YCLOAK

Facebook toughened its livestreaming policies Wednesday as it prepared to huddle with world leaders and other tech CEOs in Paris to find ways to keep social media from being used to spread hate, organize extremist groups and broadcast terror attacks.

Facebook’s move came hours before its executives would face the prime minister of New Zealand, where an attacker killed 51 people in March — and livestreamed parts of it on Facebook.

 

The CEOs and world leaders will try to agree on guidelines they will call the “Christchurch Call,” named after the New Zealand city where the attack on a mosque took place.

 

Facebook said it’s tightening up the rules for its livestreaming service with a “one strike” policy applied to a broader range of offenses. Any activity on the social network that violates its policies, such as sharing a terrorist group’s statement without providing context, will result in the user immediately being temporarily blocked. The most serious offenses will result in a permanent ban.

 

Previously, the company took down posts that breached its community standards but only blocked users after repeated offenses.

 

The tougher restrictions will be gradually extended to other areas of the platform, starting with preventing users from creating Facebook ads.

 

Facebook said it’s also investing $7.5 million in new research partnerships to improve image and video analysis technology aimed at finding content manipulated through editing to avoid detection by its automated systems — a problem the company encountered following the Christchurch shooting.

 

“Tackling these threats also requires technical innovation to stay ahead of the type of adversarial media manipulation we saw after Christchurch,” Facebook’s vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen, said in a blog post.

 

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern welcomed Facebook’s pledge. She said she herself inadvertently saw the Christchurch attacker’s video when it played automatically in her Facebook feed.

 

“There is a lot more work to do, but I am pleased Facebook has taken additional steps today… and look forward to a long-term collaboration to make social media safer,” she said in a statement.

 

Ardern is playing a central role in the Paris meetings, which she called a significant “starting point” for changes in government and tech industry policy.

 

Twitter, Google, Microsoft and several other companies are also taking part, along with the leaders of Britain, France, Canada, Ireland, Senegal, Indonesia, Jordan and the European Union.

 

Officials at Facebook said they support the idea of the Christchurch appeal, but that details need to be worked out that are acceptable for all parties. Free speech advocates and some in the tech industry bristle at new restrictions and argue that violent extremism is a societal problem that the tech world can’t solve.

 

Ardern and the host, French President Emmanuel Macron, insist that it must involve joint efforts between governments and tech giants. France has been hit by repeated Islamic extremist attacks by groups who recruited and shared violent images on social networks.

 

Speaking to reporters ahead of the meetings, Ardern said, “There will be of course those who will be pushing to make sure that they maintain the commercial sensitivity. We don’t need to know their trade secrets, but we do need to know what the impacts might be on our societies around algorithm use.”

 

She stressed the importance of tackling “coded language” that extremists use to avoid detection.

 

Before the Christchurch attack, she said, governments took a “traditional approach to terrorism that would not necessarily have picked up the form of terrorism that New Zealand experienced on the 15th of March, and that was white supremacy.”

 

 

 
…

San Francisco supervisors voted Tuesday to ban the use of facial recognition software by police and other city departments, becoming the first U.S. city to outlaw a rapidly developing technology that has alarmed privacy and civil liberties advocates. 

The ban is part of broader legislation that requires city departments to establish use policies and obtain board approval for surveillance technology they want to purchase or are using at present. Several other local governments require departments to disclose and seek approval for surveillance technology. 

“This is really about saying: ‘We can have security without being a security state. We can have good policing without being a police state.’ And part of that is building trust with the community based on good community information, not on Big Brother technology,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who championed the legislation. 

The ban applies to San Francisco police and other municipal departments. It does not affect use of the technology by the federal government at airports and ports, nor does it limit personal or business use. 

The San Francisco board did not spend time Tuesday debating the outright ban on facial recognition technology, focusing instead on the possible burdens placed on police, the transit system and other city agencies that need to maintain public safety. 

“I worry about politicizing these decisions,” said Supervisor Catherine Stefani, a former prosecutor who was the sole no vote. 

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., issued a statement chiding San Francisco for considering the facial recognition ban. It said advanced technology makes it cheaper and faster for police to find suspects and identify missing people. 

Critics were silly to compare surveillance usage in the United States with China, given that one country has strong constitutional protections and the other does not, said Daniel Castro, the foundation’s vice president. 

“In reality, San Francisco is more at risk of becoming Cuba than China — a ban on facial recognition will make it frozen in time with outdated technology,” he said. 

It’s unclear how many San Francisco departments are using surveillance and for what purposes, said Peskin. There are valid reasons for license-plate readers, body cameras, and security cameras, he said, but the public should know how the tools are being used or if they are being abused. 

San Francisco’s police department stopped testing face ID technology in 2017. A representative at Tuesday’s board meeting said the department would need two to four additional employees to comply with the legislation. 

Privacy advocates have squared off with public safety proponents at several heated hearings in San Francisco, a city teeming with tech innovation and the home of Twitter, Airbnb and Uber. 

Those who support the ban say the technology is flawed and a serious threat to civil liberties, especially in a city that cherishes public protest and privacy. They worry people will one day not be able to go to a mall, the park or a school without being identified and tracked. 

But critics say police need all the help they can get, especially in a city with high-profile events and high rates of property crime. That people expect privacy in public space is unreasonable given the proliferation of cellphones and surveillance cameras, said Meredith Serra, a member of a resident public safety group Stop Crime SF. 

“To me, the ordinance seems to be a costly additional layer of bureaucracy that really does nothing to improve the safety of our citizens,” she said at a hearing.
…

If you’re fuzzy on next-generation 5G wireless connectivity, you aren’t alone.

Powerful U.S. lawmakers who help shape the legal framework for America’s technological advances on Tuesday admitted ignorance and confusion about the highly-anticipated broadband system already being deployed in parts of the world.

