Category: Technology

May 14, 2021

Facebook’s Secret Rules About the Word “Zionist” Impede Criticism of Israel

Facebook’s secret internal rules for moderating the term “Zionist” let the social network suppress criticism of Israel amid an ongoing wave of Israeli abuses and violence, according to people who reviewed the policies.

The rules appear to have been in place since 2019, seeming to contradict a claim by the company in March that no decision had been made on whether to treat the term “Zionist” as a proxy for “Jew” when determining whether it was deployed as “hate speech.” The policies govern the use of “Zionist” in posts not only on Facebook but across its subsidiary apps, including Instagram.

Both Facebook and Instagram are facing allegations of censorship following the erratic, widespread removal of recent posts from pro-Palestinian users critical of the Israeli government, including those who documented instances of Israeli state violence.

Mass violence has gripped Israel and Gaza since last week. Tensions kicked off amid Palestinian protests against planned evictions in occupied East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers. Eventually, Israeli security forces stormed the Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s old city, one of the holiest sites in Islam. The Palestinian militant group Hamas responded with rocket fire aimed at Israel. Israel, in turn, unleashed massive aerial bombardments and artillery attacks against the occupied Palestinian Gaza Strip, reportedly leaving more than 120 people, including 20 children, dead. At least 900 Palestinians have been injured since Monday. Reports said that in Israel, seven people, including a soldier and a child, had died as a result of the violence, with more than 500 injured.

“Facebook claims that their policy on the word ‘Zionist’ is about Jewish safety,” Dani Noble, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace who reviewed the rules, told The Intercept. “But, according to their content policy excerpt, it seems Facebook decision-makers are more concerned with shielding Zionist Israeli settlers and the Israeli government from accountability for these crimes.”

Though none of Facebook and Instagram’s content removal has been tied conclusively to the term “Zionist,” users and pro-Palestinian advocates were alarmed by disappearing posts and notices of policy violations over the last week. Facebook said the sudden deletion of deeply disturbing content documenting Israeli state violence was, as the company so often claims, just a big accident. Company spokesperson Sophie Vogel, in an email to The Intercept, blamed the deleted posts, many about the recent attempts to seize Palestinian homes by Israeli settlers, on an unspecified “wider technical issue” within Instagram and on a series of “mistaken” deletions and “human error.”

Another spokesperson, Claire Lerner, said, “We allow critical discussion of Zionists, but remove attacks against them when context suggests the word is being used as a proxy for Jews or Israelis, both of which are protected characteristics under our hate speech policy.” She added, “We recognize the sensitivity of this debate, and the fact that the word ‘Zionist’ is frequently used in important political debate. Our intention is never to stifle that debate, but to make sure that we’re allowing as much speech as possible, while keeping everyone in our community safe.”

Facebook did not provide comment about when the rules were implemented and the apparent contradiction with its public statements that such a policy was still under consideration and not being actively used.

While some Palestinians’ Facebook and Instagram posts have simply vanished, suggesting a technical problem of some sort could plausibly be the cause, many others reported receiving a notification that their posts were removed because they violated company rules against “hate speech or symbols.” Those alleged violations constitute just one of many prohibitions drawn from a library of internal Facebook documents that ostensibly dictate what’s permitted and what should be deleted for the company’s multibillion-person audience.

Though the company claims its content decisions are increasingly made automatically by machines, Facebook and Instagram still rely on legions of low-paid contractors around the world, left to delete or preserve posts through a mix of personal judgment calls and the application of byzantine rule books, flow charts, and hypothetical examples. Facebook has previously dissembled on the question of whether it would add “Zionist” to a master list it maintains of protected classes of people, telling Palestinian activists at a virtual conference in March that it had made “no decision” on the matter. “We are looking about whether in some certain limited contexts, is it is accurate to consider that the word Zionist may be a proxy for Jew in some certain hate speech cases,” Facebook’s human rights chief Miranda Sissons told the Palestine Digital Activism Forum. This does not appear to be entirely true. (Sissons could not be reached for comment.)

Baffling Examples for Moderators

A portion of one such internal rulebook reviewed by The Intercept walks Facebook and Instagram moderators through the process of determining whether posts and comments that make use of the term “Zionist” constitute hate speech.

One Facebook moderator said the policy “leaves very little wiggle room for criticism of Zionism” at a time when precisely that ideology is subject to intense scrutiny and protest.

“Zionism,” strictly speaking, refers to the movement that advocated historically for the creation of a Jewish state or community in Palestine and more recently for the nation that emerged from that push, Israel. A Zionist is someone who participates in Zionism. Though “Zionist” and “Zionism” can be fraught terms, deployed at times by flagrant antisemitic people as a wink-and-nod synonym for “Jew” and “Judaism,” the words also have unequivocal historical and political meaning and clear, legitimate, and non-hateful uses, including in the context of criticism and discussion of the Israeli government and its policies. In the words of one Facebook moderator who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity to protect their job, in practice the policy “leaves very little wiggle room for criticism of Zionism” at a time when precisely that ideology is subject to intense scrutiny and protest.

The policy text on “Zionist” is only a brief section of a much larger document that walks moderators through the process of identifying a wide variety of protected classes and associated hate speech. It provides moderators with instructions “to determine if ‘Zionist’ is used as a proxy for Israeli/Jew” and thereby subject to deletion. Facebook says it does not currently consider “Zionist” a protected class on its own. It reads as follows:

What are the indicators to determine if “Zionist” is used as a proxy for Israeli/Jew?

We use the following Indicators to determine Proxy for Jew/Israeli:

1. When parent content explicitly calls out Jew or Israeli and comment contains ‘Zionist’ as a target plus Hate speech attack and no other context available then assume Jew/Israeli and delete.

Examples:

Delete: Parent Content, “Israeli settlers refuse to leave houses built on Palestinian territory”; Comment, “Fuck Zionists!”

No Action: Parent Content, “Zionist movement turns 60”; Comment, “Zionists are awful, I really hate them all”

In scenarios of visual or textual designated dehumanizing comparisons where there are references to “rats”, should the references to Zionist(s) be considered as a proxy for “Jew(s)”?

Yes, only in these scenarios please consider “Zionist(s)” as a substitute to “Jew(s)” and action appropriately.

Critics noted that the first example is tied to a frequent and often violent real-world event — seizures of Palestinian homes by Israeli settlers — almost always carried out with justifications rooted in ideological Zionism or Israeli government policies themselves rooted in Zionism. The advocates who question Facebook’s rules on the term “Zionist” worry they would collapse denunciations of such action and state policies into hate speech against Jews, making it difficult to criticize Israel online at all.

“The absurdity, futility, and politicized nature of Facebook’s policy should be as clear as day right now, as we witness continued ethnic cleansing in occupied Jerusalem, and a new war on the besieged population of Gaza,” said Dima Khalidi, director of Palestine Legal, an advocacy group. “The fundamental problem is that Zionism is a political ideology that justifies exactly the kind of forced expulsion of Palestinians — making some Palestinians refugees 3-times over — that we’re seeing right now in Sheikh Jarrah and other occupied East Jerusalem neighborhoods.”

Colonialism and Colonizers

Critics said Facebook’s decision to zero in on “Zionist” as an ethnic identity elides the fact that it describes a concrete ideological choice and ignores how Palestinians and others have come to use the word in the context of their historical repression by Israel. This focus inhibits the very political discourse and protest throughout the world that Facebook claims it’s protecting, according to Jillian York, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s director for international freedom of expression and a longtime critic of Facebook’s moderation practices. “While ‘Zionist’ is used as a self-identity, its use by Jews and others (including many Evangelical Christians) demonstrates that it’s not purely a synonym for ‘Jewish’ as Facebook has suggested,” York told The Intercept. “Further, its use in the region is different — Palestinians use it as a synonym for ‘colonizer’, not for ‘Jew.’” The policy constitutes a form of ideological “exceptionalism” around Zionism, according to York, a treatment not provided to other political identities like socialism or neoconservativism “as the result of political and other pressure.”

Though Facebook said that no Instagram posts about the recent Israeli violence were removed at the request of the Israeli government, the country routinely makes such requests to the largely compliant company. And brigades of loosely organized pro-Israel volunteers, many coordinating through the smartphone app Act.IL, participate in mass-reporting campaigns that can essentially trick Facebook’s automated moderation systems into flagging nonviolent political speech as hateful incitement. The company declined to comment on the record when asked about evidence of mass-reporting campaigns.

The existence of the “Zionist” rules comes as a surprise to Palestinian advocates who say Facebook previously created the impression that limits on using the term “Zionist” were being considered within the company but not actually implemented. “We were led to believe that they are considering this policy and therefore they were consulting with civil society,” Marwa Fatafta, Middle East and North Africa policy manager for Access Now, told The Intercept. Fatafta noted that she was asked to provide feedback on the possibility of such policy in 2020, whereas the document containing the rules indicates the rules on “Zionist” were released to moderators in 2019.

After reviewing the policy for herself, Fatafta said it reflects precisely the concerns she held when it was posed to her as hypothetical. “Zionism is a politically complex term that requires nuance,” she told The Intercept. “There is no way for Facebook to moderate such content at scale without their systems running amok, curtailing legitimate political speech and silencing critical voices.”

The post Facebook’s Secret Rules About the Word “Zionist” Impede Criticism of Israel appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.
May 14, 2021

Should customers be able to repair their devices? This federal agency says yes.

For the past several years, as state legislators across the country have held hearings to consider “right-to-repair” bills that would make it easier for consumers to fix their electronic devices, lobbyists representing manufacturers have shown up to repeat the same arguments over and over: Letting people fix their own stuff is too dangerous. It creates cybersecurity risks. It infringes on intellectual property. It won’t help reduce electronic waste.

But while it remains to be seen whether these arguments will win over any of the dozen state legislatures currently considering a right-to-repair bill, one authoritative body isn’t buying them at all: the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC.

Last week, the federal consumer protection agency released a long-anticipated report to Congress examining the repair restrictions facing consumers, along with a summary of arguments for and against those restrictions. Its conclusion was stark: There’s “scant evidence” to support manufacturers’ justifications for restricting repair, while the solutions repair advocates have proposed are “well supported” by their testimonials. Advocates say that compelling companies like Apple and Tesla to release parts, manuals, and diagnostic information needed for repair will make fixing broken devices faster and more affordable. Ultimately, this will encourage us to maintain our stuff instead of replacing it, resulting in less environmental harm and electronic waste.

With the release of the report, the FTC has signaled that it plans to step up its efforts to enforce laws aimed at preventing manufacturers from restricting repair. But the symbolic nature of the report may be more significant than whatever punitive actions the agency takes next.

A service technician in Minnetonka, Minnesota, repairs a laptop motherboard. Jerry Holt / Star Tribute via Getty Images

The right to repair movement — which promotes the idea that everyone should to be able to repair the devices they own however they want, whenever they want — has “just been given a huge shot in the arm,” said Gay Gordon-Byrne, the executive director of The Repair Association, a right-to-repair advocacy group.

Kerry Maeve Sheehan, the U.S. policy lead at the repair guide site iFixit, agreed. “[F]inally a government agency is saying what we’ve said all along — that manufacturers’ justifications for imposing repair restrictions aren’t backed by evidence,” Sheehan wrote in an email.

The report traces its origins back to a July 2019 workshop the FTC held to explore how manufacturers restrict repair of their devices. The workshop brought together right-to-repair advocates, groups representing manufacturers of everything from gaming consoles to home appliances, and independent researchers. It invited everyone to submit empirical research on the repair landscape. A year later, Congress directed the FTC to issue a report summarizing its findings, with a focus on cell phone and automobile markets.

Those findings amount to nothing less than a wholesale rejection of the anti-repair arguments advanced by lobbyists not just for cell phone and car companies, but home appliance industries, medical device makers, and more. In its 56-page report, the FTC lays out common manufacturer arguments in favor of restricting repair. For every single argument, the Commission reaches a similar conclusion: There’s little evidence to support it.

Take safety concerns. Companies will often argue that restricting access to the information and materials needed for repair prevents consumers, or mechanics that lack sufficient training, from hurting themselves. For instance, people attempting to swap the lithium-ion battery inside their phone might accidentally puncture it, causing the battery to experience a “thermal runaway event” — or in layman’s terms, overheat and explode. But aside from a single 2011 incident involving a cell phone that experienced a thermal runaway event on a plane after a faulty unauthorized repair, manufacturers provided the FTC no evidence of injuries tied to independent repair. Nor did they furnish any data demonstrating that their authorized repair shops are more careful. Meanwhile, decades’ worth of evidence from the auto repair industry shows that even the most dangerous consumer products can be safely repaired by an independent professional.

Other arguments followed a similar pattern. Consumer technology manufacturers told the FTC that handing a device that contains sensitive personal data, like a laptop, over to an independent shop can create security risks. But they failed to provide evidence that independent repair businesses are more likely to mishandle that data than the manufacturer. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers told the agency that manufacturer-backed repair providers help uphold the “brand reputation” of companies, but it didn’t demonstrate that consumers were less satisfied with repair jobs conducted by independent mechanics. And while Microsoft argued that design choices that limit device repairability — such as using glue instead of screws to secure batteries and screens in place — are driven by consumer preference, empirical research has shown that consumers also care about the longevity and repairability of their devices.

The FTC was far more sympathetic to repair advocates’ claims that manufacturer barriers make repairs take longer and cost more. It also concurred with advocates that increasing access to repair will have environmental benefits, from reducing the energy use associated with making new devices to slowing the tide of toxic electronic waste. Industry lobbyists say that they have already implemented take-back programs that have driven e-waste levels down, but many experts say this argument is misleading. While the total volume of e-waste is declining in the U.S. as electronics get smaller and lighter, researchers say that the complexity of today’s smartphones, tablets, and flat-screen TVs makes them harder to reuse and recycle. Sheehan of iFixit added that many state electronics recycling laws cover “a limited scope of products,” including old, bulky cathode-ray tube televisions but not newer technologies like smart fridges.

‘Right to repair’ advocates reject the argument that allowing consumers to fix their own electronics, like broken cell phones, creates cybersecurity risks. Smith Collection/Gado / Getty Images

Overall, the FTC concluded that the repair barriers manufacturers create have “steered consumers into manufacturers’ repair networks or to replace products before the end of their useful lives” without any decent justification.

“This is a huge tool for us,” Nathan Proctor, who heads the right-to-repair campaign at the advocacy nonprofit U.S. Public Research Interest Group, said of the new FTC report. “We certainly are going to use this report to advocate for state right to repair laws.”

Indeed, the report comes as dozens of state legislatures have recently considered bills that would make it easier to repair small electronics, home appliances, and farm and medical equipment. The pandemic has helped fuel those bills by spotlighting the “digital divide” between wealthier, whiter, more urban communities, which have more access to the electronic devices they need to work and learn remotely compared with lower income, rural, and communities of color. Advocates argue that making it easier to fix broken devices could narrow that divide, since repairing a phone or laptop tends to be a more affordable option than replacing it. The pandemic has also revealed that letting manufacturers restrict the repair of specialized equipment like ventilators can be a matter of life and death.

While advocates continue to push for the right to repair to be enshrined into law, the FTC may start cracking down on companies that violate existing laws. The Commission’s investigation into repair restrictions came about, in part, due to its concern over companies violating the so-called “anti-tying provision” of the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which makes it illegal for manufacturers to void warranties if consumers go to an independent shop or use an off-brand part to fix their devices. If you’ve ever been told by, say, the company that made your phone or printer that opening it up and fixing it yourself will void your warranty, you know this law is not being aggressively enforced.

“People have this idea in their heads that they’re somehow violating a contract with a manufacturer” if they fix their device, said Proctor. “And this is cultivated consistently and aggressively by manufacturers.”

But the Wild West days of companies making up their own warranty rules may be numbered. The day its report came out, the FTC’s official Twitter account called on members of the public to send in a report if they were told their warranty would be voided by an independent repair.

A spokesperson for the FTC told Grist that in addition to “pursuing appropriate law enforcement options” with respect to the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, the FTC would be looking into other legal and regulatory avenues to support independent repair “consistent with our statutory authority” and educating consumers about their rights.

“The Commission also stands ready to work with legislators, either at the state or federal level, in order to ensure that consumers have choices when they need to repair products that they purchase and own,” the spokesperson said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Should customers be able to repair their devices? This federal agency says yes. on May 14, 2021.

This post was originally published on Grist.
May 10, 2021

Hackers found America’s energy weak spot

Energy officials and cybersecurity experts have long warned that America’s energy infrastructure is susceptible to cyber attacks. In 2018, Karen Evans, then the assistant secretary for cybersecurity for the Department of Energy, testified before a House committee that energy infrastructure — pipelines, transformers, and other critical conduits for fuel and power — “has become a primary target for hostile cyber actors.”

Last week, a ransomware attack on the company behind the U.S.’s biggest fossil fuel pipeline emphatically proved her point.

On Friday afternoon, hackers stole enough corporate data from Colonial Pipeline to force the company to shut down its 5,500-mile system of pipelines, which transport some 2.5 million barrels of gas, diesel, heating oil, and jet fuel each day from Houston to New Jersey. The system serves 50 million Americans and several airports along its route, ultimately providing the East Coast with nearly half of its fuel.

Cybercriminals used ransomware, code that can lock computer systems and hold them hostage in exchange for money, in the attack. The company has not publicly offered up any details about how the hackers broke in. The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the source of the incident, but federal officials reportedly suspect DarkSide, an Eastern European criminal gang that operates out of Russia, is behind the attack. In a statement on Monday, the group said, “Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society.”

Shutting down the largest pipeline in the U.S. could potentially create a pretty big problem for society. Gas prices haven’t been meaningfully affected yet, and Colonial expects service to resume by the end of this week. But if the shutdown extends past next Monday, gas prices could rise and Gulf Coast refineries could be forced to slow production. Some gas stations in the Southeast could run out of gasoline. Plus, the U.S. is entering peak driving season. “Every hour counts at this point as we get closer and closer to Memorial Day weekend,” a director at an investment banking firm told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

The U.S. is ill-equipped to handle cyberattacks on its energy infrastructure, much of which is past retirement age. In March, President Joe Biden unveiled a $2 trillion infrastructure plan aimed at updating the nation’s bridges, roads, tunnels, pipelines, and spurring the transition to renewable energy. His plan does not mention cybersecurity. That’s a big problem. Renewables are prone to cyber attacks, too. Wind and solar farms and energy storage systems rely on industrial control systems — big computing centers that connect equipment like turbines to electrical substations. We already know those computers are vulnerable to attacks. In 2013, a group of hackers was able to seize control of the industrial control systems running a number of renewable energy operators in Europe.

The Colonial Pipeline attack, shaping up to be the biggest cyberattack on U.S. oil infrastructure in history, has turned up the heat on ongoing efforts to modernize America’s cyber defense systems. Biden is preparing to unveil an executive order aimed at creating a set of digital safety standards for federal agencies. It would also establish a “cybersecurity incident review board” that would investigate major attacks. But the order, by federal officials’ own admission, won’t do enough to stop sophisticated attacks. And it may not apply to privately held companies like Colonial Pipeline, even though privately held companies control 85 percent of the country’s critical infrastructure. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told CBS’s Face the Nation that businesses need to prepare for a new normal. “Unfortunately, these sorts of attacks are becoming more frequent. They’re here to stay,” she said.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.
May 10, 2021

Hackers found America’s energy weak spot

Energy officials and cybersecurity experts have long warned that America’s energy infrastructure is susceptible to cyber attacks. In 2018, Karen Evans, then the assistant secretary for cybersecurity for the Department of Energy, testified before a House committee that energy infrastructure — pipelines, transformers, and other critical conduits for fuel and power — “has become a primary target for hostile cyber actors.”

Last week, a ransomware attack on the company behind the U.S.’s biggest fossil fuel pipeline emphatically proved her point.

On Friday afternoon, hackers stole enough corporate data from Colonial Pipeline to force the company to shut down its 5,500-mile system of pipelines, which transport some 2.5 million barrels of gas, diesel, heating oil, and jet fuel each day from Houston to New Jersey. The system serves 50 million Americans and several airports along its route, ultimately providing the East Coast with nearly half of its fuel.

Cybercriminals used ransomware, code that can lock computer systems and hold them hostage in exchange for money, in the attack. The company has not publicly offered up any details about how the hackers broke in. The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the source of the incident, but federal officials reportedly suspect DarkSide, an Eastern European criminal gang that operates out of Russia, is behind the attack. In a statement on Monday, the group said, “Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society.”

Shutting down the largest pipeline in the U.S. could potentially create a pretty big problem for society. Gas prices haven’t been meaningfully affected yet, and Colonial expects service to resume by the end of this week. But if the shutdown extends past next Monday, gas prices could rise and Gulf Coast refineries could be forced to slow production. Some gas stations in the Southeast could run out of gasoline. Plus, the U.S. is entering peak driving season. “Every hour counts at this point as we get closer and closer to Memorial Day weekend,” a director at an investment banking firm told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

The U.S. is ill-equipped to handle cyberattacks on its energy infrastructure, much of which is past retirement age. In March, President Joe Biden unveiled a $2 trillion infrastructure plan aimed at updating the nation’s bridges, roads, tunnels, pipelines, and spurring the transition to renewable energy. His plan does not mention cybersecurity. That’s a big problem. Renewables are prone to cyber attacks, too. Wind and solar farms and energy storage systems rely on industrial control systems — big computing centers that connect equipment like turbines to electrical substations. We already know those computers are vulnerable to attacks. In 2013, a group of hackers was able to seize control of the industrial control systems running a number of renewable energy operators in Europe.

The Colonial Pipeline attack, shaping up to be the biggest cyberattack on U.S. oil infrastructure in history, has turned up the heat on ongoing efforts to modernize America’s cyber defense systems. Biden is preparing to unveil an executive order aimed at creating a set of digital safety standards for federal agencies. It would also establish a “cybersecurity incident review board” that would investigate major attacks. But the order, by federal officials’ own admission, won’t do enough to stop sophisticated attacks. And it may not apply to privately held companies like Colonial Pipeline, even though privately held companies control 85 percent of the country’s critical infrastructure. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told CBS’s Face the Nation that businesses need to prepare for a new normal. “Unfortunately, these sorts of attacks are becoming more frequent. They’re here to stay,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Hackers found America’s energy weak spot on May 10, 2021.

This post was originally published on Grist.
May 9, 2021

What’s the Valneva covid-19 vaccine, the French shot that’s supposed to be ‘variant proof’?
ANALYSIS: By Adam Taylor, Griffith University

A covid-19 vaccine from French company Valneva has yet to complete clinical trials. But it has caught the eye of governments in the UK, Europe and Australia.

One of the vaccine’s main selling points is its apparent ability to mount a more general immune response against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19, rather than rely on the spike protein to do this.

This means the vaccine is more likely to be effective against the type of virus variants that have already been emerging, and may emerge in the future. Some reports describe it as “variant proof”.
The hope is vaccines using this technology would be able to provide protection for longer, rather than keep being reformulated to get ahead of these new variants.

How does Valneva work?
Valneva’s vaccine, called VLA2001, is based on tried and tested vaccine technology. It is the technology used in the vaccine against poliovirus and in some types of flu vaccines. And the company already has a commercially available Japanese encephalitis vaccine based on the same technology.

