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Category: Technology

  • Canada’s NSA

    This year marks the 75th anniversary of a little known but influential arm of Canada’s foreign policy apparatus. An entity called the Communications Security Establishment was established to spy internationally in 1946, operating secretly in its first four decades.

    With an annual budget of $780 million and 3000 employees, the CSE has a variety of high-tech gadgets, including surveillance planes. In 2011 CSE moved into a new $1.2 billion home. The seven-building, 110,000 square metre complex is connected to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) headquarters in Ottawa.

    Unlike CSIS, CSE is largely foreign focused. It seeks to “protect the computer networks and information of greatest importance to Canada” from international attack. CSE also gathers international signals intelligence (SIGINT), which it defines as “intelligence acquired through the collection of electromagnetic signals.” Historically, CSE largely intercepted electronic communications between embassies in Ottawa and other nations’ capitals. Today, CSE monitors phone calls, radio, microwave and satellite, as well as emails, chat rooms and other Internet exchanges. It engages in various forms of data hacking, sifting through millions of videos and online documents daily. Or, as Vice reporter Patrick McGuire put it, CSE “listens in on phone calls and emails to secretly learn about things the Canadian government wants to secretly learn about.”

    After WWII the government established the Communications Branch of the National Research Council, which was renamed Communications Security Establishment three decades later. In Cautious Beginnings: Canadian Foreign Intelligence, 1939-51 Kurt Jensen explains: “the Gouzenko story [a Soviet diplomat who defected in September 1945, alleging widespread Russian spying in Canada] is almost entirely absent from the debate on Canadian postwar foreign intelligence. While the Soviet Union figured prominently in Canadian foreign intelligence interests, it was not an exclusive focus. The available evidence suggests that Canada had broad foreign intelligence interests that reflected current Canadian foreign policy interests.”

    Since its creation CSE has been part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing framework though Ottawa didn’t admit its Five Eyes relationship until 1995. The main contributors to the Washington-led Five Eyes are the US’s NSA, Australian Signals Directorate, New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau, British Government Communications Headquarters and CSE. A series of post-WWII accords, beginning with the 1946 UKUSA intelligence agreement, created the “AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY” arrangement.

    CSE established SIGINT posts on the east and west coasts as well as in the north. According to a table produced by blogger Jerry Proc, there have been more than 50 Canadian SIGINT stations opened during the past century.

    Canadian diplomatic posts have long housed SIGINT equipment. According to a NSA document released by whistleblower Edward Snowden, CSE operated clandestine surveillance activities in “approximately 20 high-priority countries.” In his 1994 book former CSE agent Mike Frost describes CSE listening posts at a number of embassies or consular posts while two papers in the early 2000s cite Beijing, Abidjan, New Delhi, Bucharest, Rabat, Kingston (Jamaica), Mexico City, Rome, San Jose (Costa Rica), Warsaw and Tokyo as diplomatic posts where CSE (probably) collected information.

    Since the start of the 1960s CSE has listened to Cuban leaders’ conversations from an interception post inside the embassy in Havana. (Ottawa maintained diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba after its 1959 revolution, reports Three Nights in Havana, partly because “the United States secretly urged [Prime Minister] Diefenbaker to maintain normal relations because it was thought that Canada would be well positioned to gather intelligence on the island.”) Canada also spied on Cuba from a diplomatic post outside that country. In the early 1980s CSE wanted to establish a communications post in Jamaica, notes Frost, to intercept “communications from Fidel Castro’s Cuba, which would please NSA to no end.”

    CSE also gathered intelligence on Palestinians for Israel. Frost notes, “[former Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman] Yasser Arafat’s name, for instance, was on every [CSE] key word list. NSA was happy about that.” According to files released by Snowden, CSE spied on Israel’s enemies and shared the intelligence with that country’s SIGINT National Unit. “Palestinians” was a “specific intelligence topic” of an NSA-GCHQ-CSE project shared with their Israeli counterpart.

    In the late 1980s the Soviets jammed US and British listening operations in Moscow. In response, they asked CSE to take up the slack. “From summer 1987 to summer 1989”, notes Frost, “it was Canada that was providing the most powerful Western nations with the intelligence that had been so crucial to them and, in fact, to the whole Western Alliance.”

    Economic espionage is a significant and growing component of CSE’s focus. In 1995 the agency began hiring more individuals with economics, commerce and international business qualifications “to build up its own analytical capacity in economic intelligence.” As part of the Snowden revelations, it came to light that CSE spied on Brazil’s Department of Mines and Energy.

    In 1985 the government asked CSE to gather intelligence that could help a Canadian firm bidding for a major pipeline contract in India. A few years earlier the CSE overheard the US ambassador in Ottawa detailing his country’s negotiating position on a US$5 billion wheat sale to China, which helped Canada win the contract. CSE is also thought to have secured information useful to negotiating the mid-1990s North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization.

    CSE has contributed intelligence to Canada and its allies’ wars. The agency’s sophisticated equipment and analytical and linguistic resources contributed significantly to the 2001-14 occupation of Afghanistan. The agency’s website says it played a “vital role” in the central Asian country and CSE head John Adams boasted that they were responsible for more than half the “actionable intelligence” Canadian soldiers used in Afghanistan. That included monitoring Taliban forces and leaders as well as allied Afghan government officials. Information CSE provided protected Canadian troops from attack and helped special forces assassinate Afghans.

    As the Internet came onto the scene CSE was instructed to conduct Computer Network Exploitation. It went from intercepting communications (“data in motion”) to seeking information on foreign computer systems (“data at rest”). According to CSE expert Bill Robinson, “it became a hunter as well as a gatherer.” CSE could hack into computer systems, implant malware and copy information.

    In 2017 CSE was further empowered to carry out offensive operations against foreign actors. The Communications Security Establishment Act authorized CSE “to degrade, disrupt, influence, respond to or interfere with the capabilities, intentions or activities” of international targets. In effect the intelligence agency could seek to take a government offline, shutter a power plant, knock a drone out of the sky or interfere in court proceedings and elections in countries Ottawa doesn’t deem “democratic”. There is no requirement that the target threaten Canadian security.

    The legislation forbids offensive cyber activities that could cause injury or death or “obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice or democracy.” But, these limitations don’t apply if CSE conducts cyber-attacks on behalf of a Canadian military operation or receives approval of the foreign minister. Additionally, there is no independent oversight of CSE’s new offensive capabilities and CSE is allowed to do “anything that is reasonably necessary to maintain the covert nature of the activity.”

    To mark the 75th anniversary of the Communications Security Establishment, it’s time to place this clandestine organization under far greater scrutiny.

    • On December 15 the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute will be hosting a webinar on “Canada and the Five Eyes”.

    The post Canada’s NSA first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • WhatsApp will hide ‘last seen’ status from strangers by default

    Your status on WhatsApp lets other contacts know when you were online last, or if you’re currently using the app

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • OnePlus Nord CE 2 may launch in India soon

    As per 91mobiles, the handset might get unveiled around January or February 2022 in India

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • French nuclear experts offer reassuring but contradictory ‘clear answers’ to investigative book Toxic

    ANALYSIS: By Ena Manuireva

    Following the publication of the book Toxic some 9 months ago and President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to French Polynesia last July, the response from the French administration has been to send French nuclear experts to Tahiti.

    Their mission was to give clear and transparent answers about the state of former nuclear test sites among other topics. It was a way to counter the book’s anti-official version of the CEA’s (Centre d’Experimentation Atomique) claim of “clean and non-contaminating radioactivity” on both atolls.

    The Commission of information created for those former sites of nuclear tests of the Pacific, was made up of 3 French civil servants involved in the controversial Paris roundtable — also called Reko Tika — organised by President Macron last July.

    French nuclear experts
    French nuclear experts … “proving” their case of an independent and transparent study. Image: Tahiti Infos

    In a media conference, they talked about radiological and geo-mechanical surveillance of the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls. They came with more scientific expertise and data that seemed to dispel the original idea of “clear and transparent answers”.

    As far as the environment was concerned around those former nuclear sites, the conclusion was that the sites were much safer now after the presence of caesium-137 (a radioactive isotope of caesium formed as one of the more common products of nuclear fission) was noticed to be less year by year in all parts of the environment.

    To “prove” their case of an independent and transparent study, they took samples of beef meat, whole milk or coconut juice from both atolls and are readily available to the population and analysed those samples.

    Their results showed that the levels of radioactive concentration were far less than the “maximum levels admissible” — or whatever that means for the Ma’ohi who are not versed in the scientific jargon.

    Artificial radioactive fallout level ‘low’
    As for the health of the population, they reassured the people from the atolls that the level of toxicity of artificial radioactive fallout measured from 2019 to 2020 was extremely low, according to the data collected by the Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRNS).

    They established that the overall efficient dose (external exposition, internal exposition by ingestion and inhalation) of radioactivity was evaluated at 1,4 mSv (the measure of radiation exposure) in Mā’ohi Nui — which is two times lower than in France.

    An even stronger reassurance was offered to the media when the question of a possible collapse of the northern part of the atoll of Moruroa was mentioned. The French experts replied that such a disastrous scenario was extremely unlikely, because the geo-mechanical system Telsite 2 put in place in 2000, would detect signs of unusual activities weeks beforehand.

    Notwithstanding their initial answer, they added that even in the worst-case scenario, preventative measures would be taken to evacuate the population of Moruroa, and Tureia would not be hit by this improbable landslide.

    A reassurance that clearly leaves doubt on whether Moruroa is at all safe.

    When asked by one of the local journalists, Vaite Pambrun, why the atolls were not “retroceded” (ceded back) to their people now that it is “safe”, the delegate to Nuclear Safety M. Bugault was at pains to explain that it was not possible because plutonium was not buried deep enough under the coral layer, and for safety reasons the French state still needed to monitor the atolls.

    A somehow contradictory response that does not surprise the people who are used to the rhetoric used by the French state for the last 50 years.

    France seems to offer very reassuring measures and answers, but the populations have learnt in the past that the word of the French state must be taken with a lot of mistrust and scepticism especially when it comes to nuclear matters.

    France trying to wipe out nuclear traces from Polynesian memory

    Mayor of Fa'aa Oscar Temaru
    Mayor of Fa’aa Oscar Temaru … criticised the conclusions reached by the French nuclear experts. Image: Tahiti Infos

    Independence leader Oscar Temaru, and former president of Tahiti, was quick to organise a press conference where he criticised the conclusions reached by the nuclear experts who seemed to contradict their findings about the safety of the atolls that still needed more monitoring, hence the refusal to retrocede.

