YCLOAK

Intel topped a list issued on Monday ranking how well technology companies combat the risk of forced labor in their supply chains, overtaking HP and Apple.

Most of the top 40 global technology companies assessed in the study by KnowTheChain, an online resource for business, had made progress since the last report was published in 2016. But the study found there was still room for improvement.

“The sector needs to advance their efforts further down the supply chain in order to truly protect vulnerable workers,” said Kilian Moote, project director of KnowTheChain, in a statement.

Intel, HP and Apple scored the highest on the list, which looked at factors including purchasing practices, monitoring and auditing processes. China-based BOE Technology Group and Taiwan’s Largan Precision came bottom.

Workers who make the components used by technology companies are often migrants vulnerable to exploitative working conditions, the report said. 

About 25 million people globally were estimated to be trapped in forced labor in 2016, according to the International Labor Organization and rights group Walk Free Foundation.

Laborers in technology companies’ supply chains are sometimes charged high recruitment fees to get jobs, trapped in debt servitude, or deprived of their passports or other documents, the report said.

It highlighted a failure to give workers a voice through grievance mechanisms and tackle exploitative recruiting practices as the main areas of concern across the sector.

In recent years modern slavery has increasingly come under the global spotlight, putting ever greater regulatory and consumer pressure on firms to ensure their supply chains are free of forced labor, child labor and other forms of slavery.

From cosmetics and clothes to shrimp and smartphones, supply chains are often complex with multiple layers across various countries — whether in sourcing the raw materials or creating the final product — making it hard to identify exploitation.

Overall, large technology companies fared better than smaller ones, suggesting a strong link between size and capacity to take action, the report said. Amazon, which ranked 20th, was a notable exception, it said.

“Top-ranking brands … are listening to workers in their supply chains and weeding out unscrupulous recruitment processes,” Phil Bloomer, head of the Business & Human Rights Resource Center, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A spokesman for Amazon said the report drew from old and incomplete information and failed to take into account recently launched anti-slavery commitments and initiatives.

HP said it regularly assessed its supply chain to identify and address any concerns and risks of exploitation.

“We strive to ensure that workers in our supply chain have fair treatment, safe working conditions, and freely chosen employment,” said Annukka Dickens, HP’s director for human rights and supply chain responsibility.

Intel, Apple, BOE Technology and Largan Precision did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Google will invest $550 million in Chinese e-commerce powerhouse JD.com, part of the U.S. internet giant’s efforts to expand its presence in fast-growing Asian markets and battle rivals including Amazon.com.

The two companies described the investment announced on Monday as one piece of a broader partnership that will include the promotion of JD.com products on Google’s shopping service.

This could help JD.com expand beyond its base in China and Southeast Asia and establish a meaningful presence in U.S. and European markets.

JD.com’s U.S.-listed shares rose 1.2 percent to $44.10 on the NASDAQ on Monday.

Company officials said the agreement initially would not involve any major new Google initiatives in China, where the company’s main services are blocked over its refusal to censor search results in line with local laws.

JD.com’s investors include Chinese social media powerhouse Tencent Holdings, the arch-rival of Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding, and Walmart.

The partnership not only lets Google bolster its retail ambitions in China but also allows it to further tighten its relationship with Walmart. Together, the two companies could challenge the dominance of Amazon and Alibaba in key markets around the world, analysts said.

In the past year, Google has been partnered with Walmart on multiple fronts. In August 2017, the two companies joined forces to offer hundreds of thousands of Walmart items on Google’s voice-controlled Google Assistant platform to counter the dominance of Amazon in the voice shopping market.

In March, Reuters reported a new program where Google was teaming up with retailers like Walmart, allowing them to list their products on Google Search, as well as on the Google Express shopping service to better compete with Amazon.

Google is also reportedly pursuing picking up a stake in India’s Flipkart, where Walmart picked up a 77 percent stake for $16 billion.

Google declined to comment on the rumored Flipkart deal.

Stepping Up Investments in ASIA

Google is stepping up its investments across Asia, where a rapidly growing middle class and a lack of infrastructure in retail, finance and other areas have made it a battleground for U.S. and Chinese internet heavyweights. Google recently took a stake in Indonesian ride-hailing firm Go-Jek.

The JD.com investment is being made by the operating unit of Google rather than one of parent company Alphabet’s investment vehicles.

Google will get 27.1 million newly issued JD.com Class A ordinary shares as part of the deal. This will give them less than a 1 percent stake in JD, a spokesman for JD said.

For JD.com, the Google deal shows its determination to build a set of global alliances as it seeks to counter Alibaba, which has been more focused on forging domestic retail tie-ups.

Japan’s SoftBank Group, which is making big internet investments around the globe, is a major investor in Alibaba.

Morningstar analyst Chelsey Tam said the investment will help JD.com expand into developed markets such as the United States and Europe, where it has lesser exposure compared to Google.

“This partnership with Google opens up a broad range of possibilities to offer a superior retail experience to consumers throughout the world,” said Jianwen Liao, JD.com’s chief strategy officer, in a statement.

Company officials said the deal would marry Google’s market reach and strength in analytics with JD.com’s expertise in logistics and inventory management.

The investment may give Google access to more consumer data, which can be used to boost usage of Google Shopping, said Morningstar analyst Ali Mogharabi.
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Apple is trying to drag the U.S.’s antiquated system for handling 911 calls into the 21st century.

 

If it lives up to Apple’s promise, the next iPhone operating system coming out in September will automatically deliver quicker and more reliable information pinpointing the location of 911 calls to about 6,300 emergency response centers in the U.S.

 

Apple is trying to solve a problem caused by the technological mismatch between a system built for landlines 50 years ago and today’s increasingly sophisticated smartphones that make most emergency calls in the U.S.