VLA2001 uses an inactivated version of the whole virus, which cannot replicate or cause disease.

The virus is inactivated using a chemical called beta-propiolactone or BPL. This is widely used to inactivate other viruses for vaccines. It was even used to make experimental versions of vaccines against SARS-CoV, the virus that caused SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

This type of inactivation is expected to preserve the structure of the viral proteins, as they would occur in nature. This means the immune system will be presented with something similar to what occurs naturally, and mount a strong immune response.

After being inactivated, the vaccine would be highly purified. Then, an adjuvant (an immune stimulant) is added to induce a strong immune response.

VLA2001 isn’t the first inactivated vaccine against covid-19. Leading covid-19 inactivated vaccines, such as those developed by Sinopharm and Bharat Biotech, have been approved for use in China and received emergency approval in other countries, including India.

However, VLA2001 is the only covid-19 vaccine candidate using whole inactivated virus in clinical trials in the UK and in mainland Europe.

What are the benefits known so far?
This approach to vaccine development presents the immune system with all of the structural components of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, not just the spike protein, as many other covid-19 vaccines do.

So Valneva’s vaccine is thought to produce a more broadly protective immune response. That is, antibodies and cells of the immune system are able to recognise and neutralise more pieces of the virus than just the spike protein.

The federal government is speaking with a French company about potentially importing its vaccine to use in the Australian rollout.https://t.co/8OXapOauE4

— news.com.au (@newscomauHQ) May 1, 2021

As a result, Valneva’s vaccine could be more effective at tackling emerging covid-19 virus variants and, if approved, play a useful role as a booster vaccine.

Valneva’s vaccine can be stored at standard cold-chain conditions (2-8℃) and is expected to be given as two shots.

How about results from clinical trials?
According to the company, no safety concerns or serious adverse events were associated with VLA2001 in early-stage clinical trials.

VLA2001 was given as a low, medium or high dose in these trials with all participants in the high-dose group generating antibodies to the virus spike protein.

One measure of immune response in the high-dose group after completing the two doses indicated antibody levels were, after two weeks, at least as high as those seen in patients naturally infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Interestingly, VLA2001 induced immune responses against a number of virus proteins (including the spike protein) across all participants, an encouraging sign the vaccine can provide broad protection against covid-19.

We’re looking for volunteers for the latest UK COVID-19 vaccine study.

The Valneva phase 2/3 study is open to healthy adults who have not had a previous COVID-19 vaccine.

Sign up via the NHS Covid-19 vaccine research registry: https://t.co/san2RD5Oq6 pic.twitter.com/hyHgGeBAiL

— R&D Southampton (@RDsouthampton) May 4, 2021

The vaccine has since advanced to phase 3 clinical trials in the UK. The trial, which started in April 2021, will compare its safety and efficacy with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The phase 3 trial is expected to be completed by the northern hemisphere’s autumn this year. And if successful, would be submitted for regulatory approval after that.

Who is interested?
Despite phase 3 clinical trials only just starting, the UK government has pre-ordered more than 100 million doses of the vaccine from Valneva, with the option of buying more down the track. If trials prove successful and pass regulatory approval, this means the vaccine could be used as a booster in time for this year’s northern hemisphere’s winter.

Australia has confirmed it’s also in talks with Valeneva about importing the vaccine. Some countries in Europe are also reportedly keen to strike a deal.

EXCLUSIVE Some EU nations still want Valneva COVID-19 vaccine deal -sources https://t.co/FtL49NU37L pic.twitter.com/g3yhFaOKuB

— Reuters World (@ReutersWorld) April 30, 2021

As new cases of covid-19 increase globally, we’ll continue to see new viral variants emerge that threaten to escape the protection existing vaccines offer.

Already, we are seeing vaccines from companies such as Moderna and Novavax begin to reformulate their spike protein-based vaccines to get ahead of emerging variants.

So Valneva’s vaccine, with the potential to elicit a more broadly protective immune response, may prove to be a useful tool to combat the rise of the virus and its mutations. However, whether the vaccine is really “variant proof” or merely less affected by emerging variants remains to be seen.

Dr Adam Taylor, is early career research leader, Emerging Viruses, Inflammation and Therapeutics Group, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
May 8, 2021

‘Mama Love’ sticker pack on Mother’s Day launches in WhatsApp.

Web desk,

WhatsApp has rolled out its new pack of exciting ‘Mama Love’ stickers on the occasion of Mother’s Day that is mostly celebrated on May 9 across the world.

“This weekend (and every weekend!) we celebrate moms, remembering all the moments big and small that make us thankful. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!” the widely-used messaging app said on Twitter.

This weekend (and every weekend!) we celebrate moms, remembering all the moments big and small that make us thankful. Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

The new "Mama Love" sticker pack, available now on WhatsApp: https://t.co/0c2euY7AkB pic.twitter.com/CFaKQEuNtc

— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) May 7, 2021

Earlier, WhatsApp had also released a special sticker pack to observe Earth Day and tell users how they can “protect” the planet.

“To celebrate Earth Day, we created a sticker pack that highlights steps you can take to protect our planet and drive progress,” WhatsApp had tweeted with a brief video of the stickers that will be available in the pack.

It had also reminded users to use the opportunity to reflect on how words and conversations can create a sustainable future for everyone.

This post was originally published on VOSA.
May 7, 2021

No deadline for whatsapp privacy policy

A WhatsApp spokesperson said that no accounts will be deleted on May 15 for not accepting the policy update
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
May 3, 2021

Your Car Is Spying on You, and a CBP Contract Shows the Risks

U.S. Customs and Border Protection purchased technology that vacuums up reams of personal information stored inside cars, according to a federal contract reviewed by The Intercept, illustrating the serious risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone.

The contract, shared with The Intercept by Latinx advocacy organization Mijente, shows that CBP paid Swedish data extraction firm MSAB $456,073 for a bundle of hardware including five iVe “vehicle forensics kits” manufactured by Berla, an American company. A related document indicates that CBP believed the kit would be “critical in CBP investigations as it can provide evidence [not only] regarding the vehicle’s use, but also information obtained through mobile devices paired with the infotainment system.” The document went on to say that iVe was the only tool available for purchase that could tap into such systems.

According to statements by Berla’s own founder, part of the draw of vacuuming data out of cars is that so many drivers are oblivious to the fact that their cars are generating so much data in the first place, often including extremely sensitive information inadvertently synced from smartphones.

Indeed, MSAB marketing materials promise cops access to a vast array of sensitive personal information quietly stored in the infotainment consoles and various other computers used by modern vehicles — a tapestry of personal details akin to what CBP might get when cracking into one’s personal phone. MSAB claims that this data can include “Recent destinations, favorite locations, call logs, contact lists, SMS messages, emails, pictures, videos, social media feeds, and the navigation history of everywhere the vehicle has been.” MSAB even touts the ability to retrieve deleted data, divine “future plan[s],” and “Identify known associates and establish communication patterns between them.”

The kit can discover “when and where a vehicle’s lights are turned on, and which doors are opened and closed at specific locations.”

The kit, MSAB says, also has the ability to discover specific events that most car owners are probably unaware are even recorded, like “when and where a vehicle’s lights are turned on, and which doors are opened and closed at specific locations” as well as “gear shifts, odometer reads, ignition cycles, speed logs, and more.” This car-based surveillance, in other words, goes many miles beyond the car itself.

iV e is compatible with over two dozen makes of vehicle and is rapidly expanding its acquisition and decoding capabilities, according to MSAB.

Civil liberties watchdogs said the CBP contract raises concerns that these sorts of extraction tools will be used more broadly to circumvent constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. “The scale at which CBP can leverage a contract like this one is staggering,” said Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

MSAB spokesperson Carolen Ytander declined to comment on the privacy and civil liberties risks posed by iVe. When asked if the company maintains any guidelines on use of its technology, they said the company “does not set customer policy or governance on usage.”

Getting Smartphone Data Without Having to Crack Into a Smartphone

MSAB’s contract with CBP ran from June of last year until February 28, 2021, and was with the agency’s “forensic and scientific arm,” Laboratories and Scientific Services. It included training on how to use the MSAB gear.

Interest from the agency, the largest law enforcement force in the United States, likely stems from police setbacks in the ongoing war to crack open smartphones.

Attacking such devices was a key line of business for MSAB before it branched out into extracting information from cars. The ubiquity of the smartphone provided police around the world with an unparalleled gift: a large portion of an individual’s private life stored conveniently in one object we carry nearly all of the time. But as our phones have become more sophisticated and more targeted, they’ve grown better secured as well, with phone makers like Apple and phone device-cracking outfits like MSAB and Cellebrite engaged in a constant back-and-forth to gain a technical edge over the other.

“We had a Ford Explorer … we pulled the system out, and we recovered 70 phones that had been connected to it. All of their call logs, their contacts and their SMS.”

But as our phones have grown in sophistication as small computers, so have a whole host of everyday objects and appliances, our cars included. Data-hungry government agencies have increasingly moved to exploit the rise of the smart car, whose dashboard-mounted computers, Bluetooth capabilities, and USB ports have, with the ascendancy of the smartphone, become as standard as cup holders. Smart car systems are typically intended to be paired with your phone, allowing you to take calls, dictate texts, plug in map directions, or “read ”emails from behind the wheel. Anyone who’s taken a spin in a new-ish vehicle and connected their phone — whether to place a hands-free call, listen to Spotify, or get directions — has probably been prompted to share their entire contact list, presented as a necessary step to place calls but without any warning that a perfect record of everyone they’ve ever known will now reside inside their car’s memory, sans password.

The people behind CBP’s new tool are well aware that they are preying on consumer ignorance. In a podcast appearance first reported by NBC News last summer, Berla founder Ben LeMere remarked, “People rent cars and go do things with them and don’t even think about the places they are going and what the car records.” In a 2015 appearance on the podcast “The Forensic Lunch,” LeMere told the show’s hosts how the company uses exactly this accidental-transfer scenario in its trainings: “Your phone died, you’re gonna get in the car, plug it in, and there’s going to be this nice convenient USB port for you. When you plug it into this USB port, it’s going to charge your phone, absolutely. And as soon as it powers up, it’s going to start sucking all your data down into the car.”

In the same podcast, LeMere also recounted the company pulling data from a car rented at BWI Marshall Airport outside Washington, D.C.:

“We had a Ford Explorer … we pulled the system out, and we recovered 70 phones that had been connected to it. All of their call logs, their contacts and their SMS history, as well as their music preferences, songs that were on their device, and some of their Facebook and Twitter things as well. … And it’s quite comical when you sit back and read some of the the text messages.”

The ACLU’s Tajsar explained, “What they’re really saying is ‘We can exploit people because they’re dumb. … We can leverage consumers’ lack of understanding in order to exploit them in ways that they might object to if it was done in the analog world.’”

Exploiting the Wild “Frontier of the Fourth Amendment”

The push to make our cars extensions of our phones (often without any meaningful data protection) makes them tremendously enticing targets for generously funded police agencies with insatiable appetites for surveillance data. Part of the appeal is that automotive data systems remain on what Tajsar calls the “frontier of the Fourth Amendment.” While courts increasingly recognize your phone’s privacy as a direct extension of your own, the issue of cracking infotainment systems and downloading their contents remains unsettled, and CBP could be “exploiting the lack of legal coverage to get at information that otherwise would be protected by a warrant,” Tajsar said.

MSAB’s technology is doubly troubling in the hands of CBP, an agency with a powerful exception from the Fourth Amendment and a historical tendency toward aggressive surveillance and repressive tactics. The agency recently used drones to monitor protests against the police murder of George Floyd and routinely conducts warrantless searches of electronic devices at or near the border.

“It would appear that this technology can be applied like warrantless phone searches on anybody that CBP pleases.”

“It would appear that this technology can be applied like warrantless phone searches on anybody that CBP pleases,” said Mijente’s Jacinta Gonzalez, “which has been a problem for journalists, activists, and lawyers, as well as anyone else CBP decides to surveil, without providing any reasonable justification. With this capability, it seems very likely CBP would conduct searches based on intelligence about family/social connections, etc., and there wouldn’t seem to be anything preventing racial profiling.”

Tajsar shared these concerns.

“Whenever we have surveillance technology that’s deeply invasive, we are disturbed,” he said. “When it’s in the hands of an agency that’s consistently refused any kind of attempt at basic accountability, reform, or oversight, then it’s Defcon 1.”

Part of the problem is that CBP’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, is designed to proliferate intelligence and surveillance technologies “among major law enforcement agencies across the country,” said Tajsar. “What CBP have will trickle down to what your local cops on the street end up getting. That is not a theoretical concern.”

The post Your Car Is Spying on You, and a CBP Contract Shows the Risks appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.
May 3, 2021

Your Car Is Spying on You, and a CBP Contract Shows the Risks

U.S. Customs and Border Protection purchased technology that vacuums up reams of personal information stored inside cars, according to a federal contract reviewed by The Intercept, illustrating the serious risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone.

The contract, shared with The Intercept by Latinx advocacy organization Mijente, shows that CBP paid Swedish data extraction firm MSAB $456,073 for a bundle of hardware including five iVe “vehicle forensics kits” manufactured by Berla, an American company. A related document indicates that CBP believed the kit would be “critical in CBP investigations as it can provide evidence [not only] regarding the vehicle’s use, but also information obtained through mobile devices paired with the infotainment system.” The document went on to say that iVe was the only tool available for purchase that could tap into such systems.

According to statements by Berla’s own founder, part of the draw of vacuuming data out of cars is that so many drivers are oblivious to the fact that their cars are generating so much data in the first place, often including extremely sensitive information inadvertently synced from smartphones.

Indeed, MSAB marketing materials promise cops access to a vast array of sensitive personal information quietly stored in the infotainment consoles and various other computers used by modern vehicles — a tapestry of personal details akin to what CBP might get when cracking into one’s personal phone. MSAB claims that this data can include “Recent destinations, favorite locations, call logs, contact lists, SMS messages, emails, pictures, videos, social media feeds, and the navigation history of everywhere the vehicle has been.” MSAB even touts the ability to retrieve deleted data, divine “future plan[s],” and “Identify known associates and establish communication patterns between them.”

The kit can discover “when and where a vehicle’s lights are turned on, and which doors are opened and closed at specific locations.”

The kit, MSAB says, also has the ability to discover specific events that most car owners are probably unaware are even recorded, like “when and where a vehicle’s lights are turned on, and which doors are opened and closed at specific locations” as well as “gear shifts, odometer reads, ignition cycles, speed logs, and more.” This car-based surveillance, in other words, goes many miles beyond the car itself.

iV e is compatible with over two dozen makes of vehicle and is rapidly expanding its acquisition and decoding capabilities, according to MSAB.

Civil liberties watchdogs said the CBP contract raises concerns that these sorts of extraction tools will be used more broadly to circumvent constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. “The scale at which CBP can leverage a contract like this one is staggering,” said Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

MSAB spokesperson Carolen Ytander declined to comment on the privacy and civil liberties risks posed by iVe. When asked if the company maintains any guidelines on use of its technology, they said the company “does not set customer policy or governance on usage.”

Getting Smartphone Data Without Having to Crack Into a Smartphone

MSAB’s contract with CBP ran from June of last year until February 28, 2021, and was with the agency’s “forensic and scientific arm,” Laboratories and Scientific Services. It included training on how to use the MSAB gear.

Interest from the agency, the largest law enforcement force in the United States, likely stems from police setbacks in the ongoing war to crack open smartphones.

Attacking such devices was a key line of business for MSAB before it branched out into extracting information from cars. The ubiquity of the smartphone provided police around the world with an unparalleled gift: a large portion of an individual’s private life stored conveniently in one object we carry nearly all of the time. But as our phones have become more sophisticated and more targeted, they’ve grown better secured as well, with phone makers like Apple and phone device-cracking outfits like MSAB and Cellebrite engaged in a constant back-and-forth to gain a technical edge over the other.

“We had a Ford Explorer … we pulled the system out, and we recovered 70 phones that had been connected to it. All of their call logs, their contacts and their SMS.”

But as our phones have grown in sophistication as small computers, so have a whole host of everyday objects and appliances, our cars included. Data-hungry government agencies have increasingly moved to exploit the rise of the smart car, whose dashboard-mounted computers, Bluetooth capabilities, and USB ports have, with the ascendancy of the smartphone, become as standard as cup holders. Smart car systems are typically intended to be paired with your phone, allowing you to take calls, dictate texts, plug in map directions, or “read ”emails from behind the wheel. Anyone who’s taken a spin in a new-ish vehicle and connected their phone — whether to place a hands-free call, listen to Spotify, or get directions — has probably been prompted to share their entire contact list, presented as a necessary step to place calls but without any warning that a perfect record of everyone they’ve ever known will now reside inside their car’s memory, sans password.

The people behind CBP’s new tool are well aware that they are preying on consumer ignorance. In a podcast appearance first reported by NBC News last summer, Berla founder Ben LeMere remarked, “People rent cars and go do things with them and don’t even think about the places they are going and what the car records.” In a 2015 appearance on the podcast “The Forensic Lunch,” LeMere told the show’s hosts how the company uses exactly this accidental-transfer scenario in its trainings: “Your phone died, you’re gonna get in the car, plug it in, and there’s going to be this nice convenient USB port for you. When you plug it into this USB port, it’s going to charge your phone, absolutely. And as soon as it powers up, it’s going to start sucking all your data down into the car.”

In the same podcast, LeMere also recounted the company pulling data from a car rented at BWI Marshall Airport outside Washington, D.C.:

“We had a Ford Explorer … we pulled the system out, and we recovered 70 phones that had been connected to it. All of their call logs, their contacts and their SMS history, as well as their music preferences, songs that were on their device, and some of their Facebook and Twitter things as well. … And it’s quite comical when you sit back and read some of the the text messages.”

The ACLU’s Tajsar explained, “What they’re really saying is ‘We can exploit people because they’re dumb. … We can leverage consumers’ lack of understanding in order to exploit them in ways that they might object to if it was done in the analog world.’”

Exploiting the Wild “Frontier of the Fourth Amendment”

The push to make our cars extensions of our phones (often without any meaningful data protection) makes them tremendously enticing targets for generously funded police agencies with insatiable appetites for surveillance data. Part of the appeal is that automotive data systems remain on what Tajsar calls the “frontier of the Fourth Amendment.” While courts increasingly recognize your phone’s privacy as a direct extension of your own, the issue of cracking infotainment systems and downloading their contents remains unsettled, and CBP could be “exploiting the lack of legal coverage to get at information that otherwise would be protected by a warrant,” Tajsar said.

MSAB’s technology is doubly troubling in the hands of CBP, an agency with a powerful exception from the Fourth Amendment and a historical tendency toward aggressive surveillance and repressive tactics. The agency recently used drones to monitor protests against the police murder of George Floyd and routinely conducts warrantless searches of electronic devices at or near the border.

“It would appear that this technology can be applied like warrantless phone searches on anybody that CBP pleases.”

“It would appear that this technology can be applied like warrantless phone searches on anybody that CBP pleases,” said Mijente’s Jacinta Gonzalez, “which has been a problem for journalists, activists, and lawyers, as well as anyone else CBP decides to surveil, without providing any reasonable justification. With this capability, it seems very likely CBP would conduct searches based on intelligence about family/social connections, etc., and there wouldn’t seem to be anything preventing racial profiling.”

Tajsar shared these concerns.

“Whenever we have surveillance technology that’s deeply invasive, we are disturbed,” he said. “When it’s in the hands of an agency that’s consistently refused any kind of attempt at basic accountability, reform, or oversight, then it’s Defcon 1.”

Part of the problem is that CBP’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, is designed to proliferate intelligence and surveillance technologies “among major law enforcement agencies across the country,” said Tajsar. “What CBP have will trickle down to what your local cops on the street end up getting. That is not a theoretical concern.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.
May 1, 2021

Cleaning up what can’t plug in

This story is part of the series Getting to Zero: Decarbonizing Cascadia, which explores the path to low-carbon energy for British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. This project is produced in partnership with InvestigateWest and other media outlets and is supported in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

These days Frank Lemos manages a shipping operation, but the former truck driver still gets behind the wheel occasionally to train new drivers or to fill a staffing hole. When he does, he notices a big difference. The firm recently moved away from conventional diesel fuel, and without it there’s something missing: the permeating petroleum smell that drivers wear after a day inside a big rig.

“You come home and you don’t get to just jump in bed if you’re tired. You have to take a shower, or else someone’s going to kick you out of bed,” said Lemos, who is operations manager for Portland-based Titan Freight Systems.

Since last fall Titan’s rigs, which deliver pallet-loads of goods between Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Idaho, have mostly fueled up with renewable diesel, a biofuel made by refining vegetable oils, livestock tallow, and cooking grease instead of crude oil.

It gets the job done just like petroleum diesel, yet generates far less air pollution. That’s not just a quality of life benefit. It means Titan’s drivers are breathing less toxic fumes and soot, and bringing less of that pollution home.

Lemos isn’t the only who’s noticed. Robert Bennett, Titan’s maintenance supervisor, said his wife quickly realized that she no longer needed to segregate his work clothes when she does the laundry. “There is definitely a big difference,” Bennett said.

Renewable diesel also yields far less of the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases driving climate change. That’s what inspired Titan’s shift.

The firm switched to renewable diesel one year ago, amid the region’s increasingly destructive wildfire seasons. Last year, a fire devastated the town of Phoenix, Oregon, just five miles from one of the firm’s terminals. “Doing nothing is not a course of action,” was how Titan president and owner Keith Wilson described his visceral response to the fires.

Wilson knew that climate change was stoking Cascadia’s fires, and that diesel vehicles produce over a third of Oregon’s transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions. Using biofuel cut Titan’s petroleum diesel consumption by 93 percent and cut its carbon footprint by over two-thirds.

Fuel pumps at Titan’s Portland terminal tap a 15,000 gallon tank full of renewable diesel, which is filled by fuels wholesaler. The low-carbon biofuel fuel is harder to access for smaller trucking firms that rely on retail fuel outlets. Leah Nash

Switching wasn’t a sacrifice. Wilson is getting renewable diesel at the same price. And the cleaner burn cuts maintenance costs, so he figures he’s actually saving about 2 cents a mile — over $20,000 a year.

Titan’s move is part of a Pacific coast wave driven by clean fuels standards enacted in California, Oregon, and British Columbia. Their mandates and fees provide a $1 to $2 per gallon subsidy to renewable diesel and other low-carbon fuels, and their production is multiplying as fleets seek them out.

Washington state looks set to be next. After several failed attempts, the state’s House and Senate both approved a comparable program this spring, and were reconciling their bills at InvestigateWest’s press time.

To decarbonize, as climate science calls for, Cascadia will need an even stronger clean fuels push.

Recent research guiding Cascadia’s policymakers and industries finds that switching to battery-powered vehicles is the cheapest long-term solution to eliminate use of fossil fuels by 2050. Electrification can do it all for cars, energy planners say, edging out all but a fraction of conventional car sales within a decade.

However, electrification of fuel-thirsty heavy vehicles could take decades longer, and Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia need to significantly trim carbon emissions by 2030. For those near-term carbon cuts, cleaner fuels — and lots of them — will be crucial.