    After the last Paris roundtable, Temaru accused the French state and the local government — which he calls the local “collabos” (alluding to the French who collaborated with the Germans during the Second World War) to try “to wipe out the last evidence and vestiges that constitute the history of nuclear colonisation by the army and the money”.

    According to Temaru, there is a trust crisis against the local government of territorial President Eduard Fritch and the French state that is going to last for a long time.

    Those strong words also came after the decision was taken to completely destroy the last nuclear concrete shelter on the atoll of Tureia, wiping out for ever any traces of nuclear presence.

    This decision is reminiscent of the one taken by the same French state to raze to the ground the two nuclear shelters used by the army on Mangareva.

    By the same occasion, the hangar with the flimsy protection of corrugated iron used for the local population during the nuclear tests was also demolished. All those structures were pulled down in the early 2000s.

    Father Auguste Ube Carlson, president of the anti-nuclear lobby Association 193, has also denounced the rhetoric used by the French state which “pretends’ to bring some new answers that have a “sound of deja-vu and that do not fool any of the populations who have suffered through the nuclear era”.

    According to one of the Association 193 spokespeople, France is telling local populations that all is well in the best of worlds and there is nothing to worry about.

    A more mitigated reaction

    Local historian Jean-Marc Regnault
    Local historian Jean-Marc Regnault … dedicated to writing the history of the nuclear era. Image: Tahiti Infos

    Local historian Jean-Marc Regnault conceded that it has been a struggle to get the French state to give access to files that at one point were declassified and then re-classified to now be reopened to the public which he considers a victory.

    He does not share the same stance taken by Oscar Temaru regarding the wiping out of the last atomic shelter in Tureia. According to the historian, the shelter is a hazard to the population of Tureia as it contains asbestos and therefore needs to be destroyed.

    Regnault positions himself as a researcher who, like any other member of the public, will be able to write the history of the nuclear era thanks to all those thousands of documents now available to be consulted, unless classified as state secrets.

    He sees the history of a nation not in terms of buildings but in terms of what can be written and taught to the younger generations. The destruction of the building does not equal the wiping-out of a nation’s memory.

    He finds it remarkable that teachers will have the material to teach the history of the atomic tests in Mā’ohi Nui, which was one the tenants of the Tavini party when they were at the helm of the country in 2004.

    It is up to the women and men of Ma’ohi Nui to realise their dreams of writing the history of their islands by consulting those archives, especially the military ones and not be forced to only hear one narrative, that of the French state.

    There is a movement toward more transparency, according to Regnault.

    What about the conclusions drawn by the book Toxic?
    The Delegate to Nuclear Safety M. Bugault, has been particularly dismissive of the book Toxic. He says that it is clear that the calculations based on the simulations are wrong and he rejected the deductions made by the book that the French state have played down the impacts of nuclear tests fallout on the Polynesians.

    However, he admitted that 6 nuclear tests did not have favourable weather forecasts and generated radioactive fallout that led to doses “below the limit accepted by those working on the nuclear sites” but “higher than the doses accepted by the public”.

    This is the reason why it is absolutely legitimate for people who have been contaminated to seek compensation.

    He tells the press that the calculations and the investigation by Disclose wrongly contradict those made by the CEA in 2006 where the data and the mode of calculations were extremely technical and scientific and 450 pages long.

    He suggested that those who were involved in the research and the publishing of Toxic were not versed enough in the technical jargon of the final document released by the CEA.
    It is not enough to tell the truth but it must be accessible to the public, according to Bugault.

    The book Toxic fails to explain in a clear and simple way how its calculations were carried out and achieved. He promised that in April 2022 the anti-Toxic book will be published by the CEA on Tahiti.

    Ena Manuireva, born in Mangareva (Gambier islands) in Ma’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), is a language revitalisation researcher at Auckland University of Technology and is currently completing his doctorate on the Mangarevan language. He is also a campaigner for nuclear reparations justice from France over the 193 tests staged in Polynesia over three decades and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Startup Pitched Tasing Migrants From Drones, Video Reveals

    Brinc, a rising star among the many companies jockeying to sell drones to police, has a compelling founding mythology: In the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, its young founder decided to aid law enforcement agencies through the use of nonviolent robots. A company promotional video obtained by The Intercept, however, reveals a different vision: Selling stun gun-armed drones to attack migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

    The company’s ascendant founder and CEO, Blake Resnick, recently appeared on Fox Business News to celebrate a venture capital coup: $25 million from Silicon Valley A-listers like Sam Altman, ex-LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner’s Next Play Ventures, and former acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan. The 21-year-old Resnick, a Thiel fellow and a new inductee to the prestigious Forbes “30 Under 30” list in the category of social impact, told Fox Business’s Stuart Varney that Brinc’s quadcopter drones are helping police defuse dangerous hostage situations on a near-daily basis. Resnick repeated his longtime claim that the company had been founded “in large part” as a lifesaving response to the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, an inspirational story that’s made its way into press coverage of the startup. With increased scrutiny paid to the moral and bodily harms posed by autonomous militarized robots, Brinc’s “Values & Ethics” webpage offers a salve, asserting a “duty to bring these technologies into the world responsibly” and a commitment to “never build technologies designed to hurt or kill.”

    But a 2018 promotional video for an unreleased border security product shows that the startup’s original technological goals did involve hurting people. In the video, Resnick, standing at an unnamed stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, demonstrates how his company’s flying bots could be used to detect, track, interrogate, and ultimately physically attack would-be migrants. “This is one of the most desolate parts of our southern border,” a blazer-clad Resnick says in the video, standing beside a large metallic box adorned with solar panels. “Every year, over $100 billion of narcotics and half a million people flow through areas just like this one.” When the video was made, the Trump administration had begun investing in so-called virtual wall surveillance technologies to obviate the need for the physical wall that Donald Trump had promised during his presidential campaign, inking contracts with Brinc competitors like Anduril Industries (also linked to Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder behind the Thiel Fellowship). “There’s no wall here,” notes Resnick, “and it probably wouldn’t work anyway because of the rough terrain and eminent domain issues.” Luckily, “there is a solution,” says Resnick, gesturing to the metal chest.

    Resnick would have been about 18 at the time the video was made.

    In the video, Resnick calls that solution the “Wall of Drones,” in which the glinting boxes would be deployed across the border, each harboring a small robotic quadcopter with high-definition and thermal sensors, self-piloting abilities, human-detection software, and, crucially, a stun gun. Once Brinc’s border drone detected a “suspicious” person, it was to connect its sensors and built-in speaker with a Border Patrol agent, who would then remotely “interrogate” the “perpetrator.” In the video demonstration, a Latino actor referred to as “José” is walking in the middle of the desert when he is approached by the Brinc drone. José then refuses to show identification to the drone, points a gun at it, and walks away, whereupon the drone is depicted firing a Taser into his back and shooting an electrical current through him. José crumples into the dirt.

    Fully realized, the Wall of Drones would have entailed hundreds or thousands of these armed robots constantly searching for targets along the border, adding more weapons to an already highly militarized stretch of the Earth.

    The artificial intelligence-powered hunting and tasing of a wandering migrant isn’t a scene that’s immediately easy to reconcile with Brinc’s corporate vow: “Be mindful of the implications of our work — we won’t build a dystopia.” Today the company is still engineering sophisticated security-oriented drones with an eye toward police, the Department of Homeland Security, and defense customers but without the weaponized variant shown off in the desert. Brinc’s current main offering to police and other first responders is the LEMUR S drone, which closely resembles the Wall of Drones unit but does not have a weapon installed. It’s described by the company as a “tactical tool that can help to de-escalate, reduce risk, and save lives.” The company also sells the BRINC BALL, a spherical cellphone-like device that can be tossed into dangerous situations by police to listen and communicate remotely.

    The Blake Resnick of today, three years removed from his borderland demonstration, is contrite over having worked on the border system. He told The Intercept over email that the “video is immature, deeply regrettable and not at all representative of the direction I have taken the company in since.” He described the Wall of Drones system as a “prototype” that was “never fully developed, sold, or used operationally” and was discontinued in 2018 because it is “prone to disastrous misuse. … I agree that the technology as depicted is unethical and that is one of the reasons we created a set of Values and Ethics to guide our work,” he added, referring to the website section.

    Resnick also said that “the video was faked” — the company “never built a drone with a functional taser.” The video, he said, used compressed gas to fire a Taser dart at the actor but “without actually putting high voltage through the wires.”

    Still, the company did try to sell the system: Resnick noted that “BRINC had initial discussions with a very limited number of parties” about purchasing the Wall of Drones system, explaining that the idea was to build something cheaper than a border wall that would reduce “the risk of gunfights between law enforcement and armed traffickers attempting to cross into the United States.” But “nothing ever progressed” with the project, and Resnick repeated his claim that he was inspired by the Las Vegas shooting “to pivot away from these uses” to serving emergency responders, though work continued on the Wall of Drones into the year following the massacre. That pivot and the company values statement predated the startup’s first employee, revenue, product delivery, and fundraising, he said. Brinc, he said, is committed to not selling weaponized drones.

    Despite Resnick’s change of heart and the company’s current unarmed tack, some who spoke to The Intercept say the fact that the technology was ever on the table raises serious concerns about the values, ambitions, and judgment of Brinc and its young CEO. And though Brinc’s founder says that he’s pivoted away from drones built to intercept and incapacitate migrants, the company’s original mission — selling flying robots to aid in state security — remains in place, situating the company in an ethically fraught new frontier of business. The company recently hired a “federal capture and strategy director,” previously employed by a defense contractor selling drones to U.S. Special Operations Command, suggesting an interest in military applications.

    “He’s got this whole narrative about the shooting in Vegas, but the original idea was 100 percent to use drones to tase migrants,” a source with direct knowledge of Brinc told The Intercept. The source, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their livelihood, said that Resnick at the time showed little interest in drone “applications in the non-tasing immigrants business” even though there are “a million things you can use drones for that don’t involve electrocuting people.”

    Referring to Brinc’s current emphasis on nonviolence and de-escalation, this person said, “They only made that up when they raised funds from real investors like Sam Altman. The company puts out a good front about rescuing people and doing no harm, but imagine what is said to cops behind closed doors?”

    brinc-drone-theintercept-emb

    An actor depicting a migrant on the U.S.-Mexico border is struck with a stun gun, demonstrating the capabilities of Brinc’s “Wall of Drones” system.

    Still: The Intercept

    “Startups pivot all the time to where the money is,” this source added. “Google once said ‘don’t be evil.’ When the rubber hits the road, you’ve got paying customers, and those customers want things.”

