U.S. lawmakers briefed on the massive cybersecurity breach that has impacted government agencies and the private sector are calling for the country to act, warning that so far, all evidence is pointing to Russia as the culprit. The admonitions, from both Republicans and Democrats, follow warnings from U.S. cybersecurity officials that the scope of the hack is potentially much bigger than originally thought, encompassing multiple software platforms going back at least as far as March of this year. FILE – Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asks a question during a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing in Washington, July 30, 2020.”The full extent of the cyberhack [sic] is still unknown but we already know it is unprecedented in scale & scope,” the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Marco Rubio, tweeted Friday. “The methods used to carry out the cyberhack are consistent with Russian cyber operations,” Rubio added, warning that once officials can attribute the intrusion with complete certainty, “America must retaliate, and not just with sanctions.” The full extent of the cyberhack is still unknown but we already know it is unprecedented in scale & scope, in all likelihood ongoing & at a level of sophistication only a few nation-states are capable of.
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) FILE – Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., addresses the news media in Alexandria, Va., Nov. 3, 2020.”An incident of this magnitude and lasting impact requires an engaged and public response by the U.S. government,” Senator Mark Warner said in a statement issued Friday. “It is extremely troubling that the president does not appear to be acknowledging, much less acting upon, the gravity of this situation.” Indications of a cyber intrusion first went public earlier this month when the private cybersecurity firm FireEye announced its systems had been penetrated and that sensitive information had been stolen. The hack was later traced to updates for network management software from a Texas-based company called SolarWinds, which the hackers exploited to get into the networks of at least 18,000 users. In an updated alert issued Friday, the cybersecurity unit of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned the hackers had been exploiting the SolarWinds software update going back to at least March. The SolarWinds logo is seen outside its headquarters in Austin, Texas, Dec. 18, 2020.But the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) further warned the problem was not contained to SolarWinds. “CISA has evidence of initial access vectors other than the SolarWinds Orion platform,” the alert warned, saying the agency is investigating instances in which other platforms were used to access critical networks. “This threat poses a grave risk to the federal government and state, local, tribal and territorial governments, as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations,” CISA said. “This is a patient, well-resourced and focused adversary that has sustained long duration activity on victim networks.” Research by tech giant Microsoft, made public Thursday, indicated the hackers precisely targeted at least 40 organizations. The vast majority were in the United States, but companies in Canada, Mexico, Britain, Belgium, Israel and the United Arab Emirates were also attacked. FILE – Microsoft President Brad Smith speaks during a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York, Sept. 13, 2019.”This is not ‘espionage as usual,’ even in the digital age,” Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote on the company’s blog. “This is not just an attack on specific targets, but on the trust and reliability of the world’s critical infrastructure.” Former U.S. government officials also worried about the impact of the hack. “The scope of it is large but exactly how large remains to be seen, and exactly how severe remains to be seen,” Michael Daniel, who served as a special assistant to former U.S. President Barack Obama on cyber issues, told VOA’s Russian Service. “The damage could be very, very significant to U.S. national security and to our economic security,” he said. Yet despite the warnings from current and former government officials, and private security firms, as of late Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump had yet to comment on the breach. Instead, Trump’s Twitter feed was full of unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud, praise for the distribution of coronavirus vaccines and threats to veto the $740 billion defense spending bill, which drew the ire of some key lawmakers. I will Veto the Defense Bill, which will make China very unhappy. They love it. Must have Section 230 termination, protect our National Monuments and allow for removal of military from far away, and very unappreciative, lands. Thank you! https://t.co/9rI08S5ofO
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 17, 2020″This year’s National Defense Authorization Act provides critical tools and authorities to help defend against and disrupt malicious cyber activity and effectively hunt for threats and vulnerabilities on the federal cyber network,” the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said in a joint statement late Friday. “The NDAA is always ‘must-pass’ legislation,” Republican Jim Inhofe and Democrat Jack Reed added. “But this cyber incident makes it even more urgent that the bill become law without further delay.” NEW: Senate Armed Services Committee statement on #SolarWindsHack
“significant, sophisticated, and ongoing cybersecurity intrusion against the United States… has the hallmarks of a #Russia|n intelligence operation” per @JimInhofe@SenJackReedpic.twitter.com/2d5KqPrECR
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) December 17, 2020Already, officials have determined that the hackers gained access to systems for the departments of Energy, Treasury and Commerce, though the Energy Department said networks related to nuclear security appeared to have been spared.  “At this point, the investigation has found that the malware has been isolated to business networks only and has not impacted the mission essential national security functions of the department,” spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said in a statement Thursday.  DOE UPDATE ON CYBER INCIDENT RELATED TO SOLAR WINDS COMPROMISE pic.twitter.com/l9X1AH4VJw
— DOE Press Staff (@EnergyPress) December 17, 2020U.S. President-elect Joe Biden called the cybersecurity breach “a matter of great concern.” “I want to be clear: My administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government — and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office,” he said in a statement Thursday, shortly after the latest CISA alert was issued. “Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation,” he added. Biden is set to be inaugurated as the 46th U.S. president on January 20. Russian Service’s Danila Galperovich contributed to this report.
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In recent weeks, Chinese regulators have cracked down on some of the country’s biggest and most powerful technology companies, illustrating the immense market power of these companies, which has drawn concern from the government. On Monday, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), China’s top market regulator, fined three of the country’s largest technology companies, including e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and social-media juggernaut Tencent, for failing to disclose acquisitions of smaller competitors. Last month, China Securities Regulatory Commission halted the record initial public offering of Ant Group, one of China’s dominant digital payment platforms backed by Alibaba. It then announced new draft rules targeting monopolistic practices on the country’s digital platforms.  FILE – Signs of Alibaba Group and Ant Group are seen during the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China, Nov. 23, 2020.Analysts who spoke to VOA said these moves reflect the Chinese government’s rising concern over financial technology and e-commerce companies that are using unfair competitive practices to undermine traditional payments and financial service companies. There is also a concern that the companies could pose a systemic risk to the economy.  First fine On Monday, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, a unit of Tencent Holdings, and an affiliate of express delivery company SF Holding were fined $75,000 (500,000 RMB) each for breaching China’s anti-monopoly law.  SAMR said in a statement that the online economy has become increasingly controlled by a few companies. “Complaints about platform monopoly have been on the rise, indicating competition risks and problems in the online economy,” it said.  FILE – Zhang Mao, minister of China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, attends a news conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, China, March 11, 2019.This marks the first fine towards the country’s internet giants since the enforcement of the anti-monopoly law in 2008.  Lu Suiqi, an associate professor of finance at Peking University, says the government has been turning a blind eye to monopoly issues for the past decade, because developing the digital economy was an important part of China’s industrial policy.  “Now these companies have become too strong, they have been using inappropriate means to drive their competitors out of the market,” Lu said. “They have grasped an excessively high market share and there’s a lack of healthy competition, which is bad for the overall economy.” Some 70% of the top 30 Apps in China belong to either Alibaba or Tencent. The two companies are each believed to oversee a payment and financial tractions ecosystem with a market value around $1.5 trillion (10 trillion RMB).  Li Chengdong, founder of the Beijing-based Dolphin think tank, says that the explosive growth of internet firms has made governments around the world vigilant. In the United States earlier this month, attorney generals from 48 states sued Google and Facebook, accusing them of illegally conspiring to shut out smaller rivals. Analysts say there is a similar dynamic happening in China. Facebook’s Antitrust Fight in US Could Mean More Consumer Choice Worldwide The FTC and state attorneys general lawsuits contend that the social networking giant abused its monopoly power. 38 States Sue Google Over Antitrust Complaints It is the third major lawsuit against the tech giant since October “It’s very common in China for big internet giants to crack down on small- and medium-size start-ups,” he said, adding only more strict regulation and enforcement can put the economy back on track.  Rebalancing away from technology?  Meanwhile, experts recommend China needs to rebalance its economy between e-commerce and brick and mortar stores to achieve more sustainable growth.  Tomson Tang, vice chairman of China Electronic Commerce Association, says China’s e-commerce has developed rapidly over the past 20 years in terms of users and the value of transactions, at the cost of hundreds and thousands of brick and mortar stores.  “The policy and regulations couldn’t catch up with the speed at which e-commerce develops. That include systematic problems on issues around monopoly, which is bad for the real economy,” he told VOA. However, he said the digital economy is a key element for China to maintain overall economic momentum down the road. The government needs to use regulations to make sure that market opportunities created should be open to all participants and cannot be monopolized by a few large companies.  Beijing’s antitrust watchdogs last month announced draft rules targeting monopolistic practices on the country’s digital platforms, which analysts say will have negative implications for major internet companies with dominant positions across segments.  Paul Triolo, a China digital economy fellow at the Washington-based think tank New America, says although the tech giants must comply with the tightening regulations, they might succeed in bargaining with authorities on how the regulations are implemented.  Tang predicts that in the next two to three years, China will establish a national digital economy bureau to oversee all internet companies. “Without such an authority to supervise, coordinate and enforce regulations, it would be difficult to grasp the financial data and structures of these internet giants, thus impact the implementation of the new anti-monopoly law,” he said.  
 
