The Switchboard: NSA reformers lose one of their biggest allies in Senate

Published every weekday, the Switchboard is your morning helping of hand-picked stories from the Switch team.

With Udalls defeat, NSA reformers lose an ally on the inside. "With Colorado Sen. Mark Udall's defeat Tuesday night, the Senate will lose one of its most vocal, most active and most powerfully positioned advocates for dialing back the intelligence community's surveillance powers," the Switch's Nancy Scola writes.

14 years after Bush v. Gore, we still cant get voting tech right."A handful of jurisdictions nationwide reported various computer-related problems that hampered some voters as Americans went to the polls on Tuesday," writes Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica. Electronic voting issues occurred in Virginia, Indiana, North Carolina, Michigan, Connecticut and elsewhere.

Net neutrality was the biggest tech issue of the year. But nobody campaigned on it."Across the country, tech hasn't really emerged as a central campaign issue," reports the Switch's Brian Fung. "One of the few candidates to make it a part of his platform was Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who coined the term "net neutrality" and he lost his bid for New York lieutenant governor in a nationally publicized primary."

Government requests for Facebook user data are up 24% in six months.Facebook says it has seen a sharp uptick in government requests for user data. "Between January and June, governments across the globe made 34,946 requests for data, according to the Menlo Park, Calif., companys latest transparency report," reports Sarah Parvini at the Los Angeles Times. "The United States was responsible for 15,433 of those requests, spanning 23,667 accounts."

Uber and its partners are pushing drivers into subprime loans."Two 'partners' in Uber's vehicle financing program are under federal investigation, but Uber hasn't slowed its aggressive marketing campaign to get drivers with bad credit to sign up for loans," reports Nitasha Tiku at Valleywag.

Andrea Peterson covers technology policy for The Washington Post, with an emphasis on cybersecurity, consumer privacy, transparency, surveillance and open government.

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The Switchboard: NSA reformers lose one of their biggest allies in Senate

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