORNING TECH! I’m your host, Alexandra Levine.
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‘WARRIOR WATCH’: SURVEILLING THE FRONTLINES — As Covid-19 sees a resurgence across the country, some hospitals bracing for a second wave are starting to use wearable technology to monitor health care workers’ heart rates, sleep habits and physical activity for signs of stress and burnout. The suicide in April of a top E.R. doctor at a Manhattan hospital inundated with coronavirus patients drew fresh attention to how those caring for others were being cared for.
“A lot of us are able to cope with it, but if you keep adding stressors one after the other, it’s going to get to you at the end, right?” Dr. Zahi Fayad, one of the leads behind the so-called “Warrior Watch” program in New York, told me this week. “We need to know, and we need to make sure we can do something about it.”
— Warrior Watch: The program, newly launched by the Mount Sinai COVID Informatics Center with a grant from Microsoft, is using Apple Watches to monitor hundreds of doctors, nurses and Sinai support staff. Dr. Rob Hirten, a gastroenterologist who is leading the initiative with Fayad, explained that Sinai had long been exploring how wearable devices could be used to predict chronic disease. When the pandemic hit, he and others across the Sinai community began thinking of ways the technology could be repurposed for the Covid era.
— The project has two main goals: To track the psychological impact of the pandemic on Sinai employees, and predict infections in the workforce before symptoms appear. The Apple Watch is helping the doctors gather some of the physiologic data, like heart rate variability, needed to make these determinations. (They’ve also created an app, where participants respond to basic questions about how they’re feeling, to supplement the Apple data.)
— What they’re seeing: Statisticians are now analyzing the first six weeks of Warrior Watch data — collected since early June from now more than 200 people — and plan to release their first set of findings soon. “We are very concerned about the long-term sequelae related to stress and the mental aspect from this exposure and from this disease,” Fayad said, referring to conditions that could be caused by this level of stress.
— We’ll be tracking this issue, and others at the intersection of health and technology, in POLITICO’s new Future Pulse newsletter, which launched today. Future Pulse is being written by a team of POLITICO reporters with years of experience covering health care and technology from Washington to Silicon Valley, and will pull in the best of our reporting from Europe, state capitols and beyond. Join us! Sign up here to subscribe.
FACEBOOK ON REIMAGINING PRIVACY DESIGNS — How often do we click through lengthy, overwhelming privacy notices without giving them a close read? Not infrequently, and Facebook is out with a new privacy paper on ways the site hopes to address that. Businesses should focus more on the user experience when designing notices about how data is collected, stored and used, the social media giant says in the paper, advocating for a “people-centered design” to privacy. In an interview with POLITICO, Facebook’s vice president for public policy and chief privacy officer, Erin Egan, who authored the paper, said regulators should also consider incentivizing the approach, by offering safe harbors for companies that use people-centered design, for example.
— Traditional privacy policies “may not be the best way to help people understand,” said Egan. Even newer efforts to comply with Europe’s tougher privacy laws — such as cookie banners, pop-ups when a website uses cookies — often lead users to click through without making an informed choice. “Companies want to do right by people, but often there’s not a lot of clarity of what it means to be ‘clear and conspicuous,’” she said, referring to the common legal requirement for privacy notices.
— Facebook intends to use the new paper to spark discussions with state and federal regulators in the U.S., as well as countries like India and Brazil, where new data privacy laws have been adopted.
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THE TECH PRIORITIES LAWMAKERS WANT TO HITCH TO THE NDAA — As the House prepares for a floor vote on its National Defense Authorization Act next week, lawmakers are trying to attach several tech and telecom priorities into the bill as proposed amendments. There are more than 700 filed, and while it’s not clear yet which may receive floor consideration, they provide a peek into what some lawmakers are seeking.
— Banning TikTok on federal devices, and more tech proposals: Federal employees would be banned from downloading the app on government-issued devices under an amendment from Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.). Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) is proposing two separate plans requiring new reports to Congress on the risks posed by so-called deepfakes and to prohibit the Defense Department from using funds to acquire artificial intelligence tech that hasn’t been vetted for bias. And Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) wants the State Department to report to Congress on social media use by terror groups.
— Keep the 5G fight over Ligado Networks out of it entirely?: Although Armed Services members stuck a narrow anti-Ligado provision into the base bill, E&C members Reps. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.) are proposing to nix that section entirely.