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Technology giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has facial recognition technology that can specifically pick out members of China’s Uighur minority, surveillance industry researcher IPVM said in a report. Alibaba itself said it was dismayed a unit developed software that can tag ethnicity in videos, and that the feature was never intended to be deployed to customers. The report comes as human rights groups accuse China of forcing more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs into labor camps in the region of Xinjiang and call out firms suspected of complicity. FILE – Residents line up inside a vocational training center in Artux, in western China’s Xinjiang region, Dec. 3, 2018. Critics say China uses some of these facilities as detention camps for forced labor.China has repeatedly denied forcing anyone into what it has called vocational training centers and has also said Xinjiang is under threat from Islamist militants. Still, sensitivities have prompted caution among Chinese internet firms that often self-censor to avoid running afoul of a government that strictly controls online speech and that last month published draft rules to police livestreaming. Report’s findingsU.S.-based IPVM in a report published Wednesday said software capable of identifying Uighurs appears in Alibaba’s Cloud Shield content moderation service for websites. Alibaba describes Cloud Shield as a system that “detects and recognizes text, pictures, videos and voices containing pornography, politics, violent terrorism, advertisements and spam, and provides verification, marking, custom configuration and other capabilities.” An archived record of the technology shows it can perform such tasks as “glasses inspection,” “smile detection,” whether the subject is “ethnic” and, specifically, “Is it Uighur?” Consequently, if a Uighur livestreams a video on a website signed up to Cloud Shield, the software can detect that the user is Uighur and flag the video for review or removal, IPVM researcher Charles Rollet told Reuters. IPVM said mention of Uighurs in the software disappeared near the time it published its report. Alibaba’s responseAlibaba in a statement said it was dismayed that Alibaba Cloud developed facial recognition software that includes ethnicity as an attribute for tagging video imagery, and that it never intended the software to be used in this manner. The feature was trial technology not intended for customers. Alibaba did not mention Uighurs in its statement. “We have eliminated any ethnic tag in our product offering,” an Alibaba spokeswoman told Reuters. Alibaba is listed on both the New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges. It is the biggest cloud computing vendor in China and the fourth biggest worldwide, showed data from researcher Canalys. Earlier this month, U.S. lawmakers sent letters to Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp. following reports of their computer chips being used in the surveillance of Uighurs.  
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The lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.’s Google continue to pile up. On December 17, 38 states filed a joint antitrust complaint that accuses the tech giant of expanding its search monopoly through smart speakers, televisions and cars, according to Reuters. It is the third major lawsuit against the company. The states are seeking to attach their suit with a federal suit announced by the Justice Department in October, according to the Colorado attorney general’s office. The federal case alleges Google made deals with phone makers, including Apple and Samsung, to make Google the default search engine. It alleges it is also using its Android operating system to pressure device makers to preload Google search apps and other Google products. On December 16, another case was filed by another group of states led by Texas. That case alleges Google is harming competitors by engaging in “false, deceptive or misleading acts” with its Google Ads product. In the latest case, the states allege Google is seeking to use exclusionary agreements to dominate search and search advertising over a new set of devices like smart speakers, which Google produces. Accusations against GoogleAccording to CNET, Google accounts for about 90% of U.S. search traffic. That generates “almost all” of the company’s $160 billion in annual sales. The company has long been accused of shutting out competitors by using its dominance to promote its own products. The new lawsuit alleges Google is doing the same with newer devices like voice assistants. “Google is preventing competitors in the voice assistant market from reaching consumers through connected cars, which stand to be a significant way the internet is accessed in the near future,” said Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, according to Reuters. Google has yet to comment on the lawsuit. Big Tech has come under increasing attack from both Democrats and Republicans. In addition to the Google cases, Facebook Inc. is also facing antitrust lawsuits. Reuters said the suits were the “biggest antitrust cases in a generation.”  
 
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and President-elect Joe Biden both voiced new alarm Thursday about a wide intrusion into computer systems around the world that officials suspect was carried out by Russia.The cybersecurity unit of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the hack “poses a grave risk to the federal government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations.”The assessment by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency was the most pointed yet since news of the intrusion first emerged last weekend. Both the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments were among the agencies whose secure data and emails were penetrated by the hack.US Says Recent Hacking Campaign Hit Government NetworksThe hackers are believed to be working for RussiaThe cybersecurity unit warned that removing the malware inserted in the network software will be “highly complex and challenging.”Biden, set to become the 46th U.S. president after his January 20 inauguration, said, “There’s a lot we don’t yet know, but what we do know is a matter of great concern.”Biden said he had “instructed my team to learn as much as we can about this breach” and praised career government civil servants “who are working around-the-clock to respond to this attack.”He vowed that after he assumes power, “my administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government, and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office.”Biden said he would strengthen the government’s cybersecurity partnerships with the private sector.“But a good defense isn’t enough,” he said. “We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place.”“We will do that by, among other things, imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners,” Biden said. “Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation.”
 