    A patent in Resnick’s name protecting an expanded version of the system from the video raises further questions about both his stated motivation for pivoting away from weaponized drones and about the potential for the company to use such technology in the future. Brinc provisionally applied for the patent in 2017 but formally applied in June 2018 — seven months after the Vegas shooting that Resnick said convinced him to switch to helping emergency responders. The patent was awarded to Brinc last year. The patent application, for “Drone Implemented Border Patrol,”  states: “If a person is detected, an onboard facial recognition algorithm will attempt to identify the person. … In one embodiment, the facial recognition algorithm works by comparing captured facial features with the U.S. Department of State’s facial recognition database.”

    “When the rubber hits the road, you’ve got paying customers, and those customers want things.”

    The patent specifies that the onboard stun gun is a Taser X26, a powerful, discontinued electroshock weapon associated with “higher cardiac risk than other models,” according to a 2017 Reuters investigation. But a stun gun was only one of many possible options. Other potential anti-migrant armaments described in the patent include pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, rubber buckshot, plastic bullets, beanbag rounds, sponge grenades, an “electromagnetic weapon, laser weapon, microwave weapon, particle beam weapon, sonic weapon and/or plasma weapon,” along with “a sonic approach to incapacitate a target.”

    Migrant and civil liberties advocates decried the technology demonstrated in the video.

    “The Biden administration and Congress must not contract with companies like Brinc,” said Mitra Ebadolahi, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties, after reviewing the video. “Doing so promotes profits over people and does nothing to further human safety or security.” Ebadolah added that the Wall of Drones system is “particularly horrifying when one considers potential targets: unaccompanied children, pregnant people, and asylum-seekers searching for safety.”

    She echoed the source’s concerns about a pivot back to weaponized drones, stating: “In an unregulated market, tech executives follow the money, and they engineer their products for buyers that promise large profits and little scrutiny. The most attractive government contracts are with our most over-funded and under-scrutinized agencies: law enforcement.”

    “You can tell very clearly that these companies are getting their inspiration from the killer drones that are used in other parts of the world.”

    Jacinta Gonzalez of Mijente, a Latino advocacy and migrant rights group, described the Wall of Drones video as “absolutely horrifying” in an interview with The Intercept. “It’s terrifying to think that this is not just an awful idea that someone brings up in a brainstorming session, but [Brinc has] gone so far as to make the video,” which she says is illustrative of “how blurry the line has become between war zones and a militarized border. You can tell very clearly that these companies are getting their inspiration from the killer drones that are used in other parts of the world.”

    Gonzalez said that she was disturbed by the scenario depicted in the video, which she described as a “racist fantasy” and not representative of the true humanitarian problems along the border. “If there was a drone flying over, they would most likely be finding families and people who are going through a very difficult health crisis. … They would be confronting folks that might not be speaking English.” Forcing the average southern border migrant into an interrogation with a robot designed to electrocute them “just makes a dangerous journey all the more violent, all the more likely to result in death or harm.”

    Gonzalez shared skepticism over how Brinc’s current pledge to not help build a robotic police dystopia might fare in the longer term: “You cannot trust a company that is even putting ideas like this out into the world.” Avoiding a future in which the southern border is patrolled by armed flying robots “not only requires commitments from this company to say that they won’t produce this type of drone, but it also requires local police departments, and ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and Border Patrol to all proactively say, ‘This is not the type of technology that we want to invest in, we would absolutely never implement something like this.’”

    The post Startup Pitched Tasing Migrants From Drones, Video Reveals appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Xiaomi announces new battery with 10 per cent bigger capacity, advanced monitoring

    Xiaomi was able to increase the silicon content inside the battery about 3 times and has resulted in more efficient capacity storage

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Saudi women’s rights activist sues three ex-US intel operatives over hacking for UAE

    Loujain al-Hathloul says actions of men on behalf of the UAE led to her iPhone being hacked and to her imprisonment and torture

    Loujain al-Hathloul, the prominent Saudi women’s rights activist, has filed a lawsuit against three former US intelligence and military officers who have admitted in a US court to helping carry out hacking operations on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.

    In her lawsuit, which was filed in a US district court in Oregon in conjunction with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Hathloul alleged that the actions of three men – Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke – led to her iPhone being hacked and communication being exfiltrated by UAE security officials.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Major outage hits Amazon Web Services; many sites affected

    The company said in a post on the AWS status page that it had ‘mitigated’ the underlying problem responsible for the outage

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • WhatsApp to let users set all chats to disappear by default

    The Meta-owned messaging service also said it’s giving users more options for how long before a message is deleted

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • ‘Sustainable aviation fuel’ is here, but still has miles to go

    United Airlines deployed what it called a “game-changing flight” last week. In a global first, a United Boeing 737 carrying more than 100 passengers flew from Chicago to Washington, D.C. on a tank of pure “sustainable aviation fuel,” or SAF. But while the stunt demonstrated that flying on pure SAF can be done, it’s unlikely to change the carbon footprint of your next airplane trip.

    SAF resembles conventional jet fuel and emits carbon dioxide when it’s burned in a plane’s engine. It’s considered sustainable because it’s refined from material that already exists in the environment, like used cooking fats and plant oils, rather than from fossil fuels that have stored carbon in the earth’s crust for millions of years. That means SAF can potentially have a smaller carbon footprint than crude oil–based fuel when the entire life-cycle emissions of producing it are taken into account. 

    Neither United nor World Energy, the company that produced the SAF for the flight, has revealed any details about the life-cycle emissions of the fuel used for Wednesday’s flight, but the companies advertise that SAF has the potential to reduce emissions by up to 80 percent compared to conventional jet fuel. The flight also wasn’t fueled entirely by SAF. One of the two engines on the plane ran on conventional jet fuel “to further prove there are no operational differences between the two,” according to United. 

    The point was less to demonstrate a flight with a lower carbon footprint than to show that SAF technology is now just as good as the fossil-based stuff. Some airlines are already blending SAF into the fuel they use, but the American Society for Testing and Materials, which develops standards for jet fuel, limits blending to 50 percent. Lauren Riley, United’s managing director of global environmental affairs, told Politico that was because of technical problems with earlier generations of SAF. “It’s matured since then, and we are proving that those concerns are no longer relevant,” she said.

    SAF isn’t the only early-stage proposal for cutting emissions from flying. Major manufacturers like Airbus are also looking at fueling planes with clean hydrogen, which doesn’t produce any greenhouse gases when it’s burned. Battery technology has not advanced enough to power big planes over long distances yet, but using battery-powered planes for short distances is starting to take off. The shipping company DHL recently announced it was ordering a fleet of 12 battery-powered planes that are expected to be able to carry about 2,600 pounds of cargo over roughly 500 miles on one charge. 

    In the near term, SAF is one of the few available tools to lower emissions from commercial aviation — but it’s got some serious hurdles to overcome. There are doubts the world could sustainably produce enough SAF to power the entire industry, due to limited supply of the raw materials needed to make it. At the moment, it’s three to four times more expensive than conventional fuel, and there’s hardly any of it on the market. According to the International Air Transport Association, a trade association, about 26 million gallons of SAF will be produced this year. Riley of United said SAF accounts for “far less than 0.1 percent of our total fuel supply in any given year.” United chief executive officer Scott Kirby told Bloomberg Green that converting just 10 percent of the global aviation fuel supply to SAF will require $250 billion in capital. Kirby said the industry couldn’t afford it, and that a “government foundation” was needed. 

    Experts say another way to cut aviation emissions in the near term, without spending hundreds of billions of dollars, is to issue stronger regulations that require airlines to buy the most efficient planes on the market. The Biden administration recently opted not to develop more effective emissions regulations for aircraft. 

    But Biden is taking steps to help scale up SAF. In September, the White House announced loan guarantees, research and development funding, and an interagency “Grand Challenge” to increase production of SAF to 3 billion gallons per year by 2030. 

    The Build Back Better Act, the social spending and climate bill that passed the House last month, also includes $300 million for SAF research, as well as a new tax credit of at least $1.25 per gallon for aviation fuels that achieve at least a 50 percent emission reduction.

    The aviation industry supports the measure. Carter Yang, a spokesperson for the lobbying organization Airlines for America, told E&E News, “A tax credit would help build the nascent market for SAF, providing a financial incentive for companies to integrate more SAF into the fuel supply and enabling them to offer it at a price that would allow airlines to use more of it.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Sustainable aviation fuel’ is here, but still has miles to go on Dec 6, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Fortress Europe: the millions spent on military-grade tech to deter refugees

    We map out the rising number of high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers along EU borders

    From military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.

    Poland’s border with Belarus is becoming the latest frontline for this technology, with the country approving last month a €350m (£300m) wall with advanced cameras and motion sensors.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Facebook Messenger to get built-in bill splitting feature

    The feature could be useful for situations like divvying up a restaurant bill with your friends or splitting a bill with roommates

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Rights groups urge EU to ban NSO over clients’ use of Pegasus spyware

    Letter signed by 86 organisations asks for sanctions against Israeli firm, alleging governments used its software to abuse rights

    Dozens of human rights organisations have called on the European Union to impose global sanctions on NSO Group and take “every action” to prohibit the sale, transfer, export and import of the Israeli company’s surveillance technology.

    The letter, signed by 86 organisations including Access Now, Amnesty International and the Digital Rights Foundation, said the EU’s sanctions regime gave it the power to target entities that were responsible for “violations or abuses that are of serious concern as regards to the objectives of the common foreign and security policy, including violations or abuses of freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, or of freedom of opinion and expression”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • I’m a Facebook jailbird: the system is sexist

    Content notification: This post contains discussion of and examples of online abuse and commentary some people might find offensive. It is published here in the interest of genuinely and openly discussing ideas and thoughts about what we, as a community, consider abusive and/or sexist on social media platforms.

    While draft anti-troll legislation by the current Australian Federal Government is intended to magically change the nature of global social media and protect those who are relentlessly bullied online  – with a cursory nod to women and children being the greatest victims of this abuse – the details are yet to be explained. On the surface of it, it appears more like a mental blip, than a comprehensive stab at halting harmful cyberhate and misinformation on the platforms.

    What about users who troll from a VPN? What level of abuse will be deemed severe enough for the Government to step up and step in? How many cases does it expect to prosecute and to what level? How will it force a global behemoth such as the likes of Facebook to gather and then share the necessary personal information?

    In the meantime, Facebook has its own measures to prevent trolling. Users can be reported by other users and Facebook’s algorithms or human moderators will assess the post and step in with a user ban: 12 hours, 24 hours, 3 days, 7 days, 30 days, depending on the number of misdemeanours.

