Associated Press

States have started writing their own legislation to protect broadband privacy after Congress voted to repeal regulations that would have required internet providers to obtain their customers' consent before collecting their personal information. On April 3, the Montana Senate approved a budget provision that would bar internet providers like Charter and Comcast from being awarded state contracts if they collect data from their customers without consent. That legislation is similar to a measure that is moving through the Minnesota Legislature.

Montana Sen Ryan Osmundson (R-Buffalo) said he introduced the measure as a response to Congress' vote to repeal the Obama-era Federal Communications Commission rules, which have not yet taken effect. "It has become apparent to us that they have the ability to use your information in ways to market to you, and, quite frankly, sell that information," Osmundson said of internet providers. "We're basically saying they cannot do business with the state if they're collecting personal information without the consent of the individual."

As more class assignments and homework migrate online, long bus rides have generally counted as lost time in preparing for the next school day. But Google said it hopes to help expand the use of Wi-Fi on school buses in rural areas around the country.

Google has funded 28 Wi-Fi-equipped school buses in South Carolina's rural Berkeley County. Google also has given the school district 1,700 Chromebooks, the stripped-down laptops on which many schoolchildren now do their class and homework. Google is also looking for ways to make the high-tech buses useful outside of school hours, working with the school district and community on places the buses can go once the school day is done to bring connectivity elsewhere, such as a community center or fellowship hall.

Trumpism is slowly taking hold on your phone and computer, as the Federal Communications Commission starts chipping away at hard-fought protections on privacy and competition. These measures, put in place before President Donald Trump took office, had upset the phone and cable industries.

The new regime says consumers win if businesses face less regulation and have more incentives to invest. But consumer advocates worry these changes give broadband providers that own media businesses more power to favor their own services, among other things. The changes are small and easily overlooked. But they're the first shots in what could turn into a full-fledged war over Obama-era "network neutrality" rules, which were designed to keep phone and cable giants from favoring their own internet services and apps. Overturning these rules would also likely reverse a privacy measure meant to keep broadband providers from using and selling customer data without permission. "Death by a thousand cuts is a constantly overused cliche, but that's sort of what they're aiming for right now," said Matt Wood, the policy director of consumer group Free Press, referring to the Republicans now in power at the FCC.

Before most people are out of bed, President Donald Trump is watching cable news. With Twitter app at the ready, the man who condemns the media as "the enemy of the people" may be the most voracious consumer of news in modern presidential history.

President Trump usually rises before 6 a.m. and first watches TV in the residence before later moving to a small dining room in the West Wing. A short time later, he's given a stack of newspapers — including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Washington Post and, long his favorite, the New York Post — as well as pile of printed articles from other sources including conservative online outlets like Breitbart News. The TVs stay on all day. The President often checks in at lunch and again in the evening, when he retires to the residence, cellphone in hand. It is a central paradox of the Trump presidency. Despite his fervent media criticism, President Trump is a faithful newspaper reader who enjoys jousting with reporters, an avid cable TV news viewer who frequently live-tweets what he's watching, and a reader of websites that have been illuminated by his presidential spotlight, showcasing the at-times conspiratorial corners of the internet.

WikiLeaks will work with technology companies to help defend them against the CIA's hacking tools, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said. The approach sets up a potential conflict between Silicon Valley firms eager to protect their products and an agency stung by the radical transparency group's disclosures.

In an online news conference, Assange acknowledged that some companies had asked for more details about the CIA cyberespionage toolkit whose existence he purportedly revealed in a massive leak published March 7. “We have decided to work with them, to give them some exclusive access to some of the technical details we have, so that fixes can be pushed out,” Assange said. Once tech firms had patched their products, he said, he would release the full data of the hacking tools to the public.

Yahoo is taking a $350-million hit on its previously announced $4.8-billion sale to Verizon Communications in a concession for security lapses that exposed personal information stored in more than 1 billion Yahoo user accounts. The revised agreement announced Feb 21 eases investor worries that Verizon would demand a discount of at least $1 billion or cancel the deal entirely. The hacking bombshells, disclosed after the two companies agreed on a sale, represent the two biggest security breaches in Internet history. The security breaches raised concerns that people might decrease their usage of Yahoo email and other digital services that Verizon is buying. A smaller audience makes Yahoo's services less valuable because it reduces the opportunities to show ads — the main reason that Verizon struck the deal seven months ago.

Yahoo Inc. is warning users of potentially malicious activity on their accounts between 2015 and 2016. It's the latest development in the Internet company's investigation of a mega-breach that exposed 1 billion users' data a few years ago. Yahoo confirmed that it was notifying users that their accounts had potentially been compromised, but it declined to say how many people were affected.

In a statement, the company tied some of the potential compromises to what it has described as the “state-sponsored actor” responsible for the theft of private data from more than 1 billion user accounts in 2013 and 2014. The stolen data included email addresses, birth dates and answers to security questions. The catastrophic breach raised questions about Yahoo's security and destabilized the company's deal to sell its email service, websites and mobile applications to Verizon Communications Inc.

President Donald Trump managed to avoid questions about hot-button issues facing the White House — such as the future of national security adviser Michael Flynn and a North Korean missile launch — in a news conference where selected reporters asked non-challenging questions and other, shouted-out inquiries were ignored. The president selected his questioners: Scott Thuman from Washington's local ABC News affiliate and Kaitlan Collins of The Daily Caller, a conservative website founded in 2010 by Fox News Channel anchor Tucker Carlson. "Personnel questions are interesting, but our readers want substance. They don't want Washington bull----. They want to know where the next war is going to be," Collins said.

Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) repeated his belief in the importance of the free press as tensions between the media and the administration of President Donald Trump remain high. The former congressman and 2016 presidential contender declined to directly take on President Trump, who he refused to endorse, campaign with or vote for in 2016, while speaking to editors and publishers convened by the Ohio Newspaper Association. But Gov Kasich said he wanted to see the industry survive and thrive. "I'd like to stand for all of you, for all of you who have real content, for all of you who've decided in a really crazy, changing world that your point of view, your editorials, your writings, your articles are critically important," Gov Kasich said.

The families of victims of terror attacks in Paris, Brussels and Israel are blaming social media companies including Facebook and Twitter for facilitating communications among terrorists. Twitter says it has suspended hundreds of thousands of user accounts in the past 18 months for threatening or promoting acts of terrorism. But that isn't enough, say lawyers for the families of terror victims, including a brother and sister killed in 2016's bomb attacks in Brussels and an American college student who died in Paris.

In a string of lawsuits filed in New York, they say they want Twitter and Facebook to pay damages for failing to stop violent extremists from using their platforms to recruit followers, intimidate enemies and raise money. "If you or I tried to send money to Hamas, you wouldn't get around the block," said Robert Tolchin, a lawyer for the families of Brussels attack victims Alexander and Sascha Pinczowski and Paris massacre victim Nohemi Gonzalez. "Banks are required to check before they do any wire transfers. Why is it any different to provide a communications platform to Hamas, to ISIS?"