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The U.S. government confirmed on Wednesday that a recent hacking campaign affected its networks and said the attack was “significant and ongoing.”Hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, Reuters reported earlier this week, citing people who said they feared the hacks uncovered so far may be the tip of the iceberg.”This is a developing situation, and while we continue to work to understand the full extent of this campaign, we know this compromise has affected networks within the federal government,” said a joint statement issued by the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).Technology company SolarWinds Corp., which was the key stepping-stone used by the hackers, said up to 18,000 of its customers had downloaded a compromised software update that allowed hackers to spy unnoticed on businesses and agencies for almost nine months.”Over the course of the past several days, the FBI, CISA, and ODNI have become aware of a significant and ongoing cybersecurity campaign,” the joint statement said.”The FBI is investigating and gathering intelligence in order to attribute, pursue, and disrupt the responsible threat actors,” the statement said.The FBI, CISA and ODNI have formed a Cyber Unified Coordination Group to coordinate the U.S. government’s response, it said.White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien cut short a European trip on Tuesday and returned to Washington to deal with the attack.
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Ten states on Wednesday brought a lawsuit against Google, accusing the search giant of “anti-competitive conduct” in the online advertising industry, including a deal to manipulate sales with rival Facebook.Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the suit, which was filed in a federal court in Texas, saying Google is using its “monopolistic power” to control pricing of online advertisements, fixing the market in its favor and eliminating competition.”This Goliath of a company is using its power to manipulate the market, destroy competition, and harm you, the consumer,” Paxton said in the video posted on Twitter.Google, which is based in Mountain View, California, called Paxton’s claims “meritless” and said the price of online advertising has fallen over the past decade.”These are the hallmarks of a highly competitive industry,” the company said in a statement. “We will strongly defend ourselves from (Paxton’s) baseless claims in court.”Paxton led a bipartisan coalition of 50 U.S. states and territories that announced in September 2019 they were investigating Google’s business practices, citing “potential monopolistic behavior.”Now Texas is bringing the suit along with other Republican attorneys general from Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah.The complaint targets the heart of Google’s business – the digital ads that generate nearly all of its revenue, as well as all the money that its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., depends on to help finance a range of far-flung technology projects.As more marketers have increased their spending online, those digital ads have turned Google into a moneymaking machine. Through the first nine months of this year, Google’s ad sales totaled nearly $101 billion, accounting for 86% of its total revenue.And now the states contend Google intends to use its alleged stranglehold on digital ads to choke off other avenues of potential competition and innovation. The company struck an illegal deal with Facebook, a major competitor for ads, to manipulate advertising auction, according to the complaint. Facebook declined to comment.”Google has an appetite for total dominance, and its latest ambition is to transform the free and open architecture of the internet,” the suit alleges.’Ad tech’ marketplaceIn the “ad tech” marketplace that brings together Google and a huge universe of online advertisers and publishers, the company controls access to the advertisers that put ads on its dominant search platform. Google also runs the auction process for advertisers to get ads onto a publisher’s site. Nine of Google’s products in search, video, mobile, email, mapping and other areas are estimated to have over a billion users each, providing the company a trove of users’ data that it can deploy in the advertising process.Google officials say the company shares the majority of its “ad tech” revenue with publishers, such as newspaper websites. An official recently rejected even the assertion that Google is dominant, saying that market dominance suggests abuse, which is foreign to the company.The state’s suit comes after the U.S. Justice Department sued Google in October for abusing its dominance in online search and advertising – the government’s most significant attempt to buttress competition since its historic case against Microsoft two decades ago.Separately, the FBI is investigating whether Paxton, a close ally of President Donald Trump, broke the law in using his office to help a wealthy donor who is also under federal investigation. This fall, eight of the attorney general’s top deputies accused him of bribery, abuse of office and other crimes in the service of an Austin real estate developer who employs a woman with whom Paxton is said to have had an extramarital affair.All eight of Paxton’s accusers have since been fired or resigned, including the deputy attorney general who had been leading the office’s probe of Google. The court complaint list attorneys with private firms in Houston, Chicago and Washington, D.C., as the lead lawyers on the case.Paxton announced the lawsuit the week after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his legal push to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, a case that prompted widespread speculation that the attorney general is angling for a preemptive pardon from Trump.  
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The Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act have just been presented in Brussels. These proposed policies aim to revise all the principles that apply to digital services within the 27 member states — from the publication of illegal content on social networks to the sale of products online.Big Tech companies will not be allowed, for example, to stop users from uninstalling preinstalled software or apps, nor will they be able to use data from business users to compete against them.To do so, the European Union governing body would allow fines of up to 10% of annual global revenue. Another part of the European plan is to make sure e-commerce platforms take more responsibility for their goods and services.European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said these new regulations are the right tools to bring “order to chaos” on the internet and to rein in the online “gatekeepers” that dominate the market.“The two proposals, they serve one purpose: to make sure that we, as users, customers, businesses, have access to a wide choice of safe products and services online, just as well as we do in the physical world,” Vestager said. “Whether from our streets or from our screens, we should be able to do our shopping in a safe manner. Whether we turn pages or we just scroll down, we should be able to choose and trust the news that we read. Of course, what is illegal offline is equally illegal online.”After the announcement, some companies criticized the move. A spokesperson for Google said the company was concerned that the measures “seem to specifically target a handful of companies.”Thierry Breton, European commissioner for internal market, denied those allegations.“We respect companies, but we say the bigger they are, the more obligations they may have to fulfill,” Breton said. “What is important to us is that everybody is welcome in Europe, but our responsibility is to decide and give directions and rules to protect what is important to us. These are not two acts where we would say that these companies are too big, and we propose a dismantle. Not here, not on this side of the ocean.”The coming new regulations announced in Brussels echoed the concerns over the world about the influence of big technology companies. In the United States, regulators have increased scrutiny on Google and Facebook, and antitrust cases are looming.  
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The U.S. government’s suit against Facebook for illegally stifling competition and limiting consumer choice will be watched worldwide, particularly by the social network’s more than two billion users. Tina Trinh reports. 
Produced by: Tina Trinh  
 