Washington has mandated a 45 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. To get there, it needs to both electrify vehicles as rapidly as possible and meet over a third of the remaining fuel demand with low-carbon alternatives to petroleum, according to recent research for the state. That translates to over 1.7 billion gallons of clean fuels in 2030.

Energy experts call that a staggering volume.

“The scale is huge,” said John Holladay, who directs biofuels research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. “It’s a very aggressive scenario.”

Cascadia’s clean fuels need dwarfs what’s now commercially available. Meeting the challenge means rapidly scaling up biofuels like renewable diesel and then doing more, because there simply is not enough plant- and animal-based material to support the volume required, say experts such as Holladay.

Making up the difference will require new fuels that are just beginning to take off — fuels such as hydrogen and low-carbon “synthetic” fuels. Governments and industries in Europe and Asia are beginning to push these next-generation fuels into their markets, while the U.S. and Canada lag behind.

Producing low-carbon fuels presents an opportunity for the region’s refineries, several of which have already begun to retool to make them. And energy experts say producing them locally will improve the reliability of Cascadia’s energy system.

But can clean fuels production ramp up as fast as the region’s climate action ambition demands?

On the road to electric trucks

Electrifying vehicles, homes, and industries is the cheapest way to provide the bulk of the greenhouse gas reductions required by 2050. Cars will shift quickly, thus cutting gasoline demand. Manufacturers such as General Motors have vowed to stop producing gasoline-fueled vehicles by 2035 or earlier, and the Washington Legislature just passed a 2030 target date for that transition.

But heavier vehicles such as buses, trucks, ferries, and planes are harder to electrify. Production of battery-powered heavy vehicles remains limited, and the early models cost more and often carry less than conventional vehicles. Then there’s the need to build charging stations, which a report this month from the Environmental Defense Fund called “the greatest challenge of electrifying heavy-duty trucks.”

Wilson has extensively researched electric trucks, and hopes to introduce one to Titan’s fleet this year to learn more. But he figures it could take 20 years to turn over his diesel-fueled fleet. “Is it a short-term solution? My answer was no,” said Wilson.

Electrifying even beefier vehicles will take longer. Vancouver, B.C.-based Harbour Air vows to start operating its first electric seaplane in just a year or two. But even Harbour Air bets that it will be “decades” before battery-powered jumbo jets are crossing the continent.

“It’s still an emerging technology,” said Tyler Bennett, who manages decarbonization projects for Portland-area transit authority TriMet, which operates over 700 diesel buses.

The Portland-area transit authority is testing several electric bus designs as it works to eliminate diesel buses from its 700-plus bus fleet by 2040. But as TriMet works through software glitches and charging failures afflicting battery buses, diesel buses such as this one still ply its routes. One of TriMet’s first moves was to acquire five battery-powered buses, and equip its Line 62 in Beaverton with North America’s most powerful overhead electric chargers. Leah Nash

Bennett said electric buses cost close to twice as much as diesel models and have shorter range. The first five buses TriMet acquired were mostly out of service last year, thanks to software and charging glitches.

So TriMet continues to add new diesel buses faster than it adds electrics. TriMet plans to cease purchasing diesel buses after 2025. Nevertheless, given the rate that equipment turns over — after 16 years of service for TriMet’s buses — Bennett expects diesels to still make up more than half of the fleet in 2030.

Which is why TriMet, like Titan, set its sights on switching to renewable diesel. Or, to be precise, “R99”: renewable diesel with 1 percent petroleum diesel added to help lubricate engines and to nab a $1 per gallon federal tax credit for fuel blends.

Bennett said tests on 32 TriMet buses in 2019 confirmed that using R99 cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent. It also cut air pollution. That especially benefits lower-income and Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color historically targeted for transportation corridors and therefore exposed to more diesel pollution. (Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality has estimated that diesel pollution kills about 460 Oregonians every year.)

And unlike earlier biofuels, using renewable diesel doesn’t require engine modifications. As Bennett puts it: “You pick up the phone and the company drops off R99 instead of diesel that day and you’re good to go.”

A renewable diesel price spike in 2019 prompted some early adopters to temporarily use more petroleum diesel. And that higher cost prompted TriMet to scuttle a long-term R99 purchase contract that was in the works last March when the pandemic struck. The transit operator tells InvestigateWest that it’s still assessing when it will make the switch, citing COVID-19’s “major impact on our finances.”

Renewable boom and limits

Growing experience of fleet owners — and the Pacific Coast’s clean fuel standards — have biofuels production ramping up. Renewable diesel dominates that growth. Production capacity under construction will roughly quintuple output in the U.S., and many more are in the works, according to a recent biofuels industry survey.

Much of the action is at oil refineries, including several in Cascadia, that are retooling to refine renewable feedstocks. In 2018, BP began mixing a little livestock tallow and vegetable oil into crude at its Blaine, Washington, refinery to make a lower-carbon diesel that’s 5 percent renewable — blending that could scale up and spread to Washington’s four other refineries if Governor Jay Inslee signs a clean fuels bill this year as expected.

Calgary-based Parkland Fuel already blends in renewable feedstocks on a larger scale at its Vancouver-area refinery, where it expects to process over 600,000 barrels of tallow and canola oil this year — enough to make Parkland’s diesel up to 15 percent renewable.

The Parkland refinery near Vancouver, B.C., is changing its diet. Originally designed to convert Canadian petroleum and bitumen into jet fuel, gasoline, diesel and other fuels, it increasingly blends in renewable feedstocks. Doing so is necessary to remain in compliance with British Columbia’s clean fuel standard, which progressively reduces the average amount of climate-warming emissions allowed with the production and use of a gallon of fuel. Alamy

Canada’s Tidewater Midstream and Infrastructure, meanwhile, is among a growing number of refiners gearing up to produce pure renewable diesel. By 2023, a Canadian $215 million to $235 million ($171 million to $187 million U.S.) expansion underway at its Prince George, British Columbia, refinery should be turning 3,000 barrels of renewable feedstocks per day into renewable diesel.

Dedicated “biorefineries” are also multiplying. A $1.5 billion-plus plant proposed for Columbia County, Oregon, not far from Portland, would turn up to 50,000 barrels per day of waste oils and fats into more than 500 million gallons per year of renewable diesel. Its proponent, NEXT Renewable Fuels, has applied to be exempted from siting approval under a state law incentivizing low-carbon biofuels.

The question is how many refineries can be sustainably supplied with oils and fats. “The amount we need is not consistent with the amount that’s available,” according to Holladay.

So, where to turn? As the supply of waste fats taps out, biofuels producers will rely more heavily on vegetable oils. That may drive up food prices and reduce the climate benefit.

Making fuel from waste fats provides a double benefit by preventing those wastes from simply decomposing, a process that releases the potent climate pollutant methane. In contrast, turning to harvested plant oils could drive consumption of palm oil, whose rising production has led to rainforest destruction in countries such as Indonesia. Clearing forests for palm plantations undercuts climate benefits.

Operators such as NEXT Renewable Fuels have explicitly sworn off using “virgin” palm oil. But tracking the palm oil supply chain is difficult.

Growing demand for palm oil contributes to rapid destruction of rainforests in Indonesia, Brazil and other tropical countries, and the resulting loss of forest carbon defeats the climate benefits of producing biofuels from palm oil. Several studies also have correlated forest clearing for palm plantations with the transfer of wildlife disease to humans. Shutterstock

To hydrogen and beyond

Experts project that meeting clean fuels demand in 2030 will take clean fuels producers into new technologies and ingredients that are on the cusp of commercial production today.

One potential source of future fuels are abundant biomass materials such as wheat chaff and other agricultural leftovers, sludge from sewage treatment plants, and small trees from thinned-out forests. Biomass can be converted to methane gas and compressed to fuel vehicles. Alternatively, superheated water and catalysts — materials that accelerate chemical reactions — can turn biomass into an oily mix known as “biocrude” that refineries can take on.

Holladay and collaborators at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington State University are working to demonstrate the feasibility of the biocrude fuels chain. They are making biocrude from a blend of sources including wastewater sludge from Detroit and food wastes from a prison and an army base in Washington state.

Last month, they reported continuous conversion of biocrude to renewable diesel for over 2,000 hours with no damage to the particularly pricey catalysts that refineries employ.

The PNNL-WSU research could play a small role in the set of next-generation clean fuels endorsed by Washington state’s 2021 energy strategy: hydrogen gas made with renewable power, and liquid fuels produced by reacting that “green” hydrogen with a range of materials.

Cascadia’s first green hydrogen project broke ground in March at the Douglas County Public Utility District in central Washington. The plant will use hydropower generated at the utility’s Columbia River dam to split water into hydrogen gas and oxygen.

Electrolyzers use electricity to split water into combustible hydrogen gas and oxygen. If the electricity used is renewable, the resulting “green hydrogen” is a zero-carbon fuel that can replace fossil fuels for industries, heavy vehicles, and other energy uses that are difficult to plug in to the power grid. As Cascadia makes greater use of wind and solar energy, stores of green hydrogen can also be tapped to generate electricity, providing a backup power supply during extended dark, windless periods. Cummins

Such hydrogen can replace natural gas and coal that fuel industries, or be used to propel electric vehicles that get their power from fuel cells instead of batteries. Fuel cells are electrochemical devices comparable to Douglas PUD’s hydrogen plant, but running in reverse to combine hydrogen and oxygen and thus generate electricity.

Toyota, which along with Hyundai and Honda already sells fuel cell vehicles in California and British Columbia, is teaming up with Douglas PUD to open a market in Washington by building the state’s first hydrogen fueling station near Centralia.

Douglas PUD expects to get an extra boost from its hydrogen production: flexibly adjusting the plant’s operation to keep the power supply and demand in balance. (See Using hydrogen to back up the grid)

Another way to use hydrogen to beat climate change is to produce low-carbon liquid fuels. Those include diesel for use in heavy vehicles and jet fuel for jet engines. A firm in Quebec is building one of the world’s largest green hydrogen plants, about 17 times bigger than the one at Douglas PUD. It will convert nonrecyclable municipal waste and wood waste into biofuels.

Decarbonization modeling supporting Washington’s new energy strategy found that hydrogen-derived fuels could account for four-fifths of the state’s clean fuels supply in 2030. Projections like that are new for North America, but they are the new normal in Europe and Asia where large renewable hydrogen projects are multiplying.

A Danish renewable energy giant, Ørsted, is laying plans for a hydrogen plant 200 times larger than Douglas PUD’s, to be powered by a dedicated offshore wind farm.

Banning petroleum

Cascadia’s clean fuel standards have started a transition to low-carbon fuels. But those programs are not sufficient to deliver the hydrogen and clean fuels industries needed by 2030.

Big investments promised by the Biden Administration could help. An infrastructure plan unveiled by Biden last month promises $15 billion toward large demonstration projects for emerging energy technologies, including 15 hydrogen projects.

The uncertain cost of hydrogen-based fuel processes means it is hard to predict which fuel pathways will ultimately scale up, according to Jeremy Hargreaves, the energy systems modeler with San Francisco-based Evolved Energy Research who led the recent research for Washington state.

What’s certain, said Hargreaves, is that the hydrogen fuels will cost considerably more than today’s commercial fuels, such as renewable diesel. Which is why electrifying as fast as possible rose to the top of the strategy menu that Hargreaves’ firm evaluated for Washington state, and in similar studies for British Columbia and Oregon. It makes sense to electrify as many cars and trucks as possible before turning to the more-expensive green hydrogen fuels.

Environmentalists worry that expanding clean fuels production will actually undermine that effort, undercutting the early market adoption of electric vehicles.

“You are providing an incentive to continue using fossil-powered trucks and ferries, rather than shifting to electrified equivalents,” said Patrick Mazza, a Seattle-based environmental activist and energy analyst.

Many worry that hydrogen-based fuels could also spur new fossil fuel production. Right now, green hydrogen is pretty expensive. It’s much cheaper for the time being to continue using a climate-unfriendly process using natural gas that is responsible for over 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Even if some of the carbon emissions could be captured, making more hydrogen from natural gas would spur continued fossil gas drilling and the associated methane leaks.

“You are giving a new market to fracked gas, with all its air and water pollution problems, as well as questionable carbon benefits,” said Mazza.

In contrast, the concern of trucking mini-magnate Wilson at Titan Freight Systems is about ensuring that Cascadia starts getting trucks off petroleum today.

Titan Freight Systems president Keith Wilson spent a decade trying to cut his trucking firm’s carbon emissions, and failed. Energy-sapping pollution-control equipment needed to capture soot and other toxic emissions mostly negated Titan’s fuel efficiency upgrades, such as aerodynamic trailers. So last year, Wilson switched strategies, replacing petroleum diesel with cleaner-burning, lower-carbon renewable diesel. Leah Nash

Wilson spent this winter educating fellow carriers and the Oregon Trucking Associations on renewable diesel’s advantages. Then, hot off an unsuccessful 2020 bid for Portland City Commission, Wilson leapt back into politics this year, proposing a state law to phase out petroleum diesel by 2028.

Wilson’s bill got a frosty reception from Oregon Republicans, who have made a habit of fleeing the Oregon State Capitol to block climate legislation. The trucking association raised fears of renewable diesel shortages and price spikes. So Wilson and Democratic State Representative Karin Power, who formally introduced the bill last month, added several safety valves to the bill designed to head off steep price hikes.

Wilson positions his bill as a cost-saving measure that can improve health, grow jobs, and reverse nearly a decade of rising carbon emissions in Oregon. And, he says, those wildfires are costing him customers. “We’re being compromised when we lose entire communities because of fire or smoke in the summer, because people aren’t buying fishing gear,” said Wilson.

Frank Lemos, Titan’s operations manager, says his concern is managing the backlash that’s likely to come from Wilson’s proselytizing for climate action. He wants a cleaner workplace for his drivers, and he accepts that getting off fossil fuels is important for his drivers’ grandkids.

But he also needs to protect his drivers from the inevitable blowback from their industry counterparts, whether it’s chatter on the CB radio or at the truck stops. He expects those conversations to go sideways, with their drivers hearing that costs will rise and Titan will have to cut their wages, or their jobs.

“You don’t want to be thought of as that guy from that company who’s trying to change the way trucking is done,” said Lemos. “Nobody wants to be that scapegoat that makes the difference. But somebody has to be.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Cleaning up what can’t plug in on May 1, 2021.

This post was originally published on Grist.
April 30, 2021

Oracle Executive’s Contentious Interview with the Reporter He Sought Dirt On

Editor’s Note: In response to The Intercept’s recent coverage of Oracle, the company’s executive vice president and lobbyist Ken Glueck wrote two lengthy posts on Oracle’s blog that went beyond normal media discourse. In the first post, he published the email and Signal number of Intercept reporter Mara Hvistendahl, who reported and wrote two stories about Oracle’s marketing of its analytics software for surveillance by police in Brazil, China, and the United Arab Emirates. In the second post, he called for people who had information about Hvistendahl to send it to his Protonmail account. (The call for details on Hvistendahl was removed Wednesday evening. An archived version is here.) He later posted Hvistendahl’s contact information on Twitter, which temporarily suspended Glueck for violating its terms of service.

Glueck’s personal attacks on our reporter are appalling and unprofessional, and his attacks on her work are baseless and uninformed. Mara Hvistendahl is a veteran journalist and former China-based foreign correspondent who has long covered the tech sector and whose work has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Each of her recent Oracle articles was the culmination of months of investigation, research, and editing by a team of journalists, and each entailed extensive back and forth with company representatives prior to publication. (Tatiana Dias contributed significant reporting to the first story and separately published an investigation for The Intercept Brasil.) The Intercept stands behind Hvistendahl and our Oracle stories and condemns Ken Glueck’s bullying on behalf of his employer, Oracle. This type of conduct has become increasingly common from prominent tech companies faced with journalists doing their jobs, but it should not be normalized.

Glueck’s blog posts make a number of false accusations. He says that in Hvistendahl’s initial approach, she was vague in her communications with Oracle and only sent the company a list of questions “after some e-mail prodding.” In fact, she outlined her findings in detail in her first email and sent Oracle additional emails attaching and/or linking to the documents she planned to write about. Glueck wrote of the first investigation, “This 4,695-word feature was published without a single actual discussion with Oracle” and said Hvistendahl “was not willing to actually speak to us on the phone.” In fact, we quoted the company’s emailed responses at length, and for that first article, Oracle’s public relations staff only offered to talk on background. Glueck writes that editor Ryan Tate “ghosted” him. In fact, Tate spent 44 minutes on the phone with Glueck shortly after the first article was published. (At Oracle’s insistence, the call was on background, but it was recorded.)

This type of conduct has become increasingly common from prominent tech companies faced with journalists doing their jobs, but it should not be normalized.

In the second post, Glueck accuses Hvistendahl of fabricating a comment attributed to Mark Hurd from an earnings call. “She cites a 2012 quote from former-Oracle CEO Mark Hurd that Oracle is ‘ramping up its business in Asia’ (yes, that’s quoted in its entirety from the story),” he writes. Glueck then alleges: “If you read the transcript, [Hurd] was specifically talking about ‘ramping up’ the launch of a brand-new product at the time. The ‘business in Asia’ part is just fabricated.”

But if you do in fact read the transcript and compare it to the article, as Glueck recommends, it turns out that Glueck is the one misstating what was said. Hurd said on the call, “We’re ramping up now in Asia.” Hvistendahl paraphrased that as Hurd saying “Oracle was ‘ramping up’ its business in Asia.” (Hurd separately used the word “ramping” in reference to a product.)

Glueck accuses Hvistendahl of misrepresenting a sale of Oracle hardware to China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, as it was known at the time. Glueck asserts that Oracle’s last sale to that client involved an “Oracle StorageTek tape drive worth $54,057.00, including product support and freight.” That may be true, but the government document linked to in the story describes the Oracle Exadata server being sold for 1.19 million RMB, or $193,800 at the time.

He accuses her of misrepresenting a server that is “less than 24 inches tall” as “towering.” But Hvistendahl uses that adjective in reference to the full server rack, which was taller than many people at the conference where it was displayed.

Glueck claims that a Chinese-language Oracle document cited by The Intercept (and since removed from its location on Oracle’s website) is a presentation of a 311 system in New York City. In fact, while the presentation mentions such a system in passing, it also boasts that Oracle technology was used in the pilot of China’s grid management management system, a network of neighborhood-level social monitoring and control. The document further states that Oracle’s technology helped power China’s “Golden Shield” surveillance project, which one expert called “instrumental” in returning members of the country’s Uyghur minority to their home region of Xinjiang, where many were detained.

Oracle has not refuted any facts contained in our articles about its activity in China. Our coverage showed how Oracle marketed its technology for surveillance by authorities in China and in repressive regimes around the world; revealed the company’s services to the Chinese public security bureau repressing Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region; and described the web of local resellers that facilitate and obscure such ethically dubious transfers. Oracle’s blog posts have actually confirmed the veracity of various company slide decks used in our reporting, which show Oracle employees explaining in detail how the company’s technology can be deployed for surveillance in China.

Oracle CEO Safra Catz, right, and executive vice president Ken Glueck, left, attends President-elect Donald Trump’s Roundtable Tech Industry Summit on Dec. 14, 2016, in New York City.

Photo: Brad Barket/Getty Images

On April 8, as Hvistendahl was wrapping up her reporting on the second article, Oracle arranged for her to speak with Ken Glueck on the record. That interview lasted 55 minutes. In it, Glueck aggressively reversed the messaging Oracle has routinely used with customers and in China. For example, one of Oracle’s Chinese partners manufactures a server derived from hardware that Oracle markets as having “dramatically better performance” and as “the best platform to run the Oracle Database.” In Glueck’s description, the Chinese version of the server became a “small-scale device” that “doesn’t have the capacity” to run “any kind of public sector, broadly used, system.” A document presented at an Oracle conference by an Oracle employee as showing how a “Chinese Police Department” used an Oracle product to cull information on suspects from “documents, social media, web content, chat rooms, flight records, hotel stay registries, and publically [sic] available open datasets” was presented by Glueck as a “proof of concept set of ideas … like a Harvard Business Review case study.” Oracle repeatedly boasted on its website that its technology helped Chinese police conduct surveillance; Glueck downplayed this help, saying that Oracle merely provided an “underlying piece of software that somebody else would have to build capabilities on top of.” And so on.

The interview, in other words, was typical of Oracle’s response to our reporting, across its communications with us and its outrageous blog posts: Glueck tried to minimize the importance of Oracle’s own statements about its activities in China, which were key to our conclusions, and to downplay its extensive links to repression in that country.

What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Mara Hvistendahl: I would love to get more clarity on where Oracle draws the line, particularly overseas — not just in China but in other countries. Your responses made clear that you follow all the laws and export controls. But there are notable holes in the export control regulations. So I would like to know where the line is.

Ken Glueck: I’m afraid I can’t really help you much. You’ve seen our published policies. You know what the export control regulations and laws are. Obviously we adhere to those to the letter of the law, and I’ve indicated in our written comments that we go beyond that. But two problems: One is that I don’t know what you mean by the rest of the world. You’d have to identify particular countries. Two is that I think that we all have different definitions of what surveillance might be.

“We all have different definitions of what surveillance might be.”

MH: What’s Oracle’s definition of when something makes you uncomfortable in a human rights context?

KG: Mara, I’m looking for what the industry standard is, to see if our practices exceed or are lower than whatever the standard is. I haven’t recently gone to other companies’ policies, [but] we’ve said on the record that we go beyond what one might anticipate from the export control regulations.

MH: The reason I did this article is I found PowerPoints that appear to be marketing technology for use by police [in China, the UAE, and other repressive regimes] for surveillance purposes on Oracle’s site, not on other companies’ sites. [That’s] not to say that other companies don’t have problems.

To get into those presentations specifically, I read your blog post that you wrote. And you mentioned that Oracle has 140,000 employees around the world. Do employees just have the right to post whatever they want on Oracle’s site? How did those presentations end up there?

KG: That’s a fair question. I wrote in the blog post that we regret that they’re up there, and they didn’t reflect the current status of our business. The problem, as you can imagine, we obviously can exercise controls at different points in the sales process. And ultimately our control rests in our export compliance program, which has responsibility for our global compliance and then can go beyond what is required in the law. That is obviously a point of control for a large multinational corporation. What is more complicated, of course, is employees that might create a PowerPoint presentation and just post it on our site. We were clear and I think I explained to you that I can’t control for that. You pointed out [the presentations] — that’s something that we’ve been looking at. But it’s a marketing PowerPoint that one of 140,000 employees put up there.

Look, I recognize the slides. Those are not really Chinese slides. Those are slides that we used in the United States and Europe and then they were extrapolated [to China]. But salespeople want to sell. Salespeople want to market. I have no evidence that those PowerPoints were ever even presented to a customer. But I also didn’t hide from them, right?

“Salespeople want to sell. Salespeople want to market.”

MH: I would assume that it’s a fairly limited number of employees who are able to post on Oracle’s website. Is that right?

Spokesperson: Mara, this is Deborah Hellinger. I can look into that and get back to you, OK? This is definitely outside Ken Glueck’s scope.

KG: Deborah will get back to you, but we treat our website much like I think you would be in favor of treating any other large internet situation, which is that employees can post what employees want to post. And that’s all healthy. Usually.