 

The analog system often struggles to decipher the precise location of calls coming from digital devices, resulting in emergency responders sometimes being sent a mile or more from people pleading for help.

 
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It’s happened to many of us. You fumble for your camera to record a precious moment but you’re a little too late. A delayed touch of the button, an opportunity missed forever. But now entrepreneurs in the Netherlands are hoping to change that dynamic with a new camera that can capture events even before you hit the record button. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Federal prosecutors have indicted Elizabeth Holmes on criminal fraud charges for allegedly defrauding investors, doctors and the public as the head of the once-heralded blood-testing startup Theranos. Federal prosecutors also brought charges against the company’s former second-in-command.

Holmes, who was once considered a wunderkind of Silicon Valley, and her former Chief Operating Officer Ramesh Balwani, are charged with two counts conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said late Friday. If convicted, they could face prison sentences that would keep them behind bars for the rest of their lives, and total fines of $2.75 million each.

Technology a fraud

Prosecutors allege that Holmes and Balwani deliberately misled investors, policymakers and the public about the accuracy of Theranos’ blood-testing technologies. Holmes, 34, founded Theranos in Palo Alto, California, in 2003, pitching its technology as a cheaper way to run dozens of blood tests. Once considered the nation’s youngest female billionaire, Holmes said she was inspired to start the company in response to her fear of needles.

But an investigation by The Wall Street Journal two years ago found that Theranos’ technology was a fraud, and that the company was using routine blood-testing equipment for the vast majority of its tests. The story raised concerns about the accuracy of Theranos’ blood testing technology, which put patients at risk of having conditions either misdiagnosed or ignored.

“CEO Elizabeth Holmes and COO Sunny Balwani not only defrauded investors, but also consumers who trusted and relied upon their allegedly-revolutionary blood-testing technology,” Acting U.S. Attorney Alex Tse said in a statement.

SEC charges

The Securities and Exchange Commission brought civil fraud charges against Holmes and Balwani three months ago. Holmes settled with the SEC, agreeing to pay $500,000 in fines and penalties. Balwani, 53, is fighting the charges.

As the charges were announced Friday, Theranos said Holmes would step down as CEO of the company and its general counsel, David Taylor, would become the company’s next CEO. Theranos laid off most of its staff earlier this year and is widely expected to file for bankruptcy. Holmes remains the company’s chairman.

The company did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Friday’s indictments.
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Apple Inc on Friday announced a multiyear deal with Oprah Winfrey to create original programming, a coup in the battle for A-list talent and projects in the booming digital entertainment market.

“Together, Winfrey and Apple will create original programs that embrace her incomparable ability to connect with audiences around the world,” Apple said in a statement.

Apple gave no details of the type of programming that Winfrey would create, the value of the deal, or when it might be released. Winfrey had no immediate comment.

Winfrey, 64, an influential movie and TV producer who also publishes a magazine, is expected to appear on screen, a source familiar with the deal said.

Apple has not said how it plans to distribute its programming, to which it has committed an initial $1 billion. The partnership is the biggest original content deal struck by Apple so far as it aims to compete with Netflix Inc,

Amazon.com Inc and Time Warner Inc’s HBO. Netflix, which has said it will spend up to $8 billion on programming this year, in May struck a multiyear deal with former U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle to produce films, documentaries and other content.

Netflix, the world’s leading streaming entertainment provider, has also lured prolific television producers Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes away from broadcast television.

Amazon said in November it had bought the global television rights to “The Lord of the Rings” and would produce a multi-season series that explores new storylines preceding author J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring.” Earlier this week, Amazon also announced a development deal with

Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman’s production company for movies and television.

For its part, Apple in November ordered two seasons of a dramatic series with Hollywood stars Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, looking at the lives of people working on a morning television show.

Other projects Apple has announced include a remake of Steven Spielberg’s 1980s science fiction anthology series “Amazing Stories,” based on Isaac Asimov’s influential “Foundation” science fiction novels, and a drama from “La La Land” movie director Damian Chazelle.

Under the deal with Winfrey, she will remain chief executive of cable channel OWN, which she launched in 2011 in partnership with Discovery Inc. Winfrey in December extended her contract with OWN through 2025, OWN and Apple said.

Under her contract with OWN, Winfrey can appear on camera on other platforms on a limited basis.

Known in the United States by millions on a first-name basis, Winfrey rose to fame as the host of her own television talk show, using it to build a media empire that spans magazine publishing, movie and television production, cable TV and satellite radio.

Born into poverty, she is one of the world’s wealthiest women and has been nominated for two Academy Awards.

A rousing speech by Winfrey at the Golden Globes awards ceremony in January triggered an online campaign to persuade her to run for U.S. president in 2020.

She dismissed the notion, telling InStyle magazine in an interview, “It’s not something that interests me.”
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Judging by the size of the crowd and the number of exhibitors at the fourth annual Consumer Electronics Show Asia, which opened Wednesday in Shanghai, China is well on its way toward catching up with the United States in consumer technology. A mirror image of the older and bigger sister show in Las Vegas, CES Asia 2018 presents the latest hardware and software for everyone. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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Apple Inc said Wednesday it will change its iPhone settings to undercut the most popular means for law enforcement to break into the devices.

The company told Reuters it was aiming to protect customers in countries where police seize phones at will and all users from the risk that the attack technique will leak to spies and criminals.

The privacy standard-bearer of the tech industry said it will change the default settings in the iPhone operating system to cut off communication through the USB port when the phone has not been unlocked in the past hour. That port is how machines made by forensic companies GrayShift, Cellebrite and others connect and get around the security provisions that limit how many password guesses can be made before the device freezes them out or erases data.