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On an earnings call two months ago, SolarWinds Chief Executive Kevin Thompson touted how far the company had gone during his 11 years at the helm. There was not a database or an IT deployment model out there to which his Austin, Texas-based company did not provide some level of monitoring or management, he told analysts on the October 27 call. “We don’t think anyone else in the market is really even close in terms of the breadth of coverage we have,” he said. “We manage everyone’s network gear.” Now that dominance has become a liability – an example of how the workhorse software that helps glue organizations together can turn toxic when it is subverted by sophisticated hackers. On Monday, SolarWinds confirmed that Orion – its flagship network management software – had served as the unwitting conduit for a sprawling international cyberespionage operation. The hackers inserted malicious code into Orion software updates pushed out to nearly 18,000 customers. SolarWinds Corp. CEO Kevin Thompson celebrates his company’s IPO on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, Oct. 19, 2018.And while the number of affected organizations is thought to be much more modest, the hackers have already parlayed their access into consequential breaches at the U.S. Treasury and Department of Commerce. Three people familiar with the investigation have told Reuters that Russia is a top suspect, although others familiar with the inquiry have said it is still too early to tell. A SolarWinds representative, Ryan Toohey, said he would not be making executives available for comment. He did not provide on-the-record answers to questions sent via email. In a statement issued Sunday, the company said, “we strive to implement and maintain appropriate administrative, physical, and technical safeguards, security processes, procedures, and standards designed to protect our customers.” Cybersecurity experts are still struggling to understand the scope of the damage. Sending the malicious updates from March to June, when America was hunkering down to weather the first wave of coronavirus infections, was “perfect timing for a perfect storm,” said Kim Peretti, who co-chairs Atlanta-based law firm Alston & Bird’s cybersecurity preparedness and response team. Assessing the damage would be difficult, she said. “We may not know the true impact for many months, if not more – if not ever,” she said. US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency logoThe impact on SolarWinds was more immediate. U.S. officials ordered anyone running Orion to immediately disconnect it. The company’s stock has tumbled more than 23% from $23.50 on Friday – before Reuters broke the news of the breach – to $18.06 on Tuesday. SolarWinds’ security, meanwhile, has come under new scrutiny. In one previously unreported issue, multiple criminals have offered to sell access to SolarWinds’ computers through underground forums, according to two researchers who separately had access to those forums. One of those offering claimed access over the Exploit forum in 2017 was known as “fxmsp” and is wanted by the FBI “for involvement in several high-profile incidents,” said Mark Arena, chief executive of cybercrime intelligence firm Intel471. Arena informed his company’s clients, which include U.S. law enforcement agencies. Security researcher Vinoth Kumar told Reuters that, last year, he alerted the company that anyone could access SolarWinds’ update server by using the password “solarwinds123.” “This could have been done by any attacker, easily,” Kumar said. Neither the password nor the stolen access is considered the most likely source of the current intrusion, researchers said. Others – including Kyle Hanslovan, the cofounder of Maryland-based cybersecurity company Huntress – noticed that, days after SolarWinds realized their software had been compromised, the malicious updates were still available for download. The firm has long mooted the idea of spin-off of its managed service provider business and on Dec. 9 announced that Thompson would be replaced by Sudhakar Ramakrishna, the former chief executive of Pulse Secure. Three weeks ago, SolarWinds posted a job ad seeking a new vice president for security; the position is still listed as open. Thompson and Ramakrishna could not be reached for comment. 
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Lawmakers in Britain have proposed legislation that would fine social media companies if they do not quickly take action to remove illegal content like child pornography or terrorist materials. U.S. based Facebook and Twitter and China-owned TikTok could be fined up to 10% of turnover, according to Reuters. CNBC reported that Ofcom, a British media watchdog, would have the power to enforce the laws if they are enacted. Under the proposal, which will be introduced next year, social media companies must establish clear terms and conditions about content, CNBC reported. FILE – Britain’s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Oliver Dowden arrives for a Cabinet meeting, at Downing Street in London, Britain, July 21, 2020.”We are entering a new age of accountability for tech to protect children and vulnerable users, to restore trust in this industry and to enshrine in law safeguards for free speech,” Britain’s Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said Tuesday. In addition to fines, some sites could be blocked from the British market if they fail to act. Dowden left open the possibility for criminal charges against companies that permit illegal content, according to Reuters. “These measures make this the toughest and most comprehensive online safety regime, and they will have a clear and immediate effect,” he told lawmakers.  But the proposals don’t stop at illegal content. According to Reuters, the proposed legislation would require companies to have clear policies against misinformation that could cause “harm,” such as information about COVID-19 vaccines. “We already have strict policies against harmful content on our platforms, but regulations are needed so that private companies aren’t making so many important decisions alone,” said Rebecca Stimson, Facebook’s head of Britain public policy. Other Big Tech companies echoed Facebook. Under the proposed laws, online journalism and user comments on news sites would be exempt to “safeguard freedom of expression,” Reuters reported. Britain’s move comes as the European Union was also set to unveil a slate of similar proposals on December 15.
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Apple on Monday began adding labels that reveal what user data is gathered by games, chat or other software offered in the App Store for its popular mobile devices. The iPhone maker announced plans for such privacy labels when it first unveiled the new version of its iOS mobile operating system, which it released in September. “App Store product pages will feature summaries of developers’ self-reported privacy practices, displayed in a simple, easy-to-read format,” Apple said in a blog post when iOS 14 launched. “Starting early next year, all apps will be required to obtain user permission before tracking.” Apple began pushing out the labels Monday, with the rule applying to new apps for iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Mac computers. The labels will contain information provided by developers when they submit apps for approval to appear on the App Store’s virtual shelves, according to the Silicon Valley-based company. Apple last week began requiring developers to submit privacy information for use in labels. “Apple recently required that all apps distributed via their App Store display details designed to show people how their data may be used,” Facebook-owned smartphone messaging service WhatsApp said in a blog post explaining what data the app gathers. “We must collect some information to provide a reliable global communications service,” it said. The aim, according to Apple, is for users to be able to easily see and understand what apps do with their data, from lists of contacts to where they are. Data types added to labels will include tracking in order to target advertising or sharing with data brokers, as well as information that could reveal user identity. Apple and Android mobile operating systems provide tools for controlling the kinds of data apps can access once they are installed. 
 
