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The Morning Download: Justice Department Renews Encryption Debate With Tech
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Good morning, CIOs. U.S. Attorney General William Barr in an open letter has asked Facebook to hold off on plans to add encryption throughout its messaging services until it figures out a way to provide government access.
Although directed at the social media giant, the effort reignites a long-running dispute between technology companies and law enforcement over encrypted communications, The Wall Street Journal reports. Below, a recap of where the players stand.
Tech's longstanding view. Technology companies argue that any method that provides government access to encryption systems undermines privacy and could ultimately be misused by hackers or spy agencies to steal data from consumers.
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The governments's changing view. The Justice Department in the past highlighted how encryption stymied national security and terrorism investigations. Under Mr. Barr, the Justice Department has sought instead to emphasize the trouble law enforcement faces in pursuing child-exploitation cases.
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Johnson & Johnson makes prescription drugs, medical devices, consumer goods such as Band-Aids and baby shampoo, and other products. PHOTO: MARK RALSTON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Bayer exec joins Johnson & Johnson as CIO. Jim Swanson, formerly a technology executive at Bayer’s crop-science division, has joined Johnson & Johnson as chief information officer. He succeeds Stuart McGuigan, who was CIO at J&J for seven years and now runs information technology at the State Department. CIO Journal's Sara Castellanos has more.
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Salesforce Tower in downtown San Francisco in February. PHOTO: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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Download extra: the ABCs of IT M&A for CIOs
The enterprise-software sector is seeing a record-high number of merger and acquisition deals, with a combined value this year alone of $71 billion, according to a report this week by London-based M&A consulting firm Hampleton Partners. What’s driving all this deal making? CIO Journal's Angus Loten put the question to Chris Murphy, managing director at ThoughtWorks, a global software consultancy. Here are edited excerpts of his comments:
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The opportunities for market capture presented by new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, have led to a race between well-funded and ambitious digital-native businesses on the one hand, and large strategic and legacy players defending their existing dominance on the other.
They are all locked in a battle for the same limited talent, and there is quite simply not enough time to grow it organically without the risk of ceding opportunity to the competition. This is driving companies to look at acquisitions as a way to gain access to key talent, new intellectual property and other reusable assets that can help accelerate time to market.
Acquisitions by enterprise IT service providers have mostly been focused on bolstering their digital credibility through a combination of design agency acquisition, digital consultancy acquisition, and more recently cloud and artificial intelligence or machine learning capabilities and platforms.
Acquisitions by the IT departments of traditional business enterprises have been focused on industry relevant accelerators, such as the acquisition of FinTechs or HealthTechs, which can allow them to both overtake potential competition, while also providing an opportunity to capture their technology talent. How long they can hold on to that talent post-acquisition is often a key question once retention periods have worn off.
The challenge for CIOs overseeing corporate budgets is to be ambitious in their expansion of access to technical talent and relevant accelerators so as not to fall behind, while not falling victim to overvalued hype.
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Chris Murphy, ThoughtWorks
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Enrique Lores is the incoming chief executive of HP Inc. PHOTO: PIERRE SUU/GETTY IMAGES FOR HP
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HP talks job cuts. Under pressure from a decline in the printing-supplies business, HP plans to eliminate 7,000 to 9,000 jobs from its roughly 55,000 workforce over the next three years. The cuts, once completed, should yield annual savings of about $1 billion, the company said at its annual securities-analyst meeting. (WSJ)
Europe goes after social-media posts. The European Union’s top court said Thursday that a judge in one of the bloc’s member states can order social-media companies to scan for and remove posts that are identical—or in some cases merely “equivalent”—to content that has been ruled illegal. The court also said that nothing in EU law stops judges from ordering social-media companies to apply such orders globally. (WSJ)
Google announces job training initiative. The company will provide training opportunities in tech job skills over the next five years, CEO Sundar Pinchai said Thursday. (CNBC)
Le cloud. France’s finance minister said Paris has called upon local favorites Dassault Systemes and cloud company OVH to provide a cloud counterweight to the U.S.-based giants. The call for a French cloud comes partly in response to a 2018 U.S. law that lets any U.S. agency access European corporate data stored on the data centers of U.S. companies. Bruno Le Maire says the two companies will deliver first results in December. (Reuters)
Related: U.S., U.K. sign data-sharing deal. Under the agreement U.S. companies will be required to provide British law enforcement bodies expedited access to electronic communications sent by terrorists, gangs and white-collar criminals. The same access will be required of U.K. companies holding data sought by U.S. investigators. (FT)
Digitally evolved. People are now typing on their mobile devices almost as fast as they type on keyboards, according to a study by the University of Cambridge. (Motherboard)
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Everything Else You Need to Know
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The Trump administration sought to use a potential meeting between Trump and the Ukrainian president as leverage to press Kyiv to investigate Joe Biden, text messages show, as Mr. Trump called on China to also investigate his political rival. (WSJ)
MGM Resorts agreed to pay up to $800 million to victims of the 2017 massacre outside its Mandalay Bay Casino & Resort in Las Vegas. (WSJ)
The Fed is expected next week to complete some of the most significant changes to bank rules since President Trump took office, setting up a new way of deciding which large banks are hit with its toughest regulations. (WSJ)
The rate of twins born in the U.S. dropped 4% from 2014 to 2018 after roughly three decades of increases, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (WSJ)
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