These companies have marketed their machines to law enforcement in multiple countries this year, offering the machines themselves for thousands of dollars but also per-phone pricing as low as $50.

Apple representatives said the change in settings will protect customers in countries where law enforcement seizes and tries to crack phones with fewer legal restrictions than under U.S. law. They also noted that criminals, spies and unscrupulous people often can use the same techniques to extract sensitive information from a phone. Some of the methods most prized by intelligence agencies have been leaked on the internet.

“We’re constantly strengthening the security protections in every Apple product to help customers defend against hackers, identity thieves and intrusions into their personal data,” Apple said in a prepared statement. “We have the greatest respect for law enforcement, and we don’t design our security improvements to frustrate their efforts to do their jobs.”

The switch had been documented in beta versions of iOS 11.4.1 and iOS12, and Apple told Reuters it will be made permanent in a forthcoming general release.

Apple said that after it learned of techniques being used against iPhones, it reviewed the operating system code and made a number of improvements to the security. It also decided to simply alter the setting, a cruder way of preventing most of the potential access by unfriendly parties.

Time limit

With the new settings, police or hackers will typically have an hour or less to get a phone to a cracking machine. In practical terms, that could cut access by as much as 90 percent, security researchers estimate.

In theory, the change could also spur sales of cracking devices, as law enforcement looks to get more forensic machines closer to where seizures occur.

Either way, researchers and police vendors will find new ways to break into phones, and Apple will then look to patch those vulnerabilities.

The latest step could draw criticism from American police departments, the FBI, and perhaps the U.S. Justice Department, where officials have recently renewed an on-again, off-again campaign for legislation or other extraordinary means of forcing technology companies to maintain access to their users’ communications.

Apple has been the most prominent opponent of those demands.

In 2016, it went to court to fight an order that it break into an iPhone 5c used by a terrorist killer in San Bernardino.
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Twitter announced Wednesday it would be updating its services to make it easier for users to find content about major events such as natural disasters and the FIFA World Cup that begins on Thursday.

“We’re keeping you informed about what matters by showing the tweets, conversations and perspectives around topics you care about,” Keith Coleman, product vice president, said in a blog post.  “Our goal is to make following what’s happening as easy as following an account.”

Users will receive notifications about breaking news stories based on their personal interests — the accounts they follow or what they tweet about, Coleman explained. These notifications will become available in the coming weeks to users in the United States. When clicked, users will be taken to a specialized timeline about the topic.

“If someone uses Twitter all the time, they’ll have a perfectly curated timeline,” Twitter spokesperson Liz Kelley told VOA. “But if you don’t have those things in place, there’s maybe a better way for us to present that.”

The app will also link to related topics at the top of its search results. Another update includes a change in the format of the “Moments” tab, which will now be accessed by scrolling vertically rather than horizontally. The tab, which hosts collections of tweets about major events, is curated by a global team, Kelley said, and is available in five languages across 16 different countries.

Coleman also announced a dedicated page for the World Cup, which will be available in 10 languages and have individualized timelines for each game of the 32-team tournament. Kelley told VOA that users should be able to see every goal of the tournament through the app.

“Our long-term strategy is making it easier for people to see what’s happening on Twitter,” Kelley said. “Really, we’re organizing and presenting content in a way that’s easier to discover and consume.”
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By mixing dance with the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, an all-girl public school in New York encourages its students to go into the Stem fields. According to the U.S. National Science Foundation, while women make up half of the college-educated workforce, less that 30 percent of science and engineering jobs are filled by women. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Vietnamese lawmakers have approved a new cybersecurity law that human rights activists say will stifle freedom of speech.

The law will require online content providers such as Google and Facebook to remove content deemed offensive by authorities within 24 hours, and store the personal data of its customers on servers based in Vietnam, and to open offices in the Communist-run country.

Clare Agar, Amnesty International’s director of global operations, issued a statement denouncing Tuesday’s passage of the law. Agar said “the online space was a relative refuge” within Vietnam’s “deeply repressive climate” where people could go to share ideas and opinions “with less fear of censure by the authorities.”

The new law now means “there is no safe place left,” Agar said.

The United States and Canada urged Vietnam to delay passage of the bill, citing concerns it could pose “obstacles to Vietnam’s cybersecurity and digital innovation future.” 

The Vietnam Digital Communication Association says the law could reduce the country’s gross domestic product by 1.7 percent, and wipe out 3.1 percent of foreign investment.

Vo Trong Viet, the head of the government’s defense and security committee, acknowledged that requiring content providers to open data centers inside Vietnam would increase their costs, but said it was necessary ensure the country’s cybersecurity.
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The Boring Company, based in California, is close to opening its first exciting venture – a 3.2 kilometer underground tunnel designed to convince Californians that traveling underground at high speed may solve their state’s ubiquitous traffic jams. It is the brainchild of Elon Musk, the U.S. billionaire who founded the electric car company Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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The Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of the United States’ net neutrality rules — which mandated internet service providers to not discriminate in their handling of internet traffic — took effect Monday, reigniting fears from internet freedom advocates of potential manipulation of consumers’ internet access.

The FCC voted in December to overturn its net neutrality rule, first put in place by the Obama administration in 2015. With its repeal, the door is now open for internet service providers to block content, slow data transmission, and create “fast lanes” for consumers who pay premiums.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a staunch critic of net neutrality, wrote Sunday that while he “support[s] a free an open internet,” the overturning of the Obama-era rule will allow the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] to “once again be able to protect Americans consistently across the internet economy.”

