Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords Exposed to Facebook Employees

Security lapse the latest privacy issue for the social-media giant

The company identified the issue as part of a routine security review in January.

Source: Jeff Horwitz and Robert McMillan

Facebook Inc. for years stored hundreds of millions of user passwords in a format that was accessible to its employees, in yet another privacy snafu for the social-media giant.

The incident disclosed by the company Thursday involved a wide swath of its users, though Facebook said no passwords were exposed externally, and it hasn’t found evidence of the information being abused.

Facebook estimated it will notify “hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users,” the company’s vice president of engineering, security and privacy Pedro Canahuati said in a blog post Thursday.

Facebook Lite is a stripped-down version of the product for use by people without access to reliable internet service.

The security lapse appears similar to others that have occurred at tech companies, including Twitter Inc., which asked 331 million users to change their passwords in May after discovering that one of its internal systems logged users’ unencrypted passwords.

Because so many people reuse their passwords, they have emerged as a major security problem for tech companies. Password databases have become a prime target for cyber thieves, and hackers will often try a user’s stolen password to break into new sites. Most companies, including Facebook, monitor the internet for publicly released databases of passwords.

“Passwords are extremely sensitive data,” said Deirdre K. Mulligan, an associate professor at University of California Berkeley, who specializes on data privacy. “If passwords are being stored in the clear, accessible by thousands of employees, one can only imagine how poorly other data is being managed,” she said.

Facebook’s data-security lapse attracted more attention than similar stumbles elsewhere given persistent criticism of how the company collects, stores and deploys its users’ data.

It also contradicts at least some of the company’s previous assurances on the matter. In a 2014 post about password security, Facebook’s then-security engineer Chris Long wrote that “no one here has your plain text password.”

Facebook identified that it did log plain-text passwords as part of a security review in January, Mr. Canahuati said.

During the review, Facebook has been looking for ways it stores some information, such as access tokens, and have fixed problems as they were discovered, he said. While Facebook will notify users whose passwords were stored insecurely “as a precaution,” there is no current plan to require users to change their passwords.

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Goodbye to the Internet: Interference by Governments Is Already Here

This article was originally published by Philip M. Giraldi at Strategic Culture Foundation

There is a saying attributed to the French banker Nathan Rothschild that “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” Conservative opinion in the United States has long suspected that Rothschild was right and there have been frequent calls to audit the Federal Reserve Bank based on the presumption that it has not always acted in support of the actual interests of the American people. That such an assessment is almost certainly correct might be presumed based on the 2008 economic crash in which the government bailed out the banks, which had through their malfeasance caused the disaster, and left individual Americans who had lost everything to face the consequences.

Be that as it may, if there were a modern version of the Rothschild comment it might go something like this: “Give me control of the internet and no one will ever more know what is true.” The internet, which was originally conceived of as a platform for the free interchange of information and opinions, is instead inexorably becoming a managed medium that is increasingly controlled by corporate and government interests. Those interests are in no way answerable to the vast majority of the consumers who actually use the sites in a reasonable and non-threatening fashion to communicate and share different points of view.

The United States Congress started the regulation ball rolling when it summoned the chief executives of the leading social media sites in the wake of the 2016 election. It sought explanations regarding why and how the Russians had allegedly been able to interfere in the election through the use of fraudulent accounts to spread information that might have influenced some voters. In spite of the sound and fury, however, all Congress succeeded in doing was demonstrating that the case against Moscow was flimsy at best while at the same creating a rationale for an increased role in censoring the internet backed by the threat of government regulation.

Given that background, the recent shootings at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and at mosques in Christchurch New Zealand have inevitably produced strident demands that something must be done about the internet, with the presumption that the media both encouraged and enabled the attacks by the gunmen, demented individuals who were immediately labeled as “white supremacists.” One critic puts it this way, “Let’s be clear, social media is the lifeblood of the far-right. The fact that a terror attack was livestreamed should tell us that this is a unique form for violence made for the digital era. The infrastructure of social media giants is not merely ancillary to the operations of terrorists — it is central to it [and] social media giants assume a huge responsibility to prevent and stop hate speech proliferating on the internet. It’s clear the internet giants cannot manage this alone; we urgently need a renewed conversation on internet regulation… It is time for counter-terrorism specialists to move into the offices of social media giants.”

It’s the wrong thing to do, in part because intelligence and police services already spend a great deal of time monitoring chat on the internet. And the premise that most terrorists who use the social media can be characterized as the enemy du jour “white supremacists” is also patently untrue. Using the national security argument to place knuckle dragging “counter-terrorism specialists” in private sector offices would be the last thing that anyone would reasonably want to do. If one were to turn the internet into a government regulated service it would mean that what comes out at the other end would be something like propaganda intended to make the public think in ways that do not challenge the authority of the bureaucrats and politicians. In the US, it might amount to nothing less than exposure to commentary approved by Mike Pompeo and John Bolton if one wished to learn what is going on in the world.

Currently I and many other internet users appreciate and rely on the alternative media to provide viewpoints that are either suppressed by government or corporate interests or even contrary to prevailing fraudulent news accounts. And the fact is that the internet is already subject to heavy handed censorship by the service providers, which one friend has described as “Soviet era” in its intensity, who are themselves implementing their increasingly disruptive actions to find false personas and to ban as “hate speech” anything that is objected to by influential constituencies.

Blocking information is also already implemented by various countries through a cooperative arrangement whereby governments can ask search engines to remove material. Google actually documents the practice in an annual Transparency Report which reveals that government requests to remove information have increased from less than 1,000 per year in 2010 to nearly 30,000 per year currently. Not surprisingly, Israel and the United States lead the pack when it comes to requests for deletions. Since 2009 the US has asked for 7,964 deletions totaling 109,936 items while Israel has sought 1,436 deletions totally 10,648 items. Roughly two thirds of Israeli and US requests were granted.

And there is more happening behind the scenes. Since 2016, Facebook representatives have also been regularly meeting with the Israeli government to delete Facebook accounts of Palestinians that the Israelis claim constitute “incitement.” Israel had threatened Facebook that non-compliance with Israeli deletion orders would “result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.” Facebook chose compliance and, since that time, Israeli officials have been “publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders.” It should be noted that Facebook postings calling for the murder of Palestinians have not been censored.

And censorship also operates as well at other levels unseen, to include deletion of millions of old postings and videos to change the historical record and rewrite the past. To alter the current narrative, Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all have been pressured to cooperate with pro-Israel private groups in the United States, to include the powerful Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL is working with social media “to engineer new solutions to stop cyberhate” by blocking “hate language,” which includes any criticism of Israel that might be construed as anti-Semitism by the new expanded definition that is being widely promoted by the US Congress and the Trump Administration.

Censorship of information also increasingly operates in the publishing world. With the demise of actual bookstores, most readers buy their books from media online giant Amazon, which had a policy of offering every book in print. On February 19, 2019, it was revealed that Amazon would no longer sell books that it considered too controversial.