“I actually know very little about 5G,” said Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Today, we’re going to talk about something that I’m by no means an expert on,” the panel’s chairman, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, said at a hearing where America’s top cybersecurity officials testified on 5G’s promise and looming perils.

“It’s really hard for people to get their heads around what we’re talking about here,” Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said. “First of all, what is it?”

Witnesses said the fifth generation of wireless technology, or 5G, will bring eye-popping data transmission capacity and spur a new age of digital device connectivity that will revolutionize many people’s daily lives, as well as America’s economic output.

“5G is going to be about machine-to-machine communication, the internet of things,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Cyber and International Communications Robert Strayer.

“Advances in 5G will support greater bandwidth, capacity for billions of sensors and smart devices, and ultra-low latency [minimal data delays] necessary for highly-reliable critical communications,” said the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, Christopher Krebs. “Autonomous vehicles, critical manufacturing, medical doctors performing remote surgery, and a smart electric grid represent a small fraction of the technologies and economic activity that 5G will support.”

Added Strayer: “The massive amounts of data transmitted by Internet of things devices on 5G networks will also advance artificial intelligence.”

Lawmakers signaled they are coming to grips with the anticipated impact.

“I’m told 5G is expected to provide not only 20 times faster network performance, but also generate 12.3 trillion [dollars] in global sales activity by 2035,” Feinstein said. “I’m told it’s going to create millions of new jobs and launch entirely new industries.”

With such an impact, including a new era of ultra-connectivity, will come a need to protect the network from foreign interference or manipulation and to guard against espionage and data theft, according to U.S. officials.

“With all the critical services relying on 5G networks, the stakes for safeguarding them could not be higher. A disruption to that underlying 5G network will disrupt all of those critical services. That’s why this is so fundamentally different and so much more important that we get the security right,” Strayer said.

“When we talk about [interruptions to] 5G, we’re talking about autonomous vehicles not being able to operate,” Krebs said, adding that such a scenario constitutes “a life-safety issue where things won’t work as designed.”

Lawmakers focused on China, which has emerged as an early global leader in producing 5G infrastructure.

“The Chinese government has invested more than $400 billion in development. It has supported Chinese industry efforts in international standard-setting bodies,” Feinstein said.

She added that Chinese law requires companies like telecommunications giant Huawei to assist and cooperate with state security entities.

“Fundamentally, the private sector in China is an extension of the government, and so if our allies decide to trust Huawei, they are deciding to trust the Chinese government with their big data,” Sasse said.

Witnesses echoed the apprehensions.

“We are concerned that China could compel actions by [5G] network vendors to act against the interests of our citizens or citizens of other countries around the world,” Strayer said. “They [vendors] could be ordered to undermine network security, steal personal information or intellectual property, conduct espionage, disrupt critical services or conduct cyberattacks.”

The United States bans Chinese companies from critical telecommunications infrastructure and has warned allies against Huawei’s participation in building their 5G networks.

“We must protect our critical telecom infrastructure, and the United States is calling on all our security partners to be vigilant and to reject any enterprise that would compromise the integrity of our communications technology or national security systems,” Vice President Mike Pence said earlier this year.

“Our success will depend on engagement with international allies,” Krebs said at the hearing. “Ultimately, our goal, our vision is to enable that broader collective defense against cybersecurity threats, where the government and industry understand the risks we face and are prepared to defend against them.”

“The United States will be a leader in 5G deployment, and we will do so using trusted vendors to build our networks,” Strayer said. “Through our engagements, many other countries are now acknowledging the supply-chain risks and beginning to strengthen their security alongside the United States.”

A few U.S. carriers have activated initial 5G systems in several U.S. cities. Coverage and carrier participation are expected to grow exponentially in coming years.
…

Google opened a privacy focused engineering center in Munich, Germany, on Tuesday, its latest move to beef up its data protection credentials as tech companies’ face growing scrutiny of their data collection practices.

CEO Sundar Pichai said the Silicon Valley tech giant is expanding its operations in the southern German city, including doubling the number of data privacy engineers there to more than 200 by the end of 2019.

The new Google Safety Engineering Center will make Munich a global hub for the company’s “cross-product privacy engineering efforts,” Pichai said in a blog post.

Staff will work with Google privacy specialists in other cities to build products for use around the world, Pichai said, adding that Munich engineers built the Google Account control panel as well as privacy and security features for the Chrome browser.

Data privacy and security at Google and its tech rivals including Facebook are increasingly in the spotlight. Both companies dedicated much of their annual developer conferences last week to privacy, with Google unveiling new tools giving people more control over how they’re being tracked while Facebook outlined plans to connect people though more private channels.
…

Spyware crafted by a sophisticated group of hackers-for-hire took advantage of a flaw in the popular WhatsApp communications program to remotely hijack dozens of phones, the company said late Monday. 

The Financial Times identified the actor as Israel’s NSO Group, and WhatsApp all but confirmed the identification, describing hackers as “a private company that has been known to work with governments to deliver spyware.” A spokesman for the Facebook subsidiary later said: “We’re certainly not refuting any of the coverage you’ve seen.”

The malware was able to penetrate phones through missed calls alone via the app’s voice calling function, the spokesman said. An unknown number of people – an amount in the dozens at least would not be inaccurate – were infected with the malware, which the company discovered in early May, said the spokesman, who was not authorized to be quoted by name. 

John Scott-Railton, a researcher with the internet watchdog Citizen Lab, called the hack “a very scary vulnerability.” 

“There’s nothing a user could have done here, short of not having the app,” he said.

The spokesman said the flaw was discovered while “our team was putting some additional security enhancements to our voice calls” and that engineers found that people targeted for infection “might get one or two calls from a number that is not familiar to them. In the process of calling, this code gets shipped.”

WhatsApp, which has more than 1.5 billion users, immediately contacted Citizen Lab and human rights groups, quickly fixed the issue and pushed out a patch. He said WhatsApp also provided information to U.S. law enforcement officials to assist in their investigations.