    But how does this work? Facebook does not release details of its criteria for assessment. What we do know is that many platforms outsource their moderation offshore where barely trained and often very young people are dealing with our complaints.

    I have always been one who finds bullying, injustice and casual cruelty hard to walk away from, in person, and online. For example, I’m sometimes active with the Australian branch of the #iamhere movement, a group of volunteers who work on Facebook to take “action to disrupt those who are spreading hate on the Internet.”

    This work largely consists of the group focussing energies on particular public posts from MSM where hate is flourishing in the comment sections, and correcting the record by sharing actual facts about the content (such as in the case of vaccine or climate denial) and offering affirmative comments to offer space for those who are the subject of attack (for example in stories about domestic violence, transgender and sexuality issues). We get to see a great deal of human ugliness in this work. But we keep it polite and factual and it’s good to feel supported.

    However when free range, I’m a little more feisty. I’m sure if I just put up and shut up, posted nice pictures of my dinner, my cats, chooks, sewing and a few suggestive cleavage shots, of course, I wouldn’t get myself into social media trouble.

    But I’m in the fray and I don’t apologise for this – consequently I’m frequently in the Facebook slammer. In the interests of honesty, I’m also sometimes a smidge sarcastic. Recently, for example, I received a 30-day incarceration, which means no commenting, liking, or sharing, though I can still read posts and use Messenger.

    The Guardian had shared an article about Harry Styles’ new makeup range, with a picture of the gorgeous, sexually playful, gender non-conforming pop star and non-binary role model in full frockage. One commenter suggested that Harry and those like him be conscripted to the military. My response was: “really? why? to ‘make a man of him’? who made a man of you, pussycat? Was it nasty, or… fun?”

    Online hate

    Gretchen Miller says hate is flourishing in comment sections online. But somehow she always ends up in the Facebook slammer for seemingly mild commentary. 

    I am uncertain as to whether I was jailed for calling a man “pussycat,” or for the phrase “make a man of him”. Pussycat is a term of affection, something my father used to call me, and sure, I wasn’t feeling much affection for the commenter, nonetheless it’s no more offensive than love, sweetheart, or darling.

    As for the proposal that beautifully creative and fey people like Harry Styles should be subjected to the military, known for its brutality towards those who don’t fit in, well that is quite clearly menacing.

    My teen is nonbinary and I’m acutely aware that banally hideous comments like this, floating in a relentless sea of hatred and contempt, causes genuine damage to young people looking for role models. I wanted to make space for anyone reading the comments who might feel threatened, but heaven forbid, I, as a woman, should challenge this bloke. Thus, 30 days, in the slammer for ‘bullying’.

    Previously I have received 30 days for (light heartedly) describing my beloved cat as a female dog for scratching the furniture. I got another 30 for expressing horror that a Northern Beaches Sydney Christian school had a ‘rate my wife’ sexual education program for its teen boys, that categorised girls according to their church-going, virginity and other Christian values.

    In discussing this on my own private page with a friend, a mother of a daughter, I, as a mother of a son, wasn’t polite about the entitlement of the Christian mindset and wrote to her: “yeah. I can’t imagine having a daughter and knowing this stuff goes on. Makes one feel very impotent and powerless. But we’re not. The girls pushed back hard on this, thankfully. Don’t know how the boys responded but it seems ‘build a bitch’ does observe some kind of response to the cardboard cutout being designed here. Stupid flipping Christians.”

    Bam. More time behind bars. Apparently, that was hate speech. I’m not sure which element, however saw the door close and the key thrown away: the comment about Christians or the direct quote from the students who described this practice as ‘build a bitch,” which I pulled from a mainstream newspaper,

    I did, in irritation, call an anti-vaxxer a numpty one time: 30 days for that. And it’s not just me: a friend got pinged for hate speech for three days because she described a personal experience on my private page in this way: “As a teenage Mormon one of my male friends shared a pamphlet with me from his Sunday School class which warned boys against the sins of group masturbation because it leads to homosexuality. I remember just thinking, ew, so, is group masturbation a thing? Boys are just so gross.” Was it the mention of Mormons, sin, homosexuality, masturbation, or that “boys are just so gross”? Who’s to know?

    Meanwhile, a quick informal survey of friends and contacts and I gathered the comments below, all reported by women, all perfectly peachy as far as Facebook was concerned. Let’s take a real Facebook that I’ll give the pseudomyn “Random Specialist Mens’ Interest Group” (or RSMIG). In reality, it’s a misleading front for overt misogyny. The comments below were all made in public spaces. I’ve just changed the names. From Brian: “Kate, we are all aware that you are a member of the female “rape” club.” And, to Margaret, Brian was equally charming: “Sweety, you are not staying the night… We are not going to have sex… What part of “no means no” do you not understand? I am not into rough violent sex and rape like you are … So you are not staying for breakfast and I am not cooking you waffles… We should have pics of the outside of your house soon!! Hunny Bun.”

    Facebook and RSMIG was fine with Dave sweetly suggesting of a woman that her punishment should include: “remove her priviges, send HER to jail, 2-3 time what he got. Castrate her. EDIT: also, remover her clitoris. And boobs as well. Fyi, false claims that Destroys ppls lives, make my blood boil so much”  (grammar and spelling are word for word).

    Darren was apparently well within his rights when he wrote: “Trans people aren’t real humans, and should be put down like that retarded guinea pigs.” And Frank was also good to go with: “That kind of talk will bring about a level of hostility that these fantasy dwellers aren’t even remotely prepared for. If they aren’t careful, men might just show them what they wanna see… and then they’ll know just how patient and nice we’ve really been the whole time. … If they keep it up they will force men to retaliate and they will land right back where they were a century ago. They have no idea what masculine wrath even is. Yet.”

    My question here is: Who gets banned and for what? To what extent is gender bias coming into play here? Like so much of life, these comments indicate we are swimming in such a sea of misogyny, that we we barely blink at it. And it’s clear to me that society’s offline prejudices – that women aren’t trustworthy, aren’t able to equally voice their opinions and take up space – are being applied liberally online.

    We certainly know that women face more abuse online. But perhaps they face more censorship too.

    So what happens next? You can appeal a banning, and a bot will review the request. If that is unsuccessful it is possible to request further adjudication, which you won’t necessarily get: few of these requests reach an actual human.

    I have asked Facebook executives in Australia who the company employs to review these requests, the nature of their training and whether it reflects contemporary secular values.

    The impacts of this silencing are not minor. These bannings happened when we were in Covid lockdown and many of us were profoundly isolated. I use Facebook for sharing life stories and life stories aren’t necessarily clean and tidy.

    Sometimes they are about childhood reactions “boys are gross” and sometimes they are about politics: “Christian schools shouldn’t mandate the objectification of women and to do so is stupid” (truth in defence). The language I use is that of the every day, and drawn from mainstream media. None of my comments advocated violence against men. None of them threatened doxing, a violent uprising, or accused anyone of rape.

    So I am left with more questions than I had to start. I’m wondering how the LNP legislation can possibly deal with the complexity of these engagements. But also wondering how Facebook will greet what appears to be an unworkable proposal. But more deeply, what kind of user Facebook really wants. What is best for the bottom line – fostering social good or fomenting hate?

    What kind of user does Facebook seek, exactly? I don’t have a good feeling about the answers. Not at all.

     

    The post I’m a Facebook jailbird: the system is sexist appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • $644 million boost as NZ’s ICU, hospitals brace for covid-19 surge

    By Rowan Quinn, RNZ News health correspondent

    Intensive care units and hospitals are getting a boost of hundreds of millions of dollars as the country moves to the covid-19 traffic light system.

    Minister of Health Andrew Little announced today the government would spend $100 million upgrading buildings and facilities and $544 million for operating costs, including staffing to prepare for when covid is expected to be widespread in the community next year.

    He said he had asked hospitals to identify ways of quickly increasing their intensive care beds — even though there was more than enough capacity than was likely to be needed.

    “But as the country shifts to the traffic light system, we need to make sure we can cope with the unexpected,” he said.

    Four initial projects were announced.

    The biggest was at West Auckland’s Waitākere Hospital, which had been given $65.1 million to build space for 30 new ward beds, six ICU beds and two negative pressure rooms.

    It currently had no ICU, sending patients to North Shore Hospital instead.

    Its district health board was getting a further $5 million to covert eight existing elective surgery beds to surge intensive care beds.

    Bay of Plenty was given $15.5 million to create two more ICU beds and 4 high dependency unit beds. Canterbury was getting $12 million for 12 ICU beds.

    ‘Underdone’ before covid
    Little told RNZ Morning Report: “Even well before covid, we were underdone when it comes to ICU capacity, so this has always been a thing that we had to do better on and the covid pandemic has obviously shone a light on capacity issues and and even though this most recent outbreak, we’ve actually coped remarkably well with the increasing daily case numbers, ICU capacity has been available.

    “We’ve hovered between about five and I think it topped out at 11 cases at any one time in ICU.

    “With the traffic light system, covid is going to move around the country. We need to know that we’ve done everything we can to maximize ICU capacity.”

    Of the projects announced yesterday, three will be available in the next six months – the other is a “couple of years away”, Little said.

    “These things take a little time to bring on. Early this year I had said to those responsible for putting things together, if there’s any opportunities we can take to accelerate ICU projects, let’s bring those on. This is the product of that.”

    Little said Waitakere, Tauranga and Christchurch were getting more DHB capacity because they had ICU plans that could be accelerated.

    ICU beds in New Zealand
    ICU beds in New Zealand. Graphic: RNZ

    Long-standing concern
    Intensive care doctors and nurses have long worried about how intensive care service around the country would cope when covid became truly endemic, saying the government was overestimating how much capacity there was.

    That was because they would have to care for people with covid-19 on top of all the other usual care, for example, people who had been in car accidents, had a heart attack or who were recovering from certain serious surgeries.

    They have said there is not enough capacity to cope without the high standard of care falling or some planned operations being put off.

    The biggest barrier was not physical beds and equipment, but the nurses needed to staff these.

    The College of Critical Care Nurses estimated the country’s hospitals were short of about 90 already and said urgent moves were needed to recruit nurses from overseas, train more here, and pay those already working better.

    There were not yet details on how the new funding would help to fix the problem.

    ‘Delighted’ over funding
    Intensive care doctor and Intensive Care Society spokesperson, Andrew Stapleton, told Morning Report the society was “delighted”.

    “In the 70 years since there’s been an intensive care in New Zealand, there’s never been any targeted money in a package like this and there’s the promise of more to come, so we’re very hopeful that this is the beginning of moving in the right direction,” Stapleton said.