— Other lawmakers are trying to sneak 5G legislation in: Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) has proposed his Promoting Secure 5G bill as an amendment, and Reps. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) are proposing to hitch their House-passed H.R. 3763, which addresses 5G global standards bodies, as an amendment. Some GOP amendments (see here and here) aim to curb China’s telecom influence. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) is pushing language that would require a government report on wireless cybersecurity.
TODAY: HOUSE E&C VOTES ON 5G, TELECOM — Brace yourself for a lengthy full committee markup in the House Energy and Commerce panel, kicking off at 11 a.m. and featuring several telecom measures of note. One major bill: the bipartisan H.R. 6624, which would slate money for research and development into opening 5G network building in ways that could help the U.S. compete against China, as FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly pointed out on Twitter Tuesday.
— Other measures address telecom matters like emergency alerts, government management of the airwaves, the FCC’s disaster reporting system and the FCC designation of a national suicide hotline shortcode (watch for some proposed amendments). Oh, and a bill aimed at safeguarding the T-band wireless airwaves that public safety agencies rely on now (FCC commissioners recently voted to advance a proceeding to sell this T-band spectrum, which is required in a 2012 law; commissioners have broad misgivings about the merits of this law, however, and are pleading with Congress to nix the mandate, which today’s bill would do).
— Today’s markup should help set the stage for what may go into a coronavirus relief package, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), who chairs E&C’s telecom subcommittee, said during an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators last weekend. “We need to get something done before the August recess,” Doyle said. He expressed hope that negotiations happen now to allow the chambers to advance a deal prior to that break early next month.
MEANWHILE: HOUSE APPROPRIATORS VOTE ON FCC, FTC FUNDING — But first, at 9 a.m., the full House Appropriations Committee will vote on its package containing annual funding for the FCC and FTC, both of which are set to receive a bump in appropriations as well as more than $60 billion in emergency broadband cash for the former. In an attached report, lawmakers also included stern directives on broadband mapping and a request that the FCC looks into airwaves interference on the southern border.
— Republicans expressed discontent over the size of the package last week during the subcommittee passage, singling out the infrastructure money. “It’s not clear why this staggering level of spending has been added to this annual appropriations bill,” said Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), top Republican on the full committee.
— Also buried in the House Appropriations bill: Language that would prohibit the FCC and FTC from taking any action “consistent with Executive Order 13925 of May 28, 2020” — a reference to President Trump’s recent social media executive order targeting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (that even includes the agency collecting public feedback).
PARLER’S NEW POSTURE ON IMPOSTORS — John Matze, the CEO of alternative social media site Parler, announced this week that the platform will enforce its rule against impostor accounts “only when the person being impersonated requests it.” The decision comes as a wave of both real GOP lawmakers and impostors masquerading as them flock to the site in protest of allegations that major platforms stifle conservative viewpoints, as Cristiano reported. The trend has made it a challenge to discern who’s real and who’s fake among Parler’s new crop of recruits in Washington, despite the site verifying some high-profile accounts.
— But the thing is: Several of the congressional offices who confirmed they did not create accounts purporting to be their official pages on Parler were initially unaware of the impostors. And under Parler’s new standard, the onus will now fall on them to ask the platform to take down fakes. That could lead to more confusion over what’s real or phony on the site.
The FCC announced plans to renew its Disability Advisory Committee and is soliciting applications for members through August 13. Chairman Ajit Pai also appointed members to serve on the Hospital Robocall Protection Group.
Playing favorites?: Search for a video clip using Google, and the search engine will promote results from its own subsidiary, YouTube, over content from its rivals, WSJ reports.
ICYMI: The U.K. will cut Huawei from its 5G rollout, POLITICO reports, “a move that brings Britain into closer alignment with the United States on security and relations with China.” (And more here, from POLITICO, on Boris Johnson following Washington’s lead on Huawei.)
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RNC, DNC recs: New America’s Open Technology Institute submitted comments to the Republican and Democratic National Committees for consideration as the parties develop their 2020 platforms. The recommendations include restoring net neutrality, strengthening tech antitrust enforcement, keeping strong encryption in place, and reforming government surveillance laws.
Sign of the times?: Zoom is now filing regulatory comments with the FCC, its first apparent input at the government agency. The videoconferencing platform simply cautions the Commission against applying regulatory requirements.
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TTYL.