“We are deeply concerned about the abuse of such capabilities,” WhatsApp said in a statement.

NSO said in a statement that its technology is used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to fight “crime and terror.” 

“We investigate any credible allegations of misuse and if necessary, we take action, including shutting down the system,” the statement said. A spokesman for Stephen Peel, whose private equity firm Novalpina recently announced the purchase of part of NSO, did not return an email seeking comment.

The revelation adds to the questions over the reach of the Israeli company’s powerful spyware, which takes advantage of digital flaws to hijack smartphones, control their cameras and effectively turn them into pocket-sized surveillance devices.

NSO’s spyware has repeatedly been found deployed to hack journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and dissidents. Most notably, the spyware was implicated in the gruesome killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year and whose body has never been found.

Several alleged targets of the spyware, including a close friend of Khashoggi and several Mexican civil society figures, are currently suing NSO in an Israeli court over the hacking.

Monday, Amnesty International – which said last year that one its staffers was also targeted with the spyware – said it would join in a legal bid to force Israel’s Ministry of Defense to suspend NSO’s export license. 

That makes the discovery of the vulnerability particularly disturbing because one of the targets was a U.K.-based human rights lawyer, the attorney told the AP. 

The lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for professional reasons, said he received several suspicious missed calls over the past few months, the most recent one on Sunday, only hours before WhatsApp issued the update to users fixing the flaw. 

In its statement, NSO said it “would not or could not” use its own technology to target “any person or organization, including this individual.”
…

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that an antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed.

Consumers are suing the company, alleging Apple overcharges when downloading iPhone applications at the company’s App Store.

Conservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh joined with the four liberal judges in the 5-4 decision, agreeing with the plaintiffs that the 30% commissions Apple charges violate federal antitrust laws. Consumers allege Apple has monopolized the market by requiring apps be sold only through their stores. 

Apple argued it is just a conduit between app developers and customers and that it is the developers who set the prices.

“We’re confident we will prevail when the facts are presented and that the App Store is not a monopoly by any metric,” a company statement said. 

Apple is also under scrutiny by Dutch antitrust authorities over complaints about commissions in European markets.
…

A new mass spectroscopy machine is helping forensic scientists who are looking for a much better view of fingerprints on objects used in a crime. The current methods of making a copy of a fingerprint may not be good enough and DNA swabbing can damage evidence. VOAs Deborah Block reports.
…

President Donald Trump signed an executive order this month designed to strengthen the country’s cybersecurity workforce, the front line against hackers, domestic and foreign. With 7 billion internet-connected devices in the world, and numbers expected to rise, the threat is growing. Faith Lapidus reports, web-connected devices, from smart homes to drones, are vulnerable.
…

A cat who lost his back legs when he was hit by a train got a new lease on life by getting new prosthetic limbs. They were designed by engineering students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison using a 3D printer. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
…

Billionaire Richard Branson is moving Virgin Galactic’s winged passenger rocket and more than 100 employees from California to a remote commercial launch and landing facility in southern New Mexico, bringing his space tourism dream a step closer to reality.

Branson said Friday at a news conference that Virgin Galactic’s development and testing program has advanced enough to make the move to the custom-tailored hangar and runway at the taxpayer-financed Spaceport America facility near the town of Truth or Consequences.

Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said a small number of flight tests are pending. He declined to set a specific deadline for the first commercial flight.

An interior cabin for the company’s space rocket is being tested, and pilots and engineers are among the employees relocating from California to New Mexico. The move to New Mexico puts the company in the “home stretch,” Whitesides said.

The manufacturing of the space vehicles by a sister enterprise, The Spaceship Company, will remain based in the community of Mojave, California.

​Taxpayer backing

Taxpayers invested more than $200 million in Spaceport America after Branson and then-Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, pitched the plan for the facility, with Virgin Galactic as the anchor tenant.

Virgin Galactic’s spaceship development has taken far longer than expected and had a major setback when the company’s first experimental craft broke apart during a 2014 test flight, killing the co-pilot.

Branson thanked New Mexico politicians and residents for their patience over the past decade. He said he believes space tourism — once aloft — is likely to bring about profound change.

“Our future success as a species rests on the planetary perspective,” Branson said. “The perspective that we know comes sharply into focus when that planet is viewed from the black sky of space.”

Branson described a vision of hotels in space and a network of spaceports allowing supersonic, transcontinental travel anywhere on earth within a few hours. He indicated, however, that building financial viability comes first.

“We need the financial impetus to be able to do all that,” he said. “If the space program is successful as I think … then the sky is the limit.”

​Gushing passenger

In February, a new version of Virgin Galactic’s winged craft SpaceShipTwo soared at three times the speed of sound to an altitude of nearly 56 miles (99 kilometers) in a test flight over Southern California, as a crew member soaked in the experience.

On Friday, that crew member, Beth Moses, recounted her voyage into weightlessness and the visual spectacle of pitch-black space and the earth below.

“Everything is silent and still and you can unstrap and float about the cabin,” she said. “Pictures do not do the view from space justice. … I will be able to see it forever.”

The company’s current spaceship doesn’t launch from the ground. It is carried under a special plane to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) before detaching and igniting its rocket engine.

“Release is like freefall at an amusement park, except it keeps going,” Moses said. “And then the rocket motor lights. Before you know it, you’re supersonic.”

First commercial flight may be this year

The craft coasts to the top of its climb before gradually descending to earth, stabilized by “feathering” technology in which twin tails rotate upward to increase drag on the way to a runway landing.

Branson previously has said he would like to make his first suborbital flight this year as one of the venture’s first passengers on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20. But he made no mention of timelines on Friday.

Pressed on the timeframe, Whitesides said he anticipates the first commercial flight within a year.

Three people with future space-flight reservations were in the audience.

“They’ve been patient, too,” Branson said. “Space is hard.”

Hundreds of potential customers have committed as much as $250,000 up front for rides in Virgin’s six-passenger rocket, which is about the size of an executive jet.

