Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Trump administration has altered sanctions against a Russian agency that the US intelligence community believes hacked US political groups on Putin’s orders.
A Russian agency sanctioned for hacking US political groups won’t be quite so restricted now.
The sanctions, issued by then-President Barack Obama in December , barred US businesses from dealing with the Russian Federal Security Service, but it turns out the US has at least one reason to keep doing business with the agency — getting permission to export electronics and other information technology to Russia.
On Thursday, the US Department of the Treasury issued a license ( PDF ) letting US exporters obtain permits from the Russian Federal Security Service for “the importation, distribution, or use of information technology products in the Russian Federation. ”
The change to the sanctions set off disagreement in Washington over whether President Donald Trump was going easy on Russia. Trump has equivocated on whether he’ll maintain these sanctions, which targeted eight other entities in addition to the Federal Security Service, and other sanctions that Obama issued in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the change wasn’t a sign of Trump rolling back the sanctions against Russia.
“It’s a fairly common practice for the Treasury Department, after sanctions are put in place, to go back and look at whether there needs to be specific carve-outs for different industries or products and services that need to be going back and forth,” Spicer told reporters at a press briefing Thursday .
But US Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, said the change would help Russia. “Easing these sanctions allows Russia to sharpen its knives and import tools from the United States to hack us again,” Swalwell said in a statement. “Congress must act swiftly to re-impose these sanctions so that those who attack America know there’s a price to pay. ”
The Treasury Department didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether the license permits US companies to sell products directly to the Russian Federal Security Service. Experts told Politico that the agency, said by cybersecurity experts and the US intelligence community to have hacked the Democratic National Committee and the Pentagon, would not be the purchaser of US electronics and other IT products under the revised sanctions.

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Microsoft is one of several tech companies working on a letter speaking out against the immigration ban.
Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Alphabet can finally agree on something.
The tech giants joined forces in drafting a letter to US President Donald Trump’s administration, speaking out against Friday’s controversial executive order banning immigration from seven countries, Recode reported Wednesday, also publishing a draft of the letter.
“While security and vetting procedures can and should always be subject to continuous evaluation and improvement, a blanket suspension is not the right approach,” the draft letter says.
The effort is the latest to voice opposition to Trump’s executive order , which among other things restricts for 90 days immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia.
The order sparked protests around the country, many of which took place at airports in cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Uber, Stripe and other companies are also in on the letter.
Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Alphabet and Stripe didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment as to when the letter will be sent. Facebook declined to comment. The White House didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment regarding the tech community’s concerns over the ban.
The draft of the letter discusses the need to attract tech talent from around the world, not just the US, and it also expresses concern for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program , which temporarily protects from deportation people brought to the US as children.
This isn’t the first time tech companies have objected to the ban. Google held a protest at its Mountain View, California, campus. Microsoft, Amazon and Expedia are supporting a lawsuit by the state of Washington against the ban. More than 2,000 New York tech industry members, from companies like Spotify, Etsy, Yext, and Meetup, have signed a letter warning against the economic effects of turning away immigrants.

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Demonstrators in Chicago on Monday protest President Trump’s immigration ban.
In the wake of President Donald Trump ‘s immigration ban, Microsoft has made a formal plea to the administration to make exceptions for workers and students.
The tech giant is not backing down from its stand against the ban. But in a letter Thursday to the secretaries of homeland security and state, Microsoft asked them to create an exception process, allowing “responsible known travelers with pressing needs” to enter the US.
Microsoft said people with employer-sponsored work visas or student visas in good standing at an accredited university should be exempt from the ban.
“These are not people trying to avoid detection,” according to the five-page letter by Brad Smith, Microsoft’s chief legal counsel. “Rather, these individuals are ‘known quantities’ in their communities: their character, personalities, conduct, and behavior is well recognized and understood by their employers, colleagues, friends, and neighbors. ”
The Homeland Security Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump signed an executive order Friday temporarily banning refugees from anywhere in the world and visitors from seven largely Muslim countries. Protesters crowded airports across the country over the weekend, with demonstrations continuing this week. The backlash from the tech industry was swift too, with some executives labeling the ban as bigotry and calling it “un-American. ” Microsoft is reportedly joining other tech giants — including Google, Apple and Facebook — in drafting a letter to Trump opposing the ban.
“We know that we do not have all the answers; in publishing this proposal, we hope that others will improve upon our ideas,” Smith wrote in a company blog post Thursday. “Nor does this request attempt to address all the important immigration questions currently before the nation. But we believe there is a need and opportunity, amidst the broader debate, for immediate action under the executive order to help real people address pressing needs. ”
You can read the letter in full below.