Government regulation combined with corporate social media self-censorship means that the user of the service will not know what he or she is missing because it will not be there. And once the freedom to share information without restraint is gone it will never return. On balance, free speech is intrinsically far more important than any satisfaction that might come from government intrusion to make the internet less an enabler of violence. If history teaches us anything, it is that the diminishment of one basic right will rapidly lead to the loss of others and there is no freedom more fundamental than the ability to say or write whatever one chooses, wherever and whenever one seeks to do so.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

Goodbye to the Internet: Interference by Governments Is Already Here

This article was originally published by Philip M. Giraldi at Strategic Culture Foundation

There is a saying attributed to the French banker Nathan Rothschild that “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” Conservative opinion in the United States has long suspected that Rothschild was right and there have been frequent calls to audit the Federal Reserve Bank based on the presumption that it has not always acted in support of the actual interests of the American people. That such an assessment is almost certainly correct might be presumed based on the 2008 economic crash in which the government bailed out the banks, which had through their malfeasance caused the disaster, and left individual Americans who had lost everything to face the consequences.

Be that as it may, if there were a modern version of the Rothschild comment it might go something like this: “Give me control of the internet and no one will ever more know what is true.” The internet, which was originally conceived of as a platform for the free interchange of information and opinions, is instead inexorably becoming a managed medium that is increasingly controlled by corporate and government interests. Those interests are in no way answerable to the vast majority of the consumers who actually use the sites in a reasonable and non-threatening fashion to communicate and share different points of view.

The United States Congress started the regulation ball rolling when it summoned the chief executives of the leading social media sites in the wake of the 2016 election. It sought explanations regarding why and how the Russians had allegedly been able to interfere in the election through the use of fraudulent accounts to spread information that might have influenced some voters. In spite of the sound and fury, however, all Congress succeeded in doing was demonstrating that the case against Moscow was flimsy at best while at the same creating a rationale for an increased role in censoring the internet backed by the threat of government regulation.

Given that background, the recent shootings at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and at mosques in Christchurch New Zealand have inevitably produced strident demands that something must be done about the internet, with the presumption that the media both encouraged and enabled the attacks by the gunmen, demented individuals who were immediately labeled as “white supremacists.” One critic puts it this way, “Let’s be clear, social media is the lifeblood of the far-right. The fact that a terror attack was livestreamed should tell us that this is a unique form for violence made for the digital era. The infrastructure of social media giants is not merely ancillary to the operations of terrorists — it is central to it [and] social media giants assume a huge responsibility to prevent and stop hate speech proliferating on the internet. It’s clear the internet giants cannot manage this alone; we urgently need a renewed conversation on internet regulation… It is time for counter-terrorism specialists to move into the offices of social media giants.”

It’s the wrong thing to do, in part because intelligence and police services already spend a great deal of time monitoring chat on the internet. And the premise that most terrorists who use the social media can be characterized as the enemy du jour “white supremacists” is also patently untrue. Using the national security argument to place knuckle dragging “counter-terrorism specialists” in private sector offices would be the last thing that anyone would reasonably want to do. If one were to turn the internet into a government regulated service it would mean that what comes out at the other end would be something like propaganda intended to make the public think in ways that do not challenge the authority of the bureaucrats and politicians. In the US, it might amount to nothing less than exposure to commentary approved by Mike Pompeo and John Bolton if one wished to learn what is going on in the world.

Currently I and many other internet users appreciate and rely on the alternative media to provide viewpoints that are either suppressed by government or corporate interests or even contrary to prevailing fraudulent news accounts. And the fact is that the internet is already subject to heavy handed censorship by the service providers, which one friend has described as “Soviet era” in its intensity, who are themselves implementing their increasingly disruptive actions to find false personas and to ban as “hate speech” anything that is objected to by influential constituencies.

Blocking information is also already implemented by various countries through a cooperative arrangement whereby governments can ask search engines to remove material. Google actually documents the practice in an annual Transparency Report which reveals that government requests to remove information have increased from less than 1,000 per year in 2010 to nearly 30,000 per year currently. Not surprisingly, Israel and the United States lead the pack when it comes to requests for deletions. Since 2009 the US has asked for 7,964 deletions totaling 109,936 items while Israel has sought 1,436 deletions totally 10,648 items. Roughly two thirds of Israeli and US requests were granted.

And there is more happening behind the scenes. Since 2016, Facebook representatives have also been regularly meeting with the Israeli government to delete Facebook accounts of Palestinians that the Israelis claim constitute “incitement.” Israel had threatened Facebook that non-compliance with Israeli deletion orders would “result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.” Facebook chose compliance and, since that time, Israeli officials have been “publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders.” It should be noted that Facebook postings calling for the murder of Palestinians have not been censored.

And censorship also operates as well at other levels unseen, to include deletion of millions of old postings and videos to change the historical record and rewrite the past. To alter the current narrative, Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all have been pressured to cooperate with pro-Israel private groups in the United States, to include the powerful Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL is working with social media “to engineer new solutions to stop cyberhate” by blocking “hate language,” which includes any criticism of Israel that might be construed as anti-Semitism by the new expanded definition that is being widely promoted by the US Congress and the Trump Administration.

Censorship of information also increasingly operates in the publishing world. With the demise of actual bookstores, most readers buy their books from media online giant Amazon, which had a policy of offering every book in print. On February 19, 2019, it was revealed that Amazon would no longer sell books that it considered too controversial.

Government regulation combined with corporate social media self-censorship means that the user of the service will not know what he or she is missing because it will not be there. And once the freedom to share information without restraint is gone it will never return. On balance, free speech is intrinsically far more important than any satisfaction that might come from government intrusion to make the internet less an enabler of violence. If history teaches us anything, it is that the diminishment of one basic right will rapidly lead to the loss of others and there is no freedom more fundamental than the ability to say or write whatever one chooses, wherever and whenever one seeks to do so.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

The Suspicious relationship between FACEBOOK And The CIA

¡Tené cuidado!, la CIA revisa tu Facebook y tu cuenta de ...

Source: Qronos 16 YouTube Channel

 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, began a total surveillance program in 2003 called LifeLog. Interestingly, the LifeLog project was terminated at approximately the same time that Facebook was founded. Coincidence? Sean Parker, Facebook’s first president, was recruited by the CIA in 2004 before heading the tech company. Shortly after, the CIA began investing in venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, which helped mine the user data of millions. As this information begins to surface, top executives are leaving Facebook. Now, Facebook is under investigation for potential privacy breaches.

Man Tests Tesla Autopilot By Trying To Run Over His Wife

Who knew that the story of Tesla’s rise and inevitable fall, would spawn so many potential Hollywood scripts (don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical).

In the latest story to emerge from Tesla’s “too crazy to be true” annals, a man decided to test the autopilot anti-collision feature on his car by trying to run over his wife. According to The Mirror, YouTuber KriszXstream filmed the risky experiment, during which his wife stepped out in front of his speeding car.

In the video, he said: “We’re going to test autopilot to see what happens when someone runs in front of the car.”

During the first test, the man drives towards his wife, who crosses the road in front of the car.

This is where things almost took a turn for the homicidal, as the autopiloted car gets very close to the woman, forcing her to run out of the way. While an alarm can be heard inside the car, it doesn’t appear as if the car would have stopped.

KriszXstream said: “For a second I thought it’s not gonna brake. But now it brakes” (it wasn’t clear if he was disappointed with that particular test outcome).

In a follow up test, the woman put her bag in the middle of the road, and while the Tesla does brake for the bag, it also knocks it over. The wife said: “It hit my bag. It’s still alive, I would say.”

Predictably, viewers of the idiotic experiment were unimpressed with the dangerous “test”.

One user said: “I don’t know who is dumber…you or your wife?”

Another added: “Plain and simple: are you nuts? People should never test safety system like that.”

