Startups call for pro-innovation immigration policy
When his original grading and evaluation platform wasn’t getting any bites in the world of higher education, Ali Aldubaisi and his co-founder, Ali "AJ" Aldjaei, ended up pivoting to the training of law enforcement. Today, Kaiden AI is used in police academies across the country to train recruits on how to de-escalate high-pressure scenarios. We sat down with Ali to discuss his software, selling to government organizations, and founding a startup in northern Virginia.
A federal program to boost broadband — a necessary component of startup founders and users ability to access the startup ecosystem — in states across the country is facing headwinds and delays as policymakers move the goalposts and risk making progress on closing the digital divide.
Timing the sowing and watering of crops is as important as ever in agriculture. Jessi Korinek and her co-founders at Nave Analytics are developing a software that uses satellite data to help farmers cut down on water costs for irrigation. We sat down with Jessi to discuss her product, the impact of tariffs on the agricultural industry, and the challenges she faced in receiving federal research and development (R&D) grants.
The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (or EARN IT) Act from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) addresses a critical issue—stopping online child exploitation, which is a goal that startups share. But, as currently drafted, the bill threatens to unnecessarily disrupt the regulatory framework that has helped the Internet flourish and potentially ban the use of strong encryption technologies that protect user safety.
This report examines several recent developments in the policy debate over encryption, including the debate over building backdoors to encrypted content for law enforcement, as well as reports about law enforcement’s current capabilities and impediments to accessing data in criminal investigations, and growing concerns on how encryption may affect efforts to combat the spread of child exploitation material on the Internet.
Consumer privacy has been on the minds of companies, regulators, and consumers in the wake of high-profile privacy missteps by major Internet companies and sweeping new privacy rules in Europe. While the U.S. approaches consumer privacy law on a sector-by-sector basis, states are using the momentum around the consumer privacy debate to pass their own varying — and sometimes conflicting — laws.
Congress is currently at work on a federal privacy bill that will hopefully strengthen consumer privacy while correcting some of the problems with state privacy laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act. While this is a good sign for the startup community, some policymakers are pushing for a provision in the draft federal privacy bill that could open the floodgates to expensive, bad-faith lawsuits against startups.
The Big Story: GDPR’s biggest hit yet. The French privacy watchdog has issued a $57 million fine against Google, the largest fine yet under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, the sweeping privacy rules that went into effect in the European Union last year.
The Big Story: Privacy Looms Large in Washington.
This week, the European Parliament approved sweeping changes to its copyright regime, including Article 13, which would effectively require all websites hosting user generated content to adopt expensive and ineffective content filters. The proposal also creates a new IP right for publishers that requires websites to pay publishers if the website creates a link to the publisher’s content.
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