MH: So in terms of where Oracle draws the line: Your responses were clear that you make efforts to not sell to entities that are listed. For example in Xinjiang, [Oracle’s] business with the Public Security Bureau stopped in 2019, I believe, after the Public Security Bureau was listed by the Commerce Department.

There was pretty widespread awareness of the [internment] camps in Xinjiang in 2017 and 2018. And you were doing business with the police department in the region for two years, after that was widely known. Why only stop in 2019?

KG: So I think you have — we have a couple issues we need to unpack. One is what products are being sold. Two is for what purposes. We’ve been clear with you on the record. We’ve given you, I think, 12 fully filled pages of on-the-record responses. But you also have to take a step back. These products are mass-market commodity products. There’s nothing special about them. And secondly, it’s easy to say “police,” but you need to take the next step and say, what are these products being used for? And we were very clear with you that if it’s an HR product, that’s just not a surveillance product.

[Editor: Oracle documents indicate the company provided “data security solutions” to the public security bureau in Xinjiang. Oracle also told The Intercept that it partnered with a company that does extensive work with the operator of many internment camps in the region.]

But what I can’t do is go back and unpack every one of these transactions for you. I don’t see any evidence that Oracle sold software as part of any surveillance systems. If your position is that a 311 system for a smart city to a public entity in China is a problem, I take that on board.

MH: You take that on board — meaning?

KG: Meaning, I understand what you’re saying. I just don’t think there’s consensus that that’s problematic.

MH: There’s fairly extensive documentation that smart cities in the Chinese context entail extensive surveillance. That’s even clear in the PowerPoints on Oracle’s site, because they mention smart cities on one hand and then they mentioned facial recognition, DNA collection, and so forth in the same context.

KG: I think that PowerPoint presentation was part of a New York City presentation.

[Editor: Glueck appears to be referring to this presentation on smart cities. Slide 10 shows a broad array of sensitive citizen data — including DNA, mental illness records, and other medical information — being converted into ones and zeros. Slide 5 states that Oracle technology was used in China’s Golden Shield program, which, among other outcomes, resulted in the forced return of improperly registered Uyghurs to Xinjiang, where many were detained. The presentation also references New York City’s 311 system.]

MH: This was marketing Oracle’s capabilities for smart cities in China. You’re saying smart cities in China, you have no concerns about them?

KG: I didn’t say that. I said I understand your concern. Remember, to the extent that Oracle is even used, it would be used as an underlying piece of software that somebody else would have to build capabilities on top of. You can’t order the Oracle smart city software. That doesn’t exist. If you want to go hire a big systems integrator to go either write or prepackage a set of smart city applications, then somebody can do that on top of what, again, is mass-market commodity software. There are a million different choices from using the Oracle database that are widely available almost completely for free.

“I understand your concern. To the extent that Oracle is used, it would be used as an underlying piece of software.”

I’ve looked into even prior to you and I starting to exchange [communications], a lot of these Golden Shield or Golden programs. And as far as I can tell, they’re almost entirely homegrown and open-source technology.

MH: Right, but this article is about Oracle’s technology. And it’s clear from looking at other materials that Oracle has marketed its capabilities [and] its analytics software to police around the world. One of the capabilities that Oracle is marketing is the ability to mine social media, to draw on different sources of data, and give some police a platform similar to Palantir Gotham, which has gotten a lot of scrutiny.

KG: We were clear in our responses and in my blog that we absolutely provide software and services to national security entities around the world. What you and I have been caught up on a little bit is that while some of those capabilities have wound up in marketing materials, the problem is that you’ve yet to show me a transaction or a use case where Oracle software winds up in a surveillance system in China. And what we’re now talking about — which is fair, I understand your point — is things that are on the periphery of surveillance. Your position, as I understand it, is if it’s sold to a police department for whatever purposes, then it’s a problem. I understand that.

“We absolutely provide software and service to national security entities around the world.”

MH: No. My position is if it’s marketed to police for surveillance purposes that that is —

KG: Well, you have to show me that something was sold, because we’ve been on the record with you.

MH: Right, well it’s your interpretation. I think we differ on that.

KG: [inaudible] I’ve invested a lot of time and money in going through all these transactions. I’m just telling you, and we are on the record with you, that I don’t find the transactions you’re concerned about. I fully understand the marketing, but none of those marketing presentations as far as I can tell were ever converted into actual sales and uses.

MH: They use words like “client” and “use case,” [as in] this is an actual case that was implemented. And I spoke with a former Oracle employee who told me that they had corresponded with the department [in China that used the analytics software].

KG: They don’t. What these presentations talk about is use cases. It’s like a proposed use case. I know that because I can go through the presentations, and we don’t offer this software.

MH: Why would they have included actual screenshots of what appears to be actual data in a specific province in that case?

KG: Because in some cases there are existing third-party tools that have been built on top of our capabilities that you can go buy.

Look, that’s the way technology works, right? If you want to do a smart city, you can’t come to Oracle, swipe a credit card, and download the smart city application. That’s just not available. But in terms of concepts and ideas, yes, these presentations exist. Our problem though, between you and I — our problem, it’s not even a disagreement — is you have yet to show me a conversion where some of the software went from a marketing PowerPoint presentation to an actual implementation somewhere. And I can’t find them either.

MH: They describe police departments as “clients.”

KG: I’ve been around this for 30 years. I think that when you look at what a client is, the definition is anybody that uses any of our technology. So I went back and looked at that, and the example that had been given — yes, a police department is a client. It just happened to be a client for a completely noninteresting HR application. Now, is that police department technically a client? Sure, they are. Is the logo legitimate? Sure it is. It’s a reference of somebody who’s a client, but not for the purposes that you’re concerned about.

[Editor: The presentation referenced by The Intercept that called a Chinese provincial police department a “client” said the client was in need of an intelligence platform. Another presentation in the same story referred to how a provincial police “customer” could use Oracle software to help with “police intelligence analysis,” including by linking networks of suspicious people based on hotel registration records and generating “security case heat map[s].”]

MH: So you’re saying that they are entirely theoretical. Presentations for OpenWorld — are they reviewed by Oracle’s counsel before they’re presented? [Editor: One presentation detailing data analytics work with an unnamed Chinese police department was given at Oracle OpenWorld.]

KG: On the presentations that we’ve been both circling around, I understand how you can interpret something. I’m not criticizing, but I know what that presentation is. That’s like a Harvard Business Review case study. It’s a “Hey, here’s the proof of concept set of ideas.” That’s just what it is. And it was never converted into an actual implementation.

With regard to review by counsel, the answer is, of course, things that are presented to the marketplace are checked for accuracy. We don’t want to be saying something [inaudible] the marketplace. But part of the problem — and this is not a criticism — is there are a lot of words that you read that are not the way they’re used in technology. [Editor: Glueck goes on to explain cloud computing.]

MH: OK. So how about Oracle’s partners? Can you explain a little bit about the vetting process and the auditing process for partners? The responses that [Oracle spokesperson] Jessica [Moore] sent pointed out or argued that there’s no partner in China that does not do some objectionable business, and that if you use the standard of not working with anyone who’s doing something objectionable, there would be no partners. So how do you decide which partners you do work with overseas?

KG: I can’t go through that with you, based on the rules you’ve set up. [Editor: The only conditions for the interview were that it be on the record and taped for accuracy.] But we do vet partners. We have a track record globally of ending partner relationships where there has been some violation in our view. We do audit partners. And the primary rationale for the auditing — just because something is sold to a partner doesn’t relieve us of our export compliance obligations.

MH: Right.

KG: We are required to, and we do, conduct periodic audits. To the extent we discover a problem, we will remedy it or end the relationship. But the issue in China is that the normal course of doing business is through partners. That’s the way it is. I’ll let you offer judgment as to — maybe you can give me a list of partners you think are not objectionable. But we stand behind the partners that we do business with. We’re comfortable with them. We audit them regularly. I can’t control whether or not you’ve identified that some partner does business in a way that is separate from Oracle, maybe with another partner, maybe on their own, that you determine to be objectionable. I can only control for what I [inaudible].

“We stand behind the partners that we do business with. We’re comfortable with them.”

MH: Have you ended relationships with Chinese partners in the past on the basis of an audit or what you found?

KG: We have.

MH: OK. And what do the audits entail?

Spokesperson: We have time for just one more question.

KG: I’m OK, Jess. I think there’s a commonly understood definition of an audit.

MH: Are you going in and looking at their websites and their work, or are you — ?

Spokesperson: I think we’re going to have to decline comment, Ken.

KG: You’ve established the rules for this, so I’m going to say what I’ve said. If you want to have a different conversation, we’d be happy to have a different conversation.

MH: OK. What about the Dengyun hardware that Oracle localized in China; did you want to speak about that? [Editor: Dengyun is a database server that appears to be derived from Oracle’s Exadata X8-2 Database Machine. In marketing materials, Oracle describes the Database Machine as “the best platform to run the Oracle Database” and as a “high-performance” solution “engineered to deliver dramatically better performance.”]

KG: The Dengyun is an appliance. It’s a hardware appliance that includes software. It involves no transfer of intellectual property, as I’ve described to you. It involves no transfer of source code, as I’ve described. It’s a prepackaged appliance. It’s a small-scale device. By definition, this partnership and this product is not the kind of appliance that you could even run a surveillance system on, no matter how you define it. That’s not to say that we obviously don’t have different hardware capabilities, but this is a very limited, small-scale kind of appliance. What I do know, but I can’t tell it to you because of the rules you’ve set up is, I know how many have been sold, and I know the configurations of what these systems are. And I’m prepared to say to you that these are not the kinds of systems one would build a surveillance system around.

MH: What do you mean? It could house data, though? You need multiple components to build a system, right? You need facial recognition, you need this and this and this and this, which is why these aggregators —

KG: Now, Mara, you do need all of that, but you also need scale, and you need capacity. And these are small-scale systems. Look, I know what the configuration is. This is the kind of thing that you’d run a medium-sized business’s internal transactions on. It’s not the kind of thing you could stand up to run any kind of public sector, broadly used, system. It just doesn’t have the capacity. Even if you strung dozens of these together, it doesn’t have the capacity.

I also know how many have been sold. And I’m confident that if the Chinese government wanted to stand up a surveillance system of any kind, this would not be what they would choose. It’s just not enough horsepower.

The Intercept: “What did those audits entail?” Spokesperson: “I think we’re going to have to decline to comment, Ken.”

MH: I got interested because I found this notice from Beijing police saying that they had purchased [the Dengyun server], or plan to purchase it as part of this surveillance system. And it was one of several technologies [listed].

KG: But I don’t know what they’re using it for. It could be for a very small piece of something. I’m just telling you, I know what the specifications are. It’s like if you as a consumer were to buy a $400 Chromebook when what you really want to do is very high-end video manipulation as part of your program. It’s just the wrong tool for the job.

What you would do is you would go buy a very high-end fast processor Mac, and you’d be processing tons of video. So I’m saying that the specifications of this appliance, this piece of hardware — it’s just not the right fit.

MH: So are you not concerned that Oracle technology could be bought by a police department, for example — under the premise of using it for tax purposes or just for data storage, without specifying what kind of data it is — and that [the project] would then turn out, because it’s Chinese police, to involve surveillance?

KG: Two things. One is, I’ve already said to you that it’s just not a rational decision anybody would make. But sure. We have obligations to audit and to comply with both end user and end use. Now I think I said to you in writing the last time we went through this: Is it possible that somebody uses something for an unintended purpose? I can’t — We don’t think so, but sure, that’s possible. But then you come back to why in the world would I use this tool when I’ve got a zillion other options available to me that are far more capable for this kind of purpose. Now you could say, “Look, the Oracle database itself, outside of this Dengyun offering, could be used for surveillance purposes.” That is certainly true. I’m just focused right now on the Dengyun offering. I know the specifications, and it’s just not the kind of tool one would pick.

“Is it possible that somebody uses something for an unintended purpose? We don’t think so, but sure, that’s possible.

When you asked me the question, and I go back and I look at the specifications and I look at the quantity of these units that have been sold. I can very confidently say to you, as we did on the record in writing, that these products are not being used for the kinds of use cases that you’ve articulated.

MH: In your responses, both to my first article and I believe the second one as well, you use this word “implementable” — that the PowerPoints that I found don’t portray actual implementable solutions, and that there was virtually no evidence of these solutions being implemented. Why not just say, “Our technology is not used this way in China”? What do you mean by “implementations”?

KG: OK, so [let’s] come back to our two businesses. Maybe I’m just parsing words and I’m using industry standard terms. If we’re getting caught up on semantics, I don’t mean to. What I was trying to say to you is that a lot of the use cases that are represented in these PowerPoints are not purchasable solutions in the kind of way that you would go and purchase Microsoft Excel. Right? That’s a purchasable solution.

A lot of these solutions are things that one would have to do a lot of custom work with a systems integrator and build the code to enable a lot of these capabilities. The way that the software works is that these capabilities are built on top of other underlying capabilities. You mentioned analytics. It is certainly true that we have analytics software, but somebody’s got to write code and say, “Here’s the data set that we want to analyze and here are the questions we want to ask and here’s the results we want to get.”

MH: Right. And those presentations said —

KG: When I say “implementable solution,” it’s that on those PowerPoints, I don’t actually see anything that somebody could swipe their credit card and buy tomorrow. I see something that somebody would have to go and build. Again, I don’t mean to say that those PowerPoints aren’t real. Of course they’re real. They are just marketing information. And it’s a proof of concept. It’s advertising, as you would expect it to be. It’s marketing, as you would expect it to be.

MH: I guess I wouldn’t expect Oracle or any other major U.S. company to be going and saying, “We can help you analyze DNA and facial recognition images and so forth.”

KG: I don’t think we’ve said that. I don’t think those PowerPoints say that.

MH: They do.

KG: Again, what I can’t do is if some employee wants to say something — again, let’s come back to the beginning where you and I started. And maybe you can help me as to what the better answer is.

Ultimately in compliance programs, you have to identify where are the choke points where you can enforce policy. And if you think about the sales cycle, you have to identify: Here’s the point at which I can enforce policy. And I’m not really concerned about things south of that point, and obviously I’m concerned about things north of that point. But we don’t enforce policy around what an employee might create on a PowerPoint. I can’t do that. This employee might not even be there tomorrow. They might be there. I don’t know how one would ever do that, and that’s bizarre —

MH: You don’t enforce —

KG: — in the way the industry works. I can enforce what’s actually sold and the end user it’s sold to and the end use. That I can enforce.

MH: OK. So you can’t enforce what an employee creates and posts on your website?

KG: Can I enforce what’s on our website? Yeah, of course I can. And look, Mara, before you raised these issues three weeks ago, I didn’t know those presentations existed on our website. We’ve learned something. But again, you can’t use a PowerPoint to surveil somebody. You have to actually use technology to surveil somebody.

“Before you raised these issues three weeks ago, I didn’t know those presentations existed on our website. We’ve learned something.”

So if your position is you’re concerned about PowerPoints, I take your point. And we learned that those exist and I got it. But again, what you haven’t done is, you haven’t shown me is, here’s actual cases where Oracle software is being used for things that you’ve defined as objectionable.

MH: The Dengyun case of the Beijing police department using it in a major surveillance project seems objectionable to me.

KG: Mara, it can’t be for a major surveillance project. That is incorrect. It cannot be by definition for a major surveillance project. Could it be implemented as part of something somewhere? I just don’t know the answer to that. But by definition, this product is not of sufficient scale to do what you think it does.

MH: Is there anything else that we didn’t cover that you would like to get into?

KG: I thought our blog was pretty clear. You know, you can expect a response to whatever it is you do. You’ve seen in our responses, we do take issue with the entire premise of what you’re writing. I understand where you’re coming from. I’m not critical about it, but we do take issue with it.

If you look at Oracle relative to every single one of our competitors, which does matter, I think that everybody else is going in one direction and we’ve gone the other direction. And that’s a matter of public record. So I’m confused by these inquiries.

Furthermore, we’ve now talked indirectly for weeks, and what I’m still missing is the actual solutions that exist somewhere that are problematic. I understand we’ve sort of got this fuzzy area where — define it however you want to define it, but the systems that you and I would agree on that are clearly of a surveillance nature, you’ve done nothing to show me that Oracle technology exists for any of those systems.

The post Oracle Executive’s Contentious Interview with the Reporter He Sought Dirt On appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.
April 29, 2021

Cryptocurrencies: an innovative solution to migrant remittances?

Cryptocurrencies have gained a lot of attention and scrutiny over the past few years. Especially recently as big-name companies like Tesla buy into Bitcoin, giving institutional backing and bolstering investors belief in the future of the bubbly and speculative coin. But, in which countries are cryptocurrencies most used? You would be forgiven for thinking that the US or China top the list. In fact, Nigeria is first with 32% of respondents in a survey stating that they own or have owned a cryptocurrency (Buchholz 2021). The next two countries on the list are Vietnam and the Philippines, with 21% and 20% respectively using or having used cryptocurrency. Why do so many people in these countries make use of cryptocurrencies? They are developing countries, with many nationals living abroad and are amongst the top counties globally sending remittances back home (IOM 2020).

Indeed, migrants from a few developing countries have turned to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as an intermediary to transfer and exchange money. This information highlights the contributory and innovative aspect that a cryptocurrency can, and is, offering. For migrants, Bitcoin acts as an asset to transfer money with no or very low costs of transfer and allows for exchanges between currencies with no mark-up.

Can cryptocurrencies offer an innovative solution for migrant remittances to developing countries? To answer this question, we must first consider the current situation. There are approximately 272 million migrants globally, and remittances are a huge source of income for low- and middle-income countries, totalling about $554 billion at the end of 2019 (IOM 2020). Therefore, the necessity to safeguard the effective and economical transfer of remittances is consequential for the alleviation of poverty, routes to economic empowerment and growth, and reduction of inequalities amongst countries, within countries, and between the genders. However, sending money back home is no easy task for many migrants, especially the poorest among them. This is due to factors like high costs for international transfers by private companies such as WesternUnion or MoneyGram. More broadly, underdeveloped financial systems limit the options available; access to bank accounts and online banking systems needed for online transfers are not readily available for many. In fact, the “unbanked”, as called by the World Bank, are mostly from developing countries in the world; amongst these the poorest households have the fewest bank accounts, and women are categorically underrepresented (World Bank 2018). Holding a bank account is a necessary step for any currency transfer; even cryptocurrency.

A solution for the “unbanked” is mobile money, like M-Pesa. This directly tackles the very real problems such as physical access to banks or the risk of holding loose cash in remote areas of developing countries. First kicking-off in Kenya during the early 2000’s, M-Pesa is a phone-based money system where owners can text their money transfers with their phones. If they want to withdraw or deposit in local currency, they text the amount and meet with an agent; people working for the company/bank who are strategically placed in key locations and act as human-ATMs (Piper 2020). This system has been widely successful in various African countries, with 72% of the population in Kenya and 43% in Uganda having a mobile money account. The wide spread success has been accredited to the extremely low barrier to entry; a Nokia phone. Moreover, there are no minimum amount requirements. Yet, mobile money has had little success outside of Kenya, Uganda and a few other countries in Africa. Moreover, it does not solve problems of international transfers.

So, returning to the original question, can cryptocurrencies offer an innovative solution for migrant remittances to developing countries? Yes and no. In theory, cryptocurrencies can really provide an effective and economical channel for money transfers to help alleviate poverty through remittances. However, there are two principle problems. Firstly, coins such as Bitcoin remain too volatile, in fact ten times more volatile than major currencies (Baur & Dimpfl 2021). This means that if migrants were to use such channel they would be exposing themselves to extreme risks. But, more importantly users of bitcoin may find themselves victims of speculative attacks, as the cryptocurrencies’ value remains completely speculatively constructed. Secondly, as with international bank transfers, cryptocurrencies need a bank account to buy and sell it. As explained above, having a bank account is not a given and represents a high barrier to entry for many of the poorest migrants.

At the same time, these two problems are not insurmountable; a mobile-money system tailored to the receipt, exchange and sale of a cryptocurrency may make them widely accessible to the people who are in most need and who have least access. Moreover, while Bitcoin is the most known of the currencies, a lesser known or new cryptocurrency may also work. Indeed, China is issuing its own cryptocurrency (the digital Renminbi) which, although is still in its early stages, should work without the volatility problems that other crypto-coins have because of government reserves and backing (Kynge & Yu 2021). Therefore, if large development institutions such as the World Bank were to create a cryptocurrency with reserves to stabilise it, much like a central bank, they could drastically reduce volatility. This would offer a stable asset that migrants could use for international transfers and currency exchanges.

Whether cryptocurrencies will prove to be useful or not is hard to predict, and a multitude of factors must align. However, the possibilities of this new technology are vast and should not be limited to speculative uses.

References

Buchholz, K., 2021. Infographic: How Common is Crypto?. [online] Statista Infographics. Available at: <https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoption> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

IOM – International Organisation for Migration, 2020. WORLD MIGRATION REPORT 2020. [online] Geneva: International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Available at: <https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/wmr_2020.pdf> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

World Bank, 2018. Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) Database. [online] World Bank, pp.35-41. Available at: <https://globalfindex.worldbank.org/sites/globalfindex/files/chapters/2017%20Findex%20full%20report_chapter2.pdf> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

Piper, K., 2020. What Kenya can teach its neighbors — and the US — about improving the lives of the “unbanked”. [online] Vox. Available at: <https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21420357/kenya-mobile-banking-unbanked-cellphone-money> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

Baur, D. and Dimpfl, T., 2021. The volatility of Bitcoin and its role as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Empirical Economics,. Available at: <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00181-020-01990-5> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

Kynge, J. and Yu, S., 2021. Virtual control: the agenda behind China’s new digital currency. [online] Ft.com. Available at: <https://www.ft.com/content/7511809e-827e-4526-81ad-ae83f405f623> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.
April 29, 2021

25-tonne deep sea mining robot ‘stuck’ on Pacific Ocean seabed during trial
Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

One of the world’s first deep sea mining pilot tests has resulted in a huge machine being stuck on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean, reports Greenpeace.

A broken cable has resulted in the mining company Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR) losing control of its 25-tonne robot “nodule collector” Patania II on the deep seabed in its Clarion Clipperton concession zone.

GSR has confirmed that “the connection between the Patania II and the cable has indeed come loose, so that Patania II is currently on the seabed.”
- READ MORE: Mining robot stranded on Pacific Ocean floor in deep-sea mining trial
Dr Sandra Schoettner, a deep-sea biologist from Greenpeace Germany speaking from on board the Rainbow Warrior nearby in the Pacific Ocean, said: “It’s ironic that an industry that wants to extract metals from the seabed ends up dropping it down there instead.

“This glaring operational failure must act as a stark warning that deep sea mining is too big a risk. Losing control of a 25-tonne mining machine at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean should sink the idea of ever mining the deep sea.

“The deep sea mining industry claims it’s ready to go, but investors and governments looking at what happened will only see irresponsible attempts to profit from the seabed spinning out of control.

“This industry has ‘risk’ written all over it and this is exactly why we need proper protection of the oceans – a Global Ocean Treaty that helps to put huge areas off-limits to industrial activity,” said Dr Schoettner.