While this clip is surely a contender for Darwin Award of the year, it brings up an interesting point: what if the driver had run over his wife (who just happened to have a multi-million life insurance policy)? Would it be his fault, or Tesla’s? We are confident an answer to this hypothetical scenario will be forthcoming soon.

UFO Caught on TV Zooming Over Cleveland, and You Won’t Believe NASA’s Response

'UFO' spotted in Cleveland Harbour.

Source: Sputnik

Amid the hype, NBC affiliate WKYC, whose cameras picked up the footage, reexamined the video for themselves in HD, and contacted a NASA expert, who told them that the streak was just a bird.

Thomas Wertman, a local UFO watcher, similarly downplayed the clip’s significance, saying that the ‘unidentified flying object’ was “most likely a gull,” and not really anything out of this world.

“I can actually see the wings going up and down and this is not uncommon. I’ve had some other videos submitted over the past that have turned out to be insects, when you get a very high quality resolution, you can even see the wings going up and down as it goes across the screen,” he said.

“So we can move this from the category of unidentified flying object to identified flying object,” WKYC concluded.

But WKYC’s viewers weren’t so sure. On the channel’s Facebook page, users insisted that the footage was real, or offered alternative explanations as to what caused the mysterious streak.

“I don’t know what it is but the article says that ‘experts’ at NASA who examined the video said it was a bird. The experts at NASA who stated this must have a bird brain because of all things it could be it’s certainly not a bird,” a user named Jim angrily noted. 

“Definitely a UFO,” a user named Larry added, saying that at the time in question, he had just parked his car at work in the area “when a light shot across the sky behind the clouds…way too fast for a jet.”

Others had alternative ideas, suggesting the blip was a “potato and cheese pierogi,” a search light, lightning, a meteor, a blimp, Nancy Pelosi flying on a broomstick, or even God.

“Always someone recording it with a camera that looks like it was HD back in the 70s…can you donate some higher quality cameras to WKYC?” user Keith joked.

Father Of The World Wide Web Warns “Perverse Incentives” Have Made The Internet “Dysfunctional”

British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee – known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, says that the internet has become a cesspool of “clickbait and the viral spread of misinformation,” which needs to be “changed for the better,” reports CNBC

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Image via Wikimedia Commons

In a Monday letter marking 30 years since he created a blueprint for the WWW in March 1989, the 63-year-old Oxford/MIT professor outlined three “sources of dysfunction” affecting the internet today; malicious behavior such as state-sponsored hacking and online harassment, “perverse” incentives driving misinformation, and unintended negative consequences such as polarizing, unhealthy conversations. 

“Governments must translate laws and regulations for the digital age,” said Berners-Lee. “They must ensure markets remain competitive, innovative and open.

Berners-Lee singled out Google and Facebook for rewarding clickbait and misinformation. He has previously knocked the tech giants for exploiting people’s personal data. 

“Companies must do more to ensure their pursuit of short-term profit is not at the expense of human rights, democracy, scientific fact or public safety,” reads the Monday letter. 

Last October, Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web foundation released a new blueprint in order to help put the web back on its original course. Known as the “Contract for the Web,” the plan calls for governments to ensure that everyone can connect to the internet – which is kept “available, all of the time,” and respects people’s “fundamental right to privacy.” It also calls on businesses to make the internet affordable to everyone as well as respect data privacy rights. 

One pillar of the contract is treating the web as a basic right for everyone, an idea that is far from reality today. The World Bank estimates roughly half of the world’s population still does not have access to the internet. In a report published Monday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found more than four in 10 rural households in OECD countries don’t have access to the fast fixed broadband needed to support the Internet of Things, whereas nearly nine in 10 households in urban areas have fast connections. –CNBC

Berners-Lee told Vanity Fair last year that he was “devastated” over what the web had become, and had launched a new online platform and company, Inrupt – described as a “personal online data store,” or pod, where everything from messages, music, contacts or other personal data will be stored in one place overseen by the user instead of an array of platforms and apps run by corporations seeking to profit off personal information. The project seeks “personal empowerment through data” and aims to “take back” the web, according to company statements. 

At MIT Berners-Lee has for years led a team on designing and building a decentralized web platform called ‘Solid’ — which will underlie the Inrupt platform. The Inrupt venture will serve as users’ first access to the new Solid decentralized web:

If all goes as planned, Inrupt will be to Solid what Netscape once was for many first-time users of the web: an easy way in. And like with Netscape, Berners-Lee hopes Inrupt will be just the first of many companies to emerge from Solid.

“I have been imagining this for a very long time,” says Berners-Lee.

As described on the Solid and Inrupt websites the new platform will allow users to have complete control over their information ‘pods’ (an acronym for “personal online data store”) — it is only they who will decide whether outside apps and sites will be granted access to it, and to what extent. 

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In short, unlike Facebook or Twitter where all user information ultimately resides in centralized data centers and servers under control of the companies, applications on Inrupt will compete for users based on the services they can offer, and only the users can grant these apps “views” into their data, making personal data instantly portable between similar applications.

“The main enhancement is that the web becomes a collaborative read-write space, passing control from owners of a server, to the users of that system. The Solid specification provides this functionality,” reads the website. 

Asked whether his plans could impact billion-dollar business models that profit off of controlling user data, Berners-Lee shot back: 

“We are not talking to Facebook and Google about whether or not to introduce a complete change where all their business models are completely upended overnight. We are not asking their permission.” 

Facebook Bans Zero Hedge

Over the weekend, we were surprised to learn that some readers were prevented by Facebook when attempting to share Zero Hedge articles. Subsequently it emerged that virtually every attempt to share or merely mention an article, including in private messages, would be actively blocked by the world’s largest social network, with the explanation that “the link you tried to visit goes against our community standards.”

We were especially surprised by this action as neither prior to this seemingly arbitrary act of censorship, nor since, were we contacted by Facebook with an explanation of what “community standard” had been violated or what particular filter or article had triggered the blanket rejection of all Zero Hedge content.

To be sure, as a for-profit enterprise with its own unique set of corporate “ethics”, Facebook has every right to impose whatever filters it desires on the media shared on its platform. It is entirely possible that one or more posts was flagged by Facebook’s “triggered” readers who merely alerted a censorship algo which blocked all content.

Alternatively, it is just as possible that Facebook simply decided to no longer allow its users to share our content in retaliation for our extensive coverage of what some have dubbed the platform’s “many problems”, including chronic privacy violations, mass abandonment by younger users, its gross and ongoing misrepresentation of fake users, ironically – in retrospect – its systematic censorship  and back door government cooperation (those are just links from the past few weeks).

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Unfortunately, as noted above, we still don’t know what event precipitated this censorship, and any attempts to get feedback from the company with the $500 billion market cap, have so far remained unanswered.

We would welcome this opportunity to engage Facebook in a constructive dialog over the company’s decision to impose a blanket ban on Zero Hedge content. Alternatively, we will probably not lose much sleep if that fails to occur: unlike other websites, we are lucky in that only a tiny fraction of our inbound traffic originates at Facebook, with most of our readers arriving here directly without the aid of search engines (Google banned us from its News platform, for reasons still unknown, shortly after the Trump victory) or referrals. 