    “It will (make a difference) in the places it’s targeted towards, so it is targeted and particularly the big win from this is Waitākere.

    “So we talk about intensive care beds per 100,000. There’s roughly four for the whole of New Zealand. Waitākere’s got a population of 600,000 and no intensive care beds, and this is something we’ve been campaigning for some time.

    “So, they’re going to get six intensive care beds and a 30-bed inpatient ward, and this is great news for that region.”

    Intensive care beds costed about $1 million a year to run because of the staffing costs, Stapleton said.

    “That gives you an idea that that is a significant boost.”

    ‘We’re not complaining’
    While the money could have come sooner, “at this point we’re not complaining”.

    Regarding covid-19, the big test was yet to come, he said.

    “It’s easy to forget that Auckland, where the vast majority of covid has been, has been in level 3 lockdown until today, so what happens two weeks from now is going to be interesting to see.”

    Little had earlier said 1400 nurses had completed a 4-hour online course to give them skills to help as a surge workforce if needed.

    But those in the field said they would be able to provide care around the edges at best.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to receive $1mn annual salary

    Agrawal, 37, holds a bachelor’s degree from IIT Bombay and a PhD in computer science from Stanford University

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Oppo Reno7, Reno7 Pro India price leaks

    Allegedly, the Reno7 is to be priced between Rs 28,000 to Rs 31,000, while the Pro model will go for anywhere between Rs 41,000 to Rs 43,000

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • AUT’s new academic head seeks to build relationships around Pacific

    By Sri Krishnamurthi for Asia-Pacific Report

    Incoming new vice-chancellor for Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland University of Technology (AUT) Toelesulusulu Dr Damon Ieremia Salesa is keenly aware that he has broken through another glass ceiling.

    The son of a factory worker made New Zealand history last week, as the first Pacific person to be appointed to the eminent leadership position in academia at a New Zealand university.

    “I’m really excited to be the AUT vice-chancellor and with that excitement comes a sense of its significance with the sector which I work in and have given much of my life to, actually looking like the people it serves. So I’m really excited to be part of that story,” Toelesulusulu told Asia-Pacific Report.

    “AUT is a place where talent can find opportunity and I would hope that lots of other people would want to express that excitement by wanting to come to AUT,” he says.

    “What matters more is the work of the whole institution, that the university itself embraces its many different communities, its Māori students, its Pacific students and already AUT is a little bit known for that and what we can do is to build even more deeply on that.”

    Professor Steven Ratuva, director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury, says Dr Salesa’s appointment is a significant milestone for the Pacific.

    “It is something he richly deserves, and he has been working hard for and it is a good career choice, it is good for the Pacific academic community, and I congratulate him for his contribution to Pacific education.”

    South Auckland priority
    Currently pro-vice-chancellor Pacific at the University of Auckland (UOA), Dr Salesa takes up his new role as vice-chancellor at AUT in March.

    From just up the hill at UOA, he has observed AUT, and likes what he saw.

    “I’ve really admired the way AUT prioritised and served its students, particularly the students of South Auckland and mature students, and that is one of reasons I was really interested in the job,” he says.

    “Just because those communities of learners for whom education really matters, AUT has really embraced them and that is part of what is exciting about AUT — that is why I wanted to come across and join AUT.

    “There is no question that the campus down south and campus on the shore bring universities into the communities that they serve and as well as being global institutions they are local institutions.

    “If you have heart to service and you keep the students at the very centre of the decisions you make, you get great results like you see AUT deliver in South Auckland and the North Shore,” he says.

    Strengthening Māori and Pacific research
    Pacific and Māori research is one area he wants to strengthen as well as build relationships with other institutions in the Pacific.

    “Certainly, one of the things I have as a priority is to make sure that AUT is in all of the partnerships that it needs to be in, that we are serving our communities and our partners as well in a reciprocal relationship from which everyone grows.

    “That will mean we have to be a little bit selective, but it will also mean that Pacific partnerships and other partnerships are critical to the very centre of the university, and they are not seen as being marginal because we’re a university in the middle of the South Pacific.

    “We need to honour that and be connected to our whanau around the Pacific.

    Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa
    Toeolesulusulu Dr Damon Salesa … ““We need to honour … and be connected to our whanau around the Pacific.” Image: RNZ

    “It is absolutely important that we are having those conversations, we need to understand how we can support the University of the South Pacific (USP) and their work, how we can find benefit and value for New Zealand and AUT students and staff from those relationships, so certainly we will be taking that seriously.

    “But certainly, USP is a special institution in our region, so we need to be strategic in how we support and partner with them.”

    Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, head of journalism at USP, says “as many have pointed out, the appointment is well deserved. He was not given any preference as a Pacific Islander. He was picked on merit.

    A Pacific ‘trailblazer’
    “As a trailblazer, he will inspire many Pacific Islanders and Pacific people beyond New Zealand as the vice-chancellor of one of the finest universities in our region.

    “Through my association with the Pacific Media Centre (PMC), I have participated in AUT journalism-related workshops, seminars, and conferences.

    “I have a high regard for the AUT and the PMC, long a flagship of the university for its cutting-edge research and publications in Pacific journalism.

    “I hope the PMC is revived as journalism in the region has been struggling due to economic and political factors. Pacific journalism needs support and leadership and AUT can become the beacon it was,” Associate Professor Singh says.

    Dr Salesa was in the dark about the PMC which has now been in hiatus for almost a year for unknown reasons.

    “I’d have to learn more about that, I don’t know the ins and outs of that situation, but these are things that have to be collaborative, they have to be built with the kind of collective will and expertise of the university especially.

    “There is no question that AUT will be prioritising Māori research and Pacific research among its other amazing specialisations,” Dr Salesa says.

    AUT ‘anchored in Pacific’
    “AUT will always be anchored in the Pacific region and obviously has a long history of educating people from the Pacific region and we hope to continue and deepen that.

    “Those partnerships will speak directly to AUT’s future, and this is a period in time where everyone is just hoping for the best possible outcome for USP, and we will be looking to support in ways that make sense for them and AUT.”

    Dr Salesa is testament to the fact that people of a Pacific background or ethnicity can succeed and excel — not just in sport, but in every facet of society.

    “I think we’ve always known, as the saying goes, talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn’t — and what AUT is the story of, is making opportunity available to diverse groups of talented people.

    “We know if you make opportunities available to those who have been denied them, they will flourish if they are supported in the right way.

    “I have no doubt what people will see in my own story is that the kinds of diverse talent we have in New Zealand that too often we haven’t made the most of, can come to AUT and thrive.

    “I hope that people see in that all kinds of stories because I am also the son of a factory worker, and I am also a first-generation university attendee people can understand that when talent gets opportunity and support it drives them and that’s what I am hoping you’ll see and that is what success at AUT is all about and its story,” the Auckland suburb of Glen Innes-raised Dr Salesa says.

    Education pathway
    A strong advocate for education, he wanted young Māori and Pasifika people to pursue that pathway rather than young school leavers joining the workforce.

    “We know that education is one of the proven pathways to wellbeing and prosperity for families, and that at the same time we know that many families need their young people to go out and work.

    “So, it is absolutely critical that we find ways to get talented young Pacific, Māori and other students into high value employment and education is one of the ways of doing that.

    “What we need is for them to be ambitious, to have high expectations of themselves and their families and it is for AUT and other universities to deliver that transformational learning which is the secret to those strong and prosperous futures,” Dr Salesa says.

    Transformative learning allowed people to change and have more than one career.

    “We know all of us are living in the most uncertain and highly changeable times. In the old days everyone imagined they would have just one career and many people now are realising they might not only change jobs but change careers and they have also come to realise that in many, many of our jobs technology sits at the centre of opportunity and the ability to be effective.

    “AUT is the kind of institution that is built for these times, it offers all sorts of flexible learning offerings and a truly diverse student body and it is New Zealand’s tech university.

    Transformative learning
    “So transformative learning is the kind of learning that actually transforms individual students lives where you can see outcomes writ large and that’s what I’m hoping to support further development at AUT so that people understand AUT is a great place to go, to study and get a great job but also prepare themselves for a great future,” Dr Salesa says.

    Then there was the inevitable vexed question, whether it was time for another university, namely AUT, to start a new medical school? To which he played with a straight bat.

    “At the moment AUT is one of the great providers of the health workforce in New Zealand and certainly for the short term we will be focusing on doing an even better job of doing that.

    “Delivering a health workforce and the health researchers that New Zealand needs. That is obviously a critical contribution in the age of the pandemic, but again that will be built collaboratively with my colleagues at AUT.

    “I think it is a very challenging time for universities across the board and particularly where next year is going to be where students have had two years of lockdown learning in Auckland so we have to make sure that the university can support them in their ambitions to be successful at AUT.

    “That is going to be one of the great challenges, not just facing AUT, but all the tertiary providers that have suffered lockdowns in Auckland.”


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Sri Krishnamurthi.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Tech Workers, Bigger Than Big Tech

    To hold these tech companies accountable, tech workers in the United States have begun to organize. “Help us be Alphabet’s conscience”, proclaimed the recently-formed Alphabet Workers Union, a minority union composed of full-time employees, temporary employees, vendors, and contractors at Google’s parent company. The gradual normalization of unions in the tech industry has captured a new imagination for what is possible when tech workers organize. However, to truly hold tech companies accountable, workers must not only organize at home, but start to build connections—and eventually organize—with their coworkers abroad. 

    The post Tech Workers, Bigger Than Big Tech appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Huawei Watch D to come with blood pressure monitoring feature

    The product is in its final stages of testing, and reportedly the accuracy rate is really good

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Communications and Electronics Lobbying Skyrockets Amid Microchip Shortage

    Samsung televisions are on display at Best Buy in Tampa, Florida.

    During an ongoing global semiconductor shortage that has stifled smartphone and car companies alike, the communications and electronics sector spent 15.1% more on federal lobbying during the third quarter than the same period last year, bringing its 2021 total to $362.1 million. It was the largest lobbying spending increase experienced by any sector this quarter.

    Semiconductors, or semiconductor microchips, are an essential component of electronic devices. Over the course of this year, industry demand for the chips has outstripped their supply, causing some chipmakers to deepen their U.S. investments.

    In March, President Joe Biden called on Congress to invest $50 billion in semiconductor manufacturing and research. He received $133 million from the communications and electronics industry during the 2020 campaign cycle, making it the fourth highest spending sector to contribute to his campaign.

    Tech company Samsung announced Tuesday it will build a semiconductor factory in Taylor, a city just outside of Austin, Texas. One of the world’s largest makers of electronic devices, the company also spent $2.9 million this year on federal lobbying. During the third quarter alone, the company spent $1.1 million — more than it has any other third quarter in its history.