Not the first time
This is not the first time GSR’s Patania II has failed during pilot tests. In 2019, the company had to stop the trial of the same prototype nodule collector due to damage caused to the vehicle’s communications and power cable (‘umbilical cable’).

Last week, Greenpeace International activists painted “RISK!” across side of the ship Normand Energy, the ship chartered by GSR to operate the Patania II, to highlight the threat of deep sea mining to the oceans.

GSR has been awarded a 75,000 sq km exploration contract area – 2.5 times the size of Belgium – to operate in and was scheduled to do another test series in Germany’s contract area.

Exploration contract areas for polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, central Pacific basin. Image: International Seabed Authority 2017

The tests were supposed to be a significant step for the industry’s planned development.

In New Zealand, the threat of seabed mining also looms large.

So far, environmental groups, iwi and hapū have successfully opposed attempts by Australian mining company Trans Tasman Resources to begin a 30-year mining operation off the Taranaki Coast, but Greenpeace Aotearoa is now calling on Jacinda Ardern to make New Zealand the first country to ban the risky practice altogether.

Already, almost 10,000 people have signed the petition to ban seabed mining in New Zealand since its launch earlier this month.

A Greenpeace deep sea mining protest last week on the starboard side of the GSR-chartered Belgian ship Normand Energy. Image: Greenpeace

This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
April 29, 2021

25-tonne deep sea mining robot ‘stuck’ on Pacific Ocean seabed during trial

Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

One of the world’s first deep sea mining pilot tests has resulted in a huge machine being stuck on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean, reports Greenpeace.

A broken cable has resulted in the mining company Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR) losing control of its 25-tonne robot “nodule collector” Patania II on the deep seabed in its Clarion Clipperton concession zone.

GSR has confirmed that “the connection between the Patania II and the cable has indeed come loose, so that Patania II is currently on the seabed.”

Dr Sandra Schoettner, a deep-sea biologist from Greenpeace Germany speaking from on board the Rainbow Warrior nearby in the Pacific Ocean, said: “It’s ironic that an industry that wants to extract metals from the seabed ends up dropping it down there instead.

“This glaring operational failure must act as a stark warning that deep sea mining is too big a risk. Losing control of a 25-tonne mining machine at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean should sink the idea of ever mining the deep sea.

“The deep sea mining industry claims it’s ready to go, but investors and governments looking at what happened will only see irresponsible attempts to profit from the seabed spinning out of control.

“This industry has ‘risk’ written all over it and this is exactly why we need proper protection of the oceans – a Global Ocean Treaty that helps to put huge areas off-limits to industrial activity,” said Dr Schoettner.

Not the first time
This is not the first time GSR’s Patania II has failed during pilot tests. In 2019, the company had to stop the trial of the same prototype nodule collector due to damage caused to the vehicle’s communications and power cable (‘umbilical cable’).

Last week, Greenpeace International activists painted “RISK!” across side of the ship Normand Energy, the ship chartered by GSR to operate the Patania II, to highlight the threat of deep sea mining to the oceans.

GSR has been awarded a 75,000 sq km exploration contract area – 2.5 times the size of Belgium – to operate in and was scheduled to do another test series in Germany’s contract area.

Exploration contract areas for polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, central Pacific basin. Image: International Seabed Authority 2017

The tests were supposed to be a significant step for the industry’s planned development.

In New Zealand, the threat of seabed mining also looms large.

So far, environmental groups, iwi and hapū have successfully opposed attempts by Australian mining company Trans Tasman Resources to begin a 30-year mining operation off the Taranaki Coast, but Greenpeace Aotearoa is now calling on Jacinda Ardern to make New Zealand the first country to ban the risky practice altogether.

Already, almost 10,000 people have signed the petition to ban seabed mining in New Zealand since its launch earlier this month.

A Greenpeace deep sea mining protest last week on the starboard side of the GSR-chartered Belgian ship Normand Energy. Image: Greenpeace

This post was originally published on Radio Free.
April 28, 2021

Browse The Intercept Anonymously and Securely Using Our New Tor Onion Service

Tor, the decentralized anonymity network, has been an integral part of our workflows at The Intercept since we launched in 2013. We use Tor to securely communicate with confidential sources using our SecureDrop server, and individual journalists routinely use Tor Browser to covertly investigate companies and powerful people.

Now, there’s a new way for readers of The Intercept to browse this website more securely and anonymously over the Tor network. Just open up Tor Browser and navigate to our new Tor onion service at https://27m3p2uv7igmj6kvd4ql3cct5h3sdwrsajovkkndeufumzyfhlfev4qd.onion/. You can also get there by loading theintercept.com in Tor Browser and clicking the “.onion available” button in the address bar.

Tor Browser users can click the “.onion available” button in the address bar to get to the onion service.

Websites that end in “.onion” are known as Tor onion services — or if you want to be dramatic about it, the “dark web.” Here’s how it all works.

Tor Browser Lets People Browse the Web Anonymously

When you load a website in a normal web browser like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge, you make a connection over the internet directly from your house (or wherever you happen to be) to the web server you’re loading. The website can see where you are coming from (and track you), and your internet service provider can see which website you’re loading (and track what you’re doing and sell advertising based on your activity).

But if you open Tor Browser and load the same website, none of those parties can spy on you. Even Tor itself won’t know what you’re up to. Within the network, consisting of thousands of nodes run by volunteers across the internet, you do not connect from your house directly to the web server. Instead, your connection first bounces between three Tor nodes and then finally exits the Tor network and goes to the website. The website can’t see where you’re coming from, only that you’re using Tor. Your ISP can’t see what website you’re visiting, only that you’re using Tor. And the Tor nodes themselves can’t fully track you either. The first node can see your home IP address, because you connect directly to it, but can’t see what site you’re loading, and the last node (also called the exit node) can see what site you’re loading but doesn’t know your IP address.

In short, Tor Browser makes it so people can load websites anonymously. Tor onion services do the same thing, except for websites themselves.

Tor Onion Services Let Websites Themselves Be Anonymous

So what exactly is an onion service? Just like when people use Tor Browser to be anonymous, web servers can use Tor to host anonymous websites as well. Instead of using normal domain names, these websites end with “.onion”.

If you load an onion site in Tor Browser, both you and the web server bounce encrypted data packets through the Tor network until you complete an anonymous connection, and no one can track anyone involved: Your ISP can only see that you’re using Tor, and the website’s ISP can only see that it’s using Tor. You can’t learn the website’s real IP address, and the website can’t learn yours either. And the Tor nodes themselves can’t spy on anything. All they can see is that two IP addresses are both using Tor.

Onion services have another cool property: The connection never exits the Tor network, so there are no exit nodes involved. All the communication between Tor Browser and the web server happens in the dark.

The Most Popular Site on the Dark Web

When people hear about the “dark web,” they tend to think about shady things like drug markets and money laundering. That stuff is, in fact, facilitated by anonymous websites running Tor onion services, just as it’s facilitated by the normal, non-anonymous internet. But it’s not the only use of onion services by a long shot.

The Intercept along with dozens of other newsrooms around the world, including pretty much every major news organization, run Tor onion sites for SecureDrop, a whistleblower submission platform. With The Intercept’s new onion service for readers of our website, we’ll also join the ranks of the New York Times, ProPublica, BuzzFeed News, The Markup, and other news organizations in making their core websites available as onion services.

I also develop an open source tool called OnionShare which makes it simple for anyone to use onion services to share files, set up an anonymous drop box, host a simple website, or launch a temporary chat room.

But, by far, the most popular website on the dark web is Facebook. Yup, Facebook has an onion service. For when you want some — but not too much — anonymity.

The post Browse The Intercept Anonymously and Securely Using Our New Tor Onion Service appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.
April 27, 2021

NZ police had no dedicated team to scan internet before mosque attacks
By Phil Pennington, RNZ News reporter

It took seven months for the New Zealand police to set up their first team for scanning the internet after the mosque attacks – but it was almost immediately in danger of being shut down.

An internal report released under the Official Information Act (OIA) said this was despite the team already proving its worth “many times over” in countering violent extremists.

The unit still does not have dedicated funding, despite a warning last July it risked being “turned off”.
- READ MORE: SIS and the ‘known unknowns’
This is revealed in 170 pages of OIA documents charting police intelligence shortcomings over the last decade, from pre-2011 extending through to mid-2020, and their attempts to overhaul the national system since 2018.

These show police had no dedicated team before 2019 to scan the internet for threats – what is called an OSINT team, for “Open Source Intelligence”.

“The OSINT team was stood up quickly last year with seconded staff to ensure… [an] appropriate emphasis on this new capability,” an internal report from July 2020 said.

In fact, police began the planning at the end of 2018, then “accelerated” it after the attacks, but it took till late October for the team to start, and training began in November 2019, a police statement to RNZ last week said.

This was all well after a January 2018 official assessment of the domestic terrorism threatscap said: “Open source reporting indicates the popularity of far right ideology has risen in the West since the early 2000s”.

When the police OSINT unit was finally set up, there was no guarantee it would last.

“This team is not permanent,” the July 2020 report said.

“This has meant uncertainty for staff and our intelligence customers.”

‘Seriously compromises’
The team had no dedicated budget, and lacked trained staff.

It also was still looking for tools to “quickly capture and categorise online intelligence elements”.

“The lack of a strong OSINT capability seriously compromises our intelligence collection posture, especially in major events,” said the report last July.

This is the sort of scanning that can pick up threats on 4chan or other extremist sites.

Despite the shortcomings, the internet team’s worth had already been proven “many times over in recent months, particularly in the counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism space”, the report said.

Three people have faced extremist charges in the last year or so.

‘Turned off’
An April 2019 report said police would begin recruiting for OSINT analytics and other specialists in April-May 2019.

Police had lacked a tool to search the dark web – where the truly egregious chat and trades take place on the internet – so bought one.

But last July’s report said “currently we run the risk” of OSINT “being turned off unless there is a dedicated budget”.

In a statement on Friday, police told RNZ: “The OSINT team has been funded as part of the overall allocation for intelligence since it was established.

“Maintaining this capability is a NZ Police priority, and dedicated funding is being sought as part of next year’s internal funding allocation process (note, this is funding from within Police’s existing baseline).

“Additional supplementary funding was also received in the last financial year to support the work of OSINT.”

An excerpt from the July 2020 Transforming Intelligence report. Image: RNZ screenshot

They had known they needed the team, they said.

“Prior to March 15, New Zealand Police used some OSINT tools to support open source research of publicly available information and had identified the requirement to develop a dedicated capability.

“The development of this capability was accelerated by the events of March 15.”

‘9/11 moment’
The OIA documents show the OSINT intelligence weakness was not an isolated example.

These warned police needed to avoid “a ‘9/11’ moment” – a situation where police obtain information about a threat but do not understand it due to a failure to analyse how the dots join up, as happened to CIA and FBI before the terror attacks on New York in 2001.

The solution was to have “a complete intelligence picture”.

But the July 2020 report then laid out very clearly how police did not have this:

“Recent operational examples conclude there is no current ability to access all information in a timely and accurate manner,” it said.

“Currently there is no tool that can search across police holdings [databases] when undertaking analysis of investigations.

“We are still depending on manual searches.”

‘Locked down or invisible’
“Sources are either locked down or invisible to analysts. Our intelligence picture is consequently incomplete.”

The 31-page, July 2020 report detailed the police’s ‘Transforming Intelligence’ programme, dubbed TI21, that was begun in December 2018 and meant to be complete by this December.

It indicated the right technology would not be in place – or in some cases even identified – for 6-18 months.

As things stood, “there are many single points of failure in our intelligence system”, the report said.

Threat information was broken up into silos, without a centralised document management system or powerful enough analytic and geospatial software to connect the threats.

A section of the 2020 report detailing problems within the police’s High-Risk Targeting Teams has been mostly blanked out.

The OIA documents describe what is and is not working, especially when it comes to national security and counterterrorism, but also around intelligence on gang and drug crime, family violence, combating child sex offending, and the like, at a point many months after both the mosque attacks and the beginning of the system overhaul.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the mosque attacks in late 2020 called police national security intelligence capabilities “degraded” – not just once but six times.

It showed weaknesses elsewhere when it came to OSINT: The Security Intelligence Service had just one fulltime officer doing Open Source Internet searching, and the Government Communications Security Bureau had few resources for this, too. It was not till June 2019 that the Government’s Counter-Terrorism Coordination Committee suggested “leveraging open-source intelligence capability”.

Police, unlike SIS, did not do an internal review of how they had performed in the lead-up to March 15.

They did get a review done of how they did 48 hours after the attacks, which praised their efforts.

Tools missing

Among the key systems police have been lacking are:
- A national security portal “to search across police holdings”
- A national security person-of-interest tool
- A child sex offender management tool
- Cybercrime reporting systems – a “strategic demand” that “police intelligence is unable to effectively report on it”
Police in a statement said they had now “achieved a number of milestones”.

Key among them was introducing a National Security Portal to manage persons of interest.

Also, they now had standardised ways of improving quality and a National Intelligence Operating Model to ensure a consistent approach.

“The OSINT team, a new case management tool and “refined intelligence support to major events… has increased the capability, capacity and resilience of Police Intelligence to reduce and respond to counter-terrorism risks”.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the mosque attacks in late 2020 called police national security intelligence capabilities “degraded”. Image: RNZ / Sam Rillstone

The “Transforming Intelligence” documents refer repeatedly to having three new Target Development Centres set up in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

However, this was jettisoned last year, while the overhaul did stick with introducing Precision Targeting Teams in August 2018, police said.

These teams aim to target “our most prolific offenders” early on “to reduce crimes such as burglary, robbery and other violent and high-volume offending”.

Pressure on
Police are plugging the holes in national intelligence while under pressure.

The volume of leads coming in had increased “considerably” since March 2019, the July 2020 report said.

“This has put increased strain on our people to manage cases of concern.”

The intelligence weaknesses have persisted under four police commissioners since the national intelligence system was set up in 2008.

Intelligence staff have been quitting at three times the average rate in the public sector, and the documents laid out urgent plans to improve career pathways and value the likes of field officers and collections staff more.

The July 2020 report said demand on workers at the Integrated Targeting and Operations Centre was “unsustainable”.

Deep-seated cultural problems across the police were recently uncovered by RNZ’s Ben Strang, whose reporting triggered an official investigation that found 40 percent of officers had been bullied or harassed.

The Transforming Intelligence 2021 programme covers 10 areas: Intelligence Operating Model, National Security, Open Source, Child Protection Offender Register, Critical Command Information, Collections, Intelligence Systems, Performance, Training and Intelligence Support to major events.

There is a stark contrast between how the police leadership described their intelligence systems, and what other documents state.

Timeline chart. Image: RNZ

Timeline

2003

– The Government Audit Office underscores the importance of national security planning

– Police attempt to develop a national security plan deferred due to other priorities

2006

– Police appoint first national manager of intelligence – before this it was led at district level

2008

– New national intelligence model introduced, that lasts till 2019

2011

– March: Police national security intelligence review finds many gaps and recommends a slew of fixes

2014

– Police assess rightwing extremist threat nationally, the last time this happens before the end of 2018

2015

– Sept: Police review finds 2011’s shortcomings remain, recommends changes

– Police liaison officers begin work with SIS and GCSB

2018

– August: Precision Targeting Teams begin

– Nov/Dec: Police launch Transforming Intelligence overhaul, while praising the old model

2019

– March: Mosque terrorism attacks

– April: A report ramping up the intelligence overhaul celebrates the old model’s effectiveness

– Sept: Police approve high-level operating model for intelligence

– Oct: Police set up dedicated internet scanning team for first time

– Internet scanning team identifies counterterrorism threats

– Dec: Aim to set up professional development structure to reduce Intelligence staff attrition by 15 percent

2020

– National Intelligence Centre leadership team appointed

– Feb: Intelligence training plan in place; national workshops

– July: Stocktake of Intelligence overhaul finds many gaps

– Dec 2020-Dec 2021: Aim to identify new intelligence gathering and analysing tech, including a police-wide system

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

This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
April 27, 2021

NZ police had no dedicated team to scan internet before mosque attacks
By Phil Pennington, RNZ News reporter

It took seven months for the New Zealand police to set up their first team for scanning the internet after the mosque attacks – but it was almost immediately in danger of being shut down.

An internal report released under the Official Information Act (OIA) said this was despite the team already proving its worth “many times over” in countering violent extremists.

The unit still does not have dedicated funding, despite a warning last July it risked being “turned off”.

This is revealed in 170 pages of OIA documents charting police intelligence shortcomings over the last decade, from pre-2011 extending through to mid-2020, and their attempts to overhaul the national system since 2018.

These show police had no dedicated team before 2019 to scan the internet for threats – what is called an OSINT team, for “Open Source Intelligence”.

“The OSINT team was stood up quickly last year with seconded staff to ensure… [an] appropriate emphasis on this new capability,” an internal report from July 2020 said.

In fact, police began the planning at the end of 2018, then “accelerated” it after the attacks, but it took till late October for the team to start, and training began in November 2019, a police statement to RNZ last week said.

This was all well after a January 2018 official assessment of the domestic terrorism threatscap said: “Open source reporting indicates the popularity of far right ideology has risen in the West since the early 2000s”.

When the police OSINT unit was finally set up, there was no guarantee it would last.

“This team is not permanent,” the July 2020 report said.

“This has meant uncertainty for staff and our intelligence customers.”

‘Seriously compromises’
The team had no dedicated budget, and lacked trained staff.

It also was still looking for tools to “quickly capture and categorise online intelligence elements”.

“The lack of a strong OSINT capability seriously compromises our intelligence collection posture, especially in major events,” said the report last July.

This is the sort of scanning that can pick up threats on 4chan or other extremist sites.

Despite the shortcomings, the internet team’s worth had already been proven “many times over in recent months, particularly in the counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism space”, the report said.

Three people have faced extremist charges in the last year or so.

‘Turned off’
An April 2019 report said police would begin recruiting for OSINT analytics and other specialists in April-May 2019.

Police had lacked a tool to search the dark web – where the truly egregious chat and trades take place on the internet – so bought one.

But last July’s report said “currently we run the risk” of OSINT “being turned off unless there is a dedicated budget”.

In a statement on Friday, police told RNZ: “The OSINT team has been funded as part of the overall allocation for intelligence since it was established.

“Maintaining this capability is a NZ Police priority, and dedicated funding is being sought as part of next year’s internal funding allocation process (note, this is funding from within Police’s existing baseline).

“Additional supplementary funding was also received in the last financial year to support the work of OSINT.”

An excerpt from the July 2020 Transforming Intelligence report. Image: RNZ screenshot

They had known they needed the team, they said.

“Prior to March 15, New Zealand Police used some OSINT tools to support open source research of publicly available information and had identified the requirement to develop a dedicated capability.

“The development of this capability was accelerated by the events of March 15.”

‘9/11 moment’
The OIA documents show the OSINT intelligence weakness was not an isolated example.

These warned police needed to avoid “a ‘9/11’ moment” – a situation where police obtain information about a threat but do not understand it due to a failure to analyse how the dots join up, as happened to CIA and FBI before the terror attacks on New York in 2001.

The solution was to have “a complete intelligence picture”.

But the July 2020 report then laid out very clearly how police did not have this:

“Recent operational examples conclude there is no current ability to access all information in a timely and accurate manner,” it said.

“Currently there is no tool that can search across police holdings [databases] when undertaking analysis of investigations.

“We are still depending on manual searches.”

‘Locked down or invisible’
“Sources are either locked down or invisible to analysts. Our intelligence picture is consequently incomplete.”

The 31-page, July 2020 report detailed the police’s ‘Transforming Intelligence’ programme, dubbed TI21, that was begun in December 2018 and meant to be complete by this December.

It indicated the right technology would not be in place – or in some cases even identified – for 6-18 months.

As things stood, “there are many single points of failure in our intelligence system”, the report said.

Threat information was broken up into silos, without a centralised document management system or powerful enough analytic and geospatial software to connect the threats.

A section of the 2020 report detailing problems within the police’s High-Risk Targeting Teams has been mostly blanked out.

The OIA documents describe what is and is not working, especially when it comes to national security and counterterrorism, but also around intelligence on gang and drug crime, family violence, combating child sex offending, and the like, at a point many months after both the mosque attacks and the beginning of the system overhaul.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the mosque attacks in late 2020 called police national security intelligence capabilities “degraded” – not just once but six times.

It showed weaknesses elsewhere when it came to OSINT: The Security Intelligence Service had just one fulltime officer doing Open Source Internet searching, and the Government Communications Security Bureau had few resources for this, too. It was not till June 2019 that the Government’s Counter-Terrorism Coordination Committee suggested “leveraging open-source intelligence capability”.

Police, unlike SIS, did not do an internal review of how they had performed in the lead-up to March 15.

They did get a review done of how they did 48 hours after the attacks, which praised their efforts.

Tools missing

Among the key systems police have been lacking are:
- A national security portal “to search across police holdings”
- A national security person-of-interest tool
- A child sex offender management tool
- Cybercrime reporting systems – a “strategic demand” that “police intelligence is unable to effectively report on it”
Police in a statement said they had now “achieved a number of milestones”.

Key among them was introducing a National Security Portal to manage persons of interest.

Also, they now had standardised ways of improving quality and a National Intelligence Operating Model to ensure a consistent approach.

“The OSINT team, a new case management tool and “refined intelligence support to major events… has increased the capability, capacity and resilience of Police Intelligence to reduce and respond to counter-terrorism risks”.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the mosque attacks in late 2020 called police national security intelligence capabilities “degraded”. Image: RNZ / Sam Rillstone

The “Transforming Intelligence” documents refer repeatedly to having three new Target Development Centres set up in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

However, this was jettisoned last year, while the overhaul did stick with introducing Precision Targeting Teams in August 2018, police said.

These teams aim to target “our most prolific offenders” early on “to reduce crimes such as burglary, robbery and other violent and high-volume offending”.

Pressure on
Police are plugging the holes in national intelligence while under pressure.

The volume of leads coming in had increased “considerably” since March 2019, the July 2020 report said.

“This has put increased strain on our people to manage cases of concern.”

The intelligence weaknesses have persisted under four police commissioners since the national intelligence system was set up in 2008.

Intelligence staff have been quitting at three times the average rate in the public sector, and the documents laid out urgent plans to improve career pathways and value the likes of field officers and collections staff more.

The July 2020 report said demand on workers at the Integrated Targeting and Operations Centre was “unsustainable”.

Deep-seated cultural problems across the police were recently uncovered by RNZ’s Ben Strang, whose reporting triggered an official investigation that found 40 percent of officers had been bullied or harassed.

The Transforming Intelligence 2021 programme covers 10 areas: Intelligence Operating Model, National Security, Open Source, Child Protection Offender Register, Critical Command Information, Collections, Intelligence Systems, Performance, Training and Intelligence Support to major events.

There is a stark contrast between how the police leadership described their intelligence systems, and what other documents state.