That said, with Facebook increasingly under political, regulatory and market scrutiny for its arbitrary internal decisions on what content to promote and what to snuff, its ever declining user engagement, and its soaring content surveillance costs, such censorship is hardly evidence of the platform’s “openness” to discourse, its advocacy of free speech, or its willingness to listen to and encourage non-mainstream opinions, even if such “discourse” takes place in some fake user “click farm” somewhere in Calcutta.

Over 17 Million Younger Facebook Users Have Quit Amid Privacy Scandals

More than 17 million young Americans have abandoned Facebook over the last two years after a series of data privacy scandals damaged public trust in the social media platform. According to the longest-running survey of digital media consumer behavior in America conducted by Edison Research, Facebook users between 12-34 years-old are now flocking to Facebook sister site Instagram, reports the Daily Mail

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The report found that in 2017, 67 per cent of the total US population over the age of 12 used Facebook.

This has dropped to 62 per cent and 61 per cent in 2018 and 2019, respectively.  

These average figures equate to approximately 172 million current users, according to Edison Research. 

However, a breakdown of those ditching the beleaguered site found the drop off has been much larger in youngsters.  –Daily Mail

Older people over the age of 55, meanwhile, increased their Facebook usage – marginally offsetting the drop in younger users for a net loss of 15 million users over the last two years.

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Still, despite the dropoff – Facebook remains the top social media platform for young users – with 29% saying it is the site they use most often. That said, the graphic below reveals a significant reduction in market share since 2015, when 58% of young users primarily used Facebook

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According to the report, approximately 223 million people over the age of 12 use social media

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Last week Facebook announced in a lengthy blog post that the company plans to bring end-to-end encryption to their Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram platforms in an effort to boost the company’s reputation for poor user data security. 

Zuckerberg also said he’s working to ensure your online activity won’t come back to haunt you later in life. 

Ultimately, the CEO says the firm is striving to make interactions across Facebook ‘a fundamentally more private experience.’  

‘I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever,’ Zuckerberg wrote in the March 6 post. 

‘This is the future I hope we will help bring about.’ –Daily Mail

1,500 users over the age of 12 participated in the survey via telephone. 

Google warns everyone to update their Chrome browser right now

ALERT: Never USE GOOGLE Chrome!!! Never USE ANYTHING FROM GOOGLE!!!

Source: Jacob Siegal BGR News

It’s always smart to keep all of your software up to date, but it’s not too often that a developer goes out of its way to stress to all of its users that they should drop everything and apply the latest update as soon as possible. But that is exactly what Google has done this week, as Clement Lecigne of the company’s Threat Analysis Group reveals in a blog post that two zero-day vulnerabilities have been discovered in Google Chrome.

First reported on February 27th, Google was quick to release an update two days later on March 1st to address the issue. In all likelihood, your Chrome browser updated itself automatically, but if you want to check, go to Help > About Google Chrome, and make sure you’re on version 72.0.3626.121. If not, update right away.

As Chrome security engineer Justin Schuh explained in a series of tweets on Wednesday, this attack is different from previous attacks on Chrome because, rather than targeting Flash, it targets the Chrome code directly.

When Flash was the first exploit in the chain, Google could silently update the Flash plugin behind the scenes, and Chrome would automatically switch over to the updated plugin without any user intervention. On the other hand, this zero-day exploit requires the user to manually restart the browser, so even if the update is installed on your system, you still have to close and reopen the browser for it to take effect.

The (relatively) good news is that, as of yesterday, Google has “only observed active exploitation against Windows 7 32-bit systems,” so if you’re on Windows 10 (or even Windows 8), you’re probably in the clear. Nevertheless, there’s no point in taking any risks, so be sure that your browser is up to date, and if it isn’t, update today.

GOP Lawmaker Introduces ‘Stop Social Media Censorship Act’ to Protect Free Speech

GOP lawmaker introduces bill to stop social media censorship and enforce free speech

Republican lawmaker Joe Gruters (R) has introduced a bill to protect free speech on social media and fine Big Tech a minimum of $75,000 if they delete or censor a user’s political speech. 

The law would only apply to social media firms with “more than 75 million subscribers” which are “open to the public.”

Information Liberation reports: The bill also prohibits large social media sites from citing so-called “hate speech” as a justification for political and religious censorship and authorizes the Attorney General to “bring a civil cause of action … on behalf of a social media website user who resides in this state and whose religious speech or political speech has been censored…”

The bill makes clear it would allow social media sites to censor “calls for immediate acts of violence,” “obscene or pornographic” material, that which “entices criminal conduct” and that which “involves minors bullying minors.”

Here’s the full text of Sen. Gruters’ bill, SB 1722:

1 A bill to be entitled
2 An act relating to social media websites; providing a
3 short title; defining terms; providing that the owner
4 or operator of a social media website is subject to a
5 private right of action by a social media website user
6 in this state under certain conditions; providing
7 damages; authorizing the award of reasonable attorney
8 fees and costs; prohibiting a social media website
9 from using hate speech as a defense; authorizing the
10 Attorney General to bring an action on behalf of a
11 social media website user; providing exceptions for
12 the deletion or censure of certain types of speech;
13 providing an effective date.
14
15 WHEREAS, this state has a compelling interest in holding
16 certain social media websites to higher standards for having
17 substantially created a digital public square, and
18 WHEREAS, this state has an interest in helping its citizens
19 enjoy their free exercise of rights in certain semi-public
20 forums commonly used for religious and political speech, NOW,
21 THEREFORE,
22
23 Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Florida:
24
25 Section 1. This act may be cited as the “Stop Social Media
26 Censorship Act”.
27 Section 2. Social media website speech; cause of action;
28 penalties.—
29 (1) As used in this section, the term:
30 (a) “Algorithm” means a set of instructions designed to
31 perform a specific task.
32 (b) “Hate speech” means a phrase concerning content that an
33 individual finds offensive based on his or her personal moral
34 code.
35 (c) “Obscene” means that an average person, applying
36 contemporary community standards, would find that, taken as a
37 whole, the dominant theme of the material appeals to prurient
38 interests.
39 (d) “Political speech” means speech relating to the state,
40 government, body politic, or public administration as it relates
41 to governmental policymaking. The term includes speech by the
42 government or candidates for office and any discussion of social
43 issues. The term does not include speech concerning the
44 administration, law, or civil aspects of government.
45 (e) “Religious speech” means a set of unproven answers,
46 truth claims, faith-based assumptions, and naked assertions that
47 attempt to explain such greater questions as how the world was
48 created, what constitutes right and wrong actions by humans, and
49 what happens after death.
50 (f) “Social media website” means an Internet website or
51 application that enables users to communicate with each other by
52 posting information, comments, messages, or images and that
53 meets all of the following requirements:
54 1. Is open to the public;
55 2. Has more than 75 million subscribers; and
56 3. From its inception, has not been specifically affiliated
57 with any one religion or political party.
58 (2)(a) The owner or operator of a social media website who
59 contracts with a social media website user in this state is
60 subject to a private right of action by such user if the social
61 media website purposely:
62 1. Deletes or censors the user’s religious speech or
63 political speech; or
64 2. Uses an algorithm to disfavor or censure the user’s
65 religious speech or political speech.
66 (b) A social media website user may be awarded all of the
67 following damages under this section:
68 1. A minimum of $75,000 in statutory damages per purposeful
69 deletion or censoring of the social media website user’s speech.
70 2. Actual damages.
71 3. If aggravating factors are present, punitive damages.
72 4. Other forms of equitable relief.
73 (c) The prevailing party in a cause of action under this
74 section may be awarded costs and reasonable attorney fees.
75 (d) A social media website that restores from deletion or
76 removes the censoring of a social media website user’s speech in
77 a reasonable amount of time may use that fact to mitigate any
78 damages.
79 (3) A social media website may not use the social media
80 website user’s alleged hate speech as a basis for justification
81 or defense of the social media website’s actions at trial.
82 (4) The Attorney General may also bring a civil cause of
83 action under this section on behalf of a social media website
84 user who resides in this state and whose religious speech or
85 political speech has been censored by a social media website.
86 (5) This section does not apply to any of the following:
87 (a) A social media website that deletes or censors a social
88 media website user’s speech or that uses an algorithm to
89 disfavor or censure speech that:
90 1. Calls for immediate acts of violence;
91 2. Is obscene or pornographic in nature;
92 3. Is the result of operational error;
93 4. Is the result of a court order;
94 5. Comes from an inauthentic source or involves false
95 impersonation;
96 6. Entices criminal conduct; or
97 7. Involves minors bullying minors.
98 (b) A social media website user’s censoring of another
99 social media website user’s speech.
100 (6) Only users who are 18 years of age or older have
101 standing to seek enforcement of this act.
102 Section 3. This act shall take effect July 1, 2019.