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Apple may have a solution for short battery life on the Apple Watch. Put the battery in the band.
An Apple patent application dated today illustrates a battery on the strap of a wearable device, presumably the Apple Watch. The proposed patent also shows that watch’s circular face, which is a different shape than the Apple Watch’s usual rectangular display.
The Apple patent shows a battery in the watch’s band (103), as well as a circular face (101).
Battery life has been a struggle for the Apple Watch, which is a top contender in the wearables market and broke the product’s sales records during the 2016 holiday shopping season. Apple says the watch has an 18-hour battery life, but that still means you’ll have to charge it every night if you don’t want a dead watch the next day. Extending battery life could help the watch compete against rivals with more stamina.
It isn’t clear if including the battery in the band would add significant bulk to the watch’s strap. It also isn’t clear how many batteries the watch would have and if the battery would be embedded into the band itself.
As for that round face, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Apple want to patent a watch design with a circular display. Other smartwatches, like the Samsung Gear S2 and the Huawei Watch , are made with circular displays, so if Apple ever gives the Apple Watch a round face-lift, it would join rivals in looking more like a traditional wristwatch.
Although the patent was published today, it was filed in July 2015 (around the same time the other Apple Watch patent was filed). Apple has a track record for filing patents of all sorts (like one for this paper bag ), and this application here is no guarantee that we’ll see the final product.
That being said, an Apple Watch — or any smartwatch — with better battery life is something I think we can all get behind.
Apple did not respond to CNET’s request for comment.
(Via AppleInsider )

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Snapchat’s going public and we finally get a peek at some of the company’s secrets.
It’s official: Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, is going public.
First, the basics of the IPO. The company is said to be valued at $20 billion to $25 billion, and is looking to raise $3 billion in the offering. It will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol SNAP.
The 5-year-old company, founded by a college dropout, made its long-awaited IPO filing public on Thursday, in what’s likely to be the biggest market debut for a tech company in years.
Snapchat parent company and Spectacles maker Snap is getting ready to view the world through IPO-colored glasses.
The Los Angeles-based social network, wildly popular among teens and young adults, has been one of tech’s unlikeliest success stories in years. Started by Evan Spiegel, a 26-year-old who dropped out of Stanford University, the app was once dismissed as a sexting app.
But it’s clearly much more than that. Power users include Kim Kardashian, DJ Kahled and John Mayer. Instead of posts piling on top of each other like they do on your Facebook timeline, pictures and videos posted to Snapchat disappear after a set amount of time. It ushered in a form of casual social networking that’s something of an antithesis to Mark Zuckerberg’s nearly 2 billion-strong behemoth.
“In the way that the flashing cursor became the starting point for most products on desktop computers, we believe that the camera screen will be the starting point for most products on smartphones,” the company wrote in the filing. “This means that we are willing to take risks in an attempt to create innovative and different camera products that are better able to reflect and improve our life experiences. ”
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel
While it’s the most high-profile public debut the tech industry has seen lately, the amount of money Snap wants to raise pales in comparison to tech’s last big IPO, from the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. That offering, in 2014, raised almost $22 billion. Facebook comes in second, after raising $16 billion in 2012.
Snap also said it now has 158 million daily users. The company made $404.5 million in sales in 2016, way up from $58.7 in 2015.
In the last few months, Spiegel & Co. have also broadened their vision beyond the flagship social network. Last September, they introduced Spectacles, flamboyant $130 smart sunglasses equipped with a video camera that are designed to make posting to Snapchat a snap (pun intended).
In its filing, Snap said Spectacles have not yet “generated significant revenue” for the company. The rollout of the product has so far been limited.
But though Snapchat’s enigmatic allure with teens has been its secret weapon until now, if Snap wants to grow as a public company, it has to expand beyond its young, though demographically enviable, existing user base. Snapchat says on its website that it reaches 41 percent of all 18- to 34-year-olds in the United States. And nearly 70 percent of all 18- to 24-year-olds in the US use the app, according to ComScore.

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