Timeline chart. Image: RNZ

Timeline

2003

– The Government Audit Office underscores the importance of national security planning

– Police attempt to develop a national security plan deferred due to other priorities

2006

– Police appoint first national manager of intelligence – before this it was led at district level

2008

– New national intelligence model introduced, that lasts till 2019

2011

– March: Police national security intelligence review finds many gaps and recommends a slew of fixes

2014

– Police assess rightwing extremist threat nationally, the last time this happens before the end of 2018

2015

– Sept: Police review finds 2011’s shortcomings remain, recommends changes

– Police liaison officers begin work with SIS and GCSB

2018

– August: Precision Targeting Teams begin

– Nov/Dec: Police launch Transforming Intelligence overhaul, while praising the old model

2019

– March: Mosque terrorism attacks

– April: A report ramping up the intelligence overhaul celebrates the old model’s effectiveness

– Sept: Police approve high-level operating model for intelligence

– Oct: Police set up dedicated internet scanning team for first time

– Internet scanning team identifies counterterrorism threats

– Dec: Aim to set up professional development structure to reduce Intelligence staff attrition by 15 percent

2020

– National Intelligence Centre leadership team appointed

– Feb: Intelligence training plan in place; national workshops

– July: Stocktake of Intelligence overhaul finds many gaps

– Dec 2020-Dec 2021: Aim to identify new intelligence gathering and analysing tech, including a police-wide system

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

This post was originally published on Radio Free.
April 20, 2021

Progressive Groups Fight AT&T and T-Mobile’s New Texting Rules

About a month out from the 2020 presidential election, an app called RoboKiller published the first glimpse into how campaigns and advocacy groups were leveraging political texts and calls to shape the race. The app, designed to block automated calls and spam texts, found that after June 2020, robocalls declined, but political text messaging picked up. By the end of September, Republicans had sent 1.8 billion texts to voters, and Democrats had sent 902 million.

If you lived in a swing state, you were probably getting more than five or six texts per day from political volunteers — a level you’d never experienced in prior cycles.

The draw of text messaging as a political outreach tool is not hard to understand in an age when millions pay extra to skip TV ads and emails often go straight to the spam folder. Text message “open rates” tend to be much higher than those of email, making texting a more attractive way for campaigns to engage voters. And while businesses are required under federal law to get affirmative consent to contact individuals by text, so-called peer-to-peer messaging, or P2P, has long operated in a legal gray area. Because peer-to-peer messages are sent by individuals, though aided by applications, they have not qualified as the kind of automated mass text blasts that need opt-in consent.

But mobile carriers like T-Mobile and AT&T are unhappy with the number of spam text messages — including political ones — that their customers receive. In the next few months, they’re rolling out major changes affecting who can send texts and how many they can send. The changes — named “10DLC” for the 10-digit long codes that high-volume businesses and apps use to text local numbers — will require high-volume text purveyors to register with the Campaign Registry, a subsidiary of the Milan-based communications firm Kaleyra. Carriers will impose higher messaging fees on any businesses, campaigns, and other mass texting efforts that don’t file with the Registry, and in some cases block them from delivering messages altogether.

In recent weeks, a coalition of liberal and progressive advocacy groups have mounted a campaign to put the brakes on 10DLC, rejecting the characterization of their messages as spam and raising concerns that the blunt 10DLC rules will hamper one of their most effective organizing tools. The opaque registration and vetting process, the groups warn, could lead to discrimination against smaller organizations with less-established track records, as well as overwhelm them with new and higher fees. In early March, a coalition of prominent left-leaning groups — including the Working Families Party, MoveOn, the NAACP, People’s Action, the American Federation of Teachers, and Planned Parenthood — sent a letter to the White House and Congress urging intervention.

“Though AT&T and T-Mobile claim 10DLC is intended to reduce unwanted text messages, these restrictions in actuality will quash grassroots advocacy, labor union organizing, and progressive movement building,” the letter states. “We strongly urge AT&T and T-Mobile to reconsider the damage that 10DLC will cause. We are also calling on leaders in Washington to exercise your executive and legislative authority to defend citizen engagement and call on AT&T and T-Mobile to reverse these restrictions.”

10DLC points to the extraordinary power tech companies have to regulate who can communicate with the public.

CTIA, the telecom trade association that represents AT&T and T-Mobile USA, argues that mobile carriers have an obligation to respond to user frustration with unwanted text messaging. But critics say 10DLC points to the extraordinary power tech companies have to regulate who can communicate with the public.

“10DLC isn’t legislation, instead you have for-profit companies [that] are now acting as a government,” said Debra Cleaver, founder of VoteAmerica, a nonpartisan voter advocacy group that sent peer-to-peer messaging to 30 million people last cycle. “I am skeptical of private organizations playing this regulatory role.”

Peer-to-peer texting swept the political world following the 2016 election, when the Bernie Sanders campaign leveraged a young left-leaning texting company called Hustle. Hustle, which worked with roughly 100 campaigns and facilitated 5.5 million texts in 2016, had 1,300 Democratic campaign clients by 2018, sending more than 200 million texts. A number of competitor firms have launched in the years since, including GetThru, RumbleUp, and Opn Sesame. Peer-to-peer texting suddenly allowed campaigns to reach voters, especially in rural areas, who were less likely to have smartphones.

“There’s no question that texting is the breakout tech of 2018,” one Republican digital strategist told the New York Times that summer.

Earlier that year, a coalition of peer-to-peer texting advocates moved to enshrine their exception to the opt-in requirement, petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to clarify that their texting methods were exempt from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the federal law governing telemarketers. In June 2020, the FCC issued a declaratory ruling affirming P2P was indeed distinct from autodialing, a win for campaigns and advocacy groups. Yet despite the FCC’s ruling, under 10DLC, all registered campaigns will be required to get opt-in consent, a major shift from the status quo.

Though liberal groups have expressed fears that the new 10DLC policies could target and silence them, conservatives have long argued that they have more to worry about when it comes to Big Tech discrimination. Over last year’s July 4 weekend, anti-spam monitors blocked a text blast administered by the Trump campaign, and it took five days for Trump officials to resolve the problem. Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T denied any partisan intent, but Republican operatives were left rattled by the experience.

An exterior view of AT&T corporate headquarters in Dallas on March 13, 2020.

Photo: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

For progressives, one of the most concerning aspects of 10DLC is the issuance of so-called trust scores. Trust scores are algorithmic ratings that the Campaign Registry, a self-described “reputation authority,” will assign to registered groups. The scores, based on a scale of 1 to 100, will impact how many texts a company or given campaign can send daily. Businesses and groups will also be able to pay for additional vetting from one of three third-party partners — Aegis Mobile, Campaign Verify, and WMC/GLOBAL — to potentially boost their scores.

While the details of the trust scoring system are not well understood, it’s been likened to running a credit score on each group. “They could be looking at things like a group’s personal tax history, members’ criminal histories, they could also be googling to find groups associated with people they deem unsavory,” said Don Calloway, founder of the National Voter Protection Action Fund, which uses peer-to-peer messaging to combat voter suppression. “Grassroots orgs have members who get arrested all the time in peaceful protests.”

Newer groups and groups with less of a national profile fear they’ll be penalized by the algorithms used to calculate trust scores. “My concern is that legacy organizations like NAACP and the National Urban League are going to receive higher ratings simply because of the space that they occupy in the world with no regard for the work that they’re doing,” said Fran Hutchins, the executive director of Equality Federation, a group that helps state-based LGBTQ organizations build capacity.

Calloway said there’s just no scenario in which they could get affirmative texting consent from everyone they currently reach, or even everyone on their email lists, so making it clear how one can opt out is a better option. “You will lose people you’re currently engaging, they simply won’t all be able to opt in,” he said.

Aaron Alter, the director of telecommunications at SignalWire, a nonpartisan communications firm that supports P2P, said their 120 clients who have been vetted already had “not seen any political bias.” Alter, who has spent the past two years working closely with carriers, also predicts that mobile carriers might eventually create a carveout to exempt political groups from the opt-in requirement.

Campaign Verify, which is set to assess political campaigns and committees at the federal, state, and local levels, has an even partisan split by design. But progressives have raised particular concern about the involvement of Aegis Mobile, whose former executive chair, Jeff Goettman, has donated to Donald Trump and Republican Party fundraising platform WinRed. Goettman’s LinkedIn indicates he left the company in 2017 and is currently working on a Republican gubernatorial campaign in Virginia, but critics like Calloway say his history still raises red flags. (Lobbyists for Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile also had close ties with the Trump administration.) Aegis Mobile and Goettman did not return The Intercept’s requests for comment.

While it’s possible that progressives’ worst fears won’t come to pass, confusion abounds. Mobile carriers and some of their vetting partners have rolled out information with shifting deadlines, incomplete information, and mixed messages about how 10DLC might affect different groups. And all the new fees coming down the pipe are certain to cause new financial strain for organizations with fewer resources.

“I don’t think [carriers are] trying to take advantage but everything at the end of the day is a business,” said Alter. “And from a business perspective they are looking to see if they can capitalize.”

Over the last several years, mobile carriers have watched lawsuits crop up against unwanted political texts. Last summer, two Minnesota residents brought a class-action lawsuit against Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, alleging receipt of spam texts they had not consented to. The Trump campaign also faced legal challenges for unsolicited messages. CTIA commissioned polling from Morning Consult that showed a majority of Americans considered political texts a nuisance or spam, writing, “This is one area of actual bipartisanship — 74% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats.”

Margaret Boles, a spokesperson for AT&T, told The Intercept that “protecting our customers from unwanted text messages is a top priority for us.” She added that they’re currently in the process of collecting feedback from industry partners to “improve our internal processes, help to identify problem areas and ensure the integrity of our 10DLC platform to the benefit of message senders and receivers.”

A representative from T-Mobile did not return requests for comment.

For now, there are no plans for federal legislation to stop 10DLC, but progressive activists hope that individual members of Congress will contact mobile carriers and request that they partner with concerned groups before rolling out final changes.

“We’re asking members to use their influence,” said Calloway. His coalition has already had a meeting with Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., who chairs the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband. Calloway added that he has spoken personally with about 30 members’ offices but stressed that his organizing work represents only a fraction of the total.

Luján’s office did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

“We encourage wireless carriers, aggregators, and others in the wireless ecosystem to adopt a more collaborative approach to text messaging regulations and actually engage with the communities impacted by these changes,” said LaToia Jones, a senior vice president at Hustle, “instead of unilaterally dictating opaque rules that disenfranchise voters and chill civic engagement without any external input or oversight.”

The post Progressive Groups Fight AT&T and T-Mobile’s New Texting Rules appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.
April 19, 2021

Biden wants to build 500,000 EV charging stations. Where will they all go?

It was President Joe Biden’s favorite phrase during the 2020 campaign, one that he repeated over and over again whenever the subject of electric cars came up: “500,000 charging stations.” Despite his reputation as an ardent fan of trains and Amtrak, the president has spent the last year conjuring an image of an America filled with electric vehicles by 2030, each one seamlessly zipping from one charging station to the next.

But as the Biden administration prepares to push his $2 trillion infrastructure proposal through Congress — which includes a $174 billion investment in electric vehicles — one part of that ginormous plan has been overlooked. The U.S. currently only has about 115,000 gas stations and 41,000 charging stations across the entire country, meaning that EV stations will have to match — and then quickly overtake — stations dispensing America’s longtime favorite fuel. Even with sufficient funding, where are those half a million new stations going to go?

Why public chargers?

The first thing to know about EV charging stations is that, despite having a charging mechanism that looks eerily like the nozzle of a gas pump, they aren’t much like gas stations. Filling an average car with a tank of gas takes only 3 to 4 minutes. Fully charging the battery of a Nissan Leaf, on the other hand, takes anywhere from 20 hours on a “Level 1” old-fashioned, 120-volt household wall outlet, or 4 to 8 hours on a standard, “Level 2” public charger. (If you’re lucky enough to find a “Level 3” DC fast charger, it can take as little as 30 minutes.)

That’s why, according to the Department of Energy, around 80 percent of current EV charging takes place at Americans’ homes often while the owners sleep: It only makes sense to charge the car when you don’t use it. “Most people are going to charge at home,” said Jay Friedland, the director of Plug In America, an EV advocacy group.

But if the country is really going to zero out emissions by 2050 — as Biden has promised — America is going to need a lot of public chargers, both for those who can’t charge at home (apartment buildings and shared homes can make it difficult to find a free outlet) or who want to power up during their commute or on long trips. Mike Nicholas, a researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation, estimates that the country needs one charger for every 10 to 15 electric cars; that means Biden’s plan would cover 5 to 7.5 million EVs across the country. (The country has around 1.4 million electric cars on the road today.)

Where will they all go?

The country’s public chargers are now scattered across retail stores, hotels, malls, grocery stores, and office buildings — “anywhere that you think you might be parked for an hour or two,” Nicholas said. Charging takes time, and so unlike gas stations, EV chargers are clustered in areas where people can go shopping or otherwise entertain themselves. As a result, the Department of Energy’s map of public chargers looks like a random cross-section of American consumerism: A single charger is nestled around the back of a coffee shop called “English Muffin Bakery & Espresso” in Hudson, Wyoming, population 438. In San Jose, California, where 20 percent (!) of all new vehicles sold are EVs, 28 chargers line the parking lot of a single shopping mall.

That might seem like a built-in drawback of the Biden plan: Charging stations will only be constructed if stores, restaurants, and hotels decide to spend the money to install them. But Nicholas says that businesses are already seeing benefits of adding charging stations, and the incentives are likely to grow in the coming years. For one thing, businesses that install chargers can already receive a credit of up to $30,000 off their federal taxes — a program that Biden could expand in the quest to add 500,000 stations. The government could also provide more direct rebates or funding to help businesses pay for pouring cement, rewiring their electrical systems to accommodate charging, and more.

And providing EV charging might also attract customers and sales. One analysis by ChargePoint, a company that owns and operates a network of charging stations across the U.S., found that EV customers at a retail store in California stayed at the store 50 minutes longer than the average customer — and spent an average of $1 per minute. (The retail store was anonymized in the report, but the photos make it look a lot like a Target.)

Anne Smart, the vice president of public policy at ChargePoint, said that companies also have an incentive to set up charging stations even if it’s not for their customers. They could be a new workplace perk, like snack bars or nap pods.“Workplaces want to provide an amenity for their employees,” she said.

What next?

There are many hurdles ahead. For Americans to feel comfortable driving EVs on longer routes — not just on daily commutes — the Biden administration and the Department of Transportation will have to prioritize building some “Level 3” DC fast chargers, which can cost up to $150,000 to install and take much more energy to operate. Nicholas estimates that of the 500,000 stations in Biden’s proposal, at least 50,000 should be DC fast, to enable longer trips and faster charging times for EV drivers in a hurry.

It might sound strange but in a perfect world, those chargers would also need to be unused a lot of the time. “The big challenge with this is that ideally you build these stations and then they’re empty half the time,” said Costa Samaras, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Prospective Tesla or Nissan Leaf buyers want to see that chargers are plentiful, and available when they need them. “The amount of stations has to outpace the number of cars, so the next person can feel confident that they can buy an EV,” Samaras said.

Biden has repeatedly promised that he’ll set the country on course to zero out carbon emissions by 2050. Barring any sort of technological breakthrough — or an American pivot away from cars altogether — that means all of the country’s 250 million cars need to go electric over the next 30 years, a feat requiring millions more charging stations. But half a million, experts say, is a good start. “It’s a very good down payment on what we’ll need for the future,” Friedland said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden wants to build 500,000 EV charging stations. Where will they all go? on Apr 19, 2021.

This post was originally published on Grist.
April 19, 2021

Biden wants to build 500,000 EV charging stations. Where will they all go?

It was President Joe Biden’s favorite phrase during the 2020 campaign, one that he repeated over and over again whenever the subject of electric cars came up: “500,000 charging stations.” Despite his reputation as an ardent fan of trains and Amtrak, the president has spent the last year conjuring an image of an America filled with electric vehicles by 2030, each one seamlessly zipping from one charging station to the next.

But as the Biden administration prepares to push his $2 trillion infrastructure proposal through Congress — which includes a $174 billion investment in electric vehicles — one part of that ginormous plan has been overlooked. The U.S. currently only has about 115,000 gas stations and 41,000 charging stations across the entire country, meaning that EV stations will have to match — and then quickly overtake — stations dispensing America’s longtime favorite fuel. Even with sufficient funding, where are those half a million new stations going to go?

Why public chargers?

The first thing to know about EV charging stations is that, despite having a charging mechanism that looks eerily like the nozzle of a gas pump, they aren’t much like gas stations. Filling an average car with a tank of gas takes only 3 to 4 minutes. Fully charging the battery of a Nissan Leaf, on the other hand, takes anywhere from 20 hours on a “Level 1” old-fashioned, 120-volt household wall outlet, or 4 to 8 hours on a standard, “Level 2” public charger. (If you’re lucky enough to find a “Level 3” DC fast charger, it can take as little as 30 minutes.)

That’s why, according to the Department of Energy, around 80 percent of current EV charging takes place at Americans’ homes often while the owners sleep: It only makes sense to charge the car when you don’t use it. “Most people are going to charge at home,” said Jay Friedland, the director of Plug In America, an EV advocacy group.

But if the country is really going to zero out emissions by 2050 — as Biden has promised — America is going to need a lot of public chargers, both for those who can’t charge at home (apartment buildings and shared homes can make it difficult to find a free outlet) or who want to power up during their commute or on long trips. Mike Nicholas, a researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation, estimates that the country needs one charger for every 10 to 15 electric cars; that means Biden’s plan would cover 5 to 7.5 million EVs across the country. (The country has around 1.4 million electric cars on the road today.)

Where will they all go?

The country’s public chargers are now scattered across retail stores, hotels, malls, grocery stores, and office buildings — “anywhere that you think you might be parked for an hour or two,” Nicholas said. Charging takes time, and so unlike gas stations, EV chargers are clustered in areas where people can go shopping or otherwise entertain themselves. As a result, the Department of Energy’s map of public chargers looks like a random cross-section of American consumerism: A single charger is nestled around the back of a coffee shop called “English Muffin Bakery & Espresso” in Hudson, Wyoming, population 438. In San Jose, California, where 20 percent (!) of all new vehicles sold are EVs, 28 chargers line the parking lot of a single shopping mall.

That might seem like a built-in drawback of the Biden plan: Charging stations will only be constructed if stores, restaurants, and hotels decide to spend the money to install them. But Nicholas says that businesses are already seeing benefits of adding charging stations, and the incentives are likely to grow in the coming years. For one thing, businesses that install chargers can already receive a credit of up to $30,000 off their federal taxes — a program that Biden could expand in the quest to add 500,000 stations. The government could also provide more direct rebates or funding to help businesses pay for pouring cement, rewiring their electrical systems to accommodate charging, and more.

And providing EV charging might also attract customers and sales. One analysis by ChargePoint, a company that owns and operates a network of charging stations across the U.S., found that EV customers at a retail store in California stayed at the store 50 minutes longer than the average customer — and spent an average of $1 per minute. (The retail store was anonymized in the report, but the photos make it look a lot like a Target.)

Anne Smart, the vice president of public policy at ChargePoint, said that companies also have an incentive to set up charging stations even if it’s not for their customers. They could be a new workplace perk, like snack bars or nap pods.“Workplaces want to provide an amenity for their employees,” she said.

What next?

There are many hurdles ahead. For Americans to feel comfortable driving EVs on longer routes — not just on daily commutes — the Biden administration and the Department of Transportation will have to prioritize building some “Level 3” DC fast chargers, which can cost up to $150,000 to install and take much more energy to operate. Nicholas estimates that of the 500,000 stations in Biden’s proposal, at least 50,000 should be DC fast, to enable longer trips and faster charging times for EV drivers in a hurry.

It might sound strange but in a perfect world, those chargers would also need to be unused a lot of the time. “The big challenge with this is that ideally you build these stations and then they’re empty half the time,” said Costa Samaras, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Prospective Tesla or Nissan Leaf buyers want to see that chargers are plentiful, and available when they need them. “The amount of stations has to outpace the number of cars, so the next person can feel confident that they can buy an EV,” Samaras said.

Biden has repeatedly promised that he’ll set the country on course to zero out carbon emissions by 2050. Barring any sort of technological breakthrough — or an American pivot away from cars altogether — that means all of the country’s 250 million cars need to go electric over the next 30 years, a feat requiring millions more charging stations. But half a million, experts say, is a good start. “It’s a very good down payment on what we’ll need for the future,” Friedland said.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.
April 16, 2021

Predictive policing in India: Deterring crime or discriminating minorities?
On 1^st January 2020, police in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh installed over 19,000 CCTV cameras to form a “CCTV Surveillance Matrix”; it forms the basis of a predictive policing strategy (Outlook India, 2020). The police aim to install 68,000 CCTV cameras in this matrix, one for every 100 people. Himachal Pradesh is not the first Indian state to implement predictive policing, as police in Delhi, Telangana, and Jharkhand already have full-fledged predictive policing systems (Singh, 2020; Kodali, 2017; Kumar, 2012). Predictive policing systems help the police be more proactive rather than reactive in their approach. While it has its supporters, I argue that they are ineffective, discriminatory, and violate privacy rights.

Understanding predictive policing

Predictive policing is defined as the use of algorithms to analyze massive amounts of information to predict and help prevent potential future crimes (Lau, 2020). It involves feeding massive amounts of data to advanced algorithms in order to identify recurring patterns in criminal behavior. The rationale is that if the pattern exists, crime is bound to follow. For example, Delhi’s CMAPS (Crime Mapping Analytics and Predictive System) collects data every 3 minutes from the Indian Space Research Organization’s satellites, historical crime data, and the ‘Dial 100’ helpline to identify ‘crime hotspots’ which are crime-prone areas. Hyderabad police go a step further as they use sensitive data taken from the ‘Integrated People Information Hub’. The Hub contains family details, biometric details, passport details, address, and even bank transaction details, etc. to determine those who are more likely to commit crimes (Umanadh, 2019).

Predictive policing methods can be divided into four categories: those which predict crimes; those which predict offenders; those which predict the perpetrator’s identities; and those which predict victims (Perry et al., 2013). Many of such methods utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Does it even work?

There is convincing evidence that proves predictive policing algorithms are ineffective. The Chicago police used predictive policing algorithms to identify 426 people who were the most at risk of being homicide victims in the year 2013-14. Subsequently, it was found that only 3 of the 405 homicide victims in that period were on that list (Saunders, 2016). After implementing a predictive policing system, Pasco County in Florida observed no relative decrease in property crimes but saw a relative increase in violent crimes when compared with nearby counties (McGrory and Bedi, 2020). Predictive policing systems made by PredPol, one of the largest companies in the market, were discontinued by Palo Alto and Rio Rancho police departments in the United States as they were ineffective (Puente, 2019). The outcome of a trial of a predictive policing system in Berlin was poor (Well, 2020).

The reason why predictive policing algorithms fail is that relying on data alone leads to a misunderstanding of causal relationships. For example, take these American police officers’ comments that marijuana shouldn’t be legalized as 54% of violent offences are committed by those who were under the influence of the drug (Minnesota Public Radio News, 2013). The comment is implying that marijuana is the cause of the violent offence, although the reverse may be true – that violent offenders are more likely to use marijuana. It is also possible that those who committed violent crimes under the influence of the drug were more likely to be caught. Thus, from the above statistic, it can only be inferred that there is a correlation between marijuana use and violent crime, and not causation. But predictive policing algorithms jump this gap and equate correlation and causation. If the aforementioned statistic is fed to the algorithm, it will conclude that marijuana use is a risk factor for violent crime, which has been disproved over and over again (Green et al., 2010; Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2013).