This is a superb bill which every Floridian needs to pressure their representatives to get behind and state lawmakers across the country need to introduce in their own states as well.

I do think the term “subscribers” should be changed to “users” or “active users” to make it clear this applies to Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube.

Regardless, there’s no question such a bill would have the popular support of the masses on both sides, neither of which (for the most part) support the top-down censorship regimes on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly there’s no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment. There’s no reason social media sites — which have become the public square — should be allowed to censor people for their politically protected speech because some tiny group of unelected, far-left Big Tech oligarchs deems their speech “hate.”

Florida Lawmaker Introduces ‘Stop Social Media Censorship Act’ to Protect Free Speech Online

Florida State Senator Joe Gruters (R) introduced a bill to protect free speech on social media by imposing a fine with a minimum of $75,000 in statutory damages against large platforms if they delete or censor a user’s religious or political speech.

Florida Lawmaker Introduces ‘Stop Social Media Censorship Act’ to Protect Free Speech Online

Florida State Senator Joe Gruters (R) introduced a bill to protect free speech on social media by imposing a fine with a minimum of $75,000 in statutory damages against large platforms if they delete or censor a user’s religious or political speech.

In New Jersey, When It Rains, You’re Poor

The Garden State, plagued with the highest property taxes in the nation, now plans to saddle residents with a “rain tax.”

By Dave Gahary

New Jersey has been the butt of jokes for as long as most of us can remember, some well-deserved, others not. This writer was born and raised in the state, commonly referred to as “the cockpit of the revolution,” because more battles and encampments took place there than in any other state, and “the armpit of the revolution,” most likely attributed to the many smelly factories that once dotted the more urban areas of the peninsula.

Lately, however, the Garden State has come to be identified with the highest property taxes in the nation—2018 median real estate taxes paid were $7,601—and the state that more residents moved out of than any other state in 2018—66.8% of moves exiting versus entering. New Jersey has been ranked in the Top 10 “outbound” states for the past 10 years, according to a recent United Van Lines Annual National Movers Study.

But now New Jersey is in the process of heaping more misery onto its tax-challenged denizens, by introducing a new tax, a so-called “rain tax.”

Think the IRS Never Loses Cases? Think again!

A bill is sitting on the ultra-liberal, sanctuary city-supporting governor’s desk right now that, if signed, would give New Jersey’s counties and municipalities the power to collect a tax from properties with large paved surfaces such as parking lots. So basically, the more it rains—or snows—the more these surfaces prevent drainage into the natural environment, and the more water exists as runoff. Put away your rain dance gear, New Jerseyites.

N.J. Assembly Bill 2694 and Senate Bill 1073, which “authorizes municipalities, counties, and certain authorities to establish stormwater utilities” had strong support in both chambers.

At the heart of the bill is something called “stormwater management systems,” which is the control and use of stormwater runoff by capturing and/or reusing it. Proper management of stormwater can lessen runoff, which has increased due to more parking lots, roads, buildings, and other impermeable surfaces. Runoff is undesirable because of flooding concerns, but save for a handful of areas and towns, New Jersey has never had serious flooding concerns.

Predictably, this issue is being tied—by those promoting it—to rising sea levels and “global warming/climate change,” the latter a discounted theory which has been mocked unceasingly this winter season, as record-breaking cold temperatures and snowstorms lay bare the ridiculous claim that the planet is warming due to humans, when in fact it’s been in a cooling trend since 1992.

None of this will stop the central planners in the Garden State, however, who are giving all sewerage authorities in the state a wide berth to drain more money from hapless state residents.

“Every sewerage authority is hereby authorized to charge and collect rents, rates, fees, or other charges for direct or indirect use or services of its stormwater management system,” reads the Senate bill.

The bill’s ominous language should frighten all residents of the state: “The stormwater service charges may be charged to and collected from the owner or occupant, or both, of any real property. The owner of any real property shall be liable for and shall pay the stormwater service charges to the sewerage authority at the time when and place where these charges are due and payable.”

And how will all this new infrastructure be paid for?

“The bill would permit municipalities and counties to finance the creation, operation, and maintenance of stormwater utilities through the imposition of user fees and the issuance of bonds.”

That’s right, the moneyed global elite would be the ones to benefit from this new scheme, via the issuance of bonds.

What bothers some most about this bill is the free hand it gives to moneyed interests.

“We all want to protect our environment,” stated N.J. State Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., the Republican Leader of the Senate since 2008 and the son of the former N.J. governor. “We all want to preserve it for future generations. But this is a weighted tax. The citizens of New Jersey . . . really with no oversight and no way to defend themselves against tax increases at local levels.”

Wasn’t taxation without representation one of the main reasons our forefathers founded this once-great nation?

With N.J. residents being squeezed by an elite political structure, we may see the beginnings of a new rebellion, in the state so well-known for its propensity to challenge the corrupt elite.

Dave Gahary, a former submariner in the U.S. Navy, prevailed in a suit brought by the New York Stock Exchange in an attempt to silence him. Dave is the producer of an upcoming full-length feature film about the attack on the USS Liberty. See erasingtheliberty.com for more information and to get the new book on which the movie will be based, Erasing the Liberty.

You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.

Source: WSJ

Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last weekend. Other apps know users’ body weight, blood pressure, menstrual cycles or pregnancy status.

Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is being shared with someone else: Facebook Inc. FB 1.16%

The social-media giant collects intensely personal information from many popular smartphone apps just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook, according to testing done by The Wall Street Journal. The apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure, the testing showed.

It is already known that many smartphone apps send information to Facebook about when users open them, and sometimes what they do inside. Previously unreported is how at least 11 popular apps, totaling tens of millions of downloads, have also been sharing sensitive data entered by users. The findings alarmed some privacy experts who reviewed the Journal’s testing.

Facebook is under scrutiny from Washington and European regulators for how it treats the information of users and nonusers alike. It has been fined for allowing now defunct political-data firm Cambridge Analytica illicit access to users’ data and has drawn criticism for giving companies special access to user records well after it said it had walled off that information.

In the case of apps, the Journal’s testing showed that Facebook software collects data from many apps even if no Facebook account is used to log in and if the end user isn’t a Facebook member.