In 2004, then-FCC Chairman Michael Powell announced the commission’s support of what he called the “four internet freedoms,” including the freedom of consumers to access content. Since 2005, the FCC had enforced net neutrality rules in some regard, with the support of both Republican and Democratic chairmen. In 2015, the regulations were codified into law. 

“We’re actually in a brave new world where no protections for a free internet currently exist, whereas they have for the majority of the history of the internet,” Tim Karr, senior director of strategy and communications of media watchdog Free Press, told VOA on Monday. 

Karr said based on the prior actions of internet service providers, he feared we could see restrictions placed on such free internet access.

In 2007, the Associated Press reported that telecommunications giant Comcast was stifling connection to file-sharing websites such as BitTorrent. In 2011, fellow communication company Verizon blocked the download of Google Wallet, a payment app, on its mobile devices.

Verizon spokesman Rich Young told VOA that the company “strongly supports open internet rules,” and the recent FCC decision does not change the company’s support of full internet access.

Since the December FCC decision, two states — Washington and Oregon — have passed their own net neutrality laws, whereas governors of five other states — Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Montana and Vermont — have issued executive orders mandating that internet service providers for government agencies abide by net neutrality regulations.

In May, the U.S. Senate voted 52-47 to reinstate the FCC’s 2015 net neutrality rules. Every Democratic senator voted for the proposal, as did three Republicans: John Kennedy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The bill is now in the House of Representatives, where outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, has not yet announced any plans to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

Congressman Mike Doyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, filed a petition in May to force a vote on the matter. Doyle spokesperson Matt Dinkel said of the 218 signees for the petition needed to force a vote, the petition currently has 170.

“If enough representatives sign the discharge petition to bring the bill to the floor, odds are that it will pass,” Dinkel told VOA.
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Despite astonishing advances in robotics, today’s machines often struggle to accomplish what insects do routinely. So robotics researchers are taking advantage of nature’s billions of years of experience. They are learning from bees to build flying machines that can learn and navigate their environments. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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Drones guided by artificial intelligence to catch boats netting fish where they shouldn’t were among the winners of a marine protection award on Friday and could soon be deployed to fight illegal fishing, organizers said.

The award-winning project aims to help authorities hunt down illegal fishing boats using drones fitted with cameras that can monitor large swaths of water autonomously.

Illegal fishing and overfishing deplete fish stocks worldwide, causing billions of dollars in losses a year and threatening the livelihoods of rural coastal communities, according to the United Nations.

The National Geographic Society awarded the project, co-developed by Morocco-based company ATLAN Space, and two other innovations $150,000 each to implement their plans as it marked World Oceans Day on Friday.

The aircraft can cover a range of up to 700 km (435 miles) and use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to drive them in search of fishing vessels, said ATLAN Space’s founder, Badr Idrissi.

“Once (the drone) detects something, it goes there and identifies what it’s seeing,” Idrissi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Idrissi said the technology, which is to be piloted in the Seychelles later this year, was more effective than traditional sea patrols and allowed coast guards to save money and time.

From satellites tracking trawlers on the high seas to computer algorithms identifying illegal behaviors, new technologies are increasingly coming to the aid of coast guards worldwide.

AI allows the drones to check a boat’s identification number, establish whether it is fishing inside a protected area or without permit, verify whether it is known to authorities and count people on board, Idrissi said.

If something appears to be wrong, it can alert authorities.

Other winners were Marine Conservation Cambodia, which uses underwater concrete blocks to impede the use of bottom-dragged nets, and U.S.-based Pelagic Data Systems, which plans to combat illegal fishing in Thailand with tracking technologies.

“The innovations from the three winning teams have the potential to greatly increase sustainable fishing in coastal systems,” National Geographic Society’s chief scientist Jonathan Baillie said in a statement.

Much of the world’s fish stocks are overfished or fully exploited, according the U.N. food agency, and fish consumption rose above 20 kilograms per person in 2016 for the first time.

Global marine catches have declined by 1.2 million tons a year since 1996, according to The Sea Around Us, a research initiative involving the University of British Columbia and the University of Western Australia.
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North Korea’s senior leadership has been exploiting loopholes in international sanctions to obtain the U.S. technology that Pyongyang uses to conduct “destructive cyber operations,” according to a global cyberthreat intelligence company.

Recorded Future, based in Massachusetts, found that while export bans and restrictions are somewhat effective in keeping North Korea from acquiring technology for its nuclear weapons program, sanctions fail when it comes to regulating computer products from entering into North Korea.

“Because of the globalized nature of technology production and distribution, the traditional export control is not really working for [computer] technology,” said Priscilla Moriuchi, one of the authors of “North Korea Relies on U.S. Technology for Internet Operations.” “It may work quite well for ballistic missile parts or fissile material, but the system is not designed to limit technology transfer, and it’s not optimized for that.”

​Upcoming summit

In the report, Moriuchi and her co-author, Fred Wolens, call for a “globally robust unified effort to impose comprehensive sanctions” on North Korea, warning that without this Pyongyang “will be able to continue its cyberwarfare operations unabated with the aid of Western technology.”

The report was released days before North Korean leader Kim Jung Un and U.S. President Donald Trump are scheduled to meet in Singapore for a summit focused on ending the North’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for economic incentives and security guarantees.

But some consider North Korea’s cyberthreat capabilities as damaging as the threat of its nuclear weapons, Morgan Wright, a former a senior adviser in the U.S. State Department Antiterrorism Assistance Program, wrote in The Hill.

Even as advance teams prepared for the June 12 summit, North Korean cyberattacks continued, Moriuchi told Cyberscoop. On May 28, it reported the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI released a joint alert about Hidden Cobra, which is associated with North Korea’s hacking activities.