Institutionalizing discrimination

Predictive policing algorithms legitimize discrimination by hiding it behind the façade of mathematical analysis. Historical criminal data, upon which predictive policing algorithms rely, isn’t necessarily reflective of who is more likely to commit a crime; rather, it is an indicator of who is more policed. The Indian police are notorious for being casteist and communal (Darapuri, 2020), although this is probably only a reflection of the attitudes of Indian society. Lower castes and religious minorities have historically faced systematic discrimination and violence despite constitutional protections (Kishore, 2016; (Center for Study of Society and Secularism & Minority Rights Group International, 2017). The ruling BJP’s brazenly Hindu nationalist and upper-caste agenda is reversing decades of (albeit minimal) social progress (Gettleman et al., 2019).

Members of minority religions and lower castes are more likely to be in the crosshairs of law enforcement agencies, even if there is definitive proof of innocence. For example, in Ankush Maruti Shinde v. State of Maharashtra ((2019) 15 SCC 470), six men belonging to the marginalized Paradhi community spent sixteen years on death row in solitary confinement until the Supreme Court of India acquitted them. The police presumed them to be guilty simply because they belonged to the Paradhi community. This was despite the fact that an eyewitness had identified four other men from the rogue’s gallery as the actual offenders. The fact that Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasi communities, who are amongst the most vulnerable sections of Indian society, constitute over half of the undertrial prison population as compared to their 39% share in the general population demonstrates the discrimination present in the Indian criminal justice system (Thakur and Nagarajan, 2020).

Similar patterns of discrimination exist in predictive policing systems. Mathematicians in the United States have urged their colleagues to stop working on predictive policing systems as they believe that it perpetuates structural racism (Linder, 2020). In the United States, racial minorities, in particular African-Americans, are more policed than white people due to structural racism in the policing system (Willingham, 2019). This leads to racial bias in crime data, which is used by the predictive policing algorithms. This creates a discriminatory feedback loop – the more a certain group is policed, the more likely the algorithm believes that a member of that group is a potential criminal, which in turn leads to more policing of that group.

Research demonstrates a similar phenomenon is happening with Delhi’s CMAPS (Marda and Narayan, 2020). They explain that the algorithm only reinforces the biases of the police officers. As a result, areas, where caste and religious minorities constitute the majority, are disproportionately more likely to be targeted by the police, and thus, create a discriminatory feedback loop in the algorithm. This is in line with the results of a study commissioned by the UK government which indicates that police officers deployed in ‘crime hotspots’ identified by data analytics are more likely to arrest people due to bias and not probable cause (Babuta and Oswald, 2019).

Violating the Right to Privacy

As vast amounts of personal data are used by predictive policing algorithms, I must raise the effect they have on the right to privacy. The opacity regarding the use of personal data is a violation of the right to privacy as envisioned in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India ((2017) 10 SCC 1). Also, the landmark judgement propounded the ‘proportionality and legitimacy test’, which established four criteria that must be fulfill ed before the state can infringe one’s right to privacy:
1. The action must be sanctioned by law
2. The proposed action must be necessary in a democratic society for a legitimate aim
3. The extent of such interference must be proportionate to the need for such interference
4. There must be procedural guarantees against abuse of such interference
Criterion #1 is not fulfilled since there is no objective legislation that governs the use of predictive policing algorithms. Criterion #4 is not fulfilled as well. I contend that criterion #2 is not fulfilled since there is ample evidence that suggests that predictive policing algorithms are ineffective and discriminatory, and thus, is not necessary in a democratic society for a legitimate aim, which is to lower crimes. There are plenty of ways to reduce crime that are effective and sustainable (Larsson, 2015).

Furthermore, as law enforcement authorities enjoy exemptions under the Right To Information Act, 2005, the actual machinations of predictive policing algorithms cannot be ascertained. Due to such opacity, many like myself suspect that predictive policing is state surveillance hiding behind the smokescreen of internal security. These concerns are well-founded given the fact that India’s National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), a central intelligence database, is expected to receive access to citizen’s personal data like bank account details (The Hindu, 2020). I am also concerned about the security of the databases containing personal data, given last year’s hack of Maharashtra’s Criminal Investigation Department website (Mengle, 2020).

Conclusion

At a time in which structural discrimination and lack of police accountability are being widely discussed due to the Black Lives Matter movement, I feel that India’s authoritarian regime is increasing both by implementing predictive policing algorithms. The lure of preventing crime is too good to resist for law enforcement agencies, despite ample evidence showing that is ineffective. Predictive policing algorithms are only as good as the data they utilize, and if this data is biased, it institutionalizes discrimination against minorities. It may also be that predictive policing algorithms are used by the government to keep tabs on its citizens. In light of all these issues, I believe that citizens must lobby for the scrapping of predictive policing systems. The constitutional validity of predictive policing algorithms can be challenged by relying on the authorities in Madhu v. Northern Railways (247 (2018) DLT 198) and the landmark American case Griggs v. Duke Power (401 U.S. 424 (1971)), which both hold that policies that are neutral on paper but discriminatory in practice (like predictive policing) violate the right against discrimination.

Given the rise of AI, the government should enact an algorithmic accountability law, something akin to a better-implemented version of New York’s Local Law 49 (Lechner, 2019).

While discontinuing predictive policing systems will reduce the discriminatory treatment meted out to minorities, it does nothing about the already existing biases prevalent in the Indian criminal justice system and society at large. Whilst purely legal solutions cannot eliminate discrimination, the least the government can do is legislating a comprehensive anti-discrimination law to strengthen the Constitutional right against discrimination.

References

Babuta, A. and Oswald, M., 2019. Data Analytics and Algorithmic Bias in Policing. [online] London: Royal United Services Institute. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/831750/RUSI_Report_-_Algorithms_and_Bias_in_Policing.pdf [Accessed 6 March 2021].

Center for Study of Society and Secularism & Minority Rights Group International, 2017. A Narrowing Space: Violence and discrimination against India’s religious minorities. [online]

Minority Rights Group International. Available at: https://minorityrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/MRG_Rep_India_Jun17-2.pdf.

Darapuri, S., 2020. The Police in India Is Both Casteist and Communal. The Wire, [online] Available at: https://thewire.in/caste/police-casteist-communal [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Gettleman, J., Schultz, K., Raj, S. and Kumar, H., 2019. Under Modi, a Hindu Nationalist Surge Has Further Divided India. The New York Times, [online] Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/asia/modi-india-elections.html [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Green, K., Doherty, E., Stuart, E. and Ensminger, M., 2010. Does heavy adolescent marijuana use lead to criminal involvement in adulthood? Evidence from a multiwave longitudinal study of urban African Americans. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, [online] 112(1-2), pp.117-125. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2950879/.

Kishore, R., 2016. The many shades of caste inequality in India. mint, [online] Available at: https://www.livemint.com/Politics/ino3tfMYVsd6VVGUdWXB8H/The-many-shades-of-caste-inequality-in-India.html [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Kodali, S., 2017. Hyderabad’s ‘Smart Policing’ Project Is Simply Mass Surveillance in Disguise. The Wire, [online] Available at: https://thewire.in/government/hyderabad-smart-policing-surveillance [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Kumar, R., 2012. Enter, the future of policing – Cops to team up with IIM analysts to predict & prevent incidents. The Telegraph India, [online] Available at: https://www.telegraphindia.com/jharkhand/enter-the-future-of-policing-cops-to-team-up-with-iim-analysts-to-predict-prevent-incidents/cid/390471 [Accessed 3 March 2021].

Larsson, N., 2015. 24 ways to reduce crime in the world’s most violent cities. The Guardian, [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/jun/30/24-ways-to-reduce-in-the-worlds-most-violent-cities [Accessed 6 March 2021].

Lau, T., 2020. Predictive Policing Explained. [online] Brennan Center for Justice. Available at: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/predictive-policing-explained [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Lechner, C., 2019. New York City’s algorithm task force is fracturing. The Verge, [online] Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/15/18309437/new-york-city-accountability-task-force-law-algorithm-transparency-automation [Accessed 6 March 2021].

Linder, C., 2020. Why Hundreds of Mathematicians Are Boycotting Predictive Policing. Popular Mechanics, [online] Available at: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a32957375/mathematicians-boycott-predictive-policing/ [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Marda, V. and Narayan, S., 2020. Data in New Delhi’s Predictive Policing System. In: FAT* 20′: Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. [online] New York: Association for Computing Machinery. Available at: https://www.vidushimarda.com/storage/app/media/uploaded-files/fat2020-final586.pdf [Accessed 6 March 2021].

McGrory, K. and Bedi, N., 2020. Targeted. Tampa Bay Times, [online] Available at: https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/police-pasco-sheriff-targeted/intelligence-led-policing/ [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Mengle, G., 2020. Maharashtra CID website hacked, defaced. The Hindu, [online] Available at: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/maharashtra-cid-website-hacked-defaced/article31005341.ece [Accessed 6 March 2021].

Minnesota Public Radio News, 2013. Stanek says marijuana shows clear link to violent behavior. [online] Available at: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/09/19/daily-circuit-rich-stanek-marijuana [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2013. Improving the Measure of Drug-Related Crime. [online] Washington, D.C.: Executive Office of the President of the United States. Available at: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp/policy-and-research/drug_crime_report_final.pdf.

Outlook India, 2020. 19,000 CCTV Cameras On Real-Time Streaming At HP Police HQs. [online] Available at: https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/india-news-19000-cctv-cameras-on-real-time-streaming-at-hp-police-hqs/360917 [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Perry, W., McInnis, B., Price, C., Smith, S. and Hollywood, J., 2013. Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations. [online] RAND Corporation, p.14. Available at: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR233/RAND_RR233.pdf.

Puente, M., 2019. LAPD pioneered predicting crime with data. Many police don’t think it works. LA Times, [online] Available at: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-lapd-precision-policing-data-20190703-story.html [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Saunders, J., 2016. Pitfalls of Predictive Policing. [Blog] The RAND Blog, Available at: https://www.rand.org/blog/2016/10/pitfalls-of-predictive-policing.html [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Singh, K., 2020. Preventing crime before it happens: How data is helping Delhi Police. Hindustan Times, [online] Available at: https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi/delhi-police-is-using-precrime-data-analysis-to-send-its-men-to-likely-trouble-spots/story-hZcCRyWMVoNSsRhnBNgOHI.html [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Thakur, A. and Nagarajan, R., 2020. Why Minorities Have a Major Presence in Prisons. [online] The Times of India. Available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/in-a-minority-but-a-major-presence-in-our-prisons/articleshow/73266299.cms.

The Hindu, 2020. I-T Dept. to share PAN, bank account data with 10 probe, intel agencies under NATGRID. [online] Available at: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/i-t-dept-to-share-pan-bank-account-data-with-10-probe-intel-agencies-under-natgrid/article32183200.ece [Accessed 6 March 2021].

Umanadh, J., 2019. Telangana govt denies surveillance snooping on citizens. Deccan Herald, [online] Available at: https://www.deccanherald.com/national/south/telangana-govt-denies-surveillance-snooping-on-citizens-774306.html [Accessed 5 March 2021].

Well, L., 2020. Germany. Automating Society Report 2020. [online] AlgorithmWatch. Available at: https://automatingsociety.algorithmwatch.org/report2020/germany/.

Willingham, A., 2019. Researchers studied nearly 100 million traffic stops and found black motorists are more likely to be pulled over. CNN, [online] Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/21/us/police-stops-race-stanford-study-trnd/index.html.

This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.
April 16, 2021

Goodbye, old freeways? How subtraction could address climate change

This post was originally published on Radio Free.
April 16, 2021

Goodbye, old freeways? How subtraction could address climate change

As the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the country last year, then-candidate Joe Biden pushed one message again and again: “Build Back Better.” The phrase now lends its name to the White House’s massive, multi-pronged proposal to help the country recover from the COVID-induced recession, tackle climate change, and bring the country’s railroads, bridges, and water pipes into the modern era.

But what if this ambitious plan misses an easier opportunity: remove what isn’t working? The Biden administration’s slogan reveals something about how people normally go about trying to improve the world — they’re driven by a default impulse to build big things to solve big problems.

New research suggests that people often overlook the option of getting rid of elements in favor of adding new ones, even when the simpler solution is superior. Behavioral scientists are making the case that a “subtractive” approach could be useful in tackling global problems like the climate crisis.

“Especially in this moment, there’s a strong push to focus on repairing or rebuilding existing infrastructure, which is in some ways a form of status quo thinking,” said Erin Sherman, a vice president of Ideas42, a nonprofit behavioral design firm. Sherman says that there are plenty of ways that removing infrastructure could help the environment, whether that’s taking down highways, saying goodbye to seawalls, or tearing out pavement.

For Leidy Klotz, the author of the new book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, the eureka moment happened several years ago when he was building a bridge out of Legos with his son, Ezra. One of the columns was shorter than the other, so Klotz turned around to grab a brick to even it out. When he turned back, Ezra had already fixed the problem, simply by taking a brick out of the longer column. Klotz, an engineering professor, started talking with fellow behavioral science researchers at the University of Virginia. He coauthored a study about those findings that was published in the journal Nature earlier this month.

Over several experiments, the researchers tested how people resolved problems with Legos, an overcrowded day-trip itinerary to Washington, D.C., and overcomplicated recipes. (How would you change a grilled cheese recipe that called for using a randomly selected additional ingredient, chocolate and vodka being among the least appealing options?) They found that people often overlook subtraction unless they are reminded or cued in some way, like telling someone that adding a block costs 10 cents, but removing one is free.

“What our paper implies is that we’re potentially missing out on an entire category of ways that we could solve problems,” said Gabrielle Adams, a professor of public policy and psychology at the University of Virginia who coauthored the study.

Klotz suggests that the old slogan “reduce, reuse, recycle” needs a 4th R: remove. “Reduce, reuse, recycle is not going to solve climate change, because you’ve already surpassed emissions,” he said. “I mean, remove should be one of the things that we consider, and should probably be the first thing we consider.”

What would that look like in the real world? It could mean adapting to heavier downpours by taking out pavement in a flood zone, or digging holes in it to allow the soil to soak up more water. That might help flood-prone, concrete-heavy cities like Houston weather more storms like Hurricane Harvey. Adapting to rising seas might mean replacing sea walls (which can erode beaches even further) with “living shorelines” made up of wetland plants, sand dunes, other natural elements. Subtraction could also mean simply removing an old, falling-apart freeway in a city, as Seattle and San Francisco did, making way for parks, public transit, or affordable housing.

It’s certainly easier to get excited about creating new, shiny, attention-grabbing technology. That’s why smart fridges exist. Klotz pointed to geoengineering — like spraying aerosols into the air to cool the planet by blocking the sun’s rays, for example — as an example of a solution that could make the situation even more complicated. “The fundamental problem with climate change is that we screwed up this big system that we don’t understand,” he said. Adding more stuff just introduces further complexity and uncertainty. “On the global scale, these subtractive solutions tend to be better.”

The real world, of course, isn’t as simple as a city built with Legos. Something that removes carbon dioxide at the global scale could actually add something at the local scale: building a carbon removal plant, for instance. “Depending on what level you’re looking at the problem, it’s either subtractive or additive,” Adams said.

Subtraction, in other words, is a compelling idea that starts to get a little muddy if you think about it too hard. But many people already understand it on a basic level. There are plenty of truisms that teach about simplicity and minimalism, like “less is more” or Occam’s razor. The famous advice from Marie Kondo, the author-turned-TV-show-host who helps organize homes and teaches people to get rid of junk, is to only keep things that “spark joy.”

The question is, Klotz said, “How can we do that for meaningful problems, not just our cluttered closet?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Goodbye, old freeways? How subtraction could address climate change on Apr 16, 2021.

This post was originally published on Grist.
April 15, 2021

What do NFTs mean for art? And for the Earth?

Dear Umbra,

Should I be worried about non-fungible tokens? Every day I’m told about how liberating this NFT market is for artists like myself, but I’m filled with dread.

– Not Immediately Felicitating Technological Yahoos

Dear NIFTY,

If you’re anything like me, worry and dread are like Hilary Duff songs. I’m not entirely sure how they snuck their way into my brain, but there they are, far louder than I’d prefer. How much longer have we got on this blue marble? Am I doing enough? Is my cat eating the right amount of food? I worry.

But non-fungible tokens? Nah. And yes, I’ve heard about the threat these digital collector’s items allegedly pose to the Earth’s climate. We’ll get to that shortly.

First, for those of you who have been doing your best to get through life without ever learning what an NFT is, I regret to inform you that it’s time to do so. I’ll try to make this exercise as painless as possible. NFT stands for “non-fungible token,” and fungible is just a chewy way of saying interchangeable. Some things, like currencies, have to be fungible in order for society to work properly. The value and utility of one dollar (or yuan or bitcoin) is exactly the same as any other. It doesn’t matter which particular dollar you’re holding, because it is fungible with all other dollars.

But most other assets aren’t like that. For example, each of these paintings by Vincent van Gogh sold for around $50 million in the late 1980s, suggesting they’re of comparable value — but you probably prefer one to the other. (I like the irises. The portrait of Roulin looks like a werewolf.) If you were in a position to actually shell out $50 million for a van Gogh, you’d care about authenticity, and you’d care about which one you got. Likewise, prints or reproductions don’t carry the same value as the original — apologies to your dorm room art collection. All to say: The paintings are not fungible.

But the NFTs you are referring to aren’t exactly hanging in the Louvre. They’re online, which makes their value as collectible items a little harder to understand, but fundamentally they are records of ownership. Ownership of what, you ask? Well, this is where things get sticky. Digital real estate. Actual real estate. Domain names. A T-shirt for your avatar. Virtual sports cards. And, to your point, art, including digital art. Even when it refers to a pixel-art GIF of a Pop-Tart cat, an NFT is a public certificate of authenticity that identifies an artwork’s owner and usually contains a link to the piece. And that is worth something — at least, to some people.

Perhaps you heard that an NFT of a JPG by the artist Beeple (“the first purely digital work of art ever offered by a major auction house,” according to a tweet by Christie’s) just fetched a cool $70 million. To be crystal clear here: That means some start-up founder who’s now out $70 million can go to sleep knowing that they are the only person in the world who truly owns that digital image. To each their own! (“I feel like I got a steal,” the buyer told the New York Times.)

NIFTY, I suspect the people in your life hyping NFTs argue that they’re a good thing for those hoping to break into the art world. With a few clicks and some cash for transaction fees, anyone can create an NFT and offer it up for auction. Who needs Christie’s when you have OpenSea or Rarible? There’s no stodgy institution dictating what is worth a fortune and what isn’t. For some artists, that might imply a lower barrier to entry and an easier time making a living on their practice.

But one big problem with NFTs — and the reason they fill many climate-concerned people with dread, at the very least — is that they’re parked on digital ledgers that tend to be pretty carbon-intensive. That’s because they require a huge amount of computing power.

In order for these certificates of online ownership to be trustworthy, they need to be publicly available and unfalsifiable. Enter blockchains: databases maintained on a whole bunch of different computers at once for the purpose of security. Most NFTs exist as tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, for example, a digital ledger for the cryptocurrency Ether. Just like you put cash (fungible) and concert tickets (non-fungible) in your real-world wallet, you put cryptocurrencies and NFTs in the same crypto wallet.

Implementing anti-fraud measures on blockchains often requires a huge amount of electricity. As you’re likely aware, most of that electricity still comes from the burning of fossil fuels, especially in China, where the lion’s share of these blockchain security operations (also called “mines”) currently exist. Cryptocurrency mines basically look like data centers, and running and cooling them accounts for more than 99 percent of the Ethereum network’s emissions. If you use one of these blockchains and benefit from these mines, one could argue you’re at least a little complicit in laying the path toward planetary destruction.

But life is complicated, isn’t it, NIFTY? And as our usual Umbra Eve Andrews argues on the regular, it’s just not possible or practical to live your life by some kind of climate purity test. Just because you’re an artist who’s interested in NFTs doesn’t make you a planetary villain. Maybe you’re trying to make rent, or maybe you’re just trying to see what this brave new blockchain world is all about. In that case, I say, have at it. Care about the planet? Great. Find a blockchain that doesn’t require so much electricity to maintain! Sure, there are a couple of NFT carbon-footprint calculators out there in the world, but I’m not convinced the footprinting approach is the right way to grapple with cryptocurrencies’ ecological impacts. (Recall that it was the oil industry that helped popularize the notion of a carbon footprint in the first place. “Why should we decarbonize the energy sector? You’re the one using all that electricity to heat your home.”)

Instead, skip the footprinting and consider an eco-friendly crypto art platform like Kalamint, hic et nunc, or Pixeos, the latter of which runs on an allegedly carbon-neutral blockchain. Heck, here’s a spreadsheet someone made of clean platforms. (You’re looking for the stuff in green.) Whole communities are cropping up around the environmental impact of NFTs. Join one! Use your dread to hold them accountable! If you want to try out the digital thing and skip the planetary dread, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

But I don’t even know if your dread is planetary in nature, and frankly, I’m not sure being an artist is going to be any easier on the blockchain than it is in real life. There are still gatekeepers here: The top crypto art marketplaces are curated by their employees. And I imagine there are plenty of NFT collectors who are in it primarily for the money laundering and tax evasion potential — hardly a crowd committed to wealth redistribution. Is that so different from the other art market?

The bright side, NIFTY, is that your question demonstrates emotional depth and self-awareness. Pathos! I think the important thing is to channel your energy into your craft. Continue to hone it. If you’re living on Earth in 2021, I think you have enough to worry about as it is. It’s easier than it ought to be to get swept up in dread these days.

I wonder, though, if I could be so bold as to question whether it’s only dread that you’re feeling right now. Something I’ve been feeling lately is a little bit of dizzy wistfulness: a heightened sense of the precarities and impermanence around me. It’s hard to get a grip with so much moving and passing. The world is moving so quickly these days. Viruses and vaccines and vipers all sorts; even something as seemingly benign as a new way to sell art can feel unsettling when familiarity seems increasingly hard to come by.

But there can be a sad little beauty in this movement, and I wonder if you’re feeling some of that, too. Transience itself can sharpen our appreciation of the beauty in front of us. Maybe what it means to be an artist is changing, and maybe that feels bittersweet at best and quite tragic at worst. But what is grief, climate or artistic or otherwise, other than an acknowledgement that you love something enough to care that it’s changing?

I, for one, am not feeling particularly liberated by all these blockchains or the non-fungibility of all these tokens. I hear your worry and dread: A lot is changing. But art itself, its practice and creation — none of that has changed, and you don’t have to change, either. You can choose to notice what’s passing, but you don’t need to pass along with it. If you do decide you want to throw your art up on some digital marketplace, I’ll respect the hustle. (Though I’d strongly encourage you to choose a climate-friendly option.) But I think you should only do it if that kind of experimentation feels exciting and worth your curiosity.

Besides, the NFT market is currently crashing. Do you really need another roller coaster to ride? These things might be a faint memory by next year! I am forced, once again, to return to the immortal advice of Ms. Hilary Duff: “Laugh it off let it go and / When you wake up it will seem / So yesterday, so yesterday.”