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Companies such as Coca-Cola, Adidas, Ford and Lego are boycotting Facebook this month, pulling ads that appear on the social network in the United States. Some advertisers are part of an organized boycott demanding the company do more to crack down on hate speech, conspiracies and misinformation on its site on topics such as voting. Facebook has responded with some changes but will it be enough? Michelle Quinn reports.
Camera: Deana Mitchell
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Twitter Inc has taken down an image tweet by the U.S. President Donald Trump on June 30, in response to a report from a copyright holder. Twitter now displays the message “This image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder,” in place of the tweet. News website Axios reported that the tweet was removed after a copyright complaint from the New York Times, which owns the rights to the photo. 
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People who get most of their news from social media like Facebook and YouTube are much more likely to believe conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic, according to research from Kings College London. The report also suggests those reliant on social media for news are much more likely to ignore government messaging on staying safe during the pandemic and more likely to disobey lockdown rules.The research was published earlier this month in the journal A 5G logo is displayed on a screen outside the showroom at Huawei campus in Shenzhen city, China’s Guangdong province.One prominent conspiracy theory is that 5G mobile technology is causing the disease. In recent weeks, dozens of 5G mobile telecom towers have been destroyed across Britain. Police say a belief that the masts are causing the respiratory ailment appears to have motivated many of the attacks. The researchers questioned 2,254 British residents. Overall, 8 percent believed that 5G technology was causing the pandemic. Of those people, 60 percent said they got their information from YouTube. Out of the 92 percent of people who don’t believe the 5G conspiracy theory, only 14 percent said their information came from YouTube.Among people who believe the coronavirus does not exist at all, some 56 percent cited Facebook as their primary source of news. Allington says the most disturbing finding has been the readiness among those who believe in conspiracy theories about the disease to break quarantine and lockdown rules.“We found that people who had gone out, gone outside or gone to work despite having what they knew were possible coronavirus symptoms were much more likely to be getting their information from social media,” Allington told VOA.That presents a health risk that must be addressed, says British lawmaker Damian Collins, co-founder of the group ‘Infotagion’ which aims to fight misinformation about the pandemic.“A lot of this content is still there and a lot of the times when it’s referred to social media companies, they don’t act immediately to take this content down,” Collins told VOA via Skype, adding that he has big concerns over the role social media might play in any vaccination program. “If we get to a position where we’ve got a vaccine and for the vaccine to be effective, we need the vast majority of people to agree to take it. It’s important that people have got confidence in that. And if people are spreading conspiracy theories and lies about the vaccine and trying to persuade people not to take it, then there’s a serious public health risk to that.”FILE – The Twitter and Facebook logos are seen with binary cyber codes in this illustration, Nov. 26, 2019.Facebook, YouTube and Twitter say they have removed hundreds of thousands of videos and posts relating to COVID-19 misinformation that could lead to imminent harm. In written evidence submitted to the British parliament, Facebook said that during the month of April it had “displayed warning labels on around 50 million pieces of content related to COVID-19 on Facebook,” adding, “…When people saw those warning labels, 95% of the time they did not click to view the original content.”Despite such claims, the internal systems in place to deal with misinformation remain opaque, says Allington of Kings College London. “Those systems have got to be opened up for auditing by democratically-accountable bodies,” he told VOA.The social media giants are facing a backlash on multiple fronts. More than 150 companies – including Starbucks and Coca-Cola – have stopped buying advertising on Facebook over concerns around misinformation and hate speech.At the same time, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May seeking to strip social media companies of legal immunity for the content posted by users, after Twitter tagged one of his tweets with a fact-check notice. “If Twitter were not honorable and you’re going to have a guy like this being the judge and jury, I think you shut it down, as far as I’m concerned. But I’d have to go through a legal process to do that,” Trump told reporters May 28.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he would tighten controls on social media, days after remarks were made on Twitter about his daughter and son-in-law.“Turkey is not a banana republic,” Erdogan said in a televised address to his party members. “We will snub those who snub this country’s executive and judicial bodies.”Erdogan’s eldest daughter, Esra Erdogan, and his son-in-law, Finance Minister Berat Albayrak reportedly received what were called insulting tweets after the couple announced the birth of their fourth child on social media.Eleven of 19 Twitter users who allegedly insulted Erdogan’s family were detained, Turkish police said in a statement on Wednesday.“Do you understand now why we are against social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Netflix?” Erdogan ask while addressing his party. “These platforms do not suit this nation. We want to shut down, control [them] by bringing [a bill] to parliament as soon as possible.”Rights groups have accused Erdogan of using the coronavirus pandemic as a reason to tighten controls on the media, with only a few independent publications continuing to report on the Turkish president’s handling of the pandemic.Turkey’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, called Twitter a “propaganda machine” after it recently suspended 7,340 accounts. Twitter said the accounts were “employing coordinated inauthentic activity” promoting favorable narratives to Erdogan and his party. 
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In a rare twist to Washington’s long-standing restrictions on the Chinese tech giant Huawei, the Commerce Department recently reversed its ban preventing U.S. firms from working with Huawei on developing new technical standards.The move was seen by many in China as an admission by President Donald Trump’s administration that it cannot ignore Huawei’s influential role in developing the technical standards critical for future technologies.  “America finally bowed its head” read a headline by Chinese network Phoenix TV.The new rule, announced by the Commerce Department on June 15, amends the Huawei “entity listing,” to allow American companies to collaborate with Huawei on setting standards that will determine the technical rules of the road for 5G and other emerging technologies.   “This action is meant to ensure Huawei’s placement on the entity list in May 2019 does not prevent American companies from contributing to important standards-developing activities despite Huawei’s pervasive participation in standards-development organizations,” the department said.  The situation with Huawei is no accident. For years, Beijing has focused on joining international standard-setting bodies, such as 3GPP and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which are little-known among the public, but make some of the most consequential decisions in modern telecommunications.
 3GPP and the future of your smartphone
 
Nestled in a quiet industrial park in southern France, a technology consortium with esoteric name, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, or 3GPP, sets the technical standards behind the world’s communication platforms, the fundamental building blocks for product development. As the primary global standard setting organization for the last 20 years, 3GPP helped create technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth as well as today’s 5G high-speed networks.
“Standards are not very sexy but extremely important,” Andrew Polk, partner at Beijing-based research and consultancy firm Trivium China, told VOA. “And it takes sustained long-term effort and attention. While western companies try to set standards, China has a long-term coordinated game plan to influence standards,” he said.FILE – A staff member holds a Huawei ‘Mate20 X 5G’ smartphone at the IFA 2019 tech fair in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 5, 2019.China’s leaders have long seen technology as a key to the country’s economic and military might, and have financially backed companies such as Huawei to become powerful global competitors that will help the country’s political and military goals. Critics say Beijing takes the same approach to setting technical standards.
 
“Beijing views standards as foundational to its goals to reshaping global governance and expand geostrategic power,” said Dr. J. Ray Bowen, analyst of Pointe Bello, a Washington, D.C.-based strategic intelligence firm.
 
Even though U.S. companies remain world leaders in most areas of technology, observers such as Dustin Daugherty, head of North America Business Development at Dezan Shira & Associates, a pan-Asia business consulting firm, say China’s strategy means “in the future the U.S. could fall behind a coordinated government effort in standard setting (such as from China).”
 China’s long-term plan
 
As of May, Chinese firms and government research institutes have accounted for the largest number of chairs or vice chairs in 3GPP, holding 16 of the 45 available leadership positions, according to VOA’s count based on the data release by 3GPP. By comparison, U.S. companies hold nine such leadership positions.
 
That’s up from a year ago, when 3GPP sent VOA a file showing that representatives from Chinese and U.S. companies each held 12 chair and vice chair positions.
While the 3GPP is the primary global group setting 5G standards, another major global organization, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), is now led by a formal Chinese government official Zhao Houlin.
 
Zhao, who began his career in China’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, was first elected as the secretary-general of ITU in 2014. He was reinstated in November 2018 for another four-year term.
 
Established in 1865, ITU is one of the oldest international organizations in the world and has historically avoided politics. However, Zhao publicly criticized Washington in its dispute with Huawei, the Chinese communications giant that U.S. officials say has deep links to the military. “I would encourage Huawei to be given equal opportunities to bid for business,” Zhao told reporters in Geneva earlier this year. “But if we don’t have anything then to put them on the blacklist – I think this is not fair.”FILE – Zhao Houlin, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), attends a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, May 28, 2018.Under Zhao’s leadership, another Chinese national, Richard Li, serves as the chairman of a critical group with the ITU called Focus Group Technologies for Network 2030. Li, according to his LinkedIn Page, is still currently employed by Huawei as Chief Scientist and Vice-President of Network Technologies, is in charge of examining the world’s emerging technologies and 5G.
 
Doug Barry, the spokesperson for The US-China Business Council (USCBC), a private organization with the mission of promoting trade between the two countries, said there are companies that are concerned about the abuse of leadership positions by China, but so far he has not heard any examples of this happening in practice.
 
“Most international standards setting bodies have strong due process which makes it difficult for stakeholders to abuse leadership positions to force proposals through or block proposals,” said Barry.
 