FireEye, a Silicon Valley cybersecurity company, detected cyberattacks by Lazarus, the North Korean hacking effort responsible for stealing millions of dollars from the Bangladesh Central Bank in 2016. Lazarus is also believed responsible for the 2014 Sony Picture’s hack and last year’s WannaCry ransomware attack.

​Defining ‘luxury goods’

How did U.S. technology reach North Korea? Part of the answer lies in “international inconsistencies in the definition of the term ‘luxury goods,’” according to the Recorded Future report. The U.S. “effort to restrict technology exports at the national and international level” has not reaped results because of “varied definitions by nations and [their] inconsistent implementations,” said Moriuchi, a former East Asia analyst for the National Security Agency.

While the United Nations did not include electronics in Resolution 2321, which covered exports to North Korea, when it was issued in 2016, each member nation was allowed to interpret luxury goods. The U.S. has defined luxury goods to include laptop computers, digital music players, large flat-screen televisions and electronic entertainment software. China, in particular, does not “honor the luxury goods listed by other countries when it exports to” North Korea, according to the report.

US exports OK

Another factor is that for seven years in the period spanning 2002 to 2017, “the United States allowed the exportation of ‘computer and electronic products’ to North Korea,” according to the report. The total for those seven years was more than $430,000 of legal exports, and according to Recorded Future, “at its peak in 2014, the U.S. exported $215,862 worth of computers and electronic products to North Korea.”

The Recorded Future report, citing the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), said that category includes “computers, computer peripherals (including items like printers, monitors and storage devices), communications equipment (such as wired and wireless telephones), and similar components for these products.”

Much of that equipment remains in use, according to Recorded Future, and North Korea’s ruling elites, including party, military, and intelligence leaders and their families, have long been known to use products manufactured by U.S. companies such as Apple, Microsoft and IBM to access the internet.

A third element in how the U.S. tech went astray is what the report called North Korea’s “sophisticated sanctions evasion operation, which uses intermediaries and spoofs identities online.”

As an example, the study points to North Korea’s shell company Glocom with which Pyongyang “used a network of Asian-based front companies to buy computer components from electronic resellers, and the payment was even cleared through a U.S. bank account.” The United Nations found that Glocom was tied to Pan Systems Pyongyang, whose director, Ryang Su Nyo, reports to Liaison Office 519 in the North Korean intelligence agency’s Reconnaissance General Bureau.

​Just like us

North Korea’s elites surfed and browsed just like users outside North Korea until recently when the Recorded Future researchers found “a stark change” in the elite’s usage patterns as they “migrated almost completely” from Facebook, Google and Instagram “to their Chinese equivalents — Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu,” and over the course of a few months “dramatically increased” their use of internet obfuscation services, such as virtual private networks (VPN), virtual private servers (VPS), transport layer security (TLS) and the Onion Router (Tor).

While tracking the change in activity from December 2017 to April 2018, researchers found “the overwhelming presence of American hardware and software on North Korea networks and in daily use by senior North Korean leaders.”

While U.S. exporters are responsible for understanding and adhering to export regulations, the study indicates even the implementation of robust compliance procedures were insufficient in preventing banned U.S. computer products from reaching North Korea.

U.S. export enforcement rests with the Office of Foreign Asset Control, the Office of Export Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations. The U.S. is one of the only countries that enforces its export laws outside of its national boundaries, placing federal agents in foreign countries to work with local authorities.

Widespread international sanctions were imposed beginning in 2006, when North Korea conducted its first nuclear weapons test. In response, the U.N. passed two resolutions (Resolution 1695 and 1718) banning a broad range of exports to North Korea by any U.N. member states. The U.N. subsequently expanded those sanctions through a number of resolutions that prohibit and restrict exporting items ranging from missile material to oil to North Korea.

The case of ZTE

The Recorded Future report mentions Chinese manufacturer ZTE (Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment) as a case where the implementation of export regulation failed, pointing out that the U.S. had the chance to enforce its export laws when the company was under Export Administration Regulation (EAR), a dense set of laws regulating exports.

ZTE was initially placed on the so-called Entities List for violating U.S. sanctions for selling products containing U.S. goods to Iran and North Korea in March 2016. For two years, the company and the U.S. government attempted to reach an agreement over penalties and how to verify that ZTE had stopped violating U.S. sanctions.

The Department of Commerce (DOC) ended the negotiations and imposed a denial order that banned U.S. companies from selling to ZTE for seven years.

In May, the DOC lifted the denial order, which would have put ZTE out of business, and allowed ZTE to purchase components from U.S. companies. The move came after threats of a trade war and Trump’s intervention.

Moriuchi said if the U.S. had let ZTE fail, it would have sent “a huge message to the rest of the world that there is no [company] too big to fail” and that “the U.S. government takes export control very seriously.”

In the end, “an opposite message ended up being sent with the administration’s deal with China, and that there are companies too big to fail especially if that company … has significant interest with the United States,” she said, adding the case demonstrated that “you can circumvent U.S. export control as a company and in the end, survive.”

The U.S. enforces its export laws through the DOC and regulates them through EAR, which not only restricts commercial goods and technologies from reaching hostile countries but also regulates the re-export of U.S. goods and technologies from one foreign country to another.

Until 2008, U.S. sanctions prohibiting exports to North Korea were implemented through the Trading with the Enemy Act, through which the U.S. government banned any exports to designated countries including North Korea.

Subsequently, the Obama administration issued the North Korea Sanctions Regulations and a number of Executive Orders (13551, 13570, 13687, and 13722) to further prohibit various measures, including exports of “goods, services or technology to North Korea.”

Additionally, numerous U.S. sanctions were imposed against North Korea under Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, especially in 2017 during Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles tests, which also saw the U.N. issue new sanctions.

