Consumer privacy may turn out to be the loser in a bill introduced by Republican Senator Jeff Flake that seeks to curtail the Federal Communications Commission's authority to regulate online privacy. Senator Flake's bill, which was co-signed by 25 senators and introduced in Congress yesterday, seeks to revert responsibility for regulation of online privacy back to the Federal Trade Commission, an agency tasked with overseeing anti-competitive practices. This would result in an annulment of rules introduced by former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler last year to put checks on the sharing of consumer data by internet service providers with third-party agencies.

The FTC was responsible for overseeing online privacy until the previous administration transferred responsibility to the FCC in 2015. In a recent Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journal, Flake characterized the Obama administration's move as a "power grab." He wrote, "It is unnecessary, confusing, and adds yet another innovation-stifling regulation to the internet," adding that the move set the stage for a "bureaucratic turf war" between the FCC and FTC. "[It is a] two-track system under which the FCC applies its own set of rules for ISPs while the FTC monitors the rest of the internet ecosystem," according to the senator. Flake's resolution uses the Congressional Review Act, a 1996 law that enables Congress to repeal recently passed regulations. (See also: FCC Backs Off Cable, Telecom Proposals.)

Last year, Wheeler proposed a series of rules to strengthen privacy protection for broadband customers. The rules required internet providers to seek customer permission before sharing "sensitive" information, such as browsing history, email content and medical information, with third-party agencies. The rules left the door open for ISPs to anonymize and share the data with service providers, and they were approved by the FCC in October. If they remain in place, the privacy protection rules will negatively affect the merger between AT&T Inc. (T) and Time Warner Inc. (TWX). This is because a compelling rationale for the merger was the prospect of combining consumer data gleaned from broadband connections for targeted advertising. (See also: AT&T-Time Warner Deal Won't Face a Review by FCC.)

Under its new chairman Ajit Pai, the FCC has promised a "light touch" to regulation. In a recent address to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Pai reiterated as much and said that the agency was on track to return to the approach that existed before the 2015 ruling.

Revealed: how US billionaire helped to back Brexit

Robert Mercer, who bankrolled Donald Trump, played key role with ‘sinister’ advice on using Facebook data. The US billionaire who helped bankroll Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency played a key role in the campaign for Britain to leave the EU, the Observer has learned.

It has emerged that Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund billionaire, who helped to finance the Trump campaign and who was revealed this weekend as one of the owners of the rightwing Breitbart News Network, is a long-time friend of Nigel Farage. He directed his data analytics firm to provide expert advice to the Leave campaign on how to target swing voters via Facebook – a donation of services that was not declared to the electoral commission.

Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of a British company, SCL Group, which has 25 years’ experience in military disinformation campaigns and “election management”, claims to use cutting-edge technology to build intimate psychometric profiles of voters to find and target their emotional triggers. Trump’s team paid the firm more than $6m (£4.8m) to target swing voters, and it has now emerged that Mercer also introduced the firm – in which he has a major stake – to Farage.

The communications director of Leave.eu, Andy Wigmore, told the Observer that the longstanding friendship between Nigel Farage and the Mercer family led Mercer to offer his help – free – to the Brexit campaign because of their shared goals. Wigmore said that he introduced Farage and Leave.eu to Cambridge Analytica: “They were happy to help. Because Nigel is a good friend of the Mercers. And Mercer introduced them to us. He said, ‘Here’s this company we think may be useful to you’. What they were trying to do in the US and what we were trying to do had massive parallels. We shared a lot of information.”

The strategy involved harvesting data from people’s Facebook and other social media profiles and then using machine learning to “spread” through their networks. Wigmore admitted the technology and the level of information it gathered from people was “creepy”. He said the campaign used this information, combined with artificial intelligence, to decide who to target with highly individualised advertisements and had built a database of more than a million people, based on advice Cambridge Analytica supplied. Two weeks ago Arron Banks, Leave.eu’s founder, stated in a series of tweets that Gerry Gunster (Leave.eu’s pollster) and Cambridge Analytica with “world class” AI had helped them gain “unprecedented levels of engagement”. “AI won it for Leave,” he said.

By law, all donations of services-in-kind worth more than £7,500 must be reported to the electoral commission. A spokesman said that no donation from the company or Mercer to Leave.eu had been filed.

US hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, a long-time friend of Nigel Farage, is now known to be one of the owners of the Breitbart News Network.