Full Story

NY governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

February 22, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday ordered two state agencies to investigate a media report that Facebook Inc may be accessing far more personal information than previously known from smartphone users, including health and other sensitive data.

The directive to New York’s Department of State and Department of Financial Services (DFS) came after the Wall Street Journal said testing showed that Facebook collected personal information from other apps on users’ smartphones within seconds of them entering it.

The WSJ reported that several apps share sensitive user data including weight, blood pressure and ovulation status with Facebook. The report said the company can access data in some cases even when the user is not signed into Facebook or does not have a Facebook account. In a statement Cuomo called the practice an “outrageous abuse of privacy.” He also called on the relevant federal regulators to become involved.

Facebook said in a statement it would assist New York officials in their probe, but noted that the WSJ’s report focused on how other apps use people’s data to create ads.

“As (the WSJ) reported, we require the other app developers to be clear with their users about the information they are sharing with us, and we prohibit app developers from sending us sensitive data. We also take steps to detect and remove data that should not be shared with us,” the company said.

Shares in Facebook took a short-lived hit after the newspaper report was published, but closed up 1.2 percent. In late January Cuomo along with New York Attorney General Letitia James announced an investigation into Apple Inc’s failure to warn consumers about a FaceTime bug that had let iPhones users listen to conversations of others who have not yet accepted a video call.

Facebook is facing a slew of lawsuits and regulatory inquiries over privacy issues, including a U.S. Federal Trade Commission investigation into disclosures that Facebook inappropriately shared information belonging to 87 million users with British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

New York’s financial services department does not traditionally supervise social media companies directly, but has waded into digital privacy in the financial sector and could have oversight of some app providers that send user data to Facebook.

In March, it is slated to implement the country’s first cybersecurity rules governing state-regulated financial institutions such as banks, insurers and credit monitors.

Last month, DFS said life insurers could use social media posts in underwriting policies, so long as they did not discriminate based on race, color, national origin, sexual orientation or other protected classes.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Katie Paul in San Francisco; editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Tom Brown)

Smartphone Apps Sending “Intensely Personal Information” To Facebook – Whether Or Not You Have An Account

Facebook has been collecting “intensely personal information” from millions of people – whether they have Facebook accounts or not, according to testing performed by the Wall Street Journal

According to tests of more than 70 apps using software to monitor internet communications, the Journal found that “the apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure,” and that “Facebook software collects data from many apps even if no Facebook account is used to log in and if the end user isn’t a Facebook member.

Eleven of the apps tested sent Facebook “potentially sensitive information about how users behaved or actual data they entered.”

For example, Flo Health Inc.’s “Period & Ovulation Tracker” – which boasts 25 million active users, was sending Facebook information on when women were having their periods – or indicated their desire to get pregnant, according to the tests. 

Note: After being contacted by the Journal, Flo said it has ‘substantially limited’ data sharing with third-party analytics services.

Source: Wall Street Journal testing of the app

Other apps found sending Facebook information include; Instant Heart Rate: HR MOnitor, Realtor.com’s app, “at least six of the top 15 health and fitness apps” and BetterMe: Weight Loss Workouts” 

Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which operate the two dominant app stores, don’t require apps to disclose all the partners with whom data is shared. Users can decide not to grant permission for an app to access certain types of information, such as their contacts or locations. But these permissions generally don’t apply to the information users supply directly to apps, which is sometimes the most personal.

In the Journal’s testing, Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor, the most popular heart-rate app on Apple’s iOS, made by California-based Azumio Inc., sent a user’s heart rate to Facebook immediately after it was recorded. –Wall Street Journal

Facebook told The Journal that some of the data sharing uncovered by the tests violate its business terms, by which app developers are instructed not to send “health, financial information or other categories of sensitive information.” The company has notified app developers identified in the tests to stop sending sensitive information to them, and it may take additional steps if the apps don’t adhere to their requests.

““We require app developers to be clear with their users about the information they are sharing with us,” said a Facebook spokeswoman. In other words, they’re sorry they got caught and are now on a finger-wagging campaign. 

Apple and Google had relatively lawyerly responses to the investigation; Apple said its guidelines require apps to seek “prior user consent” before collecting user data, adding “When we hear of any developer violating these strict privacy terms and guidelines, we quickly investigate and, if necessary, take immediate action.” Google declined to comment – pointing to the company’s policy requiring that apps which handle sensitive data prominently “disclose the type of parties to which any personal or sensitive user data is shared.” 

Flo initially said in a written statement that it doesn’t send “critical user data” and that the data it does send Facebook is “depersonalized” to keep it private and secure.

The Journal’s testing, however, showed sensitive information was sent with a unique advertising identifier that can be matched to a device or profile. A Flo spokeswoman subsequently said the company will “substantially limit” its use of external analytics systems while it conducts a privacy audit.

Move, the owner of real-estate app Realtor.com—which sent information to Facebook about properties that users liked, according to the Journal’s tests—said “we strictly adhere to all local, state and federal requirements,” and that its privacy policy “clearly states how user information is collected and shared.” The policy says the app collects a variety of information, including content in which users are interested, and may share it with third parties. It doesn’t mention Facebook. –Wall Street Journal

“This is a big mess,” said Disconnect’s chief technology officer Patrick Johnson, who analyzed apps for the Journal analysis. “This is completely independent of the functionality of the app.”

While the software used by the Journal wasn’t able to decipher specific content sent by Android apps, Defensive Lab Agency’s Esther Onfroy found in a separate test that at least one Android app flagged by the Journal – BetterMe: Weight Loss Workouts, shared users’ weights and heights with Facebook almost immediately after they were entered. 

How is this possible?

Apps often incorporate code known as software-development kits (SDKs) which allow developers to integrate various features or functions across platforms. One of these is Facebook’s SDK – which allow apps to collect data for targeted advertising or to allow apps to beter understand user behavior. 

Facebook’s SDK, which is contained in thousands of apps, includes an analytics service called “App Events” that allows developers to look at trends among their users. Apps can tell the SDK to record a set of standardized actions taken by users, such as when a user completes a purchase. App developers also can define “custom app events” for Facebook to capture—and that is how the sensitive information the Journal detected was sent.

Facebook says on its website it uses customer data from its SDK, combined with other data it collects, to personalize ads and content, as well as to “improve other experiences on Facebook, including News Feed and Search content ranking capabilities.” –Wall Street Journal

A Facebook spokeswoman said that Facebook is now looking into how to search for apps violating its data sharing terms, and will build safeguards to prevent the company from storing any sensitive data which may be provided by apps. 

Last year Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the company would create a “Clear History” feature to allow users to analyze data which had been collected about them from various apps and websites – and then delete it from Facebook. 

We’re still waiting on that… 

The EU’s Copyright Directive Opens the Door to Massively Increase Big Tech Monopolies and Censorship

The EU’s new new Copyright Directive mandates that any online community, platform or service that has existed for three or more years, or is making 10 million euros a year or more, is responsible for ensuring that no user ever posts anything that infringes copyright, even momentarily, which is impossible.

Google, Facebook Forced to Pay Creators Under New EU Rules

(Bloomberg) — Online platforms will be required to compensate publishers and creators for the content that appears on their websites, under new European Union copyright rules that could shrink access to online media in Europe.

The new rules mean music producers and publishers could come gunning for more money from Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. to compensate for the display of their songs, video and news articles.