Daugherty said because Chinese companies are among the most important international players in a variety of industries, including telecommunications, their presence in industry groups and standard setting bodies is logical. But he said there is an important difference between them and their counterparts from democratic countries.  
 
“Chinese companies (and by extension possibly their individual representatives on such bodies) may ultimately need to answer to Beijing’s priorities for strategically important issues,” said Daugherty.
 
In an interview with VOA, he said the politicization of such international bodies could conceivably lead to a decrease in legitimacy in international standard setting. “The damage could be immense,” he said.
 Flooded with proposals
 
Holding leadership positions is one part of Beijing’s strategy. Another part involves massive investments in submitting technical proposals to the international groups.
 
In a rare disclosure last September, Huawei said for one particular technical area alone, the company submitted 18,000 5G New Radio proposals. “If printed on A4 paper and piled up high, would stand a staggering 10 meters tall,” it said proudly on its official twitter account.FILE – A 5G logo is displayed on a screen outside the showroom at Huawei campus in Shenzhen city, in China’s Guangdong province, March 6, 2019.The U.S.-China Business Council said last February this is an issue of concern.  “Some companies and experts complained that Chinese stakeholders submit large numbers of proposals that are low-quality or irrelevant to market needs in some industries, including for products that China does not actually produce.”
 
The report titled “China in International Standards Setting” said this takes valuable time and resources away from considering serious proposals.
 
China also sends more people to attend international meetings that discuss, vote and make decisions on standards.
 
According to a report release last November by German intellectual property research firm Iplytics, Huawei dispatched over 3,000 engineers to participate in the 5G standard-setting process. American chipmaker Qualcomm sent 1,701 engineers to attend 3GPP meetings.
 
Dr. Melanie Hart, director for China Policy Center for American Progress, said the Chinese government is channeling state financial support to help Huawei and other Chinese firms send personnel to attend 3GPP meetings and flood the process with Chinese technical contributions.
 