Brittany Kaiser, an employee of Cambridge Analytica/SCL, appeared on a panel at a Leave.eu press conference to explain the technology behind the campaign. And in documents Leave.eu filed with the commission, it reported that Cambridge Analytica was “a strategic partner”.The Observer reported in December that Cambridge Analytica had worked on the Leave campaign and received a letter from the campaign to say this was untrue. It later wrote to say: “It is a US company based in the US. It hasn’t worked in British politics.” It declined to comment last week on whether it had donated services to Leave.eu.

Leave.eu declined to say why it had not declared any donation of services to the electoral commission.

Mercer – and his daughter Rebekah – are emerging as key figures in the ascendancy of Trump and, as the Observer details today, the strategic disruption of the mainstream media. A brilliant computer scientist who did pioneering work at IBM in AI, Mercer made billions with Renaissance Technologies, a hedge-fund that specialises in automated trading. As well as financing Trump’s campaign, he encouraged Trump to take on two key advisers – Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway – and on Saturday the Washington Post revealed him as one of the owners of Breitbart. Bannon’s role within the Trump administration is being increasingly examined but, until now, Mercer’s connection has escaped the same sort of close scrutiny – particularly with regard to the media.

Breitbart, which has become the leading platform for the alt-right, is only one of a series of investments that aim to change the media landscape and political views not just in the US but also in Britain. A British version of Breitbart was launched in 2014, Bannon told the New York Times, explicitly to try to influence the upcoming general election. He and Farage have been close friends since at least 2012 and the site has been an important cheerleader for Ukip, with its editor, Raheem Kassam, at one point working as chief adviser to Farage.

Until now, however, it was not known that Mercer had explicitly tried to influence the outcome of the referendum. Drawing on Cambridge Analytica’s advice, Leave.eu built up a huge database of supporters creating detailed profiles of their lives through open-source data it harvested via Facebook. The campaign then sent thousands of different versions of advertisements to people depending on what it had learned of their personalities.

A leading expert on the impact of technology on elections called the relevation “extremely disturbing and quite sinister”. Martin Moore, of King’s College London, said that “undisclosed support-in-kind is extremely troubling. It undermines the whole basis of our electoral system, that we should have a level playing field”.

But details of how people were being targeted with this technology raised more serious questions, he said. “We have no idea what people were being shown or not, which makes it frankly sinister. Maybe it wasn’t, but we have no way of knowing. There is no possibility of public scrutiny. I find this extremely worrying and disturbing.”

Adobe, Bungie, IAC and HP join amicus brief against Trump’s immigration order

Thirty one companies have joined an amicus brief supporting the state of Washington in its lawsuit against the Trump administration. The suit is in opposition to an executive order that would temporarily halt the issuance of visas to citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries.

Nearly 100 companies signed the brief when it was filed over the weekend, with a number of major firms missing from the list. Among the companies joining the brief today were Adobe, Bungie, Evernote, HP, Inc., IAC, Slack, SpaceX, Tesla, and Zenefits.

Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all".

But the prime minister promised to push for the "greatest possible" access to the single market following Brexit.

In a long-awaited speech, she also announced Parliament would get a vote on the final deal agreed between the UK and the European Union.
And Mrs May promised an end to the UK's "vast contributions" to the EU.

The prime minister used the speech to announce the UK's 12 priorities for Brexit negotiations:

Maintaining the common travel area between the UK and Irish Republic
Tariff-free trade with the EU
A customs agreement with the EU
Continued "practical" sharing of intelligence and policing information
"Control" of immigration rights for EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU

Mrs May said there would not be a "blow-by-blow" account of negotiations, set to get under way after Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is invoked by the end of March. It was not her intention to "undermine" the EU or the single market, she added.

But she warned the EU against a "punitive" reaction to Brexit, as it would mean "calamitous self-harm for the countries of Europe and it would not be the act of a friend".

She said: "This agreement should allow for the freest possible trade in goods and services between Britain and the EU's member states.
"It should give British companies the maximum possible freedom to trade with and operate within European markets and let European businesses do the same in Britain. But I want to be clear: what I am proposing cannot mean membership of the single market."

Mrs May added: "It would, to all intents and purposes mean not leaving the EU at all. That is why both sides in the referendum campaign made it clear that a vote to leave the EU would be a vote to leave the single market."

The single market allows the free movement of goods, services and workers between its members.
The government had previously revealed few details about what it wants to secure from the Brexit talks. Labour has urged Mrs May to push for a "deal that works for trade".