Virgin not alone

Other Branson’s plans have gradually advanced amid a broader surge in private investment in space technology with cost-saving innovations in reusable rockets and microsatellite technology.

Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos announced Thursday that his space company, Blue Origin, will send a robotic spaceship to the moon with aspirations for another ship that could bring people there along the same timeframe as NASA’s proposed 2024 return. Bezos has provided no details about launch dates.
…

The question comes up over and over, with extremist material, hate speech, election meddling and privacy invasions. Why can’t Facebook just fix it?

It’s complicated, with reasons that include Facebook’s size, its business model and technical limitations, not to mention years of unchecked growth. Oh, and the element of human nature.

The latest revelation: Facebook is inadvertently creating celebratory videos using extremist content and auto-generating business pages for the likes of Islamic State and al-Qaida. The company says it is working on solutions and the problems are getting better. That is true, but critics say better is not good enough when mass shootings are being live-streamed and online mobs are spreading rumors that lead to deadly violence.

“They have been frustratingly slow in dealing with everything from child sexual abuse to terrorism, white supremacy, bullying, nonconsensual porn” and things like allowing advertisers to target categories such as “Jew hater,” simply because some users had listed the term as an “interest,” said Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley.

As new problems crop up, Facebook’s formula has been to apologize and promise to make changes, sometimes also noting that it did not anticipate how malicious actors could so readily misuse its platform. More recently, the company has also emphasized just how much it is improving, both technically in its use of artificial intelligence to detect problems and in terms of focusing more money and effort on fixing them.

“After making heavy investments, we are detecting and removing terrorism content at a far higher success rate than even two years go,” Facebook said Wednesday in response to the revelations about the auto-generated pages. “We don’t claim to find everything, and we remain vigilant in our efforts against terrorist groups around the world.”

It has seen some success. In late 2016, CEO Mark Zuckerberg infamously dismissed as “pretty crazy” the idea that fake news on his service could have swayed the election. He later backtracked, and since then the company has reduced the amount of misinformation shared on its service, as measured by several independent studies.

Zuckerberg has also, by and large, avoided similar gaffes by conceding mistakes and delivering apologies to the public and to lawmakers.

‘Stuck with all this garbage’

But even as the company bats down one problem, others pop up. The reason for that might be baked into its DNA. And that’s not just because its business model relies on as many people as possible using it as much as possible, leaving behind personal details that can then be targeted by advertisers.

“Almost everything Facebook has designed has been designed for good people. People who are nice to each other, who have birthdays to celebrate, who have new puppies and generally like to treat others well,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. “Basically Facebook is made for a better species than ours. If it were made for golden retrievers, everything would be great.”

But if just 1% of the 2.4 billion people on Facebook want to do terrible things to others, that’s 24 million people.

“Every couple of weeks, we hear about Facebook knocking down troublesome pages, making promises about hiring more people, building AI and so on,” Vaidhyanathan said. “But at Facebook’s scale, none of that will matter. We are basically stuck with all this garbage.”

Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, called for a breakup of the social media giant in a Thursday op-ed. Vaidhyanathan also thinks strong government regulation could be the answer, such as laws that “limit companies’ ability to suck up all our data and use it to target advertising.”

“We really should be addressing the back end of Facebook,” he said. “That’s what you have to attack.”
…

France welcomed Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg on Friday with a threat of sweeping new regulation.

With Facebook under fire on multiple fronts, Zuckerberg is in Paris to show that his social media giant is working hard to limit violent extremism and hate speech shared online.

But a group of French regulators and experts who spent weeks inside Facebook facilities in Paris, Dublin and Barcelona say the company isn’t working hard enough.

Just before Zuckerberg met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, the 10 officials released a report calling for laws allowing the government to investigate and fine social networks that don’t take responsibility for the content that makes them money.

The French government wants the legislation to serve as a model for Europe-wide management of social networks. Several countries have introduced similar legislation, some tougher than what France is proposing.

To an average user, it seems like the problem is intractable. Mass shootings are live-streamed, and online mobs are spreading rumors that lead to deadly violence. Facebook is even inadvertently creating celebratory videos using extremist content and auto-generating business pages for the likes of the Islamic State group and al Qaida.

The company says it is working on solutions, and the French regulators praised Facebook for hiring more people and using artificial intelligence to track and crack down on dangerous content.

But they said Facebook didn’t provide the French officials enough information about its algorithms to judge whether they were working, and that a “lack of transparency … justifies an intervention of public authorities.”

The regulators recommended legally requiring a “duty of care” for big social networks, meaning they should moderate hate speech published on their platforms. They insist that any law should respect freedom of expression, but did not explain how Facebook should balance those responsibilities in practice.

After meeting Macron, Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post that he welcomed governments taking a more active role in drawing up regulations for the internet. He made similar remarks earlier this year but has been vague on what kind of regulation he favors.

Facebook faces “nuanced decisions” involving content that is harmful but not illegal and the French recommendations, which set guidelines for what’s considered harmful, “would create a more consistent approach across the tech industry and ensure companies are held accountable for enforcing standards against this content,” Zuckerberg said.

The regulators acknowledged that their research didn’t address violent content shared on private chat groups or encrypted apps, or on groups like 4chan or 8chan, where criminals and extremists and those concerned about privacy increasingly turn to communicate.

Facebook said Zuckerberg is in France as part of meetings around Europe to discuss future regulation of the internet. Facebook agreed to embed the French regulators as an effort to jointly develop proposals to fight online hate content.

Zuckerberg’s visit comes notably amid concern about hate speech and disinformation around this month’s European Parliament elections.

Next week, the leaders of France and New Zealand will meet tech leaders in Paris for a summit seeking to ban acts of violent extremism and terrorism from being shown online.

Facebook has faced challenges over privacy and security lapses and accusations of endangering democracy — and it came under criticism this week from its own co-founder.

Chris Hughes said in a New York Times opinion piece Thursday that it’s time to break up Facebook. He says Zuckerberg has turned Facebook into an innovation-suffocating monopoly and lamented the company’s “slow response to Russian agents, violent rhetoric and fake news.”
…

Nike wants to meet your feet.

The sneaker seller will launch a foot-scanning tool on its app this summer that will measure and remember the length, width and other dimensions of customers’ feet after they point a smartphone camera to their toes. The app will then tell shoppers what size to buy each of its shoes in, which Nike hopes will cut down on costly online returns as it seeks to sell more of its goods through its websites and apps. 

 

But Nike will also get something it has never had before: a flood of data on the feet of regular people, a potential goldmine for the shoemaker, which says it will use the information to improve the design of its shoes. Nike mainly relies on the feet of star athletes to build its kicks.

“Nikes will become better and better fitting shoes for you and everyone else,” said Michael Martin, who oversees Nike’s websites and apps. 

 

Nike won’t sell or share the data to other companies, Martin says. And he says shoppers don’t have to save the foot scans to their Nike accounts. But if they do, they’ll only have to scan their feet once and Nike’s apps, websites and stores will know their dimensions every time they need to buy sneakers. Workers at Nike stores will also be equipped with iPods to do the scanning, replacing those metal sizing contraptions. 

The challenging part for Nike is convincing people they need to measure their feet in the first place. Most think they already know what their shoe size is, says Brad Eckhart, who was an executive at shoe store chain Finish Line and is now a principal at retail consultancy Columbus Consulting, 

 

But Nike says it gets half a million complaints a year from customers related to fit and sizing. And it admits what many shoppers have already suspected: Each of its shoe styles fit differently, even if they are in the same size. A leather sneaker may be tighter and require a bigger size. Knit ones may be more forgiving. And shoelaces can throw everything off.

 

Shoe size is “effectively a lie,” said Martin. “And it’s a lie that we’ve perpetuated.”

Matt Powell, a sports industry analyst at NPD Group Inc., says the tool might be most valuable for people who want to run or play basketball in their sneakers, since the wrong fit can cause injury. But Powell says most people buy sneakers just to walk around in.

Still, finding the right size is a problem for shoppers: “There really is no industry standard for what is a size 10,” Powell said. 
…

U.S. communications regulators are rejecting a Chinese telecom company’s application to provide service in the U.S. due to national-security risks amid an escalation in tensions between the two countries.

 

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted unanimously, 5-0 across party lines, to reject China Mobile International USA Inc.’s long-ago filed application. The Commerce Department had recommended that denial last year.

 

The company, which the FCC says is ultimately owned by the Chinese government, applied in 2011 to provide international phone service in the U.S.

 

The Trump administration has been pushing against China in several ways. It has been pressuring allies to reject Chinese telecom equipment for their networks, citing security risks from Chinese telecom giant Huawei.

 

The U.S. and China are also in the middle of high-stakes trade talks.

 

 
…

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes says it’s time to break up the social media behemoth.

He says in a New York Times opinion piece that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has allowed a relentless focus on growth to crush competitors and “sacrifice security and civility for clicks.”

Hughes says Facebook is a monopoly and should be forced to spin off WhatsApp and Instagram. He says future acquisitions should be banned for several years

Hughes roomed with Zuckerberg at Harvard and left Facebook in 2007 to campaign for Barack Obama.

He says he liquidated his Facebook shares in 2012, the year he became publisher of The New Republic.

Last year, Hughes published a book advocating a universal basic income. In 2017, Forbes put his net worth at more than $400 million.
…

Earlier this month, officials from a group of 30 countries agreed to take a more coordinated approach to secure the next generation of fast mobile communication networks, known as 5G. The United States and others worry that technology companies located in countries with governments like China’s could be subject to state influence, making the networks insecure. Elizabeth Lee reports on the security concerns over 5G, and what it means to consumers.
…

A senior U.S. State Department official said there is no need for President Donald Trump to sign an executive order to explicitly ban Chinese telecommunication company Huawei from taking part in the buildout of the U.S. 5G networks.

The four largest U.S. telecom carriers — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint — have agreed not to use Huawei in any part of their 5G networks, said Ambassador Robert Strayer, deputy assistant secretary of state for cyber and international communications and information policy.

Strayer spoke with VOA about U.S. 5G policy and security concerns over Huawei. He also said the United States will only use trusted vendors, including South Korea’s Samsung, Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia, in the buildout of the U.S. 5G networks.

 

WATCH: Is 5G Chinese Technology a Threat to US National Security?

​The following is an edited excerpt of the interview:

VOA: VOA broadcasts to many countries in Africa and Asia. These are places eager to develop their economies with high-tech communications. What does the U.S. say to those countries, which are eager for 5G and see the most attractive equipment and financing packages for those networks are all Chinese? If countries resist the Huawei offer, how many years back does that set their 5G networks? What would be the alternatives?

Deputy Assistant Secretary Robert Strayer: All around the world, we’re all very excited to see the promise of 5G technology. It’s going to empower things like telemedicine, autonomous vehicles, autonomous manufacturing, and including autonomous transportation networks in general.

So it’s going to be very important that network be incredibly secure because of all the critical infrastructure that’s going to ride on top of it. We know that there are a number of vendors besides Chinese technology vendors that are providing the equipment, the underlying infrastructure for 5G networks.

Those include Samsung in South Korea, Ericsson in Sweden and Nokia in Finland. So we believe those are trusted vendors.

We have grave concerns about the Chinese vendors because they can be compelled by the National Intelligence Law in China as well as other laws in China to take actions that would not be in the interests of the citizens of other countries around the world. Those networks could be disrupted or their data could be taken and be used for purposes that would not be consistent with fundamental human rights in those countries.

VOA: But it’s going to be a difficult choice. China is offering a great deal, in some cases 0% interest loans, 20-year payment plans, and what are the alternative plans like? Is there an analogy that you have that can show how turning down that kind of offer for something like 5G is actually in their long-term interest?