VOA’s Christy Lee contributed to this report.
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Growing up on Mount Boutmezguida in southwest Morocco on the edge of the Sahara desert, Khadija Ghouate never imagined that the fog enveloping the nearby peaks would change her life.

For hours every day and often before sunrise, Ghouate and other women from nearby villages would walk 5 km (3 miles) to fetch water from open wells, with girls pulled out of school to help and at risk of violence on the lonely treks.

But with groundwater levels dropping due to overuse, drought and climate change, the challenge to get enough water daily was becoming harder, and almost half of people in the local area sold up and quit rural life after generations for the city.

As the future of the traditional Berber region by Mount Boutmezguida floundered, a mathematician whose family came from the area had a eureka moment gleaned from living overseas – using fog to make water.

Now Ghouate’s village is connected to the world’s largest functioning fog collection project, alleviating the need to collect water that fell mainly on women, and with state-of-the-art equipment setting an example for other projects globally.

“You always had to go to the wells, always be there, mornings, evenings,” said Ghouate, a mother-of-three, as she prepared lunch for her family, showing off the tap in her home.

“But now water has arrived in our house. I like fog a lot.

The project, running since 2015 after nine years of surveys and tests, was founded by the Moroccan non-government organization Dar Si Hmad, which works to promote and preserve local culture, history, and heritage.

It was the brainchild of mathematician and businessman Aissa Derhem whose parents were originally from Mount Boutmezguida where the slopes are covered in mist on average 130 days a year.

Derhem first came across fog collection when he learned of one of the world’s first projects – in Chile’s Atacama Desert – while he living in Canada in the 1980s studying for his PhD.

But it was not until visiting his parents’ village years later that he realized the mountainous location, situated at the edge of the Sahara and about 35 km (22 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean, was perfect for fog.

Ideal Location

Mist accumulates in coastal areas where a cold sea current, an anticyclone and a land obstacle, such as a mountain range, combine.

“When the sea water evaporates, the anticyclone … stops it from becoming rain, and when it hits the mountain, that’s where it can be gathered,” Derhem told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, looking out from the top of Mount Boutmezguida besides a small building used as a fog observatory and tool deposit.

“If we look at the planet, we see this happening in all tropical regions … In Chile and Peru in Latin America. The Kalahari desert in Africa. In Western Australia. Around the Thar desert in India and in California,” he listed as examples.

Developed in South America in the 1980s, fog collection projects have since spread globally to countries including Guatemala, Ghana, Eritrea, Nepal and the United States.

In Morocco, Dar Si Hmad has built a system of nets stretching about 870 square metres – about 4.5 tennis courts.

These nets are hung between two poles and when wind pushes the fog through the mesh, water droplets are trapped, condense and fall into a container at the bottom of the unit with pipes connecting the water to reservoirs.

Derhem hopes the success of the Mount Boutmezguida scheme can help other areas in West Africa and in North Africa – where the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says fresh water resources are among the world’s lowest.

Studies show climate change impacting water patterns globally and Derhem said in Morocco levels have dropped to about 500 cubic meters a person a year from about 1,500 cubic meters a person in the 1960s on calculations based on government figures.

Challenges Too

The principles behind fog collection are simple, and throughout nature examples exist of creatures capturing moisture from the air in the most arid conditions, ranging from beetles in the Namib Desert to lizards in the Australian outback.

But creating a water collection project on a large scale comes with challenges, as the research and development, as well as the infrastructure and technology involved in expanding and developing fog collection projects, can be costly.

The project at Mount Boutmezguida, however, has been a trailblazer for other projects due to its equipment, according to its founders.

The original nets used were insufficiently resistant to the high winds and tore but a partnership with the German non-profit Water Foundation allowed Dar Si Hmad to develop a stronger net.

The CloudFisher was described by the WaterFoundation as the first maintance-free fog collector that can withstand wind speeds of up 120 kph with flexible troughs following the movement of the net in the wind.

Now collected water is filtered and combined with underground water before being distributed to villages on the grid with homes paying for water through a pre-paid system.

The initial pilot project served five villages. At present, the 870 square metres of nets installed reach about 140 families – 14 villages – while a second set of nets is being built.

“Fog is like aeroplanes at the start. At the beginning they were only little toys but, with some effort, things have changed … but it needs investment,” said Derhem.

“Along the coast, there is three times as much fog as there is available on Mount Boutmezguida. The government spends millions for water desalination processes. This is something that is worth exploring.”

For with dry wells comes anxiety and risk but also the unraveling of traditional livelihoods and communities.

Mohamed Zabour, president of the local municipality, said more than 60 percent of the inhabitants of the region live without running water in their homes.

Between 2004 and 2014, 2,000 of the 5,000 local residents moved to cities.

“Our region is rich but it needs infrastructure. And water is one of the priorities,” said Zabour.

“If we don’t find a solution in the next 10 years, it’s going to be a catastrophe … It’s going to be like a desert. Empty.”

For Ghouate, the fog scheme has improved village life.

“When we were kids, we didn’t even know what it meant to need water  … Now there is less rain and if I still had to go to the wells, I wouldn’t find much water now,” she said. “Everything is about water, everything. I don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
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Facebook said a software bug led some users to post publicly by default regardless of their previous settings. The bug affected as many as 14 million users over several days in May.

 

The problem, which Facebook said it has fixed, is the latest privacy scandal for the world’s largest social media company.

 

It said the bug automatically suggested that users make new posts public, even if they had previously restricted posts to “friends only” or another private setting. If users did not notice the new default suggestion, they unwittingly sent their post to a broader audience than they had intended.

 

Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said the bug did not affect past posts. Facebook is notifying users who were affected and posted publicly during the time the bug was active, advising them to review their posts.