EU leaders have said the UK cannot "cherry pick" access to the single market while restricting the free movement of people.

Addressing an audience including foreign ambassadors in central London, Mrs May said the UK had "voted for a brighter future for our country" and would become "stronger, fairer, more united" after Brexit. She said the UK's history was "profoundly internationalist" and would remain so.

Ahead of the speech, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the business community in her country to back her stance on Brexit, saying: "I'm asking you as representatives of the business world to act together with us, because should it become apparent that you can get full access to the single market even if you can choose certain things then we risk that every country cherry picks. That's why politics and business need to act together."

Conservative MP Dominic Raab, who campaigned for a Leave vote, said it was "highly likely" the UK would leave the formal structures of the single market and the customs union, and it was vital for Mrs May to argue a "positive case" for Brexit.

But Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: "You can call this Brexit clean, red, white and blue, or whatever you want. But this doesn't disguise the fact that it will be a destructive, hard Brexit and the consequences will be felt by millions of people through higher prices, greater instability and rising fuel costs."

Rupert Harrison, former chief of staff to ex-Chancellor George Osborne and previous chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the UK Treasury, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was "inevitable" the prime minister would aim to leave the single market.

Switzerland has won a case at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) obliging Muslim parents to send their children to mixed swimming lessons.

It said authorities were justified in giving precedence to enforcing "the full school curriculum" and the children's "successful integration" into society.The ECHR acknowledged that religious freedom was being interfered with. But judges said it did not amount to a violation.

The case was brought by two Swiss nationals, of Turkish origin, who refused to send their teenage daughters to the compulsory mixed lessons in the city of Basel. Education officials, however, said that exemptions were available only for girls who had reached the age of puberty - which the girls had not reached at the time.

In 2010, after a long-running dispute, the parents were ordered to pay a combined fine of 1,400 Swiss Francs ($1,380, £1,136) "for acting in breach of their parental duty". They argued that such treatment was a violation of article nine of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

In a statement, the ECHR said the refusal to exempt the girls had interfered with the right to freedom of religion. But it also said the law involved was designed to "protect foreign pupils from any form of social exclusion" and Switzerland was free to design its education system according to its own needs and traditions. Schools, it said, played an important role in social integration, and exemptions from some lessons are "justified only in very exceptional circumstances".

In 2016, officials in Basel suspended the citizenship process for the family of two teenage Muslim brothers who refused to shake hands with female teachers. Switzerland has also applied the law to other cases - a man of Bosnian origin was fined last year for refusing to allow his daughter to take part in swimming lessons during school hours, among other activities. Germany also battled with the issue of mixed swimming lessons in 2013, when a judge ruled that a 13-year-old girl must attend - but allowed the wearing of a burkini. In France, in 2009, a woman was banned from swimming in a public pool in her burkini. That would be followed in 2016 by a controversial official ban on the garment in public spaces - which was eventually overturned by French courts. France, Belgium, and the Netherlands all have bans on Muslim veils in public, to varying degrees."

Accordingly, the children's interest in a full education, thus facilitating their successful social integration according to local customs and mores, prevailed over the parents' wish to have their children exempted from mixed swimming lessons," the court said. The court also noted that "very flexible arrangements" had been offered as a compromise, including allowing the girls to wear burkinis during lessons rather than traditional swimwear, and allowing them to change clothes with no boys in the room.

It's not the focus of this paper, but the team does offer a hypothesis:

"[The] supporting physics model used to derive a force based on operating conditions in the test article can be categorised as a nonlocal hidden-variable theory, or pilot-wave theory for short."

Pilot-wave theory is a slightly controversial interpretation of quantum mechanics.

It's pretty complicated stuff, but basically the currently accepted Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics states that particles do not have defined locations until they are observed.

Pilot-wave theory, on the other hand, suggests that particles do have precise positions at all times, but in order for this to be the case, the world must also be strange in other ways – which is why many physicists have dismissed the idea.

But in recent years, the pilot-wave theory has been increasing in popularity, and the NASA team suggests that it could help explain how the EM Drive produces thrust without appearing to propel anything in the other direction.

"If a medium is capable of supporting acoustic oscillations, this means that the internal constituents were capable of interacting and exchanging momentum," the team writes.

"If the vacuum is indeed mutable and degradable as was explored, then it might be possible to do/extract work on/from the vacuum, and thereby be possible to push off of the quantum vacuum and preserve the laws of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum."