Axios

Uber told a federal judge on Thursday that it plans to file a motion to move the lawsuit from Google's self-driving car unit, Waymo, into private arbitration. Uber argues that because Waymo's claims center around its former employee's actions, the case should move to arbitration per Google's employment contract.

In late February, Waymo filed a lawsuit against Uber alleging that Anthony Levandowski, a founder of a startup Uber acquired last year, stole intellectual property before he left the company and Uber is now using that technology itself. The company has also asked for an injunction of Uber's self-driving car project. Uber has called the lawsuit "baseless."

What to watch: Uber is expected to respond to Waymo's original lawsuit by March 27.

A bill in the New York State Assembly would require search engines and online publishers to remove "'inaccurate', 'irrelevant', 'inadequate', or 'excessive'" content on individuals within 30 days of a removal request.

Recall, Europe's highest court ruled in favor of the "right to be forgotten" in 2014. It aimed to alleviate privacy concerns of an individual whose past financial troubles had been represented poorly online. The court ruled that search engines should place rights to privacy above the right of the public to find information.

Why this matters: The loser in the U.S., according to The Washington Post's Eugene Volokh, is freedom of speech under the First Amendment:

...the deeper problem with the bill is simply that it aims to censor what people say, under a broad, vague test based on what the government thinks the public should or shouldn't be discussing.

To put it in context, Volokh writes, "the bill contains no exception even for material of genuine historical interest; after all, such speech would have to be removed if it was 'no longer material to current public debate.'"

Plus, as Google's CEO Larry Page put it, this forces search engines like Google to arbitrarily decide what counts as private information and what doesn't.

Update: Google declined to comment.

A federal judge in San Jose has rejected Google's proposed settlement with non-Gmail users who claim Google illegally scanned their emails to Gmail users to target them with advertising, Reuters reports.

In a decision released Wednesday night, District Judge Lucy Koh said the disclosure requirements were inadequate and the settlement did not include technical changes Google would make to comply with privacy laws.

Background: Google tentatively agreed to change the way it collects data from Gmail in December, agreeing to stop collecting advertising-specific data before an email is accessible in a user's inbox, according the The Verge. The voluntary settlement came after non-Gmail users, who haven't agreed to have their emails scanned under Google's Terms of Service, brought a class-action lawsuit against Google for violating privacy laws.

Yahoo settled a similar lawsuit last year and agreed to delay ad-scanning. Koh noted that Yahoo's settlement required more disclosures than Google's proposed settlement.

What's next: The issue is a growing one for companies who run ad-supported email services. The plaintiffs plan to push on with the litigation against Google.

Consumer privacy questions briefly took center stage at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing about drones, as Democratic Sen. Ed Markey hammered away at the idea that the increasingly-common devices could be used by corporations to collect sensitive data:

"And what happens if there's drones that are gathering through facial recognition kind of who's shopping on Main Street and selling that to advertisers. Are there any protections? What if some commercial entities are gathering information about kids playing in the back yard, and then using it for nefarious purposes?"

The backstory: Markey's a privacy hawk who backs a new bill that would have the FAA get information from drone users about their data collection practices before granting them a license. Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune said he hadn't yet had a chance to review the bill but indicated the issue was on his radar.

Google is finally opening up its key services to kids under the age of 13. Access is coming via a new Android app called Family Link, which also gives parents some control over the content kids can access on their own Android devices.

Parents can limit the amount of time a child spends on an app, or block it altogether. They can also set the kid's phone or tablet to shut down at a certain time, or after a certain amount of screen time.

A limited beta version of Family Link will be released on March 15 with the full service will be launched in the U.S. later this year.

Mashable has more details here.

Playing catch-up to Amazon: Amazon has been in the lead here with its Kindle Fire which comes with parental features built-in, while Microsoft has a Kid's Corner feature in its Windows phone. But Apple and Google have been late to the party. It will be interesting to see if Apple follows suit.

In a phone interview with Bloomberg Wednesday, the head of Google's South Africa office Luke McKend said the company is laying around 621 miles of fiber optic cable in Uganda, a move similar to what Facebook announced two weeks ago.

Fiber optic cable will help Google expand its existing efforts in the country — like internet training — that have been deterred by slow transmission rates and high data costs for the skyrocketing number of Africans who own smartphones. McKend says Google is already working on laying down a similar amount of cable in Ghana, and that the effort is part of a larger push into Africa that includes providing cheaper access to Android smartphones and training African workers in digital fluency.

Why it matters: Both Google and Facebook, facing saturated advertising markets in most of the word — particularly the U.S. — are looking to expand their reach into the African market and more importantly, get data from the roughly 30% of Africans that have access to the Internet. The first company to capture a sizable amount of digital audience data in Africa will be the first to be able to monetize usage in the continent.