 

The news follows recent furor over Facebook’s sharing of user data with device makers, including China’s Huawei. The company is also still recovering from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm got access to the personal data of as many as 87 million Facebook users.

 

Jonathan Mayer, a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University, said on Twitter that this latest privacy gaffe “looks like a viable Federal Trade Commission/state attorney general deception case.” That’s because the company had promised that the setting users set in their most recent privacy preferences would be maintained for future posts. In this case, this did not happen for several days.

 

Facebook’s 2011 consent decree with the FTC calls for the company to get “express consent” from users before sharing their information beyond what they established in their privacy settings. Even if the bug was an accident on Facebook’s part, Mayer said in an email that the FTC can bring enforcement action for privacy mistakes.

 

Facebook, which has 2.2 billion users, says the bug was active from May 18 until May 27. While the company says it stopped the error on May 22, it was not able to change all the posts back to their original privacy parameters until later.

 

The mistake happened when the company built a new way for people to share “featured items” on their profiles. These items, which include posts and photo albums, are automatically public. In the process of creating this feature, Facebook said it accidentally made the suggested audience for all new posts public.

 

When people post to Facebook, the service suggests a default distribution for their posts based on past privacy settings. If someone made all posts “friends only” in the past, it will set their next post to “friends only” as well. People can still manually change the privacy level of the posts — anywhere from “public” to “only me” — and this was the case while the bug was active as well.
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High costs of extracting greenhouse gases from thin air could tumble with new technologies that can help to combat climate change, scientists said on Thursday.

Carbon Engineering, a Canadian-based clean energy company, outlined the design of a large industrial plant that it said could capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a cost of between $94 and $232 a ton.

That is well below past estimates of about $600 a ton by the American Physical Society, said David Keith, a Harvard University physics professor and the founder of Carbon Engineering who led the research.

“I hope to show that this as a viable energy industrial technology, not something that is a magic bullet … but something that is completely doable,” he told Reuters of the peer-reviewed study published in the journal Joule.

Carbon Engineering, which has about 40 employees and produces about a ton of carbon dioxide a day from an experimental plant. The technology makes synthetic fuels using only air, water and renewable power.

Keith said an industrial-scale plant could make fuel at a dollar a liter. That would be competitive in California, where low carbon fuel standards to cut pollution from cars and trucks mean high prices.

He said some investors were interested. An industrial plant, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, could capture a million tons of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to emissions by 250,000 cars.

Other experts welcomed the study as a step to clear up huge uncertainties about the costs of “direct air capture.”

U.N. reports indicate that governments may have to deploy such novel technologies this century to remove carbon from nature and bury it to limit global warming under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

“Direct air capture is a politically promising route for carbon dioxide removal,” said Oliver Geden, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

And an air capture plant could be built almost anywhere. It would not threaten farmland, unlike options of planting vast forests which soak up carbon dioxide, he said.

Climeworks, a Swiss company and Carbon Engineering’s main rival, also told Reuters it was hoping to cut its production price to $100 a ton in the next 5-10 years, from about $600 now. It sells carbon dioxide to greenhouses as an airborne fertilizer to grow tomatoes or cucumbers.

Jan Wurzbacher, a founder of Climeworks, said more and more governments are likely to jack up penalties on carbon emissions to limit floods, storms and rising seas in coming years, making the technology more viable.

The World Bank says Sweden has the highest carbon taxes, currently 1,150 Swedish crowns ($133) a ton.
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Google won’t do artificial intelligence work for weapons, the company said Thursday.  

The company will not work on “technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” wrote Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, in a blog post.

 

Google has come under fire in recent months for its contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to use AI for sifting through drone footage. AI is a field of study whereby a computer or technology is able to do things typically associated with human behavior, such as make decisions, plan and learn.

 

Google and other tech firms have been bringing the advances in AI to fields such as medicine, natural disaster planning, energy, transportation and manufacturing.

But these advances have also led to ethical concerns about the kinds of decisions being made without human input.

“How AI is developed and used will have a significant impact on society for many years to come,” Pichai wrote. “As a leader in AI, we feel a special responsibility to get this right.”

 

Sifting through drone footage

In recent months, more than 4,000 Google employees signed a petition calling for the cancellation of the company’s contract with the Department of Defense as part of the DoD’s Project Maven initiative. They joined other critics in raising alarms that the project could lead to the use of autonomous weapons.

 

Last week, a Google executive reportedly told employees that the company would not seek to renew its Project Maven contract with the military.  

Kirk Hanson, the executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, which counts Google as a financial supporter, said Google’s contract highlights a larger debate about AI and military applications.

“Until we have trust that those systems will not make mistakes, we’re going to have a lot of doubts about the use of artificial intelligence for autonomous weapons,” Hanson said.

 

Google will continue some work for the military, Pichai said.

 

“We want to be clear that while we are not developing AI for use in weapons, we will continue our work with governments and the military in many other areas,” he said. “These include cybersecurity, training, military recruitment, veterans’ healthcare, and search and rescue.”
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Google will not allow its artificial intelligence software to be used in weapons or unreasonable surveillance efforts under new standards for its business decisions in the nascent field, the Alphabet unit said Thursday.

The restriction could help Google management defuse months of protest by thousands of employees against the company’s work with the U.S. military to identify objects in drone video.

Google instead will seek government contracts in areas such as cybersecurity, military recruitment and search and rescue, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in a blog post Thursday.

“We want to be clear that while we are not developing AI for use in weapons, we will continue our work with governments and the military in many other areas,” he said.