Whatever you decide, please, for the love of all that is fleeting and permanent, just keep making your art.

Cryptically,

Umbra

This post was originally published on Radio Free.
April 15, 2021

What do NFTs mean for art? And for the Earth?

Dear Umbra,

Should I be worried about non-fungible tokens? Every day I’m told about how liberating this NFT market is for artists like myself, but I’m filled with dread.

– Not Immediately Felicitating Technological Yahoos

Dear NIFTY,

If you’re anything like me, worry and dread are like Hilary Duff songs. I’m not entirely sure how they snuck their way into my brain, but there they are, far louder than I’d prefer. How much longer have we got on this blue marble? Am I doing enough? Is my cat eating the right amount of food? I worry.

But non-fungible tokens? Nah. And yes, I’ve heard about the threat these digital collector’s items allegedly pose to the Earth’s climate. We’ll get to that shortly.

First, for those of you who have been doing your best to get through life without ever learning what an NFT is, I regret to inform you that it’s time to do so. I’ll try to make this exercise as painless as possible. NFT stands for “non-fungible token,” and fungible is just a chewy way of saying interchangeable. Some things, like currencies, have to be fungible in order for society to work properly. The value and utility of one dollar (or yuan or bitcoin) is exactly the same as any other. It doesn’t matter which particular dollar you’re holding, because it is fungible with all other dollars.

But most other assets aren’t like that. For example, each of these paintings by Vincent van Gogh sold for around $50 million in the late 1980s, suggesting they’re of comparable value — but you probably prefer one to the other. (I like the irises. The portrait of Roulin looks like a werewolf.) If you were in a position to actually shell out $50 million for a van Gogh, you’d care about authenticity, and you’d care about which one you got. Likewise, prints or reproductions don’t carry the same value as the original — apologies to your dorm room art collection. All to say: The paintings are not fungible.

But the NFTs you are referring to aren’t exactly hanging in the Louvre. They’re online, which makes their value as collectible items a little harder to understand, but fundamentally they are records of ownership. Ownership of what, you ask? Well, this is where things get sticky. Digital real estate. Actual real estate. Domain names. A T-shirt for your avatar. Virtual sports cards. And, to your point, art, including digital art. Even when it refers to a pixel-art GIF of a Pop-Tart cat, an NFT is a public certificate of authenticity that identifies an artwork’s owner and usually contains a link to the piece. And that is worth something — at least, to some people.

Perhaps you heard that an NFT of a JPG by the artist Beeple (“the first purely digital work of art ever offered by a major auction house,” according to a tweet by Christie’s) just fetched a cool $70 million. To be crystal clear here: That means some start-up founder who’s now out $70 million can go to sleep knowing that they are the only person in the world who truly owns that digital image. To each their own! (“I feel like I got a steal,” the buyer told the New York Times.)

NIFTY, I suspect the people in your life hyping NFTs argue that they’re a good thing for those hoping to break into the art world. With a few clicks and some cash for transaction fees, anyone can create an NFT and offer it up for auction. Who needs Christie’s when you have OpenSea or Rarible? There’s no stodgy institution dictating what is worth a fortune and what isn’t. For some artists, that might imply a lower barrier to entry and an easier time making a living on their practice.

But one big problem with NFTs — and the reason they fill many climate-concerned people with dread, at the very least — is that they’re parked on digital ledgers that tend to be pretty carbon-intensive. That’s because they require a huge amount of computing power.

In order for these certificates of online ownership to be trustworthy, they need to be publicly available and unfalsifiable. Enter blockchains: databases maintained on a whole bunch of different computers at once for the purpose of security. Most NFTs exist as tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, for example, a digital ledger for the cryptocurrency Ether. Just like you put cash (fungible) and concert tickets (non-fungible) in your real-world wallet, you put cryptocurrencies and NFTs in the same crypto wallet.

Implementing anti-fraud measures on blockchains often requires a huge amount of electricity. As you’re likely aware, most of that electricity still comes from the burning of fossil fuels, especially in China, where the lion’s share of these blockchain security operations (also called “mines”) currently exist. Cryptocurrency mines basically look like data centers, and running and cooling them accounts for more than 99 percent of the Ethereum network’s emissions. If you use one of these blockchains and benefit from these mines, one could argue you’re at least a little complicit in laying the path toward planetary destruction.

But life is complicated, isn’t it, NIFTY? And as our usual Umbra Eve Andrews argues on the regular, it’s just not possible or practical to live your life by some kind of climate purity test. Just because you’re an artist who’s interested in NFTs doesn’t make you a planetary villain. Maybe you’re trying to make rent, or maybe you’re just trying to see what this brave new blockchain world is all about. In that case, I say, have at it. Care about the planet? Great. Find a blockchain that doesn’t require so much electricity to maintain! Sure, there are a couple of NFT carbon-footprint calculators out there in the world, but I’m not convinced the footprinting approach is the right way to grapple with cryptocurrencies’ ecological impacts. (Recall that it was the oil industry that helped popularize the notion of a carbon footprint in the first place. “Why should we decarbonize the energy sector? You’re the one using all that electricity to heat your home.”)

Instead, skip the footprinting and consider an eco-friendly crypto art platform like Kalamint, hic et nunc, or Pixeos, the latter of which runs on an allegedly carbon-neutral blockchain. Heck, here’s a spreadsheet someone made of clean platforms. (You’re looking for the stuff in green.) Whole communities are cropping up around the environmental impact of NFTs. Join one! Use your dread to hold them accountable! If you want to try out the digital thing and skip the planetary dread, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

But I don’t even know if your dread is planetary in nature, and frankly, I’m not sure being an artist is going to be any easier on the blockchain than it is in real life. There are still gatekeepers here: The top crypto art marketplaces are curated by their employees. And I imagine there are plenty of NFT collectors who are in it primarily for the money laundering and tax evasion potential — hardly a crowd committed to wealth redistribution. Is that so different from the other art market?

The bright side, NIFTY, is that your question demonstrates emotional depth and self-awareness. Pathos! I think the important thing is to channel your energy into your craft. Continue to hone it. If you’re living on Earth in 2021, I think you have enough to worry about as it is. It’s easier than it ought to be to get swept up in dread these days.

I wonder, though, if I could be so bold as to question whether it’s only dread that you’re feeling right now. Something I’ve been feeling lately is a little bit of dizzy wistfulness: a heightened sense of the precarities and impermanence around me. It’s hard to get a grip with so much moving and passing. The world is moving so quickly these days. Viruses and vaccines and vipers all sorts; even something as seemingly benign as a new way to sell art can feel unsettling when familiarity seems increasingly hard to come by.

But there can be a sad little beauty in this movement, and I wonder if you’re feeling some of that, too. Transience itself can sharpen our appreciation of the beauty in front of us. Maybe what it means to be an artist is changing, and maybe that feels bittersweet at best and quite tragic at worst. But what is grief, climate or artistic or otherwise, other than an acknowledgement that you love something enough to care that it’s changing?

I, for one, am not feeling particularly liberated by all these blockchains or the non-fungibility of all these tokens. I hear your worry and dread: A lot is changing. But art itself, its practice and creation — none of that has changed, and you don’t have to change, either. You can choose to notice what’s passing, but you don’t need to pass along with it. If you do decide you want to throw your art up on some digital marketplace, I’ll respect the hustle. (Though I’d strongly encourage you to choose a climate-friendly option.) But I think you should only do it if that kind of experimentation feels exciting and worth your curiosity.

Besides, the NFT market is currently crashing. Do you really need another roller coaster to ride? These things might be a faint memory by next year! I am forced, once again, to return to the immortal advice of Ms. Hilary Duff: “Laugh it off let it go and / When you wake up it will seem / So yesterday, so yesterday.”

Whatever you decide, please, for the love of all that is fleeting and permanent, just keep making your art.

Cryptically,

Umbra

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What do NFTs mean for art? And for the Earth? on Apr 15, 2021.

This post was originally published on Grist.
April 9, 2021

Research Says Facebook’s Ad Algorithm Perpetuates Gender Bias

New research from a team at the University of Southern California provides further evidence that Facebook’s advertising system is discriminatory, showing that the algorithm used to target ads reproduced real-world gender disparities when showing job listings, even among equally qualified candidates.

In fields from software engineering to sales to food delivery, the team ran sets of ads promoting real job openings at roughly equivalent companies requiring roughly the same skills, one for a company whose existing workforce was disproportionately male and one that was disproportionately female. Facebook showed more men the ads for the disproportionately male companies and more women the ads for the disproportionately female companies, even though the job qualifications were the same. The paper concludes that Facebook could very well be violating federal anti-discrimination laws.

“We confirm that Facebook’s ad delivery can result in skew of job ad delivery by gender beyond what can be legally justified by possible differences in qualifications,” the team wrote.

The work builds on prior research that left Facebook reeling. A groundbreaking 2019 study from one member of the team provided strong evidence that Facebook’s ad algorithm isn’t just capable of bias, but is biased to its core. Responding to that study, and in the wake of widespread criticism over tools that could be used to run blatantly discriminatory ad campaigns, Facebook told The Intercept at the time, “We stand against discrimination in any form. We’ve made important changes to our ad targeting tools and know that this is only a first step. We’ve been looking at our ad delivery system and have engaged industry leaders, academics, and civil rights experts on this very topic — and we’re exploring more changes.”

Based on this new research, it doesn’t appear that the company got very far beyond whatever that “first step” was. The paper — authored by USC computer science assistant professor Aleksandra Korolova, professor John Heidemann, and doctoral student Basileal Imana — revisits the question tackled in 2019: If advertisers don’t use any of Facebook’s demographic targeting options, which demographics will the system target on its own?

The question is a crucial one, given that Facebook’s control over who sees which ads might determine who is provided with certain vital economic opportunities, from insurance to a new job to a credit card. This control is executed entirely through algorithms whose inner workings are kept secret. Since Facebook won’t provide any meaningful answers about how the algorithms work, researchers such as Korolova and her colleagues have had to figure it out.

This time around, the team wanted to preempt claims that biased ad delivery could be explained by the fact that Facebook showed the ads to people who were simply more qualified for the advertised job, a possible legal defense against allegations of unlawful algorithmic bias under statutes like Title VII, which bars discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics like race and gender. “To the extent that the scope of Title VII may cover ad platforms, the distinction we make can eliminate the possibility of platforms using qualification as a legal argument against being held liable for discriminatory outcomes,” the team wrote.

As in 2019, Korolova and her team created a series of advertisements for real-world job openings and paid Facebook to display these job listings to as many people as possible given their budget, as opposed to specifying a certain demographic cohort whose eyeballs they wanted to zero in on. This essentially left the decision of “who sees what” entirely up to Facebook (and its opaque algorithms), thus helping to highlight the bias engineered into Facebook’s own code.

Facebook funneled gender-neutral ads for gender-neutral jobs to people on the basis of their gender.

Even when controlling for job qualifications, the researchers found that Facebook automatically funneled gender-neutral ads for gender-neutral jobs to people on the basis of their gender.

For example, Korolova’s team purchased Facebook ad campaigns to promote two delivery driver job listings, one from Instacart and another from Domino’s. Both positions are roughly equivalent in terms of required qualifications, and for both companies, “there is data that shows the de facto gender distribution is skewed”: Most Domino’s drivers are men, and most Instacart drivers are women. By running these ads with a mandate only to maximize eyeballs, no matter whose, the team sought to “study whether ad delivery optimization algorithms reproduce these de facto skews, even though they are not justifiable on the basis of differences in qualification,” with the expectation of finding “a platform whose ad delivery optimization goes beyond what is justifiable by qualification and reproduces de facto skews to show the Domino’s ad to relatively more males than the Instacart ad.” The results showed exactly that.

Left to its own devices, the team found that Facebook’s ad delivery algorithm took the Domino’s and Instacart listings, along with later experiments based on ads for software engineering and sales associate gigs at other companies, and showed them to online audiences that essentially reproduced the existing offline gender disparities: “The skew we observe on Facebook is in the same direction as the de facto skew, with the Domino’s ad delivered to a higher fraction of men than the Instacart ad.” And since the experiments were designed to take job qualification out of the picture, the team says, they strengthen “the previously raised arguments that Facebook’s ad delivery algorithms may be in violation of anti-discrimination laws.” As an added twist, the team ran the same set of ads on LinkedIn, but saw no evidence of systemic gender bias.

Facebook spokesperson Tom Channick told The Intercept that “our system takes into account many signals to try and serve people ads they will be most interested in, but we understand the concerns raised in the report,” adding that “we’ve taken meaningful steps to address issues of discrimination in ads and have teams working on ads fairness today. We’re continuing to work closely with the civil rights community, regulators, and academics on these important matters.”

Though the USC team was able to cleverly expose the biased results of Facebook ads, their methodology hits a brick wall when it comes to answering why exactly this happens. This is by design: Facebook’s ad delivery algorithm, like all the rest of the automated decision-making systems it employs across its billions of users, is a black-box algorithm, completely opaque to anyone other than those inside the company, workers who are bound by nondisclosure agreements and sworn to secrecy. One possible explanation for the team’s findings is that the ad delivery algorithm trains itself based on who has clicked on similar ads in the past — maybe men tend to click on Domino’s ads more than women. Korolova says “skew due to prior user behavior observed by Facebook is possible” but that “if despite the clear indication of the advertiser, we still observe skewed delivery due to historical click-through rates (as we do!), this outcome suggests that Facebook may be overruling advertiser desires for broad and diverse outreach in a way that is aligned with their own long-term business interests.”

The post Research Says Facebook’s Ad Algorithm Perpetuates Gender Bias appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.
April 6, 2021

First Arab nuclear plant begins commercial operation in UAE

UAE,

“The UAE has entered a landmark phase today,” tweeted Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, the Emirates’ vice president and prime minister. “The first megawatt from the first Arab nuclear plant has entered the national power grid,” said Sheikh Mohammed, who is also the ruler of Dubai.

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan too lauded the “historic milestone”.

“The start of commercial operations at the Barakah nuclear energy plant is a historic milestone for the UAE that significantly enhances the sustainability of our entire power sector,” he tweeted.

The UAE, which is made up of seven emirates, including the capital Abu Dhabi and freewheeling Dubai, is the fourth largest oil producer in the OPEC.

The country was built on oil, but is spending billions to develop enough renewable energy to cover half of its needs by 2050.

When fully operational, the four reactors of the Barakah plant will generate 5,600 megawatts, around 25 percent of the UAE’s electricity needs.

The plant started up in August when authorities pushed the button on the first of four reactors. Barakah, which means “blessing” in Arabic, is an Arab first. Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, has said it plans to build up to 16 nuclear reactors, but the project has yet to materialize.

Barakah on the Gulf coast, west of Abu Dhabi was built by a consortium led by the Korea Electric Power Corporation at a cost of some $24.4 billion. Across the Gulf, Iran operates a Russian-built nuclear power plant at Bushehr on its southern coast.

This post was originally published on VOSA.
April 5, 2021

LG to exit loss-making mobile phone business worldwide

LG was once the third-largest mobile phone maker but has lost market share to Chinese and other competitors
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.
April 2, 2021

LexisNexis to Provide Giant Database of Personal Information to ICE

The popular legal research and data brokerage firm LexisNexis signed a $16.8 million contract to sell information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to documents shared with The Intercept. The deal is already drawing fire from critics and comes less than two years after the company downplayed its ties to ICE, claiming it was “not working with them to build data infrastructure to assist their efforts.”

Though LexisNexis is perhaps best known for its role as a powerful scholarly and legal research tool, the company also caters to the immensely lucrative “risk” industry, providing, it says, 10,000 different data points on hundreds of millions of people to companies like financial institutions and insurance companies who want to, say, flag individuals with a history of fraud. LexisNexis Risk Solutions is also marketed to law enforcement agencies, offering “advanced analytics to generate quality investigative leads, produce actionable intelligence and drive informed decisions” — in other words, to find and arrest people.

The LexisNexis ICE deal appears to be providing a replacement for CLEAR, a risk industry service operated by Thomson Reuters that has been crucial to ICE’s deportation efforts. In February, the Washington Post noted that the CLEAR contract was expiring and that it was “unclear whether the Biden administration will renew the deal or award a new contract.”

LexisNexis’s February 25 ICE contract was shared with The Intercept by Mijente, a Latinx advocacy organization that has criticized links between ICE and tech companies it says are profiting from human rights abuses, including LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters. The contract shows LexisNexis will provide Homeland Security investigators access to billions of different records containing personal data aggregated from a wide array of public and private sources, including credit history, bankruptcy records, license plate images, and cellular subscriber information. The company will also provide analytical tools that can help police connect these vast stores of data to the right person.

Though the contract is light on details, other ICE documents suggest how the LexisNexis database will be put to use. A notice posted before the contract was awarded asked for a database that could “assist the ICE mission of conducting criminal investigations” and come with “a robust analytical research tool for … in-depth exploration of persons of interest and vehicles,” including what it called a “License Plate Reader Subscription.”

LexisNexis Risk Solutions spokesperson Jennifer Richman declined to say exactly what categories of data the company would provide ICE under the new contract, or what policies, if any, will govern how agency agency uses it, but said, “Our tool contains data primarily from public government records. The principal non-public data is authorized by Congress for such uses in the Drivers Privacy Protection Act and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act statutes.”

ICE did not return a request for comment.

The listing indicated the database would be used by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations agency. While HSI is tasked with investigating border-related criminal activities beyond immigration violations, the office frequently works to raid and arrest undocumented people alongside ICE’s deportation office, Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO. A 2019 report from the Brennan Center for Justice described HSI as having “quietly become the backbone of the White House’s immigration enforcement apparatus. Its operations increasingly focus on investigating civil immigration violations, facilitating deportations carried out by ERO, and conducting surveillance of First Amendment-protected expression.” In 2018, The Intercept reported on an HSI raid of a Tennessee meatpacking plant that left scores of undocumented workers detained and hundreds of local children too scared to attend school the following day.

Department of Homeland Security budget documents show that ICE has used LexisNexis databases since at least 2016 through the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, a division of ERO that assists in “locating aliens convicted of criminal offenses and other aliens who are amenable to removal,” including “those who are unlawfully present in the United States.”

It’s exceedingly difficult to participate in modern society without generating computerized records of the sort that LexisNexis obtains and packages for resale.

It’s hard to wrap one’s head around the enormity of the dossiers LexisNexis creates about citizens and undocumented persons alike. While you can at least attempt to use countermeasures against surveillance technologies like facial recognition or phone tracking, it’s exceedingly difficult to participate in modern society without generating computerized records of the sort that LexisNexis obtains and packages for resale. The company’s databases offer an oceanic computerized view of a person’s existence; by consolidating records of where you’ve lived, where you’ve worked, what you’ve purchased, your debts, run-ins with the law, family members, driving history, and thousands of other types of breadcrumbs, even people particularly diligent about their privacy can be identified and tracked through this sort of digital mosaic. LexisNexis has gone even further than merely aggregating all this data: The company claims it holds 283 million distinct individual dossiers of 99.99% accuracy tied to “LexIDs,” unique identification codes that make pulling all the material collected about a person that much easier. For an undocumented immigrant in the United States, the hazard of such a database is clear.

For those seeking to surveil large populations, the scope of the data sold by LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters is equally clear and explains why both firms are listed as official data “partners” of Palantir, a software company whose catalog includes products designed to track down individuals by feasting on enormous datasets. This partnership lets law enforcement investigators ingest material from the companies’ databases directly into Palantir data-mining software, allowing agencies to more seamlessly spy on migrants or round them up for deportation. “I compare what they provide to the blood that flows through the circulation system,” explained City University of New York law professor and scholar of government data access systems Sarah Lamdan. “What would Palantir be able to do without these data flows? Nothing. Without all their data, the software is worthless.” Asked for specifics of the company’s relationship with Palantir, the LexisNexis spokesperson told The Intercept only that its parent company RELX was an early investor in Palantir and that “LexisNexis Risk Solutions does not have an operational relationship with Palantir.”

And yet compared with Palantir, which eagerly sells its powerful software to clients like ICE and the National Security Agency, Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis have managed to largely avoid an ugly public association with controversial government surveillance and immigration practices. They have protected their reputations in part by claiming that even though LexisNexis may contract with ICE, it’s not enabling the crackdowns and arrests that have made the agency infamous but actually helping ICE’s detainees defend their legal rights. In 2019, after hundreds of law professors, students, and librarians signed a petition calling for Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis to cease contracting with ICE, LexisNexis sent a mass email to law school faculty defending their record and seeming to deny that their service helps put people in jail. Describing this claim as “misinformation,” the LexisNexis email, which was shared with The Intercept, stated: “We are not providing jail-booking data to ICE and are not working with them to build data infrastructure to assist their efforts. … LexisNexis and RELX does not play a key ‘role in fueling the surveillance, imprisonment, and deportation of hundreds of thousands of migrants a year.” (Emphasis in the original.) The email stated that “one of our competitors” was responsible for how “ICE supports its core data needs.” It went on to argue that, far from harming immigrants, LexisNexis is actually in the business of empowering them: Through its existing relationship with ICE, “detainees are provided access to an extensive electronic library of legal materials … that enable detainees to better understand their rights and prepare their immigration cases.”

“Your state might be down to give you a driver’s license, but that information might get into the hands of a data broker.”

The notion that LexisNexis is somehow more meaningfully in the business of keeping immigrants free rather than detained has little purchase with the company’s critics. Jacinta Gonzalez, field director of Mijente, told The Intercept that LexisNexis’s ICE contract fills the same purpose as CLEAR. Like CLEAR, LexisNexis provides an agency widely accused of systemic human rights abuses with the data it needs to locate people with little if any oversight, a system that’s at once invisible, difficult to comprehend, and near impossible to avoid. Even in locales where so-called sanctuary laws aim to protect undocumented immigrants, these vast privatized databases create a computerized climate of intense fear and paranoia for undocumented people, Gonzalez said. “You might be in a city where your local politician is trying to tell you, ‘Don’t worry, you’re welcome here,’ but then ICE can get your address from a data broker and go directly to your house and try to deport you,” Gonzalez explained. “Your state might be down to give you a driver’s license, but that information might get into the hands of a data broker. You might feel like you’re in a life or death situation and have to go to the hospital, but you’re concerned that if you can’t pay your bill a collection agency is going to share that information with ICE.”

Richman, the LexisNexis spokesperson, told The Intercept that “the contract complies with the new policies set out in President Biden’s Executive Order 13993 of January 21, which revised Civil Immigration Enforcement Policies and Priorities and the corresponding DHS interim guidelines” and that “these policies, effective immediately, emphasize a respect for human rights, and focus on threats to national security, public safety, and security at the border.” But Gonzalez says it would be naive to think ICE is somehow a lesser menace to undocumented communities with Donald Trump out of power. “At the end of the day, ICE is still made up by the same agents, by the same field office directors, by the same administrators. … I think that it is really important for people to understand that, as long as ICE continues to have so many agents and so many resources, that they’re going to have to have someone to terrorize.”

The post LexisNexis to Provide Giant Database of Personal Information to ICE appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.
March 31, 2021

Content Control

An interview with Jillian C. York, the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech under Surveillance Capitalism.

This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.