    The electronics manufacturing and equipment industry spent the most in the communications and electronics sector. Its industry groups have lobbied $135.1 million so far this year. The industry experienced its largest third quarter lobbying spend yet, spending $46.1 million — a nearly $10 million increase from the same period last year.

    Other electronics giants moving to chip in include Intel, who in March announced it would build a pair of new factories in Arizona. Intel has spent $4.9 million on federal lobbying this year despite spending only $1 million this past quarter.

    Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing began construction on an Arizona facility in June, and has spent $1.7 million on federal lobbying efforts this year — an over $200,000 increase compared to this period last year.

    Earlier this month, Texas Instruments announced plans for new semiconductor plants in Sherman, Tex. The tech company has spent just over $1 million on lobbying efforts so far this year, tying with the Semiconductor Industry Association, a lobbying group that represents the United States semiconductor industry.

    Amazon.com is the largest client lobbying in the communications and electronics industry, spending a total of $15.3 million during the first three quarters of 2021. The Seattle-based company, which produces its own line of semiconductor chips, spent over $5 million on federal lobbying during the third quarter alone.

    The communications and electronics sector has contributed $20.6 million to members of Congress this year. Of that, nearly 73% went to Democrats and 27% went to Republicans. So far, the sector has given the most to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), a total of $1.8 million. Sen. Schumer sponsored the United States Innovation and Competition Act, a bill that passed the Senate in June, which would invest $52 billion for domestic semiconductor manufacturing to help reduce U.S. reliance on foreign semiconductor producers.

    Within the communications and electronics sector, clients from the telecom and internet industries spent record-high amounts on federal lobbying. Telecom services and equipment bested its previous third quarters numbers with $26.1 million, for a total of $81.5 million this year. The internet industry followed suit and added $23.2 million to its now $67.6 million 2021 federal lobbying total.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Facebook fails to terminate hate speech propagator Suresh Rajput, YouTube suspends his channel

    On November 9, Yati Narsinghanad disciple Suresh Rajput uploaded a video on Facebook about AIMIM chief Asaddudin Owaisi, where he referred to Muslims as “pigs” and termed the violence against the minority Muslim population in Tripura as “Diwali”. In less than 24 hours, the video garnered close to 2 lakh views.

    Five days before uploading this video, Rajput had uploaded another video on his Facebook account with his associate Rahul Sharma where the duo threatened to shoot Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The video was taken down by Facebook after social media outrage.

    But this wasn’t the first time Rajput had publicly threatened the CM. In February, Rajput, who goes by “Hindu Sher Boy” on YouTube, had uploaded a video with his associate Malik Sehrawat in which they threatened to shoot Kejriwal and kill and evict Muslims in Mangolpuri.

    There are Facebook Lives where Rajput is branding Muslims as “terrorists” and farmers as “Khalistanis”. He is requesting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to deploy the army on the Singhu border. In another Live from October, he gave the Indian cricket team captain Virat Kohli a “Muslims getup” for his stance against bursting firecrackers on Diwali. While abusing Kohli in the video and asking his viewers to thrash “people of his kind”, the Live has also been used to spread hate against the Muslim community.

    Click to view slideshow.

    Ironically in a Live about “Hindu-Muslim brotherhood”, Rajput says that Hindus should be allowed to celebrate Navratri and offer bhajans inside mosques since “seculars” allow Muslims to offer namaz in temples. He then instigates his viewers to thrash “seculars” who follow “one-sided brotherhood”.

    The aforementioned videos are accessible on Facebook on Rajput’s profile. Facebook has neither taken down these videos nor suspended Rajput.

    Facebook’s response to Suresh Rajput’s hate speech

    Alt News had emailed several videos of Rajput to Facebook where he could be seen spreading hatred against the Muslim community. Facebook took down most of these links and responded, “We have removed pieces of content that were in violation of our Community Standards. We don’t allow hate speech on our platform, and we remove it when we find it or are made aware of it. We’re investing heavily in people and technology to help us find and remove this content quickly, but if people see something on Facebook which they think violates these rules we encourage them to report it to us, so we can take action. We know our enforcement is not perfect and there is more work to do, but our regular transparency reports show we are making progress combating these issues.”

    But Facebook did not suspend Rajput.

    “We do progressive reviews and put restrictions on accounts when they violate. When the account meets the threshold to disable, we take final action,” was the social media giant’s response when questioned about its failure to deplatform Rajput.

    According to Facebook, he did not “meet the threshold” to be suspended. Yet there are videos of him openly inciting violence against Muslims and promoting a boycott of the community.

    Rajput’s videos are amplified via other accounts and pages as well — SureshHinduboy, Suresh Hindu and Hindu sher boy fans — and these also continue to exist on Facebook.

    In fact, his associate Prabhu Nishad’s account has also not been suspended. Nishad regularly shares Rajput’s videos and his own.

    The video below drew close to 80,000 views. It shows Rajput in an angry rant against a theatre artist Danish Khan who played the role of Ram in Ramlila. Rajput uses offensive language for Khan and accuses Muslims of mass conversions. He also abuses Aaj Tak for a broadcast where the channel reported that Khan was threatened in his locality for playing Ram’s role. “The gatekeepers of Sanatana Dharma will decide who gets to play the role of Ram, not news channels…You live in this country and eat meat and beef. How can you play the role of Ram?” Rajput says.

    Nishad also shares his own videos with anti-Muslim narratives and draws thousands of views. His page has close to 1 lakh followers. He also goes by the name Prabhu Sahani.

    He is a follower of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse.

    Facebook’s response to these users is not in tandem with its policy on hate speech. “We believe that people use their voice and connect more freely when they don’t feel attacked on the basis of who they are. That is why we don’t allow hate speech on Facebook,” reads the first sentence of the policy that forbids violent speech, dehumanising posts (referring to Muslims as “pigs”) and content targeting protected categories among a plethora of other restrictions.

    Facebook’s complete policy on hate speech can be read here.

    Suresh Rajput has violated the regulation on multiple counts — violent speech or support in written or visual form; dehumanising speech or imagery (referring to Muslims as “pigs”); derogatory terms related to sexual activity (Muslims women have been portrayed as sexually deviant people who bear multiple children of different men); self-admission to intolerance on the basis of protected characteristics, including, but not limited to: homophobic, islamophobic, racist; expressions of hate, including, but not limited to: despise, hate.

    Suresh Rajput also used to circulate objectionable content among lakhs of people on YouTube. Unlike Facebook, the video streaming platform took down his channels when alerted by Alt News.

    Violation of YouTube’s policy on hate speech

    Suresh Rajput operated under the name “Hindu Sher boy” on YouTube. While the subscriber count of the channel was hidden (according to a June article in The Wire, his YouTube channel had 4.6 lakh followers), the extent of his popularity could be gauged by the millions of views his videos received.

    In February 2020, Rajput uploaded a video where he referred to AIMIM spokesperson Waris Pathan as “K*** Mulla” (a derogatory slang used for Muslims), members of the Muslim community as “pigs” and alluded that Muslim women who protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) were “prostitutes”. He also threatened Pathan with violence.

    The video had over 1 million views.

    In another video from 2019, where he targeted AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi, he termed members of the Muslim community “jihadis” and used racist slurs against Owaisi. This video also had over 1 million views.

    In a recent video, Rajput targeted prominent Muslim actors of Bollywood — Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Aamir Khan. He began the video by instigating his viewers to boycott Shahrukh Khan’s movie “Pathan” and went on an Islamophobic rant against the Pathan community in Afghanistan. He later called for a complete economic boycott of the Muslim actors. He also blameed the actors for the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

    Rajput had also uploaded the video targeting actor Danish Khan on YouTube. His channel was filled with such content.

    According to YouTube’s policy, hate speech is not allowed on the platform, and this includes comparing people with animals and promoting violence and hatred against protected groups. Suresh Rajput had violated YouTube guidelines on several counts.

    “We take the safety of our users very seriously, and we have strict policies that prohibit hate and harassment on YouTube, including content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups. We apply these policies consistently across all languages and regions regardless of the uploader. Any flagged content found to violate our policies is removed from YouTube immediately…We can confirm that the channel “Hindu Sher boy” has been terminated for violation of our Hate Speech policy,” responded YouTube in an email to Alt News.

    On November 17, Rajput made a new channel under the same name “Hindu Sher boy”.

     

    hindu sher boy channel deleted 😭 || Hindu Sher boy new channel link in description 👇https://youtube.com/channel/UCDTorM2GhfYDRiMbkyHjdpA

    Posted by Prabhu Nishad on Saturday, 20 November 2021

    He runs another YouTube channel called “Hindu Parivar” which also overflows with hate-filled videos targeting the Muslim community. This channel has been in existence since August 2021 and wasn’t terminated by YouTube, however, certain restrictions have been applied to the channel.

    “We have applied a strike against the channel, removed one video for violation of our policy on harassment and bullying from the channel and further age-restricted two videos (link, link) for violence and graphic content. In cases where content doesn’t violate our policies but may not be appropriate for all audiences, we may place an age restriction on the video when we’re notified of the content,” responded YouTube.

    While Google-owned YouTube terminated one of Rajput’s channels, Facebook failed to suspend the multiple pages and accounts he uses to circulate hateful content targeting Muslims. Facebook only took down a few of his videos and did not provide a reasonable explanation to allow him to continue on the platform.

    The social media giant has been making headlines the past few weeks after the revelations made by the former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen. According to leaked documents obtained by the Associated Press, Facebook in India has not only failed to check hate speech but has also been selective in curbing the same, especially inflammatory posts targeting the minority Muslim community.

    Internal staff memos which are part of the disclosures made to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and provided to the US Congress in redacted form by the legal counsel of Haugen revealed that Facebook did not have “even basic key work detection set up to catch” potential hate speech. Several red flags concerning polarising content and hate speech in India were deemed “not a problem” by Facebook and its Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools failed to detect vernacular languages. This is evident from Facebook’s biased treatment of Hindi content.

    YouTube, on the other hand, has not been under the scanner as much as Facebook. Hate speech also flourishes on the video streaming platform. YouTube typically has a three-strikes policy before taking down a channel and nearly every video uploaded by Suresh Rajput violates its policy. YouTube has claimed to have applied one strike against his new channel “Hindu Parivar”. Furthermore, Alt News has emailed YouTube about the reappearance of “Hindu Sher boy” and this article will be updated in case YouTube takes down the new channel.