Breakthroughs in the cost and performance of advanced computers have carried AI from research labs into industries such as defense and health in the last couple of years. Google and its big technology rivals have become leading sellers of AI tools, which enable computers to review large datasets to make predictions and identify patterns and anomalies faster than humans could.

But the potential of AI systems to pinpoint drone strikes better than military specialists or identify dissidents from mass collection of online communications has sparked concerns among academic ethicists and Google employees.

A Google official, requesting anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue, said the company would not have joined the drone project last year had the principles already been in place. The work comes too close to weaponry, even though the focus is on non-offensive tasks, the official said Thursday.

Google plans to honor its commitment to the project through next March, a person familiar with the matter said last week.

More than 4,600 employees petitioned Google to cancel the deal sooner, with at least 13 employees resigning in recent weeks in an expression of concern.

A nine-employee committee drafted the AI principles, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.

The Google official described the principles as a template that any software developer could put into immediate use. Though Microsoft and others released AI guidelines earlier, the AI community has followed Google’s efforts closely because of the internal pushback against the drone deal.

Google’s principles

Google’s principles say it will not pursue AI applications intended to cause physical injury, that tie into surveillance “violating internationally accepted norms of human rights,” or that present greater “material risk of harm” than countervailing benefits.

“The clear statement that they won’t facilitate violence or totalitarian surveillance is meaningful,” University of Washington technology law professor Ryan Calo tweeted Thursday.

Google also called on employees and customers developing AI “to avoid unjust impacts on people,” particularly around race, gender, sexual orientation, and political or religious belief.

The company recommended that developers avoid launching AI programs likely to cause significant damage if attacked by hackers because existing security mechanisms are unreliable.

Pichai said Google reserved the right to block applications that violated its principles. The Google official acknowledged that enforcement would be difficult because the company cannot track each use of its tools, some of which can be downloaded free of charge and used privately.

Google’s decision to restrict military work has inspired criticism from members of Congress. Representative Pete King, a New York Republican, tweeted Thursday that Google not seeking to extend the drone deal “is a defeat for U.S. national security.”
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As the internet continues to revolutionize communications, the next world-changing technology may already be here. Blockchain, a way of recording data and automatically storing it on computers around the world, has the potential to change everything from collecting crime scene evidence to creating new digital currencies. VOA’s Jill Craig visited a blockchain hackathon in Memphis, Tennessee, to learn more.
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Major changes could be ahead for the International Space Station but there will always be an American astronaut in orbit, NASA’s new boss said Wednesday.

The space agency is talking with private companies about potentially taking over the space lab after 2025, but no decision will made without the other 21 countries that are partners in the project, NASA Administrator James Bridenstine said in his first briefing with reporters.

President Donald Trump’s recent budget requests have put discussions about the station’s future “on steroids,” he said. Under Trump’s 2019 proposed budget, U.S. funding for the space station would end by 2025. The U.S. has spent more than $75 billion on the space station.

Options include splitting the station into different segments or reducing its size by breaking it up and discarding one part.

Always a US astronaut in orbit

But no matter what happens, there won’t be any gap when Americans aren’t in space, Bridenstine vowed. It won’t be as it was after the Apollo moon program closed or even the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, which has forced NASA to pay Russia to ferry astronauts to the station.

“There are kids graduating from high school this month, that their entire lives, we’ve had an astronaut in space,” Bridenstine said. “And we want that to live on in perpetuity forever. No gaps.”

Companies are interested in running the station and “there’s a range of options” that are just now being examined, he said.

The first station piece was launched in 1998. The complex was essentially completed with the end of the shuttle program in 2011. It is about the size of a six-bedroom house, complete with two bathrooms, a gym and a 360-degree bay window. It usually has a crew of six.

Climate change

In wide-ranging remarks, the former Oklahoma Republican congressman said he generally supports NASA’s Earth science missions, including missions that monitor heat-trapping carbon dioxide. He said at least three climate science satellites that the Trump administration had tried to cancel earlier in budget proposals “could all end up in very good shape” and that he supported them in Congress, crossing party lines.

“We’re going forth with missions that are going to do carbon monitoring,” he said, ticking off a couple of projects. “We’re committed to that.”

When told that a Pew Research poll out Wednesday said that 63 percent of Americans said NASA’s top priority should be monitoring key parts of Earth’s climate, Bridenstine said “good” and reiterated his acceptance of human-caused climate change as a threat to national security and the globe.

Back to the moon

Bridenstine also said he hopes NASA will put some kind of small robotic landers on the moon next year, followed at some later date by humans. Astronauts should use the moon as a “proving ground” for future missions to Mars, especially checking out potential health issues for living far away from Earth for a long time. He said he worried about balance, vision, bone loss and heart issues that have been reported with space station astronauts.

“We do not want to go to Mars and have our astronauts to be marshmallows on the surface of Mars,” Bridenstine said. “The moon is our best opportunity to be successful when we go to Mars.”
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Passenger jets of the future will be safer, lighter, faster, more fuel-efficient and … windowless.

So predicts Emirates Airlines chief Tim Clark. The Dubai-based airline has already introduced virtual windows in the first-class suites of its newest planes. 

Instead of being able to see out a conventional window, the passengers will be able to enjoy the view on a full display of windows that will project live camera feeds on a high-definition screen. 

Clark said the images are “so good, it’s better than with the natural eye.”

Clark told the BBC that the ultimate goal was to have a completely windowless plane. 

“Now you have a fuselage which has no structural weaknesses because of windows. The aircraft are lighter, the aircraft could fly faster, they’ll burn less fuel and fly higher,” he said.

But Emirates’ experiment has raised concerns that might not win it the votes of safety regulators. Some passengers have expressed concerns of possibly feeling claustrophobic on windowless planes. 
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