The Department of Justice is planning to announce Wednesday the indictments of two Russian spies and two criminal hackers responsible for the massive Yahoo data breach in 2014, reports the Washington Post, marking the first time U.S. criminal cyber charges were ever brought against Russian government officials.

The charges — which officials said include hacking, wire fraud, trade secret theft and economic espionage — target two members of the Russian intelligence agency FSB, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, as well as two hackers hired by the Russians, Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov.

The San Francisco FBI office has scheduled a news conference for later Wednesday

Reminder: In the 2014 data breach, the FSB dug up information on 500 million Yahoo accounts for intelligence purposes, targeting journalists, dissidents and U.S. government officials.

This story was originally published at 6:35a.m. and updated to specify the details of the charges and that the hackers are Russian.

President Trump's first tweet today was to accuse David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer-prize winning reporter who obtained some of the president's 2005 tax returns (which were verified by the White House), of "FAKE NEWS":

Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, "went to his mailbox" and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017

His second tweet turned to the rapper Snoop Dogg, who pointed a toy gun at a clown resembling Trump in a recently released video:

Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017

Seemingly hundreds of Twitter accounts have been hacked and now display pro-Turkey propaganda.

Affected accounts, including Forbes and Duke University, have posted swastikas and tweets supporting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The hack appears to be in relation to Erdoğan's recent feud with Germany and the Netherlands.

Twitter Counter, a Netherlands-based analytics tool which was targeted by a similar attack in November, appears to be the entry point for the hack, though it's still unclear. The company is investigating the matter and has already "taken measures to contain such abuse of our users' accounts, assuming it is indeed done using our system — both blocking all ability to post tweets using our system and changing our Twitter app key," a spokesperson told Axios.

On its end, Twitter says it's aware of the issue and has "quickly located the source which was limited to a third party app" and has removed its permissions immediately, seemingly referring to Twitter Counter.

For the last couple of years, Adobe has been focused on shifting its business model so that customers pay monthly for products like Photoshop and Illustrator.

Now it's the products themselves that need to shift to adjust to a world of artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

"This is not a market that is very forgiving of companies that don't continually ask what is around the corner," CTO Abhay Parasnis told Axios.

Here's what Parasnis says is in Adobe's future:

• making tasks like photo and video editing as simple as dictating what you want done
• tapping machine intelligence to make better sense of vast image libraries
• creating programs that bring professional illustration into three dimensions for virtual reality

Ford Motors has made a strategic investment in Autonomic, a stealth Silicon Valley startup founded last summer, Axios has learned. According to an SEC filing (which does not mention Ford), Autonomic has raised nearly $11 million, but may add a bit more.

Team: Autonomic's founders were previously at Pivotal, a software development consulting firm in which Ford invested last year. CEO Sundeep Madra and COO Amar Varma co-founded Xtreme Labs, which built and designed mobile apps for its clients and sold to Pivotal 2013.

The company: Not much is known about what Autonomic is building, except that it's working on software related to self-driving cars. That information came from Chamath Palihapitiya, a partner with VC firm Social Capital, who said on stage at a conference that his firm recently co-invested with Ford on a new company, although he did not identify Autonomic. Palihapitiya added that the deal was structured so that the automaker has been given the right to buy the company down the road. "And we'll see if they'll exercise that right," said Palihapitiya.

Self-driving race: Like other automakers, Ford is highly invested in building self-driving car technology. The Detroit giant is developing its own in-house and has invested in startups like sensor maker Velodyne and Civil Maps, which is working on high-definition 3D maps. It also recently acquired a majority stake in Argo, a company focused on artificial intelligence software self-driving cars.

Neither Ford, Social Capital nor Autonomic have returned requests for comment.

An earlier version of the story incorrectly stated that Ford and Uber have a partnership. It has been updated.

The key to advancing self-driving car technology and getting consumers more comfortable with it is to team up ride-sharing services, said Hilary Cain, Toyota's director of technology and innovation policy, at SXSW Thursday.

Toyota announced last year it was investing in Uber and starting a car-leasing program for Uber drivers. Toyota also said it planned to collaborate with Uber on other technology products and research efforts. It was speculated at the time that the company's interest extended to autonomous cars.

"We need to partner up in the ride-sharing space," she said on a panel in Austin. "There's lots of speculation that ride sharing will be the first place you see this technology come to market."

Teaming up with a ride-sharing service spreads the cost of developing the cars across more users, and it can expose skeptical consumers to the idea of self-driving cars, she said.

Why it matters: There's been a lot of pairing up of car makers and ride-sharing firms over the past year. GM invested $500 million in Lyft and announced plans to build a network of self-driving cars, and Volkswagon made a $300 million investment in Gett. While Toyota's investment was small comparatively— less than $100 million — it appears to be a key part of its self-driving car strategy.