    Myopic policies and a lackadaisical approach of tech giants to curb hate speech in India negatively affect the country’s minority Muslim population. Suresh Rajput occupies a prominent space on Facebook and the company’s refusal to suspend him is evidence of its unwillingness to tackle the problem.

    The post Facebook fails to terminate hate speech propagator Suresh Rajput, YouTube suspends his channel appeared first on Alt News.

    This post was originally published on Alt News.

  • Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 4G goes official

    The Redmi Note 11 4G features a side-mounted fingerprint scanner

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Apple reportedly switching to iPhone modem design in 2023

    Apple’s switch to modems of its own design is widely expected to happen in 2023, and TSMC is the natural manufacturing partner

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Facebook Grants Government of Afghanistan Limited Posting Rights

    Following the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the ascendance of the Taliban, Facebook has found itself with a power nearly unprecedented in history: an American corporation unilaterally controlling the most popular means through which an entire foreign government speaks to its people.

    After the Taliban assumed power in August, Facebook initially tightened its controls on the group, which it had already blacklisted. But internal company materials reviewed by The Intercept show that Facebook has carved out several exceptions to its Taliban ban, permitting specific government ministries to share content via the company’s platforms and contributing to a growing tangle of internal policies on how the Taliban posts.

    Facebook has for years officially barred the Taliban and myriad affiliates from using its platforms under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, an internal blacklist published by The Intercept in September. The DIO blocks thousands of groups and people from Facebook platforms and dictates what billions of people can say about them there. But unlike other banned groups on the DIO list, like Al Qaeda or the Third Reich, the Taliban is now a sovereign government engaged in the very real business of administering an entire country with millions of inhabitants.

    An internal policy memorandum obtained by The Intercept shows that, at the end of September, the company created a DIO exception “to allow content shared by the Ministry of Interior.” The memo cited only “important information about new traffic regulations,” noting “we assess the public value of this content to outweigh the potential harm,” although it did not limit its exception to traffic updates only. A second DIO exception added at the same time provides a far narrower carveout: Two specific posts from the Ministry of Health would be permitted on the grounds that they contained information relevant to Covid-19. Despite the exceptions, however, Interior’s Facebook page was deleted at the end of October, as first reported by Pajhwok Afghan News agency, while the Health Ministry’s page hasn’t posted since October 2.

    The exception memo cited “important information about new traffic regulations,” noting “we assess the public value of this content to outweigh the potential harm.”

    While no other government offices are currently allowed to share information, other exceptions to the DIO policy reviewed by The Intercept were even narrower in scope: For just 12 days in August, government figures on Facebook were permitted to recognize the Taliban “as official gov of Afghanistan” without risking deletion or suspension, according to another internal memo, and a similarly brief stretch from late August to September 3 granted users the freedom to post the Taliban’s public statements without having to “neutrally discuss, report on, or condemn” these statements.

    While exempting the Ministry of Interior would permit Afghans to receive information about a variety of important administrative functions like public security, driver’s licenses, and immigration matters, no such exceptions have been issued for other offices with responsibilities vital to the basic functioning of any country, like the ministries of agriculture, commerce, finance, and justice. Afghanistan is currently “on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe,” according to a recent U.N. report, and the new Taliban administration is still struggling to establish itself.

    Facebook spokesperson Sally Aldous told The Intercept that the Taliban remains banned from the company’s services through the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, adding, “We continue to review content and Pages against our policies and last month removed several Pages including those from the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Public Works. However, we’ve allowed some content about the provision of essential public services in Afghanistan, including, for example, two posts in August on the Afghan Health Page.”

    It’s unclear how Facebook has arrived at this piecemeal approach to its Taliban policy, or how exactly it determined which government ministries to permit. Aldous declined to explain how the company drafted these policy exceptions or why they they weren’t publicly disclosed, but told The Intercept that “Facebook does not make decisions about the recognized government in any particular country but instead respects the authority of the international community in making these determinations,” adding, “We have a dedicated team, including regional experts, working to monitor the situation in Afghanistan. We also have a wide and growing network of local and international partners that we work with to alert us to emerging issues and provide essential context.”

    Experts who spoke to The Intercept say these exceptions, even if well-intentioned, demand a public disclosure not only of their existence, but also of how the determinations were reached. Others criticized the policy exceptions as arbitrary in nature, underscoring the unchecked power the American company holds over the functioning of another country’s government, particularly in a society like Afghanistan where a lack of internet infrastructure creates a greater reliance on Facebook products. In 2019, a New York Times report noted that Facebook messaging product “WhatsApp has become second only to Facebook as a way for Afghans to communicate with one another, and with the outside world.” While poorer countries are a lucrative and growing target for Facebook’s advertising operations, years of reporting show these markets are often an afterthought in terms of content policy and moderation.

    Masuda Sultan, co-founder of Women for Afghan Women, told The Intercept that while the potential for Taliban propagandizing is a concern, Facebook platforms in Afghanistan may present “the only communication that many people have in order to relay messages with the entities in power, or for these entities to hear them.” In August, Sultan made use of the now-shuttered Taliban WhatsApp hotline when her NGO’s Kabul office was attacked amid the chaos of the American pullout. “It was incredibly important for us to have access to them because the police had abandoned their posts and we had no one else to call,” she added. “Especially during an emergency, it is not helpful to have communications shut down between ordinary people and those in power.”

    Facebook platforms in Afghanistan may present “the only communication that many people have in order to relay messages with the entities in power.”

    While Facebook is a publicly traded company and at times consults and collaborates with both governmental experts and regional NGOs, the company remains under the complete and total control of one man, founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, and its policy decisions are ultimately his. It’s unclear to what extent the future of Afghanistan is a priority for Zuckerberg, even while his company’s undisclosed content policies continue to affect it.

    The company has stumbled through issues of national sovereignty in the past — throttling the military junta in Myanmar’s access to Facebook and banning the sitting president of the United States early this year — but the magnitude of banning an entire government and then creating niche exceptions to that ban is a new test of the company’s de facto control over the flow of information to billions of people around the world. “Facebook has had to make these calls before,” explained Jane Esberg, a senior social media analyst at International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, but “the scale of it is new in the sense that it is both extremely political in the United States, and it is with an organization that is a designated terror organization.”

    While the Taliban is not listed as a terrorist entity by the State Department, it is subject to economic sanctions through the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Global Terrorist roster, a list of entities on which Facebook’s own internal blacklist relies heavily. Facebook has repeatedly pointed to the SDGT list as the legal rationale behind its Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, claiming it has no choice but to limit such speech, though legal scholars deny the company is under any legal obligation to censor the Taliban or any other SDGT entity, let alone censor those who want to mention them.

    However, Facebook appears to be operating based on its own extremely broad and conservative interpretation of the law, one that critics say isn’t grounded in the actual statutes at play but rather the company’s corporate prerogatives. In a recent Twitter thread on this topic, Electronic Frontier Foundation senior attorney and civil liberties director David Greene wrote, “I can confirm that for years we’ve been asking Facebook to provide the specific legal authority that compels them to remove these groups (as opposed to just deciding they don’t want them). I’ve always said there is none. And we’ve never had a specific law cited to us.”

    By notable contrast, Twitter continues to permit the Taliban to use their platform without legal penalty of any kind. “It’s completely unclear what the political logic is and who’s driving the political logic internally,” said Esberg, who emphasized the importance of “some degree of transparency so that we understand what the logic is, what counts as information that the Afghan public needs to see” versus whatever speech is deemed too “dangerous” for the platform. In a recent article for Just Security, Faiza Patel and Mary Pat Dwyer of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice rebutted the notion that the company’s hands are tied by anti-terror statutes and sanctions compliance, writing: “Facebook needs to set aside the distracting fiction that U.S. law requires its current approach.”

    The ad hoc exception to certain elements of the Taliban government makes Facebook’s claims that it’s legally bound by the federal government to censor certain foreign groups even more untenable: If U.S. law mandates barring the Taliban regime from using its platforms, as the company and its executives repeatedly assert, then presumably these exceptions would be violate Facebook’s expansive interpretation of its legal obligations. Facebook spokesperson Sally Aldous did not respond to a question on this point.

    Ashley Jackson, a former aid worker with the U.N. and Oxfam and co-director of the Centre for the Study of Armed Groups, also criticized the company’s approach. “Why not exempt the Ministry of Education, or whatever else that deals with essential services?” she asked. “The post-2001 republic collapsed. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have absolute power over the government. It makes little sense to pick and choose.”

    The ban is all the more baffling because members of the Taliban can thwart it, Jackson added. “I know that the Taliban have used Facebook to spread propaganda and wage the war because I’ve seen it and written about it,” she said. “I’ve even used Facebook to connect with Taliban commanders. All [Facebook] are doing is covering themselves and obstructing information.”

    Still, Facebook is no doubt under political pressure at home to deny the Taliban any benefit whatsoever, even if it means keeping Afghans in the dark.

    “What they are doing is a cynical PR exercise — not actual safeguarding.”

    “Facebook’s stance reflects a much more contentious debate on ‘legitimizing’ the Taliban, which has been marked by total and utter policy incoherence on the part of Western States,” Jackson explained. “It makes sense that Facebook’s own policy is incoherent, but erring on the side of conservatism — they’re trying to avoid public criticism. No private company should have this power, of course, but what they are doing is a cynical PR exercise — not actual safeguarding.”

    Facebook’s Taliban problem began as the militant group took control of Kabul in August, pitting the social network’s opaque and U.S.-centric content moderation policies against the undeniable reality on the ground. As the last American planes were escaping the city and Taliban officials were setting up shop in government buildings, Facebook terminated a WhatsApp “emergency hotline” created by the group “for civilians to report violence, looting or other problems,” the Financial Times reported. The move immediately drew a mixed reaction, satisfying foreign policy hard-liners while disturbing others who said it would only deprive an already beleaguered Afghan public of receiving information from their new government, however loathed in the West.

    But even though Afghanistan now occupies a diminished space in the American public consciousness and media, Facebook’s role there remains no less fraught. “There’s a real tension between wanting to keep certain information on the platform, including propaganda and misinformation,” said Esberg, “and allowing these actors to actually govern, and not completely scuttling their attempts at governing a country that is already facing a pretty severe crisis in and of itself.”

    The post Facebook Grants Government of Afghanistan Limited Posting Rights appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Rolls-Royce’s ‘Spirit of Innovation’ electric aircraft has clocked 387mph

    Web Desk:

    Rolls-Royce ‘Spirit of Innovation’, an electric aircraft has claimed three new world records and clocked up a top speed of 387.4mph, which makes it the world’s fastest all-electric vehicle.