If artists and music producers refuse to grant platforms licenses, tech firms will be required to remove or block uploads. And if platforms don’t negotiate licenses with publishers, or if publishers don’t waive their rights, web firms won’t be able to display longer fragments of news articles under headlines.

The rules “will enable creators to be remunerated fairly by large online platforms that today are siphoning the value of the creative sector while failing to compensate creators,” said Veronique Desbrosses, Director General of GESAC, a European umbrella association of authors and composers.

The legislation, proposed by the European Commission in 2016 and agreed to with the European Parliament and member states Wednesday, is designed to help artists, musicians, publishers and other creators get fair payment for use of their content online. But the copyright rules provoked years of lobbying on all sides, with free-speech activists saying they could result in censorship online.

In response to the copyright agreement, Google spokesman Damien Roemer said in a statement: “We’ll be studying the final text of the EU copyright directive and it will take some time to determine next steps.” He added that “the details will matter, so we welcome the chance to continue conversations across Europe.”

The search giant said recently it may pull its Google News service from Europe in response to the law, particularly if publishers aren’t allowed to waive their rights. It said it would take the decision reluctantly and only after analyzing the final text. Google has already deactivated the product in Spain.

Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents Facebook and Google, said in a statement the rules are a “lost opportunity to achieve a balanced and future-proof EU copyright reform,” adding it could “harm online innovation, scaleups, and restrict online freedoms in Europe.”

As part of the new rules, the EU is requiring tech firms to negotiate licenses for songs or video clips before publishing user uploads of content that incorporates them. In situations where no licenses are concluded, they are required to make “best efforts” to obtain authorization, according to the EU. Platforms also have to do everything in their power to remove or block material that rights holders have flagged in advance and quickly remove any unauthorized content once notified.

“This law will fundamentally change the internet as we know it,” said Julia Reda, a member of the European Parliament from Germany’s Pirate Party and staunch opponent of the copyright package on concerns of censorship. Platforms “will have no choice but to deploy upload filters, which are by their nature both expensive and error-prone.”

The bloc also agreed to grant publishers new legal rights to help them seek compensation from all types of online services that display longer fragments of their articles. “Very short” snippets and individual words, such as in hyperlinks, are not covered by the law, the EU said. And publishers, which often get significant internet traffic to their sites from search and social, are allowed to waive their rights and let platforms display the content for free.

The rules create new liabilities for tech firms, chipping away at previous protections that absolved them of legal responsibility for what users posted on their sites. Those carve-outs were designed to help web firms grow in the early days of the internet but now officials want them to shoulder more responsibility for the material their users create, such as terror content, hate speech, and fake news.

The agreement on copyright still needs to be rubber-stamped by the European Parliament and the bloc’s member states, which is typically a formality.

(Updates with Google comment.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Natalia Drozdiak in Brussels at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at [email protected], Nate Lanxon, Molly Schuetz

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

YouTube Hails Censorship of Conspiracy Videos ‘Historic Victory’ for Big Tech

YouTube have hailed the censorship of conspiracy content on their platform as an historic victory for Big Tech

YouTube says the censorship of conspiracy-related content on the platform is a move in the right direction for Big Tech. 

On Saturday, a former engineer for Google hailed the company’s decision to no longer recommend videos that “come close to” violating its community guidelines as a “historic victory.”

Msn.com reports: The original blog post from YouTube, published on Jan. 25, said that videos the site recommends, usually after a user has viewed one video, would no longer lead just to similar videos and instead would “pull in recommendations from a wider set of topics.”

For example, if one person watches one video showing the recipe for snickerdoodles, they may be bombarded with suggestions for other cookie recipe videos. Up until the change, the same scenario would apply to conspiracy videos.

YouTube said in the post that the action is meant to “reduce the spread of content that comes close to — but doesn’t quite cross the line of — violating” its community policies. The examples the company cited include “promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”

The change will not affect the videos’ availability. And if users are subscribed to a channel that, for instance, produces conspiracy content, or if they search for it, they will still see related recommendations, the company wrote.

Guillaume Chaslot, a former Google engineer, said that he helped to build the artificial intelligence used to curate recommended videos. In a thread of tweets posted on Saturday, he praised the change.

“It’s only the beginning of a more humane technology. Technology that empowers all of us, instead of deceiving the most vulnerable,” Chaslot wrote.

Chaslot described how, prior to the change, a user watching conspiracy theory videos was led down a rabbit hole of similar content, which was the intention of the AI he said he helped build.

According to Chaslot, the goal of YouTube’s AI was to keep users on the site as long as possible in order to promote more advertisements. When a user was enticed by multiple conspiracy videos, the AI not only became biased by the content the hyper-engaged users were watching, it also kept track of the content that those users were engaging with in an attempt to reproduce that pattern with other users, Chaslot explained.

He pointed to a different artificial intelligence that was also shaped by the bias of its users: Microsoft’s chatbot “Tay.”

Tay was a Twitter chatbot produced by Microsoft, which was meant to interact with users like a human and learn from others.

Within 24 hours of its release, Tay went from innocent chatbot to full-blown misogynist and racist, according to The Verge. The AI operating Tay learned from and became biased by the engagement it received from Twitter users who were spamming the bot with those ideologies, according to CNBC.

Chaslot said that YouTube’s fix to its recommendations AI will have to include getting people to videos with truthful information and overhauling the current system it uses to recommend videos.

“The AI change will have a huge impact because affected channels have billions of views, overwhelmingly coming from recommendations,” Chaslot said, adding that the platform’s decision to make this change affect thousands of new users.

YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Chaslot’s thread.

In the name of ‘fake news,’ Asian governments tighten control on social media

In the name of ‘fake news,’ Asian governments tighten control on social media

Source: LA Times

Su Chii-cherng, head of the Taiwan government office in Osaka, committed suicide in September after he was criticized in mainstream news reports for not having made arrangements to rescue Taiwanese tourists temporarily stranded at a typhoon-flooded Japanese airport.

As it turned out, the foreign ministry in Taipei said, the 61-year-old diplomat was not allowed to send in vehicles, which meant the criticism, based on an unidentified traveler’s tip, was not justified. High-level Taiwanese officials are now citing the incident as they seek to strengthen penalties for the spread of what they deem false reports on natural disasters and food safety.

 

Taiwan is one of at least seven countries across eastern Asia that have recently enacted or are considering laws to limit or gain access to information about internet reports that officials claim are false, speculative, exaggerated, or truthful yet hurtful. As does President Trump, they often lump such reports under a vague, and often misleading, heading: fake news.

For nations with one-party rule, regulations squelching false or sensitive stories emanating from social media would result in an expansion of longstanding controls over the traditional mass media.

Such efforts have been on the rise over about the last two years due in part to the difficulty of identifying the authors of encrypted messages sent on social media, said Cedric Alviani, east Asia bureau director with the French-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders.

In these nations, the dramatic rise of smartphones has sent social media and overall internet use spiraling. Smartphone shipments to six emerging Southeast Asian countries tracked by market research firm IDC totaled 100 million in 2017, up from 22.5 million in 2012.

Government officials in Southeast Asia are focusing on social media commentary that causes “reputation harm” to themselves and their institutions, said James Gomez, board chair with the nonprofit human rights group Asia Centre in Bangkok.

“Unlike in the U.S., where Trump is attacking to do reputation damage to the fact-based traditional media,” he said, “in Asia, government representatives are focused on discrediting critics.”