Strayer: We think that there should be commercially reasonable terms applied to financing deals. There’s obviously private financing available from telecom companies, but there are also a number of multinational, multilateral development banks providing potential sources of financing for infrastructure deals around the world.

We don’t think that countries need to adhere to, be left with only the predatory lending terms that are often offered by the Chinese Development Bank and other financing mechanisms that the Chinese companies are offering. Zero percent interest for 20 years is not commercially reasonable. It comes with huge strings attached. In fact, many of these things aren’t even transparent enough for countries to know what they’re signing up to.

We’re encouraging countries to think carefully about how they will move into 5G, make sure that they’re applying and signing up to financing terms that are commercially reasonable and ones that they can pay back in the long term.

We know of stories, of course, of ports being used as collateral in some of these financing deals, so countries could lose access to their very critical infrastructure under the terms of some of these deals. So we think that while 5G has huge promise and we should move quickly to it, we’re not in any way slowing ourselves down by going with vendors that are more trustworthy, and under financing conditions that are probably concessionary but are not at the level of some of these deals that are in no way reasonable in any type of commercial sense.

VOA: If Washington is asking other countries to ban Huawei from their 5G networks, why hasn’t the U.S. done so? I mean, the president has not signed an executive order on a comprehensive ban on Huawei, not just in the government, but in the private sector as well. Is the U.S. credibility at stake? How certain are you that the U.S. will ban Huawei equipment from its 5G network?

Strayer: So in our view, we don’t need to have a legal mechanism to ban Huawei in our private sector networks. The four largest U.S. telecom carriers have already agreed that they will not use Huawei or ZTE in any part of their 5G networks and they’re not using it in their 4G networks. So we don’t think that we need a legal tool to force them to do so. In addition, last year in the National Defense Law that was enacted at the end of the year, the government was prohibited — our U.S. government is prohibited from using these high-risk vendors.

VOA: Chinese Vice Premier Liu He is coming to Washington this week for the latest round of trade negotiation with the U.S. There are allegations against Huawei for stealing U.S. intellectual property. How should Huawei and 5G be discussed in the bilateral trade talks? Could they be hurdles for the two nations to reach a deal?

Strayer: I just want to be very clear that everything we’re talking about with countries around the world is about a national security threat that we see facing now, and that we think could have significant economic implications for them as well.

We are not talking about this in the context of trade. And I would just mention, too, that the concerns we have about Huawei that are well-documented are related to corruption, related to the theft of intellectual property, and related to defying sanctions, and using basically money-laundering schemes, have raised great concern about that company itself, but they’re not part of our trade discussions.

VOA: Is the U.S. lagging China in developing 5G infrastructure?

Strayer: No. We think we’re leading the world. By the end of this year, we’ll have 90 trials rolled out across the United States. We’ve already seen them being rolled out by Verizon and AT&T. We think we are actually leading the world in this field and we’re using only vendors from those three countries I mentioned that are trusted vendors, not the ones in China.

VOA: Thank you for talking to VOA.

Strayer: Thank you.
…

U.S. law enforcement officials announced on Wednesday the indictment of two Israeli operators of a website that referred hundreds of thousands of users to underground internet marketplaces to purchase drugs, weapons and other illegal products.  

 

Tal Prihar, 37, an Israeli citizen living in Brazil, and Michael Phan, 34, who lives in Israel, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Western Pennsylvania with money laundering in connection with operating DeepDotWeb, a website that served as a gateway to the Darkweb, the internet’s dark underbelly where users can purchase and exchange illegal products.

 

Prihar was arrested by French authorities in Paris Monday and faces likely extradition to the U.S. Phan was arrested on Monday in Israel and faces charges there.  Prosecutors declined to say whether they’ll seek Phan’s extradition to the U.S.

 

The two Israeli nationals operated DeepDotWeb from 2013 to late last month when it was taken down by the FBI, collecting more than $15 million in commissions for directing users to various marketplaces such as the now defunct AlphaBay.

 

The users, in turn, purchases hundreds of millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs, firearms, malicious software, hacking tools, and stolen financial information and credit cards, according to prosecutors.

 

About 24 percent of all orders on AlphaBay, which was one of the largest Darkweb marketplaces before it was seized by the FBI in 2017, were associated with an account created through a referral link provided by DeepDotWeb.

 

Scott W. Brady, the U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, said DeepDotWeb’s takedown represents a major blow to the Darknet economy.

 

“This is the single most significant law enforcement disruption of the Darknet to date,” Brady said at a press conference in Pittsburgh.  “While there have been successful prosecutions of various Darknet marketplaces, this prosecution is the first to attack the infrastructure supporting the Darknet itself.”

 

Darknet marketplaces operate on Tor, a computer network that facilitates anonymous communication and transactions over the internet.   Tor marketplaces can’t be found via a Google search. To access a marketplace, a user needs the site’s exact .onion url, a top level domain suffix designating an anonymous service reachable via the Tor network.

 

To address this problem, DeepDotWeb provided pages of hyperlinks to various marketplaces such as AlphaBay Market and Hansa Market, allowing users to navigate the marketplaces and collecting a commission each time a user made a purchase.

 
…

Google’s self-driving car spinoff, Waymo, is teaming up with Lyft in Arizona to attempt to lure passengers away from ride-hailing market leader Uber.

The alliance announced Tuesday will allow anyone with the Lyft app in the Phoenix area to summon one of the 10 self-driving Waymo cars that will join the ride-hailing service by end of September.

Waymo’s robotic vehicles will still have a human behind the wheel to take control in case something goes awry with the technology. But their use in Lyft’s service could make more people feel comfortable about riding in self-driving cars.

Self-driving to a profit

Both Lyft and Uber consider self-driving cars to be one of the keys to turning a profit, something neither company has done so far. Meanwhile, Waymo has been slowly expanding its own ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area that so far has been confined to passengers who previously participated in free tests of its self-driving technology.