    Photo Courtesy: Twitter/Rolls Royce

    Rolls Royce in its Press Release said that at 15:45 (GMT) on 16 November 2021, the aircraft reached a top speed of 555.9 km/h (345.4 mph) over 3 kilometers, smashing the existing record by 213.04 km/h (132mph). In further runs at the UK Ministry of Defense’s Boscombe Down experimental aircraft testing site, the aircraft achieved 532.1km/h (330 mph) over 15 kilometers, 292.8km/h (182mph) faster than the previous record, and broke the fastest time to climb to 3000 meters by 60 seconds with a time of 202 seconds, according to our data.

    Rolls Royce claims that “During its record-breaking runs, the aircraft clocked up a maximum speed of 623 km/h (387.4 mph) which we believe makes the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ the world’s fastest all-electric vehicle”.

    Rolls-Royce CEO Warren East said: “Following the world’s focus on the need for action at COP26, this is another milestone that will help make jet zero a reality and supports our ambitions to deliver the technology breakthroughs society needs to decarbonize transport across air, land, and sea.”

    Photo Courtesy: Twitter/Rolls Royce

    Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: “Rolls-Royce’s Revolutionary Spirit of Innovation aircraft is yet more proof of the UK’s enviable credentials when it comes to innovation. This record will show the potential of electric flight and help to unlock the technologies that could make it part of everyday life.”

    The ‘Spirit of Innovation’ is part of the ACCEL or ‘Accelerating the Electrification of Flight’ project. Half of the project’s funding is provided by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, and Innovate UK.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Totalitarian Cyber-Creep: Mark Zuckerberg in the Metaverse

    Never leave matters of maturity to the Peter Panners of Silicon Valley.  At their most benign, they are easily dismissed as potty and keyboard mad.  At their worst, their fantasies assume the noxious, demonic forms that reduce all users of their technology to units of information and flashes of data.  Such boys (they are mostly boys), felt somehow left out by the currents of reality, their own world excruciatingly boring and filled with pangs of childhood disturbance and regret.  So they sought vengeance upon us all: imposing a global regime of fairly useless cyber architecture that saps intelligence in the name of experience, destroys imagination even as it celebrates it, and luxuriates in a lowly prurience.

    Facebook, in particular, has been trying to push such a model using a tactic all companies in distress have sought to adopt: rebranding.  Be it the scandals disclosed by the Facebook papers, the scrutiny over the use of algorithms by the company, the inability to combat galloping misinformation on its platforms, or the stark amorality of the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, the chance to seek the metaverse has presented itself.

    Enter, then, the world of Meta Platforms, aided by the virtual reality headset company Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion.  Astute watchers then would have been the strategy afoot at the time; most, however, thought the decision misguided and destined to flop.

    The metaverse has become a goal for not just Facebook, but the likes of Unity Technologies and Epic Games, though Facebook is distinctly not interested in gaming.  It can be seen to be a sort of Internet 2.0, envisaged as shared 3D spaces streaked by virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR respectively).  You can access that reality via a pair of glasses or some virtual reality set and get transported to a virtual space populated by avatars.  “The essence of virtual and augmented reality is that you need to have a technology that delivers this feeling of presence,” Zuckerberg mentions in an interview this year.  “The sense that you are actually there with another person and all the different sensations that come with it.”

    According to Facebook, the metaverse will feature a totalising system of various functions and services designed to be “the successor to the mobile internet”.  There will be Horizon Home for social interactions, “the first thing you see when you put on your Quest headset.”  Video conferencing and phone conversations will be replaced by Quest for Business.

    For all the company’s egregious sins, this new technology will be pursued, says Andrew Bosworth, Vice President of Facebook Reality Labs and Nick Clegg, Vice President of the company’s global affairs, “responsibly”.  In September, $50 million in research development was promised to ensure that such products met that mark, an amount somewhat piddly when compared to other areas of research the company lavishes money upon.

    On November 15, there were further announcements that the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital would “focus on improving our understanding of how we can foster young people’s digital literacy and embed wellness into emerging metaverse technologies.”  The children, it seems, will not be spared.

    All this tells us that Facebook is moving towards its next stage of surveillance capitalism, a relentless drive towards extracting and squeezing every bit of nutriment of being that is human behaviour.  The privacy of users, already tattered and battered by the predations of Facebook data privateers, can be further diminished, even as it is supposedly protected. “Metaverse technologies like VR and AR are perhaps the most data-extractive digital sensors we’re likely to invite into our homes in the next decade,” reasons Marcus Carter of the University of Sydney’s Socio-Tech Futures Lab.

    Zuckerberg has spent some time contemplating the road of enthronement in the VR/AR market.  The amount of money Facebook has heaped upon its VR and AR research and development division is eye watering.  One estimate places it at $10 billion.  Critics can at least take comfort in the fact that most of the company’s social VR/AR products to date have tended to splutter into well-deserved oblivion or flounder in “invite-only beta phases”.  Then there is the issue of the headsets themselves, cumbersome bits of hardware saddled across the user’s face like a harness.

    None of that gets away from the sinister premise in this new company strategy.  Zuckerberg and his minions seek to corporately control the metaverse, using VR and AR to identify behavioural biometrics unique to each user.  Everything from body gyration to eye movement becomes fair game.  “We should all be concerned about how Facebook could and will use the data collected within the metaverse,” writes virtual reality enthusiast Bree McEwan.

    In truth, we should be more than concerned.  Facebook’s strength of influence has been its embrace of the innocuous even as it gears up for inflicting the next societal harm.  But its increasingly centralising tendencies – making the user generate a marketable portrait of usage and behaviour – will be given a further kick along with the metaverse.

    With Oculus and the Facebook account linked, one headset, and one user, ever greater pools of marketized data will be generated.  Work, fitness, entertainment, social choices will all become a deeper quarry to be mined and monetised by salivating wonks in a corporate enterprise.  This is totalitarian cyber-creepism run mad.  And Zuckerberg just might get away with it.

    The post Totalitarian Cyber-Creep: Mark Zuckerberg in the Metaverse first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • No default end-to-end encryption for Facebook Messenger, Instagram until 2023

    While messages sent through Messenger and Instagram can be E2EE, that option isn’t turned on by default and likely won’t be until 2023

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Xiaomi will update nine of its smartphones to MIUI 13

    GSM Arena found a list of phones that might be getting MIUI 13 pretty soon

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Fixing your iPhone is about to get a lot easier

    Right-to-repair advocates scored a major victory on Wednesday as Apple announced a new program to let users fix their own broken devices.

    The program, called Self Service Repair, will make it easier for Apple customers to access spare parts and repair manuals. Screen replacements, batteries, and camera modules will be among more than 200 parts and tools available for purchase on Apple’s website starting early next year, along with repair manuals that Apple will post on its website.

    “Creating greater access to Apple genuine parts gives our customers even more choice if a repair is needed,” said Apple’s chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, in a statement.

    Only the newest iPhones — iPhone 12 and 13 — will be eligible for the program when it launches in early 2022. But Apple said it would eventually expand to cover Mac computers featuring the company’s newer M1 chips.

    The move comes amid growing pressure from consumers, investors, and regulators to make electronics and mechanical equipment easier to fix. Apple is among many technology and machinery companies, including  Microsoft and John Deere, that have been heavily criticized for intentionally making their products non-repairable — for example, by sealing devices with glue rather than screws, using non-removable batteries, or installing software that can disable a device if it detects knockoff replacement parts. Many companies have lobbied against bills that would increase consumers’ ability to repair their own devices.

    Advocates point out that hard-to-repair products are bad for the environment. By limiting repairability, companies encourage users to buy new devices, leading to excess greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing. In the case of Apple’s iPhone 13, 81 percent of the product’s life-cycle carbon emissions come from production, which means the best thing for the climate is to extend its lifetime for as long as possible. According to Nathan Proctor, senior director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s campaign for the right to repair, if every American used their cell phone just one year longer, it would have the same climate benefit as taking 636,000 cars off the road per year.

    Janet Domenitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, said that repair restrictions also cause pollution at the end of products’ lives, generating toxic e-waste that is often dumped in developing countries, contaminating the air, soils, and waterways. Domenitz predicted Apple’s move would help reduce the flow of electronics destined for the landfill. “We’ve moved Apple to reduce what they make, what we buy, and what we dispose of,” she said.

    A technician repairs an iPhone
    A technician repairs an iPhone in Brive, France. Nicolas Tucat / AFP via Getty Images

    Shareholder activist groups have made gains in recent months in the fight for the right to repair. In October, for example, the investor advocacy nonprofit As You Sow successfully pushed Microsoft to analyze the “environmental and social benefits” of right-to-repair rules, and got the company to commit to act on its findings by the end of 2022. And the environmentally oriented mutual fund company Green Century has targeted both Apple and Deere & Co., maker of the John Deere tractor, with similar shareholder resolutions.

    Even the federal government has taken on the right-to-repair fight. In July, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing the Federal Trade Commission, the consumer protection agency, to require companies to allow independent repairs for their products. The agency soon voted unanimously to enforce existing laws against practices that inhibit independent repair, with Lina Khan, the agency’s chair, promising to “root out” illegal repair restrictions “with new vigor.”

    Regulators in Europe, where right-to-repair laws are overwhelmingly popular, have also pushed for more repairable products. In March, the European Union introduced new rules requiring manufacturers of electrical goods to make their products repairable for at least seven years after they hit the market. France has also required electronics manufacturers to tell consumers how repairable their products are by assigning them a score. 

    In both Europe and the United States, companies including Apple have argued that letting consumers fix their own devices could pose safety and reliability issues. But advocates say that the company’s about-face illustrates the flimsiness of those arguments. “You get told no a thousand times: ‘It can’t be done,’” Domenitz said. “But then Apple says, ‘Actually, it can.’”

    She and other advocates welcomed the company’s announcement but wished it had gone further to cover older Apple products. Proctor also criticized Apple for not doing more to accommodate independent repair shops with its Self Service Program. Although many people will jump at the opportunity to repair their own devices, he said, most will prefer to have their electronics fixed by a knowledgeable technician. But because parts must be custom-ordered to match each user’s faulty device, they won’t be orderable in advance, making the replacement process time-consuming and inconvenient even for Apple-approved service providers.

    Even still, environmental advocates said that Apple’s announcement carried symbolic weight, and could represent a breakthrough for the right-to-repair movement. Kelly McBee, waste program coordinator for As You Sow, said she expected other manufacturers to follow in Apple and Microsoft’s footsteps. “I absolutely think we will see more of a domino effect,” she said. “These are two of the greatest players in this space, and they have set a new bar for their competitors.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Fixing your iPhone is about to get a lot easier on Nov 19, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.