“It is difficult for private companies from other nations to match that level of activity because sending engineers overseas to participate in 3GPP meetings and devoting R&D resources to develop 3GPP technical contributions are costly activities,” she testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission last March.   
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Facebook has banned an extremist anti-government network loosely associated with the broader “boogaloo” movement, a slang term supporters use to refer to a second Civil War or a collapse of civilization. But the platform didn’t try to name the group, underscoring the difficulty of grappling with an amorphous network linked to a string of domestic terror plots that appears to obfuscate its existence. Among other complications, its internet-savvy members tend to keep their distance from one another, frequently change their symbols and catch phrases and mask their intentions with sarcasm. The move by Facebook designates this group as a dangerous organization similar to the Islamic State group and white supremacists, both of which are already banned from its service. The social network is not banning all references to “boogaloo” and said it is only removing groups, accounts and pages when they have a “clear connection to violence or a credible threat to public safety.”  The loose movement is named after “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” a 1984 sequel to a movie about breakdancing. Boogaloo supporters have shown up at protests over COVID-19 lockdown orders, carrying rifles and wearing tactical gear over Hawaiian shirts – a reference to “big luau,” a homophone for “boogaloo” sometimes favored by group members. Facebook said that the movement dates to 2012 and that it has been tracking it closely since last year.  FILE – Steven Carrillo is seen in a booking photo from the Santa Cruz County (California) Sheriff’s Office, June 7, 2020.Earlier in June, Steven Carrillo, an Air Force sergeant with ties to the boogaloo movement, fatally shot a federal security officer and wounded his partner outside a U.S. courthouse, ambushed and killed a California sheriff’s deputy, and injured four other officers in Oakland, California. According to the criminal complaint, Carrillo posted in a Facebook group, “It’s on our coast now, this needs to be nationwide. It’s a great opportunity to target the specialty soup bois. Keep that energy going.”  The statement was followed by two fire emojis and a link to a YouTube video showing a large crowd attacking two California Highway Patrol vehicles. According to the FBI, “soup bois” may be a term that followers of the boogaloo movement used to refer to federal law enforcement agents.  While the term “boogaloo'” has been embraced by white supremacist groups and other far-right extremists, many supporters insist they aren’t racist or truly advocating for violence. As part of Tuesday’s announcement, Facebook said it has removed 220 Facebook accounts, 95 Instagram accounts, 28 Pages and 106 groups that that comprise the violent Boogaloo-affiliated network. It also took down 400 other groups and 100 pages that hosted similar content as the violent network but were maintained by accounts outside of it. The company said it has so far found no evidence of foreign actors amplifying boogaloo-related material. Social media companies are facing a reckoning over hate speech on their platforms. Reddit, an online comment forum that is one of the world’s most popular websites, on Monday banned a forum that supported President Donald Trump as part of a crackdown on hate speech. Live-streaming site Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, temporarily suspended Trump’s campaign account for violating its hateful conduct rules. YouTube, meanwhile, banned several prominent white nationalist figures from its platform, including Stefan Molyneux, David Duke and Richard Spencer. Civil rights groups have called on large advertisers to stop Facebook ad campaigns during July, saying the social network isn’t doing enough to curtail racist and violent content on its platform, and several major advertisers have signed on to the boycott.  Violent and extremist groups are increasingly turning to encrypted communications networks and fringe social platforms with no content moderation, which makes them more difficult to track.  
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With social distancing as the new pandemic normal, U.S. presidential campaigns were faced with an unprecedented situation. They no longer were able to send out organizers and volunteers to connect with potential voters face-to-face. Intimate, high-dollar fundraising events were also out of the question. “The coronavirus pandemic shifted things overnight. It was a sudden and instant transformation to 100% virtual campaigning, just like the pandemic disrupted everyone else’s daily life. The same is true of our campaigns,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist and director of the Center for Campaign Innovation. “You’re just seeing a lot more creativity in terms of how and where the campaigns are finding the voters they need to get their message across to,” said Tara McGowan, CEO and founder of Acronym, a progressive nonprofit organization and head of the political action committee Pacronym.  Lally Doerrer, right, and Katharine Hildebrand watch Joe Biden during his Illinois virtual town hall, in Doerrer’s living room March 13, 2020, in Chicago.Politics as entertainment Most voters are consuming politics as entertainment, Wilson said. Since the start of social distancing orders in March, the Trump campaign launched, on social media such as Facebook and YouTube, a daily talk show-style broadcast with a host and guests. “That’s one of the biggest kind of innovations we’ve done, are these original seven-nights-a-week online broadcast. We really touch on loads of different dynamics and different messaging opportunities,” Erin Perrine, director of press communications for the Trump campaign, said.  Prominent Republicans and President Donald Trump’s children have been either guests or hosts on these shows. In one program, hosted by Donald Trump Jr., the guest being interviewed was his father, who is running for a second term against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden.  The Biden campaign is also tapping into social media. Biden is using Instagram for live conversations with social media influencers, celebrities and past Democratic presidential candidates such as entrepreneur Andrew Yang.  Last week, Biden raised more than $11 million during a joint virtual fundraising event with former President Barack Obama.President Donald Trump speaks during a Fox News virtual town hall from the Lincoln Memorial, May 3, 2020, in Washington, co-moderated by FOX News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.Digital advertising, apps and engagement Digital ads have become another way for campaigns to reach potential voters and build a database of information.  “What the campaign is trying to do is if somebody engages the ad, clicks on the link, goes then to the website, then the first thing the campaign says is, ‘Hey, give me your email address,’ and if you do give your email address, they also then typically ask you for your name and maybe your address or your zip code,” Stromer-Galley said.  “Now they can start to get a profile of who you actually are and then maybe potentially marry that to other data that they have about that email address, whether they’ve purchased that list or are building it organically.”  With a potential supporter’s profile, campaigns can create ads on Facebook that target a specific demographic of users. “We run a lot of ads on Facebook continuously,” Perrine, of the Trump campaign, said. “Our digital team says it’s like high, high-volume trading on the stock market. We do a bunch of them and those that are doing well, we’ll put more money behind and continue to push those, then others that aren’t, you can pull them off the platform.”  Stromer-Galley said Facebook is a useful tool for campaigns because “Facebook has built an algorithm that predicts if you’re politically interested. They have an algorithm that predicts if you’re likely a Democratic supporter or a Republican supporter.” Both campaigns also have apps as ways of engaging supporters, fundraising and encouraging users to conduct peer-to-peer organizing. “If you’re one of my friends, and I know that you’ve not decided on who you’re going to vote for, I can reach out directly to you and say, ‘Hey, here’s who I’m supporting, here’s what I think matters to you, and I would send you a text message or a Facebook message, however we normally communicate,” said Wilson, the Republican strategist.   To encourage supporters, Trump’s app is gamified, where users can earn points by sharing a post or liking something on social media and making phone calls for the campaign. The points get aggregated, and they can be used to gain early entry into rallies, a discount code for buying campaign merchandise, and with enough points, a supporter can meet Trump.  The reason why campaigns want people to engage digitally is to “glean data, is to get more information on voters, how we can stay in contact with them, because you want these people to become volunteers, you want them to stay engaged and become part of the movement. But, ultimately, we want them to show up on election day,” Perrine said. “When I downloaded them to my phone, the first thing it asks — after some personal information about me, like my address, some demographic information, my name, my email address — it then asks if the app, the mobile app can access my contacts, my photographs,” said Stromer-Galley, who downloaded the Trump and Biden apps for her research. McGowan, of Pacronym, and her staff are separate from the Biden campaign. They  have been running their own digital advertising to support Biden on nontraditional platforms, such as streaming apps like Hulu and Roku, on gaming devices such as Xbox, and on streaming radio, including Pandora and Spotify.  McGowan said ads are no longer one-size-fits-all and have to be tailored for the various unique platforms available to consumers today. “It’s become such, just a diverse media landscape today. So you really have to sort of stay ahead of the curve. You really can’t rest on your laurels, and it’s a real challenge for campaigns,” she said.  Digital campaign contest With a bigger war chest, analysts of digital campaigns say Trump started the 2020 digital campaign with a huge advantage, both as the incumbent and with a database of supporters from his last presidential race.  “Trump has been very effective at blurring his presidential messaging and his campaign messaging on Twitter, and so as a journalist or as a member of the public, you can’t help but sort of get both at the same time when you’re watching him,” Stromer-Galley said. “Biden doesn’t have that advantage because he’s not the incumbent. He doesn’t have the presidency. He’s issuing formal statements. He’s doing YouTube videos. He is holding online events, but they don’t get the same traction,” she added. By numbers alone, Trump has more than 82 million followers on Twitter and Biden has just over 6 million. There are close to 30 million followers on Trump’s campaign Facebook page compared to just over 2 million followers on Biden’s Facebook page.  Trump’s campaign has outspent Biden on Facebook ads. “With online marketing, it’s a lot like compound interest. It pays more dividends the sooner you get it into the bank, and so the fact that the Trump campaign was able to get started building their digital infrastructure so early, it gives them a huge head start,” Wilson said.  As an example, he pointed to Trump’s decision to name Brad Pascale, his 2016 digital strategist, as his 2020 campaign manager as a sign that Trump understands the importance of having a strong digital presence in a campaign. Although Biden has been in politics much longer, “all of the campaign experiences can be a curse because you think you know how things should be done,” Wilson said. He further described the Biden campaign as “a traditional legacy style of campaign first, with digital operations as an add-on, and that’s not the way campaigns should be run in 2020.” The Biden campaign did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. However, McGowan countered, saying Biden has experience with digital campaigning while running as Obama’s running mate. “The Obama campaigns really drove a lot of the innovation in campaigning and bringing campaigning online. Online fundraising, advertising, and so Vice President Biden is no stranger to digital campaigning or strategy,” McGowan said. Earlier in June, the Biden campaign spent $15 million on advertising across media platforms.  “The Biden campaign has very quickly adapted to this moment. They’re continuing to grow and pivot, and I really believe that they are closing the gap,” McGowan said.  Since the pandemic, the Democratic National Committee has sent more than 4 million text messages to get people to sign up to vote by mail and held 82 training sessions on digital organizing since March, compared to 14 training sessions in 2019.  “The way that people have shown up in droves for them has been a really important thing,” Meg DiMartino, Democratic National Committee digital organizing director, said with more than 11,500 people signing up across all of the trainings. The key to a successful digital campaign is to reach “the right voters with the right message at the right moment on the right platform from the right messenger,” strategist Wilson said. That largely means meeting potential voters in the digital world during the 2020 pandemic. 
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For years, social media platforms have fueled political polarization and hosted an explosion of hate speech. Now, with four months until the U.S. presidential election and the country’s divisions reaching a boiling point, these companies are upping their game against bigotry and threats of violence. What’s not yet clear is whether this action is too little, too late — nor whether the pressure on these companies, including a growing advertiser boycott, will be enough to produce lasting change. FILE – Reddit employees work at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, California, April 15, 2014.Reddit, an online comment forum that is one of the world’s most popular websites, on Monday banned a forum that supported President Donald Trump as part of a crackdown on hate speech. Also on Monday, live-streaming site Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, temporarily suspended Trump’s campaign account for violating its hateful conduct rules. YouTube, meanwhile, banned several prominent white nationalist figures from its platform, including Stefan Molyneux, David Duke and Richard Spencer.  Social media companies, led by Facebook, now face a reckoning over what critics call indefensible excuses for amplifying divisions, hate and misinformation on their platforms. Civil rights groups have called on large advertisers to stop Facebook ad campaigns during July, saying the social network isn’t doing enough to curtail racist and violent content on its platform.  Companies such as the consumer goods giant Unilever — one of the world’s largest advertisers — as well as Verizon, Ford and many smaller brands have joined the boycott, some for the month of July and others for the rest of the year. New companies have been signing on to the boycott almost every day. While some are pausing ads only on Facebook, others have also stepped back from advertising on Twitter and other platforms. On Monday, Ford Motor Co. put the brakes on all national social media advertising for the next 30 days. The company says hate speech, as well as posts advocating violence and racial injustice, need to be eradicated from the sites. FILE – The Twitter and Facebook logos are seen with binary cyber codes in this illustration, Nov. 26, 2019.While the ad boycott has dinged Facebook’s and Twitter’s shares, analysts who follow the social media business don’t see it as having a lasting effect.  Raymond James analyst Aaron Kessler noted that YouTube has faced several ad boycotts in the past over hate speech and other objectionable material. Each time, it adjusted its policies and the advertisers returned. In addition, July is generally a slow month for advertising. Companies have also been cutting their ad budgets due to COVID-19, so the spending declines are not a surprise for investors. Kessler called Facebook’s stock pullback — its shares fell more than 8% on Friday, then rallied a bit Monday — a “buying opportunity.” Reddit’s action was part of a larger purge at the San Francisco-based site. The company said it took down a total of 2,000 forums, known as the site as “subreddits,” most of which it said were inactive or had few users.  The Trump Reddit forum, called The_Donald, was banned because it encouraged violence, regularly broke other Reddit rules, and defiantly “antagonized” both Reddit and other forums, the company said in a statement. Reddit had previously tried to discipline the forum. “We are cautiously optimistic that Reddit is finally working with groups like ours to dismantle the systems that enable hateful rhetoric on their platform,” Bridget Todd, a spokeswoman for the women’s advocacy organization UltraViolet, said in an emailed statement.  The group said its members met with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman via Zoom last week, encouraging him to address racism and hate speech on the platform. Despite optimism from some critics, others said it is not clear if such measures will be enough. For years, racist groups “have successfully used social media to amplify their message and gain new recruits,” said Sophie Bjork-James an anthropology professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in white nationalism, racism and hate crimes.  “However, limiting access to a broader public will have unintended negative consequences. Far-right and white nationalist groups are increasingly gathering on encrypted apps and social media sites that do not monitor for offensive speech or violent content,” she added. “This shift allows for coordinating more violent and radical actions.” The algorithms tech companies developed to keep users glued to their services “have provided perhaps the biggest boon to organized racism in decades, as they help racist ideas find a much larger and potentially receptive audience,” Bjork-James said, adding that she is hopeful that the same companies that “helped this anti-democratic movement expand” can now help limit its impact. For its part, Twitch pointed to comments the president made at two rallies, videos of which were posted on the site.  Supporters of President Donald Trump cheer as he arrives on stage to speak to a campaign rally at the BOK Center, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.In one, a live stream of a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trump talked about a “very tough hombre” breaking into someone’s home. The other was from a 2015 campaign rally that was recently posted on Twitch, in which Trump said Mexico sends rapists and criminals to the U.S. Twitch declined to say how long the suspension will last. The White House referred a request for comment to Trump’s reelection campaign. Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s director of communications, said that people who want to hear directly from the president should download the campaign’s app. Reddit has  tweaked its rules and banned forums  for white nationalists  over the years in an attempt to rid its platform of vitriol, sometimes producing significant user backlash as a result. CEO Steve Huffman said earlier this month that Reddit was working with moderators to explicitly address hate speech. 
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India has banned the use of 59 Chinese-owned apps, including TikTok, citing security concerns Monday, as relations between the two neighbors worsen. In a statement, India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT said it “has decided to block 59 apps since in view of information available, they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of state and public order.” TikTok, a popular video application owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, counts India as its biggest market. It was not immediately clear how the “ban” would be enforced and whether mobile companies were expected to comply. As of Monday evening, the banned apps were still available on Google’s Play store and the Apple App store in India, according to Tech Crunch.The announcement from Delhi comes amid rising tension between the two countries, weeks after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in clashes with Chinese forces along the border in the region of Ladakh. The Chinese government did not release figures on how many of its own soldiers were injured or killed. 
 