In Thailand, authorities, citing “fake news,” have been strengthening their 12-year-old Computer Crimes Act to stop anti-government criticism, regardless of whether the statements are true. The law, initially aimed at stopping slights to the monarchy, has expanded to discourage criticism of the military government that took power in 2014, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.

In Cambodia, a regulation issued in June authorized an inter-ministerial working group to control “all dissemination of information” that threatened security, the economy or foreign relations.

 

A Vietnamese law that took effect Jan. 1 required foreign and domestic internet services to hand over user data so authorities could probe the spread of any report and the identity of its author. The Cyber Security Law calls for providers including Facebook and Google to supply user information and delete content at the government’s request. Individual senders of what is deemed false information can already be sentenced to prison under existing law for attempting to undermine state security.

Authoritarian governments in Vietnam and China have more muscle to fight what they brand “fake news” because they already own or censor the major media outlets, Gomez said.

China’s 2017 Provisions for the Administration of Internet News Information Services require that online news providers reprint information from government-approved organizations without changing the content.

Vietnamese officials worry that social media, which is not proactively censored as it is in China, will spread reports that damage their reputation, said Trung Nguyen, international relations dean at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

 

The Thai provision helps the military government prosecute those they say are threatening national security, Pongsudhirak said. Violators face up to 15 years in prison, he said, and “the draconian law has led to rising self-censorship.”

Cambodian officials believe false reports undermine the government, cause social unrest and pose a “genuine threat to national security,” said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia. The government, run by the party of former Khmer Rouge commander Hun Sen since 1985, has long repressed radio and print, Thayer said, so now it wants to hobble social media used by political opponents.

Some Asian governments have found that libel codes and other existing laws do not cover acts they deem actionable. The Taiwanese tipster was charged under the country’s Social Order Maintenance Act. But a judge threw out the case for lack of evidence that the defendant had caused a “social disturbance.”

 

In Vietnam, officials will probably sparingly enforce their new law to avoid making citizens angry, Trung predicted. Malaysian officials, meanwhile, repealed legislation enacted in August after finding that a 1998 law already covered much of its content.

In Singapore, a city-state with a strong ruling party known for being tough on crime, legislators are considering regulations to strengthen media controls that are already in place. Journalists can now be jailed for libel, threats to national security or “ill will” against religious or racial groups, Reporters Without Borders said.

 

Even as governments rush to strengthen their laws, some continue to spin their own false reports in media outlets they control in order to discredit critics, said Gomez of the Asia Centre in Bangkok. “Critics are finding themselves on the back foot,” he said, “becoming victims of governmental fake news that is then amplified by the compliant traditional media, and being vilified online by government-aligned trolls and anonymous social media accounts.”

EA’s ‘Fortnite’ rival wins 10 million gamers in three days

February 8, 2019

By Arjun Panchadar

(Reuters) – A game developed by Electronics Arts Inc as a competitor to the wildly popular “Fortnite” has signed up 10 million players within three days of its launch, the videogame maker said, driving its shares up 16 percent on Friday.

With “Apex Legends,” EA is hoping to reproduce the success of “Fortnite,” a sort of hybrid of “The Hunger Games” and “Minecraft” that drops 100 people onto an island to fight each other for survival.

The number of gamers playing “Apex Legends” had crossed 10 million and there were about 1 million gamers logged on at the same time, EA said late on Thursday. As of Friday, the game was the most viewed on gaming live-streaming network Twitch.

The figures come just days after EA lowered its yearly revenue projections following weak sales of its “Battlefield V” title, news that had sent its stock plunging 18 percent.

EA owns iconic gaming franchises such as “FIFA,” “Need for Speed” and “Battlefield,” but the rapid rise last year of free-to-play online games like “Fortnite” and “PUBG” are forcing the company and its industry peers Activision-Blizzard and Take-Two to sit up and take notice.

“Fortnite” and “PUBG,” each backed by Chinese internet giant Tencent, are credited with helping take gaming to new audiences and popularizing the battle royale format, where dozens of online players battle each other to the death.

EA said on Tuesday its decision not to release a battle royale version of “Battlefield V” was one reason why it sold some one million fewer units than expected in the final quarter of 2018.

Videogame review website Eurogamer said it had taken Fortnite about two weeks to hit the 10-million-player mark.

Wall Street analysts covering EA were optimistic about “Apex Legends” but said it was too early to tell if it could become the next “Fortnite.”

“It’s an impressive number and a great start to a new cornerstone property for EA — something the company needs following a string of missteps with its non-sports franchises,” said Oppenheimer & Co analyst Andrew Uerkwitz.

Analysts also said posts by influential gamers such as “Ninja,” the most followed streamer on Twitch, had helped bring more attention to the game.

“Apex Legends” could add $100 million to EA’s revenue in the fiscal year ending March 2020, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said.

“That figure is based upon our rule of thumb that free-to-play games typically generate around $10 per monthly active user per year,” he said.

EA has forecast about $4.75 billion in adjusted revenue for fiscal year 2019.

(Reporting by Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar)

EXTENSIVE PRIVACY VIOLATION: An At-Home DNA Company Admits To Giving DNA To The FBI

The at-home DNA testing company, FamilyTreeDNA has admitted to giving DNA samples to the F.B.I. (Federal Bureau of Investigation.) Although the company apologized for failing to disclose the fact that they were sharing DNA with the F.B.I., customers are still rightfully angry at the privacy violations and abuse.

As the government attempts to track and treat every single citizen as a criminal, they use “the greater good” as an excuse to force at home DNA companies to give them samples from people.  If it’s to solve a murder, it’s ok, right?  Not if you want privacy and seek to protect the privacy rights of others, it’s not.

FamilyTreeDNA was caught in a bold lie proving they don’t care about your privacy. According to the New York Times, in the booming business of consumer DNA testing and genealogy, FamilyTreeDNA had marketed itself as a leader of consumer privacy and a fierce protector of user data, refusing, unlike some of its competitors, to sell information to third parties. But unbeknown to its users, the Houston-based firm quietly and voluntarily agreed in 2018 to open its database of more than two million records to the F.B.I. and examine DNA samples in its laboratory to identify suspects and victims of unsolved rapes and murders.

Regardless of how the DNA was used, the idea that a private company willingly gave citizens DNA to the government was too much for most. FamilyTreeDNA confirmed that they were violating their own privacy promise on Thursday.  In a report by Buzzfeed News, where the confirmation was first noted, there was a significant backlash among FamilyTreeDNA’s loyal users who felt betrayed and this betrayal ignited yet another debate over privacy and ethical issues with investigators using genealogical sites to solve crimes.

The company’s president, Bennett Greenspan, wrote an email to users on Sunday.  In the email, Greenspan defended the agreement with the F.B.I. but apologized for not revealing it sooner. “I am genuinely sorry for not having handled our communications with you as we should have,” Greenspan wrote, according to a copy of the email obtained by The New York Times. “We’ve received an incredible amount of support from those of you who believe this is an opportunity for honest, law-abiding citizens to help catch bad guys and bring closure to devastated families.”

It’s also an absolute privacy violation and non-consensual one at that, especially considering FamilyTreeDNA, who vowed privacy from the getgo, isn’t even apologizing for their bald-faced lie that they are a “leader of consumer privacy and a fierce protector of user data.”

“For the greater good”:
the phrase that always precedes
the greatest evil.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

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