Not Acceptable

In the wake of today’s terror bombings in Brussels, Facebook has turned on its safety check feature again, David Meyer reports for Fortune. It was also activated in the after attacks in Nigeria and Turkey, he notes.

Here’s a useful Twitter list of Brussels officials, curated by Rob Owers, the head of news, government and regional partnerships at Twitter UK.

Crypto-wars, continued: The FBI now says it may have a way to unlock the iPhone at the center of its dispute with Apple, and so it has asked the court to stay its earlier order requiring Apple to do so, David Kravets reports for ArsTechnica.

Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice explains in The Guardian why black Americans have so much at stake in the fight for digital privacy and security, and why several Black Lives Matter activists have joined in Apple’s fight against the FBI.

Tech and politics: Republican voters in today’s Utah primary will be able to vote online, John Breeden reports for NextGov. He writes: “How the process will work in Utah is that registered Republican voters can visit a portal and validate themselves using personal information like their name, address and date of birth. A unique PIN is then sent directly to their cellphone or email address, which can be used later to cast their ballot….On the backend, each vote is digitally signed and checked to make sure it corresponds to a registered voter, so no invalid votes can ever be added to the system. Each individual vote is encrypted and given a checksum value so later it can be confirmed that nothing was changed, deleted or otherwise manipulated.”

Trump watch: Daniel Drezner reads through Donald Trump’s interview with the Washington Post editorial board so you don’t have to.

OK, you do have to read this part, where he dodges a question about using nuclear weapons against ISIS but talks for 550 words about the size of his hands.

This is civic tech: Planner and strategist Noel Franus makes a good, if obvious, point about civic innovation: it’s not just for technologists. He writes: “It’s time for a new role in our urban kaleidoscope: Executive Creative Director. The kind with money or teeth, ideally both. This is the empowered intrepreneur with free range to seek opportunities for innovation and tap into nimble, cross-disciplinary teams to jam on solutions and move quickly to prototype new futures for public services and placemaking.”

US CTO Megan Smith cites the updated Cluetrain Manifesto in her conversation with Brian Fung of the Washington Post about how we need to handle online harassment. She says, “Getting to the point where we together collectively care enough about solving this, where people raise the priority of solving it, is really important. One in five women will be attacked or assaulted on campus, one in 20 men. This is not acceptable. And yet it’s happening in the digital space, too. And it’s debilitating. So we have to really evolve our culture and it’s a heavy lift, because it’s not a digital-only thing; it’s analog meets digital.”