Tag: internet

Trump renews call for internet tax, making a veiled threat against Amazon

President Donald Trump repeated an earlier call for an internet tax, in a thinly veiled shot at Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post.

“The internet — they’re going to have to start paying sales tax because it’s very unfair what’s happening to our retailers all over the country that are put out of business,” Trump said Wednesday.

Trump also reiterated concerns about Amazon’s effect on the U.S. Postal Service as it struggles to keep up with online orders.

The comments mirror tweets from the president in December that named the e-commerce giant.

“There’s always been a fear for players like an Amazon or a Google that something like this could actually get through,” Daniel Ives, head of technology research at GBH Insights, told CNBC. “We believe it’s more noise than a real threat.”

There’s been speculation that the president’s shots at Amazon are aimed at Bezos, whose newspaper has published stories critical of the president.

Amazon already collects sales tax on products it sells directly to consumers, but has faced challenges from states over its policy of allowing third-party vendors to charge varying levels of sales tax.

In June South Carolina filed a complaint against the online retailer, and Amazon agreed in November to take on additional third-party tax burden in its home state of Washington.
The issue has garnered more attention as Amazon continues to take a bigger share of overall retail sales. Amazon celebrated its “biggest holiday” shopping season at the end of last year.

There is an underlying movement among traditional brick-and-mortar retailers to more heavily tax Amazon, Ives said, so the discussion is “something you have to keep an eye on.”

But the likelihood that an internet tax would pass is small, he said.
“Listen they’ve [Amazon] significantly changed the retail landscape across the world,” Ives said. “I think it’s more of the same where they’re getting in the crosshairs.”
Trump spoke before media and members of the administration Wednesday evening during the signing of the Interdict Act, which seeks to reduce drug smuggling through the purchase of opioid sensors.
Amazon did not immediately return a CNBC request for comment.

[CNBC]

Donald Trump Says Internet Must Be ‘Cut Off’ to Stop Further Terror Attacks

Donald Trump says that the internet must be “cut off” to stop further terror attacks.

Responding to the terror incident at Parsons Green Tube station, he said that the internet was a terrorist “recruiting tool”.

“Loser terrorists must be dealt with in a much tougher manner,” he wrote. “The internet is their main recruitment tool which we must cut off & use better!”

The tweet came after another message in which he appeared to suggest that the attacker had been known to police, despite Scotland Yard not having said so. “These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard,” he posted in a preceding message.

A following message said that he would look to increase his muslim ban into the United States. “The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific-but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!” he posted.

It is far from the first time that Mr Trump has asked for the internet to be shut down because of terror. In December, he said he would ask Bill Gates to “close up” the internet to stop it being used by Isis.

That call actually came during the same event where he launched his plans for a “complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the US, the policy that later became the travel ban.

“We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet,” Trump said then. “We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening.

“We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people.”

A week later, he posted more details about his plan. He said during a Presidential debate that he would get people to “penetrate” the internet and shut down the parts that were being used for radicalisation.

[The Independent]

President Trump Just Signed Off on Killing Your Internet Privacy Protections

President Trump signed into law a resolution that repealed protections requiring Internet service providers to get your permission before collecting and sharing data. These protections — which had not yet gone into effect — were approved by the Federal Communications Commission in the final days of the Obama administration.

The providers have data on your web browsing history, app usage and geo-location.

Providers would also have been required to notify customers about the types of information collected and shared.

Trump’s move doesn’t come as a surprise: the White House said last week that repealing the protections will create an “equal playing field” between Internet service providers and tech companies

Opponents of the privacy rules argued they would place an undue burden on broadband providers while leaving large Internet companies like Facebook (FB, Tech30) and Google (GOOG) free to collect user data without asking permission.

“President Trump and Congress have appropriately invalidated one part of the Obama-era plan for regulating the Internet,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who was appointed by Trump, said in a statement. “Those flawed privacy rules, which never went into effect, were designed to benefit one group of favored companies, not online consumers.”

But rather than apply similar protections to more businesses, the resolution passed by Republican-controlled Congress scraps the rules entirely.

Democrats and privacy advocates have argued this approach effectively hands over the customer’s personal information to the highest bidder.

(h/t CNN)