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Facebook says it will flag all “newsworthy” posts from politicians that break its rules, including those from President Donald Trump.  CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously refused to take action against Trump posts that suggested mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud. Twitter, by contrast, slapped a “get the facts” label on them.Facebook is also banning false claims intended to discourage voting, such as stories about federal agents checking legal status at polling places. The company also said it is increasing its enforcement capacity to remove false claims about local polling conditions in the 72 hours before the U.S. election.Earlier Friday, shares of Facebook and Twitter dropped sharply after the giant company behind brands such as Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Dove soap said it will halt U.S. advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram through at least the end of the year.That European consumer-product maker, Unilever, said it took the move to protest the amount of hate speech online. Unilever said the polarized atmosphere in the United States ahead of November’s presidential election placed responsibility on brands to act.Shares of both Facebook and Twitter fell roughly 7% following Unilever’s announcement.FILE – The Unilever headquarters is seen in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Aug. 21, 2018.The company, which is based in the Netherlands and Britain, joins a raft of other advertisers pulling back from online platforms. Facebook in particular has been the target of an escalating movement to withhold advertising dollars to pressure it to do more to prevent racist and violent content from being shared on its platform.”We have decided that starting now through at least the end of the year, we will not run brand advertising in social media newsfeed platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the U.S.,” Unilever said. “Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society.”On Thursday, Verizon joined others in the Facebook boycott.Sarah Personette, vice president of global client solutions at Twitter, said the company’s “mission is to serve the public conversation and ensure Twitter is a place where people can make human connections, seek and receive authentic and credible information, and express themselves freely and safely.”She added that Twitter is “respectful of our partners’ decisions and will continue to work and communicate closely with them during this time.”
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Microsoft Corp said on Friday it would close its retail stores and take a related pre-tax asset impairment charge of $450 million in the current quarter.The Redmond, Washington-based software giant said would continue to serve customers online, with team members working remotely from corporate facilities.It was not immediately clear if Microsoft’s move would lead to any layoffs.The company also said it will rethink other spaces that serve all customers, including operating Microsoft Experience Centers in London, New York City, Sydney, and Redmond campus locations.”This is a tough, but smart strategic decision for (CEO) Nadella & Co. to make at this point. The physical stores generated negligible retail revenue for Microsoft and ultimately everything was moving more and more towards the digital channels over the last few years,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note.Retailers, whose stores shuttered in mid-March due to coronavirus-led lockdowns, have seen a huge surge in online demand amid stay-at-home orders.
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The Boston City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to pass a ban on the use of facial recognition technology by city government. The move makes Boston the second-largest U.S. city after San Francisco to enact a ban. The city joins several other Massachusetts communities that passed similar bans, including Cambridge, Springfield, Northampton, Brookline and Somerville. “Boston should not use racially discriminatory technology that threatens the privacy and basic rights of our residents,” At-Large Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu said in a statement. “Community trust is the foundation for public safety and public health.” The push against the technology is being driven both by privacy concerns and after several studies have shown current face-recognition systems are more likely to err when identifying people with darker skin. “While face surveillance is a danger to all people, no matter the color of their skin, the technology is a particularly serious threat to Black and brown people,” Councilor Ricardo Arroyo said in a statement. The American Civil Liberties Union-Massachusetts has been pushing a bill on Beacon Hill that aims to establish a statewide moratorium on the government use of facial surveillance and other remote biometric screening technologies until the Legislature imposes checks and balances to protect the public’s interest. The Boston measure is now sent to Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh’s desk. If he takes no action in 15 days, it will automatically become law. 
 
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