“We’re committed to continuously improving our customer experience, and our partnership with Lyft will also give our teams the opportunity to collect valuable feedback,” Waymo CEO John Krafcik wrote in a blog post.

Lyft President John Zimmer described the Waymo partnership as “phenomenal” in a Tuesday conference call. Uber didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The new threat to Uber is emerging as the San Francisco company pursues an initial public offering of stock that could raise $9 billion when the deal is completed later this week. Lyft raked in more than $2 billion in its own IPO in March, only to see its stock fall nearly 20% below its offering price amid concerns about its ability to make money, a challenge magnified by another loss of $1.1 billion during the first three months of the year.

Waymo invests in both

Waymo’s corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., is in line to be among the biggest winners in Uber’s IPO just as it was in the Lyft IPO. Alphabet owns a 5% stake in Uber that will be worth as much as $3.6 billion if Uber realizes its goal of selling its stock for as much as $50 per share. It also holds a 5% stake in Lyft that is currently worth $761 million.

Despite their financial ties, Waymo and Uber have had an acrimonious relationship since becoming entangled in a thorny case of alleged high-tech theft.

Waymo accused Uber of orchestrating a scheme to steal some of its autonomous driving technology. That came after Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick began to suspect Waymo was planning to use its self-driving cars in a rival ride-hailing service.

The two sides settled that dispute last year in a deal that required Uber to give Alphabet another bundle of stock that was worth $245 million at the time the truce was reached.

The agreement also requires Uber to submit to reviews by a software expert to ensure it isn’t misusing any of Waymo’s technology in its effort to build its own self-driving cars, a process that recently uncovered some potentially “problematic” issues, according to discloses made as part of Uber’s IPO. Uber warned the problems could require it to pay a licensing fee to Waymo or delay its efforts to introduce self-driving cars in its service.
…

Imagine a robot that can learn to walk by itself in about five minutes. Researchers at the University of Southern California have developed a robotic leg that can do just that with potential applications that range from helping in disaster areas to outer space. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
…

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is expected to showcase much-anticipated updates to the company’s hardware lines and artificial intelligence.

Google will also likely address privacy updates as concerns about data sharing continue to plague the tech industry. Facebook dedicated much of its own conference last week to addressing privacy.

Rumors suggest that Google may unveil a mid-range Pixel phone as a cheaper option to the flagship model currently on sale for $800.

Pichai has a keynote scheduled Tuesday at the company’s annual I/O conference for software developers in Mountain View, California.

Google says more than 7,000 developers will attend. The conference is focused on updates for the computer engineers that build apps and services on top of Google technology. I/O has also become a stage to announce new consumer products.
…

When Google launched its now distinctive digital assistant in 2016, it was already in danger of being an also-ran.

At the time, Amazon had been selling its Echo smart speaker, powered by its Alexa voice assistant, for more than a year. Apple’s Siri was already five years old and familiar to most iPhone users. Google’s main entry in the field up to that point was Google Now, a phone-bound app that took voice commands but didn’t answer back.

Now the Google Assistant – known primarily as the voice of the Google Home smart speaker – is increasingly central to Google’s new products. And even though it remains commercially overshadowed by Alexa, it keeps pushing the boundaries of what artificial intelligence can accomplish in everyday settings.

For instance, Google last year announced an Assistant service called Duplex, which it said can actually call up restaurants and make reservations for you. Duplex isn’t yet widely available yet outside of Google’s own Pixel phones in the U.S. Alexa and Siri so far offer nothing similar.

Google is expected to announce updates and expansions to its AI Assistant at its annual developer conference Tuesday.

Although voice assistants have spread across smartphones and into cars and offices, they’re currently most commonly found in the home, where people tend to use them with smart speakers for simple activities such as playing music, setting timers and checking the weather. Amazon’s Echo devices maintain a strong lead in the market, according to eMarketer ; the firm estimates that 63% of all U.S. smart speaker users will talk to an Amazon device this year, compared to 31% that will use Google. Apple’s HomePod is a mere afterthought, lumped in the “other” category which has a combined 12%.

More broadly, though, the competition is much more difficult to assess. Google claims the Assistant is now available across more than a billion devices, although many of those are smartphones whose owners may never have uttered the Assistant’s wake-up phrase, “OK Google.”

Google Assistant doesn’t record users commands by default – differing from Alexa – but recording must be turned on to access some of Assistant’s features, including a popular one that allows it to recognize different users by voice.

​Amazon and Google may one-up each other on different metrics, but the real measurement is how well they’ve achieved those own goal, said Gartner analyst Werner Goertz.

Amazon’s deep ties in shopping make Alexa the go-to assistant for adding items to your grocery list or putting in a quick re-order of dish soap. Google’s decades of deep search technology make it the leader in looking up or answering questions you might have and personalizing its responses based on what else Google knows about you from your previous searches, your movements or your web browsing.

All that, of course, reinforces Google’s key advertising business, which is based on showing you ads targeted to your interests.

At first, the Assistant on Home mostly just acted as a vocal search engine; it could also carry out a few additional tasks like starting your Spotify playlists. Over time, however, it has added dozens of languages, partnered with more than 1,500 smart home companies to control lights, locks and TVs and learned to identify members of any given household by voice.

It’s also expanded the number of apps and other companies it works with and moved into Google Maps as a way to send text messages while driving.

Both Google and Amazon plan further expansions. Last year, Amazon unveiled a number of home gadgets with Alexa built in, including a “smart” microwave. At the CES gadget show this year, it showed off a phone-connected device that brings Alexa to cars. 

Google countered with updates to its expanding Android Auto system, which got Assistant capability last year.

As Assistant and Alexa get smarter, faster and more personalized, analysts expect their reach to become broader and more ubiquitous. The speakers, said eMarketer analyst Victoria Petrock, are “getting people used to talking to their devices.” Eventually, she says, if you can speak to your microwave and TV and lights directly, you won’t need the speakers – except maybe to play music.

In these emerging areas Google is hoping to outflank rivals with its strong inroads with Android smartphones and cars. But it faces competition in many of these areas not just from Amazon, but also Apple and Microsoft.

Google I/O kicks off at 10 a.m. Tuesday in Mountain View, California. The company is expected to announce a less expensive Pixel phone and updates to its smart home devices.
…

Alphabet’s Google is set to roll out a dashboard-like function in its Chrome browser to offer users more control in fending off tracking cookies, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Cookies are small text files that follow internet users and are used by advertisers to target consumers on the specific interests they have displayed while browsing.

While Google’s new tools are not expected to significantly curtail its ability to collect data, it would help the company press its sizable advantage over online-advertising rivals, the newspaper said.

Google’s 3 billion users help make it the world’s largest seller of internet ads, capturing nearly a third of all revenue, ahead of rival Facebook’s 20%, according to research firm eMarketer.

Total digital ad spending in the United States will grow 19%  to nearly $130 billion in 2019, according to eMarketer.

Google has been working on the cookies plan for at least six years, in stops and starts, but accelerated the work after news broke last year that personal data of Facebook users was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

The company is mostly targeting cookies installed by profit-seeking third parties, separate from the owner of the website a user is actively visiting, the Journal said.

Apple in 2017 stopped majority of tracking cookies on its Safari browser by default and Mozilla’s Firefox did the same a year later.

Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.
…

Microsoft announced an ambitious effort it says will make voting secure, verifiable and subject to reliable audits. Two of the three top U.S elections vendors have expressed interest in potentially incorporating the open-source software into their proprietary voting systems.

 

The software kit is being developed with Galois, an Oregon-based company separately creating a secure voting system prototype under contract with the Pentagon’s advanced research agency, DARPA.

 

Dubbed “ElectionGuard,” the Microsoft kit will be available this summer, the company says, with early prototypes ready to pilot for next year’s general elections. CEO Satya Nadella announced the initiative Monday at a developer’s conference in Seattle.

 

Nadella said the project’s software, provided free of charge as part of Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program, would help “modernize all of the election infrastructure everywhere in the world.” Microsoft also announced a cut-rate Office 365 application suite for political parties and campaigns for what it charges nonprofits. Both Microsoft and Google provide anti-phishing email support for campaigns.

 

Three little-known U.S. companies control about 90 percent of the market for election equipment, but have long faced criticism for poor security, antiquated technology and insufficient transparency around their proprietary, black-box voting systems. Open-source software is inherently more secure because the underlying code is easily scrutinized by outside security experts.

 

Two of the leading vendors, Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Nebraska, and Hart InterCivic of Austin, Texas, both expressed interest in partnering with Microsoft for ElectionGuard. A spokeswoman for a third vendor, Dominion Voting Systems of Denver, said the company looks forward to “learning more” about the initiative.

 

Anyone with an existing voting system or developing a new one will be able to incorporate the ElectionGuard development kit — at the state or local level in the U.S. or national level for jurisdictions abroad.

 

“It can be used with a ballot-marking device. It can be used with an optical scanner, on hand-marked paper ballots,” said Josh Benaloh, a senior cryptographer at Microsoft Research and key contributor to the ElectionGuard project.

 

Benaloh helped produce a National Academies of Science report last year that called for an urgent overhaul of the rickety U.S. election system, which faced serious threats from Russian hackers who in 2016 attempted to infiltrate voting administration systems in several states.

 

That report called for all U.S. elections to be held on human-readable paper ballots by 2020. It also advocated a specific form of routine post-election audits intended to ensure that votes are accurately counted. While U.S. officials say there is no evidence of hackers tampering with election results, experts say systems used by millions of U.S. voters remain susceptible to tampering.

 

One election official who has been in informal conversations with the ElectionGuard project leaders is Dean Logan, who runs elections for Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, and is building an open-source voting system for it.

 

Election integrity activist Susan Greenhalgh of the National Election Defense Coalition said she hoped the project would encourage innovative thinking at the level that elections are actually managed.

 

ElectionGuard aims to provide “end-to-end” verification of voting in two ways, Benaloh said. First, it lets voters confirm that their votes are accurately recorded.

 

Second, the unique coded tracker it produces registers an encrypted version of the vote that keeps the ballot choice itself secret while ensuring votes are accurately counted. Outsiders such as election watchdog groups, political parties, journalists and voters themselves can verify online that votes were properly counted without being altered.

 

The system would also allow for reliable post-election audits and recounts. Microsoft executives say they also plan to build a prototype voting system for reference.

 

A spinoff of Galois called Free & Fair developed the sophisticated post-election audits , known as “risk-limiting,” for Colorado, which was the first U.S. state to require the audits recommended in the National Academies of Sciences report.

 

ElectionGuard is not designed to work with internet voting schemes — which experts consider too easily hackable — and does not currently work with vote-by-mail systems.

 

ES&S told The Associated Press via email that it was excited to partner with Microsoft and “still exploring the potentials” for incorporated the software kit its voting systems.

 

Hart InterCivic, the No. 3 vendor, said it planned a pilot project with Microsoft to “incorporate ElectionGuard functionality as an additional feature” layered over its core platform.

 

A spokeswoman for Dominion, the No. 2 vendor, said “We are very interested in learning more about the initiative and being able to review the various prototypes that are being planned, along with hearing more about other federally-supported efforts in the elections space.”

 

Edgardo Cortes, a former Virginia elections commissioner now with New York University’s Brennan Center, welcomed additional private sector support for election systems.

 

“I think it’ll take a while to catch on and see how beneficial (ElectionGuard) ends up being,” he said. “But I think it certainly does have a great deal of potential.”

 

Columbia University will be partnering with Microsoft to audit the pilots.
…