How Google & Facebook Censor Content & Demonetize Independent Media

[angelburst29]

Just got the e-mail from twitter notifying me that I either liked or retweeted something from an account that was deemed to be part of the imaginary Russian collusion interference in the 2016 election. Marks a first for me for being warned about anything related to content on social media. I imagine it won't be the last.

Twitter will inform nearly 700,000 people in the U.S. that they either followed a Kremlin-linked troll account, or retweeted or liked a tweet sent by one of the accounts, the social media company said Friday.

Twitter to tell 677,775 people they interacted with Kremlin-linked trolls January 19, 2018
http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/19/media/twitter-internet-research-agency-accounts/index.html

The company last year identified thousands of Twitter accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency, a Russian government-linked troll army in St. Petersburg that worked to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and to promote chaos and division in American society more generally.

"Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period," Twitter said in a blog post announcing the move.

Twitter initially said it had found 200 accounts linked to the group. Then it told Congress last fall that it had identified 2,752 accounts linked to the group. On Friday, Twitter said it had since identified an additional 1,062 accounts, bringing the total to 3,814. The accounts together sent more than 175,000 tweets, the company said.

Twitter said it will hand over the details of the additional accounts to Congress.

The company also said it had also found more than 50,000 Russian-linked automated accounts that tweeted about the presidential election. Networks of automated accounts are often run from the same computer and sometimes post the same link, talking point or hashtag en-masse in an attempt to make it trend on the platform.

Among those getting emails will likely be some current and former members of the Trump administration, as well as a member of the Trump family.

White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway retweeted one of the IRA-linked accounts, @TEN_GOP, which was designed to look like it was run by the Tennessee Republican Party, just days before the 2016 election.

Donald Trump Jr. also followed the @TEN_GOP account, CNN found.

And former National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn, his son Michael Flynn Jr. and former deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka all followed a separate IRA-linked account, a CNN analysis last year found. That account, which used the pseudonym "Jenna Abrams," developed a persona of a conservative American woman, and amassed a following of more than 70,000.

A copy of the email sent to one Twitter user after the blog post was published Friday obtained by CNN showed that Twitter informed the user they had interacted with one of the IRA-linked accounts, but did not say which account it was.

In December, Facebook launched a tool in its help section that allows users to see if they followed any Facebook or Instagram accounts run by the Internet Research Agency. Unlike Twitter, Facebook has not announced plans to inform users directly.

Both companies appeared to time these announcements for moments when they would get less attention than they might otherwise. Facebook made its announcement the Friday before Christmas; Twitter published its blog post on a Friday when the news media was focused on a possible government shutdown.

Twitter also said on Friday it was investing in technology to help "detect and mitigate the effect on users of fake, coordinated, and automated account activity."

Its efforts on that front have included some missteps. The fake "Jenna Abrams" persona that was followed by the Flynns and Gorka has twice since re-emerged on the platform using the same name. On both occasions Twitter did not take action against the new accounts until CNN reported their existence.

 

[angelburst29]

Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, has been named the largest lobbyist in Washington, DC, in 2017, the first time ever that a tech company has claimed that mantle. Alphabet spent $18 million to influence US government policy in the past year.

Google Makes US Lobbying History to Build ‘Vertical Monopoly’ on Information
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201801251061045964-google-lobbyist-record-spending/

Brian Becker and John Kiriakou of Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear spoke to Chris Garaffa, an independent tech journalist and web developer with website designer Box 8 Creative, about Alphabet's record-setting lobbying.

"Looking at some of the things that Google is lobbying for, it would seem to list some seemingly innocuous things: some on human trafficking bills, immigration policy, increased infrastructure spending," said Garaffa. "But they're doing it all for their own benefit. Google wants infrastructure spending for their own fiber network rollout that would provide internet service to cities across the country, something they've been working on for many years. They want immigration change because they want to able to hire workers from other companies and bring them into the United States."

"In particular, I think we need to talk about the consumer privacy thing that Google has been lobbying for. They've been lobbying very hard for consumer privacy laws, but I think that's just a PR move. As the Snowden reports and other reports from Al-Jazeera and other news outlets have told us, they work very closely with the NSA. In fact, the executives of Google have personal relationships with the NSA directors."

Becker and Kiriakou discussed the broad power major corporations wield in the US government, with tech corporations such as Apple and Facebook also spending tens of millions on lobbying Congress in 2017. Becker added that Google's power goes even deeper than that: their secret algorithm to decide which search results appear and in what order gives them enormous socio-political power, but is subject to virtually no regulation.

"I often bring this up when people talk about so-called ‘Russiagate' while US companies are lobbying and spending millions and billions of dollars collectively to influence the elections," agreed Garaffa. "But we never talk about that, whereas Russia may have had a few hundred thousand accounts — and it still hasn't been proven."

"Google and Facebook and Apple are joining the likes of Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin and other giant defense contractors, plus AT&T, which was and now is again a monopoly. That is what Google wants to be: a vertical monopoly, providing services from literally being your internet service provider, the cable to your home, all the way up to your data on the cloud, what YouTube videos you're watching, the content of your emails, the searches you're making, the content of other websites that you're going to."

"It does that because its main product is not the search engine, or even advertisements, but your personal data is what Google is primarily concerned with," he said.

Kiriakou argued that he considered Google to be part of the "deep state," working with intelligence agencies and policy makers to furtively amass power, or whatever a deep state does. Becker brought up that during the tenure of former US President Barack Obama, Google executives visited the White House around 450 times, more than any other company.

"Google is not partisan," said Garaffa. "They give about equally to Republicans and Democrats. Maybe [Alphabet Inc. President] Sergey Brin cares who's in the White House, but as a company they don't particularly care. They want to get their results, and they're going to get them, regardless of who's in the White House."

It's interesting you mentioned the many visits to the White House. A lot of that actually was about Cuba policy: Google was in some ways instrumental in Obama's change towards the approach to Cuba, and part of the reason for that was that they are now providing some Internet access through Google services to Cubans. We can only imagine what they're doing with that information, which three letter agencies they're handing the search results to."

 

[angelburst29]

US online networking service Twitter has notified some 1.4 million users about interactions with accounts likely linked to the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA), the company said in a statement.

Twitter Notifies Over Million of Its Users About Alleged Russian Accounts
https://sputniknews.com/us/201802011061247999-usa-twitter-accounts-interaction-russia/

We have expanded the number of people notified about interactions with Twitter accounts potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency," Twitter said on Wednesday. "Approximately 1.4 million people have now received a notification from Twitter."

Twitter sent letters to users who interacted with IRA accounts by liking their content, replying to posts or retweeting them.

In December, Facebook said that St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which is suspected of alleged interfering in the US election, spent only $0.97 on the referendum-related ads delivered to UK audiences. Twitter has also looked into the organization and has suspended almost 4,000 accounts linked to it since October.

Twitter’s general counsel told the US Senate Intelligence Committee last year the number of Russia-linked accounts with election-related content was one one hundredth of a percent (0.0001) of all accounts.

Russia has repeatedly refuted the allegations of its interference in other states' internal affairs.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed, when speaking about the purported meddling in elections in the United States, the United Kingdom or other countries, that there was no evidence to substantiate the claims.

Congressman Adam Schiff and Senator Dianne Feinstein pressed Facebook and Twitter in a letter on Wednesday to reveal details about an alleged Russian campaign to promote the release of a classified memo on the apparent mishandling of the Russiagate investigation.

Dems Urge Facebook, Twitter to Probe Alleged Russian Tracks in FBI Memo Release
https://sputniknews.com/us/201802011061243943-usa-facebook-twitter-fbi-probe/

"We ask that your companies… provide responses with any information, data, or context that is relevant to our underlying concern: that Moscow has persevered undeterred in its attempts to manipulate or exploit social media conversations on politically divisive topics," the senior Democratic lawmakers said in their to the social media giants.

The lawmakers were referring to a classified four-page memo drafted by Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes that alleges that the FBI and Justice Department mishandled the investigation into accusations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

Republicans have called for the release of the memo, many of them using the social media hashtag #releaseTheMemo. Democrats claim that Russian-sponsored social media bots promoted the "release the memo" campaign.

Wednesday's letter from Schiff and Feinstein is the second that the lawmakers have written to Facebook and Twitter demanding an investigation of what they allege is a Kremlin-backed influence campaign.

We appreciate your companies’ respective responses … to understand the role and extent of Russian-affiliated social media accounts involved in promoting the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag,” their latest letter said. “Although we are encouraged by your companies’ continued willingness to work with Congress to raise awareness about the potential abuse of your platforms by agents of foreign influence, your replies have raised more questions than they have answered.”

Twitter has reportedly already investigated the matter and determined that the bots were American, not Russian.

Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that it meddles in US politics, including accusations that it interfered in the 2016 US election.

 

[angelburst29]

Inside Google’s plan to build a smart neighborhood in Toronto (Video) 3.16.2018
https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/16/alphabet-google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-quayside/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWjW5N0ZkZU (3:53 min.)

On the Sidewalk Labs website is a 200-page document explaining its vision for a smart neighborhood in Toronto.
_https://sidewalktoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Sidewalk-Labs-Vision-Sections-of-RFP-Submission.pdf

It's packed with illustrations that show a warm, idyllic community full of grassy parks, modular buildings and underground tunnels with delivery robots and internet cabling inside. The text describes "a truly complete community" that's free of cars and committed to reducing its carbon footprint. Underpinning everything is a network of sensors that can monitor noise, traffic and pollution, collecting the troves of data required to understand and improve the city's design.

Flipping through the pages, it's easy to see how the company -- an offshoot of Google parent Alphabet -- was chosen to revitalize the Lake Ontario waterfront. The lengthy pitch document, however, is just a taste of what the area might become. It's a dreamy but meticulously thought-out mood board summarizing what Sidewalk Labs has been pondering for the past two years. Reading it cover to cover, you can get lost in the scale and ambition of such a project. Most companies would struggle to execute just one aspect of the plan: autonomous transit, for instance, or buildings that can be quickly and cheaply repurposed depending on the time of day or needs of the city.

Sidewalk Labs, however, wants to do it all.

The project started with an email sent by Eric Schmidt, Google's then executive chairman, to Dan Doctoroff in 2014. The subject line read, "The City of the Future." Doctoroff was the head of Bloomberg LP, an umbrella company for its terminal business, news wire service and journalistic ventures. Previously, he had worked with Michael Bloomberg as New York's deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding. Schmidt wanted to know if Doctoroff would meet Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and listen to their thoughts on smart cities.

At the time, Google was working on its smiley face self-driving car. Behind the scenes, however, the company was having broader conversations about technology and how it could be used to improve urban life. Page and Brin were enthusiastic but knew they needed a specialist, or some kind of leader, who understood cities as much as technology. Their conversations with Doctoroff were fruitful, and in the summer of 2015, Sidewalk Labs was announced to the world. "Every time I talk with Dan I feel an amazing sense of opportunity because of all the ways technology can help transform cities to be more livable, flexible and vibrant," Page said in a Google+ post.

Two months later, Google announced Alphabet, a new business structure that made Google a subsidiary and its many moonshot projects, including delivery drones and life extension, standalone businesses. Sidewalk Labs was "a new company" from the start, but this corporate shuffle solidified its position as a long-term, experimental bet.

Doctoroff and his team spent the next two years studying more than 100 urban initiatives. This served as preparation for the Waterfront Toronto project, which launched in March 2017. The City of Toronto, with support from the Canadian government, was looking for a partner to rebuild and revitalize roughly 750 acres of land along the Eastern Waterfront. The first phase, or pilot, would be Quayside, a 12-acre site close to the central business district. Several local and international firms submitted proposals, including Sidewalk Labs. On October 17th, 2017, the Alphabet-owned offshoot announced that it had won the bid and given the project a new name: Sidewalk Toronto.

Toronto's Eastern Waterfront has more than 325 hectares (800 acres) of land ripe for redevelopment.

So-called smart cities have been tried before with varying levels of success. One of the most ambitious is Songdo, a tech metropolis built 40 miles west of Seoul, the South Korean capital. In 2000, it was a marshy patch of tidal flats; now it's a connected city dominated by glassy skyscrapers and a New York-inspired Central Park. Cameras are scattered across bridges, highways and narrow back alleys, providing an endless stream of video to a human team stationed in Songdo's G-Tower. They monitor traffic for accidents and congestion as well as natural disasters, crime and public facilities that might require repairs.

Residents have touchscreen panels that allow them to control the temperature and lighting in their homes as well as the timing of deliveries. A citywide pneumatic refuse system sucks garbage below the surface and into a remote sorting center, eliminating the need for dirty garbage trucks. Songdo can feel a bit quiet and sterile, however, with rent prices that exceed the budget of the average household. It was meant to be a hub for international businesses -- Incheon International Airport is a short drive away -- but adoption has been slow. French newspaper Le Monde described the city as a "ghetto for the affluent" last year.

"Most smart cities projects are in a very early stage." Singapore is using a network of sensors to understand people's energy usage and waste production. It's also considering a mandatory GPS system that tracks every car on the road in real time. But there are privacy and security concerns born out of a government that is often described as authoritarian. Barcelona, meanwhile, has deployed an army of sensors to track air quality, free parking spaces and the amount of trash in public bins.

It's also dabbling with a superblock concept that limits the speed and volume of traffic inside small metropolitan areas, prioritizing the movement of cyclists and pedestrians instead. These projects are small, however, compared to Neom, a planned city on the Red Sea coast that will be powered by wind turbines and vast fields of solar panels, announced last October by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. According to an ostentatious promotional website, the streets will be occupied by "automated, 100-percent green transport systems," including passenger drones. Food will be supplied by giant vertical urban farms while residents enjoy "the world's largest garden," endless natural parkland and record-breaking theme parks.

Many are skeptical. "Most smart cities projects are in a very early stage," Cesar Cerrudo, founder of the not-for-profit Securing Smart Cities, said. "If you do your research, you'll find there are a lot of projects but there isn't much that's concrete. It's a lot of publicity, a lot of marketing."

Sidewalk Labs believes its dual expertise in technology and urban design makes it different. The company is based in New York rather than Silicon Valley to distill a sense of city living in its employees. That DNA also shaped its bid and, consequently, the ideas that it's pushing forward for Quayside. The buildings, for instance, will use a modular design that's cheaper and faster to build. Some of them will utilize Loft, a minimalistic interior that means they can be quickly repurposed. In this scenario, a parking lot could be converted into an office as more people start to embrace electric and autonomous ride-sharing options.

Buildings will be made from eco-friendly buildings materials, including tall timber skeletons and mycelium insulation, and powered by renewable energy sources, including roof and wall-mounted solar panels. They'll be warmed and cooled by a thermal grid that leverages waste heat from sewers and buildings as well as geothermal sources and nearby lakes. Homes will also be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified and meet the energy-efficient Passive House standard developed by two professors in Germany (where it's known as Passivhaus) in the early 1990s.

"By far the most important issue is affordability."

Sidewalk is committed to affordability and avoiding Songdo's reputation as a half-empty city for the rich. It's banking on a blend of simple and old-fashioned pricing models, including social tenants, private renters, subsidized renters and full-fledged homeowners. "A partial homeownership program might be a perfect fit for a family looking to settle down, whereas a retiree on a fixed income may require a rental subsidy," the company explained. "Sidewalk proposes to make Quayside a living laboratory for housing policy innovation that delivers a mixed- occupancy community that mirrors Toronto's socioeconomic diversity."

Doctoroff pushed this point at a community town hall meeting last November. "By far the most important issue is all about affordability," he said. "We certainly see everyday people, middle class, lower-middle and lower-income people, being priced out of areas, suffering from the incapacity to get opportunities because distances are too great or the costs are too great. If we don't fundamentally address that issue, the fabric of society and the whole notion of this being an inclusive community begins to fray."

Sidewalk Labs is serious about ditching cars too. The team wants the Eastern Waterfront to be the first district in Toronto where only shared and self-driving vehicles are allowed. Non-emergency vehicles will be banned from "a large portion" of the neighborhood, giving space back to pedestrians and cyclists. A "transition zone" will exist for people who need to travel beyond Quayside, but the idea is to promote a walking, cycling and public transit culture in the center.

The absence of private cars should make the roads feel quieter and safer. It will also eliminate the need for curbside parking, freeing up crucial space for sidewalks and stores. "It's all about getting rid of stationary cars," Alan Penn, a professor in Architectural and Urban Computing at UCL, said. "That can transform what somewhere feels like."

Sidewalk plans to extend Toronto's existing bike-share scheme into Quayside. It's also considering an LED system that can create, widen and narrow temporary bike lanes on the road. The latter is experimental but perhaps unnecessary. Michael Seth Wexler, an urban designer at cycling consultancy Copenhagenize, said permanent, protected cycleways will be critical if the city wants to get more people on two wheels. If they disappear or they're few and far between, people won't be able to rely on them -- and casual cyclists will default to other forms of transportation.

"It's all about getting rid of stationary cars. That can transform what somewhere feels like."

"To know that there's always going to be a protected path that you can take down the main street," Wexler explained, "before any modern technology is implemented, that's a baseline that will create a sense of reliability in the transport system."

Above all, people want to feel safe. "They won't feel safe unless they have a separation from other modes of transport," Wexler added. "You don't want to be cycling slowly with a tram zooming right by you and then you have to duck out of the way of a transport truck or even an automated vehicle." It's worrying, he said, that none of the illustrations in the Sidewalk Labs pitch document show a protected cycleway.

Wexler welcomes technology, however, and how it could make cycling a more efficient and attractive option in Quayside. Sidewalk Labs will pilot an "adaptive traffic light" concept that can detect and prioritize cyclists at busy intersections. It would be similar to the green-wave system in Copenhagen, which ensures that cyclists traveling at 20KMH hit green lights all the way into the city center. The company has some new ideas, too, such as automatic, retractable canopies and heated bike paths that melt snow in the winter.

Technologists vs. urbanists - Doctoroff was brought onboard to bring urban planning and design expertise to Google's traditionally technological background. Blending these two worlds hasn't been easy though. Developers will often use A/B testing, for instance -- two versions of the same software, quietly distributed to different users -- to see which solution works best. In a city, however, that's often not an option. You can't A/B test a traffic light system if there's a chance one of them will cause accidents on the road. Similarly, "fail fast, fail often" is a bad ethos when lives are at risk.

Urbanists act more deliberately but can often see solutions as unchangeable. When a home is built or a cycle path is put in place, they see it as a semipermanent development. Sidewalk Labs found it "difficult" to balance these two cultures in its first year of operations. "It led to some conflicts," said Rit Aggarwala, chief policy officer at Sidewalk Labs. "It led to a bunch of misunderstandings where it wasn't an intentional conflict. We just realized we weren't speaking the same language with each other."

The urbanists had to be more explicit about the risks they were identifying, and the technologists had to be more attuned to where something could go wrong. Similarly, the developers needed to retain their enthusiasm and speed while protecting the values that urbanists believe are important.

Sidewalk Labs is envisioning Quayside as a series of layers. At the bottom is a network of tunnels, or utility channels, which serves as the city's near-invisible infrastructure. Above is the public realm, or street level, which serves as a foundation for its mobility and building concepts. At the highest level is the digital layer, which combines a network of sensors, a detailed map of the neighborhood, simulation software and a platform where citizens can log in and manage their public and private data.

Google makes its money by tracking internet users and serving them highly targeted ads. It's the revenue engine for Alphabet that, in turn, allows Sidewalk Labs to operate so freely. As a result, people are worried about Quayside and how residents' data will be treated. Will Sidewalk Labs have full access to the information collected by its sensors? How will data be shared with the company's partners? Will citizens be able to opt out of certain programs, and if so, how will it affect their quality of life in the city?

People are worried about Quayside and how residents' data will be treated.

Wexler welcomes technology, however, and how it could make cycling a more efficient and attractive option in Quayside.

Aggarwala is promising a privacy-by-design approach. That means limiting data capture to the "bare minimum" throughout the city. The company's internal Sense Lab, for instance, is developing a camera system that strips surveillance footage down to a series of faint outlines. We don't need an image of you," Aggarwala said. "What we need is your outline, because then the computer can tell, 'Oh, that's a human. That's a person walking.' If all I do is outline your body and there's no face, no color, no nothing, then there's no way I can identify you. I've eliminated the privacy issue, but I've accomplished the goal."

Not everyone is convinced. To make a service smarter, or more user-friendly, you generally need more information. Let's say someone clambers into an elevator; with a motion sensor you can detect their presence and light up a control panel. If you know who they are, however, you can also play their favorite song or take them to their hotel room automatically. "They can anonymize the information," Cerrudo explained, "but in the end, the less they anonymize it, the more functionality they can give to the end user."

(Article continued in next post.)

 

[angelburst29]

Part of the solution is a simulation platform called Model. It will be "metro area scale" and cover the movement of every Quayside resident who might wander through its virtual net. Sidewalk Labs will use this data to test possible changes to roadway pricing, ride-sharing and its multiuse buildings. It will also accept data collected by the Sense Lab team to simulate what will happen in the next five, 15 and 30 minutes. Over time, the company will use the platform to test long-term changes to water, energy and other public infrastructure. It will also grow more accurate and sophisticated with use, to the point where someone could ask, "Where were the 20 people on this bus really starting from, and where were they really going?"

"It's a tool that doesn't exist," Aggarwala said. "We need to build it because the state-of-the-art equivalents right now are very expensive, very slow and very coarse in terms of their analysis."

It seems inevitable, though, that Sidewalk Labs will need to change or upgrade one of its services in the future. When that happens, the company will have to survey Quayside residents or ask them for approval, just like developers do now with user agreements in the App Store. Cerrudo suspects the company will introduce an "end-citizen" agreement that includes automatic approval for all technological changes in the city. Otherwise, "the challenge is to find a way to easily ask people for feedback and get an answer," Cerrudo said, "and then decide what to do."

Consultations will be a political and democratic problem as much as a privacy and security issue. Decisions will need to be backed by Quayside citizens as well as local and national government. "It could be very bureaucratic," Cerrudo said. Sidewalk Labs, however, thinks it's a question of trust. If its policies are transparent enough and there are robust safeguards to protect user data, residents will slowly give Doctoroff and his team the benefit of the doubt. "If not, then frankly we've made a mistake, because we have to earn that trust," Aggarwala said.

"There should be a whole chapter on privacy and security. There shouldn't just be one reference."

To do so, Sidewalk Labs will be asking for help from independent cybersecurity experts. Ann Cavoukian, a former information and privacy commissioner for Ontario and now executive director of the Privacy and Big Data Institute at Ryerson University, has agreed to serve on the company's advisory board. It's a positive step, though Cerrudo is still concerned about the company's commitment to security. In the pitch document, for instance, "I looked for 'security' and there are just two mentions of security, on two pages," he said. "There should be a whole chapter on privacy and security. There shouldn't just be one reference."

Trust will also hinge on the people that Sidewalk Labs is able to attract to the area. The company wants the community to be multigenerational, mixed-income and diverse. If all of its residents are Google employees or Silicon Valley developer types, the project may be seen by many as a failure. That doesn't mean Quayside will be for everyone, however. A major opportunity, Aggarwala said, will be attracting people who are open to urban innovation.

The company is thinking about a Smart Chute system, for instance, that tracks how much waste people are throwing away. It would then be possible to charge residents per bag, promoting waste reduction and generating cash for city refurbishments. Such a move would also help Quayside to reduce its environmental impact and the amount of traffic running through its underground tunnels. To be effective, though, Sidewalk Labs needs residents who can understand and embrace the long-term benefits. If a path is widened or a canopy is moved, citizens need to trust that it's for the greater good.

"My strong belief is that we're going to find it's an attitude that cuts across age, gender, income, background -- all sorts of things," Aggarwala said.

Waterfront Toronto has recognized the importance of privacy and data governance too. In a memo, Kristina Verner, vice president of innovation, sustainability and prosperity at Waterfront Toronto, said Cavoukian's help and privacy by design were "not sufficient to ensure legal compliance with relevant legislation." The organization will, therefore, create an independent Digital Strategy Advisory Panel to assist on the project. Members will be plucked from the academic, legal and civic technology communities and help Waterfront Toronto shape its digital-governance requirements.

Sidewalk Labs owns Intersection, one of the companies behind the LinkNYC WiFi kiosks.

Sidewalk Labs is an offshoot of Alphabet, but it's also experimenting with a subsidiary structure of its own. That's unusual; most of Google's acquisitions are quickly absorbed into one of its existing businesses.
In June 2015, Doctoroff and his team led a consortium in the acquisition of Control Group, a New York-based technology and design consultancy firm, and advertising agency Titan. The pair were combined and rebranded as Intersection, a company that has since turned thousands of old pay phones into free, gigabit-speed WiFi kiosks.

On Februart 1st, 2018, Sidewalk Labs announced a second spin-off called Coord. The company is developing a platform with APIs that relate to road tolls, curbs and parking. It's a small but important piece in the development of a smart city. With a custom surveyor app, for instance, Coord employees can quickly photograph parking signs and other curbside information, digitizing road regulations in minutes. Developers can then access that information as an API and use it to improve their navigation apps and software. If you run a delivery truck business, for example, you need to know where it's OK to park and unload. Similarly, taxi drivers want to find the best places to pick up and drop off customers.

In the future, Coord will help self-driving vehicles adjust their routes in real time, preventing congestion, double-parking and unwanted toll fees. Google Maps has already integrated Coord so that drivers can find available parking near their destination. "By giving people full insight into all of their trip choices -- and seamless door-to-door service -- tools like this one can lead to better mobility outcomes for cities," Stephen Smyth, CEO of Coord, said in a blog post.

It's not clear if or how Coord and Intersection will work on Sidewalk Toronto. But a distribution of expertise could help Doctoroff's company to focus and solve specific problems.

Toronto's Eastern Waterfront - In many respects, Sidewalk Labs is building Quayside from scratch. The coastline area already exists, but the company is imagining a complete revamp that includes roads, buildings and public areas. It's an opportunity for the company -- a chance to implement large, experimental infrastructure from the outset -- but also a great challenge. The more options that you have, the harder it is to make decisions and prove that a single component or change is having a positive impact. Penn calls it a "combinatorial explosion." "People often think that a clean slate is an easier thing to handle in design," he said. "In fact it's not. It's much, much harder."

Most designers circumvent this problem by creating artificial constraints. They'll look at real-world examples and choose a small selection as possible solutions. Or they'll settle on a particular style that drastically reduces the possibilities in an urban area. Penn said, "You can say, 'Well, actually, I'm going to build a city in a big green field.' But how do you decide anything? Where do you start? So the first thing you do is invent constraints or you look at what constraints there are in the world. That narrows the possibilities down to the point at which you have a starting point."

It's also inaccurate to call Quayside a clean slate, because it sits within the larger context of Toronto. It's part of an old, established city that has its own culture and expectations. Many citizens, for instance, use cars to run errands and get to work. If the Eastern Waterfront has a complete ban on private vehicles, that will make it a difficult place to visit -- a futuristic but isolated community. That's why the company is thinking about a transition zone. Aggarwala compares it to Canary Wharf, a business district in London that was originally served by the DLR train line exclusively. It felt remote until an underground station was added as part of the 1999 Jubilee Line extension.

"All of a sudden it felt like, 'Oh, that's part of the city because that's part of what the rest of the city does.'"

With Quayside, Sidewalk Labs wants to build a neighborhood with a strong sense of community. The company envisions "a next-gen bazaar" where residents can sell their "tech-enabled" wares or teach others new skills. The dense mixture of homes, stores and public facilities will encourage people to walk around and interact with one another. Community is an abstract value, however, that's difficult to measure. It's tied to mental health and how people feel about a place more than their physical actions.

How will Sidewalk Labs know, then, when its urban project has been successful? "That's a really good question," Aggarwala said. "Those things do not lend themselves to quantifiable ... to measurement." Techniques exist to measure relationships, but they're often crude and lack nuance. At the end of a technology conference, for instance, you can count the number of business cards someone has come away with; however, that doesn't explain how many of those interactions were deep or meaningful. You could ask how many times those people contacted one another again, but even that is a shallow assessment. One life-changing relationship, for instance, is better than a dozen emails that never went anywhere.

"We'll have to experiment, and we'll know it when we see it," Aggarwala said. As a starting point, the company has identified 25 "success metrics" that relate to someone's quality of life. These include the cost of rent and transportation as well as carbon emissions, job opportunities, park access, civic participation and time spent commuting. All of them will be tracked using sensors and the company's Model platform.

"The idea that this somehow can't make money or can only make money if Sidewalk Labs is capturing and monetizing private data -- I don't buy that at all."

Many wonder how Sidewalk Labs will make money on Quayside. The company's insistence on privacy by design suggests it won't be harvesting data like its sister company Google. Aggarwala said it won't be an advertising-based model, so there won't be giant billboards beaming targeted ads like in Blade Runner 2049. When pressed, he said, "It would be inaccurate for me to say that we're 100 percent confident that we know exactly what the business model for us, through this project, is."

The company has some time to figure it out. It will spend most of this year developing ideas, listening to the public and crafting a Master Innovation and Development Plan. That final document will need to be approved by Waterfront Toronto, the public and a variety of government bodies before a single brick can be laid. Aggarwala acknowledges that his company, and the project, will need to generate revenue. If it struggles to break even or becomes a piece of Alphabet philanthropy, it won't inspire other cities to do the same.

There will be opportunities, though, for Sidewalk Labs to charge a fee for its services. A city, after all, contains landlords, transport operators and utility companies; Doctoroff's company could bill any of these for access to its technology. "The idea that this somehow can't make money or can only make money if Sidewalk Labs is capturing and monetizing private data -- I don't buy that at all," Aggarwala said.

Quayside will serve as a test bed for many Alphabet technologies. Once they're perfected, Sidewalk could profit from selling the individual pieces -- the blueprint behind its modular buildings, for instance, or its simulation platform -- to other cities. Revenue, then, wouldn't come from advertising but making Quayside a living, breathing advertisement for other city planners. Success, Cerrudo said, would be "great for PR and marketing, and enable them to make money in the future when the technology is widely adopted."

Doctoroff knows how important it is to win the public's support. On Novemver 1st, 2017, he participated in a community town hall with Will Fleissig, CEO of Waterfront Toronto, which was open to the public and streamed online. Fleissig was keen to stress that nothing about the project is set in stone. "It starts tonight," he said. "We're having this discussion, and we're listening. There is no plan in place. We can actually co-create by bringing together a lot of different partners, and together, we'll figure out what should happen on the Waterfront."

The company has since published a Public Engagement Plan that specifies how it will discuss and consult with Toronto residents. It includes a series of public talks, roundtable meetings and a pavilion where people can learn more about the project, participate in workshops and tinker with interactive exhibits. There will also be design jams, a Fellows Program for 19-to-24-year-olds and a 36-member Reference Panel that will meet throughout the year and take a closer look at Sidewalk Labs' work.

Later this year, the company will conduct a series of pilots to show the public some of its thinking. Aggarwala is staying tight-lipped about the details, but one is likely to including self-driving vehicles. That could be Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous car spin-off, or another industry specialist. "There has, to my knowledge anyway, never been an opportunity for somebody in Toronto to ride an autonomous vehicle," Aggarwala said. "We think we can help address that."

Wexler thinks this is the right approach. Pilots are cheaper than a full rollout and allow companies to get valuable data that can be used to refine the final idea. It beats the antiquated model, anyway, of a token-gesture consultation and a shiny but ultimately unfit-for-purpose skyscraper. "Do pilot projects," Wexler said. "Do pilot projects and collect data. And then use that data to understand if what you're doing works, and then tweak it."

At any moment, the city of Toronto could sever its partnership with Sidewalk Labs. The bid the company won is for a planning exercise that will run for at least a year. Doctoroff and his team are putting $50 million into the project, so clearly they're committed to building a smart neighborhood. But Waterfront Toronto, and the people it represents, can back out at any time. "At the end of the year, if you don't like it, if Waterfront Toronto's board doesn't like it, if the elected officials don't like it, they can tell us to go bye," Doctoroff said at the town hall meeting.

It's a big gamble, but one that Sidewalk Labs has been preparing for since 2015. The company has ideas, and it's confident that with proper consultation it can whip up a development plan that's hard for the city to refuse. "We're going to do our best possible work," Aggarwala said, "and I think they will find it compelling."

 

[angelburst29]

US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has invited Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify in a hearing on April 10 concerning protection and monitoring of consumer data, the lawmaker's office said in a press release on Monday.

US Senate Invites Facebook CEO to Testify on Data Protection 26.03.2018
https://sputniknews.com/us/201803261062925286-usa-senate-facebook-ceo-testimony/

"Grassley today invited Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify at the hearing to discuss Facebook's past and future policies regarding the protection and monitoring of consumer data," the release said.

In addition, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey have also been invited to discuss the future of data privacy in the social media industry, the release added.

The hearing will focus on misuse of consumer data and steps companies like Facebook can take to better protect personal information, the release added.

Earlier in March, media reported that the personal information of about 50 million Facebook users had been harvested without their permission by Cambridge Analytica.

The firm used data to develop a mechanism that would predict and influence the behavior of voters. Cambridge Analytica worked for President Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election, among others.

The scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica's use and analysis of Facebook users' personal information without permission has taken an intriguing turn, just as the social media giant's CEO confirmed that the company failed to establish any connection between Russia and Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign.

Ukrainian Trace Found in Cambridge Analytica Data Mining Scandal – Report 22.03.2018
https://sputniknews.com/science/201803221062787716-ukraine-caught-up-in-cambridge-analytica-scandal/

Cambridge Analytica parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) was used by the Ukrainian government for "localized communications campaigns" to assist Kiev's efforts to try to win back control of eastern Ukraine's breakaway Donbass region, a detailed investigation by British TV broadcaster Channel 4 has revealed.

"The final project report was delivered to the President of Ukraine…this report was pivotal in later national decisions," the company said.

Collecting and analyzing data about users from the Donetsk region, the company helped to craft and implement a communications campaign to try to weaken the coherence of the self-proclaimed republic. Eventually, however, analysts came to the conclusion that support for Kiev in the breakaway was extremely low.

Before that, SCL boasted about its efforts as part of a "multi-national consultation team" to secure the victory of the first Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. In that situation, the company said it used "modern research and efficient campaign intervention techniques" to help ensure the election victory of pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko.

In related news, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told Wired magazine in an interview published Wednesday that the social media giant could not confirm a connection between Internet Research Agency, a Russian company accused of meddling in the 2016 US election, and Cambridge Analytica.

You know, we've certainly looked into the IRA's ad spending and use in a lot of detail. The data that [Aleksandr] Kogan's app got, it wasn't watermarked in any way. And if he passed along data to Cambridge Analytica that was some kind of derivative data based on personality scores or something, we wouldn't have known that, or seen that data," Zuckerberg said.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica had illegally received the data of upwards of 50 million Facebook users. The company was accused of having purchased the data from a company called Global Science Research, creators of an app called thisisyourdigitallife, developed by Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan. The collected data provided researchers with information about peoples' political preferences, and is thought to have since been used to target ads for campaigns including Brexit and the 2016 US presidential campaign.

Cambridge Analytica, formed in 2013, has participated in at least 200 election campaigns across five continents, with its SCL parent company involved in similar operations going back to the 1990s.

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that his company must take steps to prevent developers from misusing personal data through passing it on to third parties after the recent situation involving Cambridge Analytica.

Zuckerberg Admits Facebook's Mistakes After Cambridge Analytica Breach 22.03.2018
https://sputniknews.com/us/201803221062777985-zuckerberg-admits-facebook-mistakes/

"We also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.

Zuckerberg added that most of the actions needed to prevent this from happening again were already taken years ago.

Earlier in March, Facebook faced public outrage as it emerged that third party organizations, such as data and political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica, had received information about Facebook users through a personality app developed by Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan.

According to media reports, the Cambridge Analytica company worked for US President Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral campaign, and a campaign in favor of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, in order to develop a mechanism that would predict and influence the behavior of voters.

Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica and affiliated accounts, claiming that Kogan's application obtained data about users, including information about people's liked content or current city, legally, but should not have passed it on to third parties.

The #deletefacebook is trending right now after Brian Acton, cofounder of the WhatsApp messaging platform, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014, joined the tweet brigade - urging users to walk the Facebook plank. Sputnik spoke with Tianqing Zhu, from the School of Information Technology at Deakin University in Australia about the breach.

Will Deleting Facebook Actually Help Your Privacy? Expert Explains 22.03.2018
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201803221062780489-deletefacebook-wont-help-you/

Sputnik: How exactly has the data of these 50 million American citizens been compromised?

Tianqing Zhu: This is an accident of data sharing. So as a user we submit our data to Facebook, and when we submit our data, we register it on Facebook and sign our agreement, or, tick our agreement, saying that we allow Facebook to share our data to other third parties. Cambridge Analytica is a third party. They ask for data from Facebook. So at the beginning it is legal, because they claimed that they wanted to do a research project about the psychological effects, something like that. It's legal. Facebook shared the data with them. However, they changed their target. Originally, they had said it was for research purposes, but later they misused the data, and tried to dig out the personal information from the data and created user profiles. These user — profiles were used later for the presidential election. I think that the word 'misusing' is the key point of this scandal.

Sputnik: Mark Zuckerberg has become something of an antihero — but was this not anticipated all along?

Tianqing Zhu: Mr. Zuckerberg has created a huge kingdom and changed the rules of the game of social networking. But with great power comes great responsibility. His company has collected a huge amount of data, so how to control, maintain and preserve privacy of personal related data is a big challenge. Actually this challenge is using the companies who are collecting our private data, including banks, hospitals, online shops, airlines and governments. Facebook is not an exception.

Sputnik: We give our data away with everything we do (driving licenses, card payments, loyalty cards), will deleting Facebook increase our data privacy, or is it more of symbolic action?

Tianqing Zhu: In my point of view, it is a symbolic action. Privacy leakage is everywhere nowadays. When we drive through toll gates, they can collect our travel habits. When we pay via credit card, the banks and supermarket collect all of our shopping habits. When we call our friends, the phone company collects our conversation habits. So also now there are people that have multiple accounts, on multiple social networks. Deleting a Facebook account will not do anything to improve our wall of privacy.

The Berlin government believes that Facebook's affirmation that it has the grip on the situation is insufficient and additional measures should be taken.

Germany Seeks 'Stricter' Facebook Control Amid Data Leak 26.03.2018
https://sputniknews.com/europe/201803261062922206-germany-facebook-control-data-leak/

Germany's Justice Minister Katarina Barley said on Monday that Facebook needs "stricter" supervision and should increase transparency toward its users amid the recent big data leak scandal.

Following talks with Facebook representatives in Berlin, the official stated that the company's assurances that it had already taken the situation under control were "not enough."

"In future we will clearly have to monitor companies like Facebook more strictly and punish data protection violations severely and quickly," Barley said at a press conference.

A scandal over Facebook data privacy broke out last week when it became known that personal information of about 50 million Facebook users had been obtained without their consent or permission by data mining firm Cambridge Analytica, which allegedly worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Brexit campaign.

The alleged goal of the data collection was to create a mechanism that would allow it to predict and influence voter behavior.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly apologized for the "breach of trust," promising to make sure "this doesn't happen again."

Cook County, Illinois, is now the first government entity to sue Facebook for the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal.

New US Lawsuit Accuses Facebook of Massive Fraud in Data Mining Operation 25.03.2018
https://sputniknews.com/us/201803251062890026-new-us-lawsuit-accuses-facebook-massive-fraud/

A new case was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County last week and outlines allegations similar to those laid out in six other lawsuits filed against Facebook in a federal court.

Cook County argues that Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the data-mining company's corporate parent, the SCL Group, violated the state's Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act by misrepresenting their app as an academic research tool, instead of a way to access Facebook users' personal data, Engadget reported.

In addition, the Illinois county is accusing Facebook of not protecting user data and not preventing Cambridge Analytica from committing fraudulent behavior, despite knowledge of the practice by the social media giant.

"This kind of mass data collection was not only allowed but encouraged by Facebook, which sought to keep developers building on its platform and provide companies with all the tools they need to influence and manipulate user behavior," wrote Jay Edelson, an attorney representing Cook County, in the complaint.

"Facebook is not a social media company," the statement warned, "it is the largest data-mining operation in existence."

Although Cook County has not cited any claim for damages, each violation of the Illinois fraud act could have a penalty of up to $50,000.

An additional $10,000 penalty could be added if a victim is 65 or older. Given the fact that there are millions of Cook County residents reportedly affected by the scandal, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook could see a very expensive lawsuit, although industry observers argue that poor public relations could do greater damage to the company, in the form of drops in stock valuation, then simple monetary fees.

Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told CNN in an interview, "This was a breach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time."

Despite multiple allegations, Cambridge Analytica has denied violating any laws.

***********

The European Union has threatened to split up Google into smaller companies. The US firm's dominance of the internet is out of kilter with the EU's anti-trust legislation.

Google in Deep Trouble: Company Risks Being Broken Up by European Union 26.03.2018
https://sputniknews.com/science/201803261062903342-google-eu-vestager-monopoly/

The European Union has threatened to split up Google into smaller companies. The US firm's dominance of the internet is out of kilter with the EU's anti-trust legislation.

EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager told the Daily Telegraph they had "grave suspicions" about Google's monopoly.

Last June she hit Google with a record £2.1 billion fine (US$3 billion) for giving its own comparison shopping service an unfair advantage on the search engine.

Google appealed against the European Commission's judgement, which would have meant it had to rearrange the way its searched algorithm ranks websites.

The California-based company is facing two other anti-competition lawsuits from the European Commission.

Margrethe Vestager
✔ @vestager

Most companies pay on average 24% corporate tax. Digital companies less than 10% in Europe. We propose to update our understanding of where to tax and what to tax - to ensure fair taxation also in our digital world @pierremoscovici #digitaltax 9:47 AM - Mar 21, 2018

Google Does Nine out of Ten Internet Searches in Europe

Google has a 91.5 percent share of the search engine market in Europe and Mrs. Vestager said the EU was not comfortable with this virtual monopoly.

Asked if the EU was considering forcing Google to break up into smaller companies, in a similar way to the banks after the 2008 financial crisis, she said: "It is important to keep that question open and on the agenda." "We are not there yet but it is important to keep an awakened eye," she told the Telegraph.

Damir Marusic
✔ @dmarusic

Remember when Facebook, Twitter, and Google were going to change the world by depriving dictators of a monopoly of control over narratives? 10:14 PM - Mar 19, 2018

Mrs. Vestager, who has also faced down Apple and Amazon in recent months, said she feared Google would soon be indispensable for European businesses.

But the Danish commissioner was quick to insist the EU was not in the market of punishing companies for being successful.

"There is no ban on success in Europe. You get to be dominant and you get a special responsibility that you don't destroy the already weakened competition. We have proven their dominance in search and we have found they have misused this dominance to promote themselves and diminish competitors," Mrs. Vestager told the Telegraph.

Vestager Has Taken on Apple and Amazon

Mrs. Vestager, who has been in the job since 2014, has ordered the Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg to demand back taxes.

Ireland allegedly gave Apple illegal tax breaks of 13 billion euros (US$15.6 billion) and Luxembourg offered Amazon a similar deal worth 250 million euros ($294 million).

Google's troubles come just as another internet colossus, Facebook, is facing intense scrutiny for its activities.

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, apologized last week for allowing Cambridge Analytica access to data from 50 million users.

Cambridge Analytica allegedly used the data while working for the Trump campaign.

Last week EU governments agreed a joint statement calling for "social networks" to offer "full protection of citizens' privacy and personal data."

Google says it is working on a plan to remedy the anti-competitive behaviour but last month some of Google's opponents said the only way to prevent the monopoly was by breaking the company up.

 

[angelburst29]

If you are widely using Android-based QR readers on your smartphone, just make sure you haven’t come under attack of a newly unveiled malware – most importantly haven’t been let down by Google, which appeared to react too slowly.

Google Pulls Malware From App Store After Half Million Android Users Fall Victim 27.03.2018
https://sputniknews.com/science/201803271062964051-google-malware-app-android/

The security firm SophosLabs has revealed that the malicious apps had been downloaded and used more than 500,000 times before being taken down from the Google Play online store, according to a report cited on CNET sister website ZDNet.

The malware was detected on six QR readers and one smart compass and its name notably speaks for itself: it virtually bombards users with ads. It begins its "dirty" operations only six hours after installation, flooding users with full screen pop-ups, opening adverts on websites and sending ad-related notifications, ZDNet's Danny Palmer warned.

The US-based firm wanted to provide 360-degree panoramic and street-level 3D imagery of most parts of India through the "Street View" application, which is used in over 80 countries including the US, Canada, and many European countries.

India Refuses Permission to Google for 'Street View' App 27.03.2018
https://sputniknews.com/science/201803271062944341-india-denies-permission-google-app/

India has turned down Alphabet Inc.'s three-year-old proposal to launch "Google Street View" in the country.

"Google had submitted a proposal on 'Google Street View' for the Government's permission in July 2015, which allows users to explore places around the world through 360-degree panoramic street-level imagery and view public areas. The government has not agreed to the proposal," Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, India's Minister of State for Home Affairs informed the parliament on Tuesday.

Earlier, on an experimental basis, Google had launched "Street View" at some tourist sites across India, such as the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, Qutub Minar, Varanasi river bank, Nalanda University, Mysore Palace, Thanjavur temple and the Chinnaswamy stadium, in partnership with the Archaeological Society of India. But, for the application to access every nook and corner of India, the company required the permission of the government of India.

Earlier this month, Google launched an open-source project that aims to simplify India's chaotic street address through "Plus Codes" — a location-based digital tagging system that divides the landscape into tiles and assigns a unique code to each, making navigation easier. Plus Codes have a "6-character + city" format and can be generated online and offline on Google Maps, which can also be shared by anyone on Google Maps.

 

[angelburst29]

The scandal surrounding Facebook’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica, the election data company previously associated with former Trump campaign Chairman Steve Bannon, dominates the media in the US and Britain.

The Truth About Cambridge Analytica-SCL: Psy-ops by UK-US Deep State Actors 26 March 2018
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/26/camb-m26.html

The serious privacy concerns involved in the harvesting of the personal information of some 50 million Facebook users were underscored by Britain’s Channel 4 News. An undercover investigation filmed Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix boasting of dirty tricks operations to ensnare politicians and subvert elections.

But while the disclosures are being used to bolster hysterical claims of “Russian meddling,” a closer examination reveals that the real and far more fundamental threat to democratic rights involves psy-ops programs run by elements of the British and US deep state.

Cambridge Analytica’s parent company is British-based SCL. Formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories, it is a private behavioral research and strategic communication company, founded in 1993 by Nigel Oakes. The son of Major John Waddington Oakes and a former boyfriend of Lady Helen Windsor, Oakes was formerly employed by Margaret Thatcher’s favorite advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, before establishing SCL.

As with Oakes, SCL’s board members include scions of the British ruling class, from former military officers and defense contractors to major Conservative Party donors.

Lord Ivar Mountbatten, third cousin to Queen Elizabeth, is on the board, while CEO Roger Gabb is a millionaire wine merchant, a former British special forces officer and major contributor to the Tory Party. SCL President Sir Geoffrey Pattie was a defense undersecretary in the Thatcher government. SCL chairman is the venture capitalist Julian Wheatland, also chairman of Oxfordshire Conservatives Association. Former Conservative Party Treasurer Jonathan Marland, trade envoy under Prime Minister David Cameron, is a shareholder.

Others associated, past or present, with SCL include property billionaire and Tory Party donor Vincent Tchenguiz; Sir James Allen Mitchell, privy counselor since 1985; Rear Admiral John Tolhurst, a former assistant director of naval warfare in the Ministry of Defense and aide de camp to the Queen; and Gavin McNicoll, creator of the Eden Intelligence firm, which has run projects for the British government.

SCL boasts of providing “data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations worldwide,” notably the British Ministry of Defense, the US State Department and NATO. It states that it has carried out “behavioral change programs” in more than 60 countries. One of its first contracts in 1999 was promoting Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid. It has worked to influence elections in Afghanistan, Latvia, Ukraine, Nigeria and Kenya among others.

Cambridge Analytica was launched in 2012 by SCL to extend its operations to the US. In partnership with hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, this included the Republican primaries for the 2016 election, where it worked to support Ted Cruz and then Donald Trump.

There is nothing new in this. Similar activities were known of, facilitated and endorsed by the political and military establishment in Britain and the US for years.

According to Liam O’Hare at Bella Caledonia, SCL went public in 2005 at the DSEI conference, a global arms fair in London, promoting itself as the first private company to provide psychological warfare services to the British military: “Its ‘hard sell’ was a demonstration of how the UK government could use a sophisticated media campaign of mass deception to fool the British people into thinking an accident at a chemical plant had occurred and threatened central London.”

Such a sales pitch is even more chilling given the recent events in Salisbury, where the alleged attempted assassination of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia—victims of a still unidentified nerve agent —is being used by the government to stage provocations against Russia.

A Freedom of Information request from August 2016 showed the MoD took out a £40,000 contract with SCL for the “provision of external training” in 2010/11 and £150,000 for the “procurement of target audience analysis” in 2014/15.

“In addition, SCL also carries a secret clearance as a ‘list X’ contractor for the MOD. A List X site is a commercial site on British soil that is approved to hold UK government information marked as ‘confidential’ and above. Essentially, SCL got the green light to hold British government secrets on its premises.”

Revelations of the British military’s connections with SCL forced Prime Minister Theresa May to declare in Parliament Wednesday, “As far as I’m aware the government has no current contracts with Cambridge Analytica or with the SCL Group.”

A spokesperson admitted that the government had held three previous contracts with SCL Group, but said these had now ended.

According to the Guardian, in 2014 “MoD officials worked with SCL Group on ‘Project Duco’ to analyze how people would interact with certain government messaging.”

The project was carried out by the MoD’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), which is focused on maximizing “the impact of science and technology for the defense and security of the UK.”

Project Duco was part of the government’s “human and social influence” work, and SCL was paid £150,000. It assessed how Target Audience Analysis (TAA) could “contribute to the government’s strategic communications.”

The Guardian has been in the forefront of the campaign over Russian fake news in the UK. But it was forced to acknowledge that SCL’s work on Project Duco and its “list X” ranking “is likely to raise concerns that government officials were aware of Cambridge Analytica and SCL’s operations, and intended to use them to promote government messages.”

In other words, Cambridge Analytica and SCL were not acting as proxies for the Russian state but rather for significant sections of the US/UK military and intelligence apparatus. A link to the heavily redacted report on Project Duco is here. Note that intellectual copyright is held by the government’s science and technology laboratory at Porton Down, just eight miles from Salisbury.

Nafeez Ahmed at INSURGE intelligence elaborated on the connections between SCL, the British foreign office and “other elements of the UK political and financial establishment.” These are so close that “last year the Foreign Office executive agency, Wilton Park, invited SCL Group subsidiary, SCL Elections, to speak about how the use of data in the 2016 Presidential election could be applied in the British government’s diplomatic and foreign policy agenda.”

The SCL Group executives were Mark Turnbull, managing director of SCL Elections, and David Wilkinson, then lead data scientist, who addressed the FCO in February 2017 on the subject of “examining the application of data in the recent US Presidential election.”

“The meeting was attended and opened by Jonathan Allen—then the FCO’s Acting Director General for Defence and Intelligence. Allen is now Theresa May’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations.”

O’Hare explains that the TAA “evolved during the battle for hearts and minds in Afghanistan.”

A SCL whistle-blower has charged that techniques used by the SCL Group has traced TAA back to the methods used by the US and UK militaries in Iraq. IR.net reports the whistle-blower stating that “some of this technology was actually owned by the UK Ministry of Defence and/or the US Military, and now they don’t want people to know that it was their weapon that’s currently in the wild, being used privately to manipulate elections worldwide.”

SCL received £548,000 for delivering training to NATO that included providing an eight-week course for its staff. This was “subsequently passed on to Georgian, Ukrainian and Moldovan government officials.”

Turnbull is also head of Cambridge Analytica Political Global. He was previously employed for 18 years at Bell Pottinger where, O’Hare reports, he headed up “the Pentagon funded PR drive in occupied Iraq which included the production of fake al-Qaeda videos.”

The US State Department has a contract for $500,000 with SLC to provide “research and analytical support in connection with our mission to counter terrorist propaganda and disinformation overseas.”

An offshoot, SCL Defense, received $775,000 “to support NATO operations in Eastern Europe targeting Russia.”

O’Hare reports, “The company delivered a three-month course in Riga which taught ‘advanced counter-propaganda techniques designed to help member states assess and counter Russia’s propaganda in Eastern Europe.’

“The NATO website said the ‘revolutionary’ training would ‘help Ukrainians better defend themselves against the Russian threat’.”

SCL has also had contracts with the Pentagon for psy-ops in Iran and Yemen.

Whatever the exact beginnings of the TAA program, the real news story being buried by the official media is that the covert operations and subversion techniques deployed in US and British imperialism’s neo-colonial adventures are now being used on their domestic populations.

 

[angelburst29]

05.04.2018 - Google Staff demand closure of Joint AI Project with Pentagon
Google Staff Demand Closure of Joint AI Project With Pentagon

Thousands of employees of a world-famous tech giant stood up to helping develop software that could be used by the US military in drone operations.

Over 3,100 Google employees, including some of the company’s senior engineers, have signed a letter addressed to their CEO, asking him to halt the company’s involvement in an artificial intelligence project run by the Pentagon, The New York Times reports.

The program in question involves the development of AI software for analyzing drone footage, and is conducted under the auspices of Project Maven, also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, that was established in April 2017 in order to accelerate the US Department of Defense’s integration of big data and machine learning.

"We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy of stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology," the letter said.

The employees also warned that the project "will irreparably damage Google’s brand and its ability to compete for talent”, claiming that "amid growing fears of biased and weaponized AI, Google is already struggling to keep the public’s trust."

A statement issued by Google sometime later, which did not directly mentioned the letter, said that "any military use of machine learning naturally raises valid concerns," adding that the company is actively engaged "in a comprehensive discussion of this important topic."

The company insisted, however that Google’s part in Project Maven was "specifically scoped to be for non-offensive purposes," the newspaper points out.

Google's role within Project Maven reportedly involves developing artificial intelligence to help identify various objects in drone footage using advanced computer vision, thereby removing that burden from human analysts who cannot keep up with the vast amounts of daily data.

Sources who spoke on condition of anonymity also revealed that Google's involvement Project Maven was not public, but was discussed inside the company. When information about it was shared on an internal mailing list, it sparked concern among employees.


05.04.2018 - US Senate Judiciary, Commerce Panels say Facebook CEO to Testify on April 10
US Senate Judiciary, Commerce Panels Say Facebook CEO to Testify on April 10

Two US Senate committees will hold a joint hearing on April 10 regarding the abuse of social media data with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the sole witness."

Senate Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman John Thune will convene a hearing titled ‘Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data,’ at 2:15 p.m. [6:15 p.m. GMT] on April 10," the release said on Wednesday. "CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be [the] April 10 hearing’s only witness."

Earlier, the US House Energy and Commerce Committee confirmed that Zuckerberg will testify before the panel on April 11.

Last month, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced the launch of an investigation into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica in connection with the illegal use of user data during the 2016 US presidential campaign.

The scandal erupted after it was reported that the personal information of about 50 million Facebook users had been harvested without their permission by the firm. Cambridge Analytica reportedly gathered data from millions of social media accounts to develop a mechanism that would predict and influence the behavior of voters.


05.04.2018 - Fitness APP Users visually assaulted by half-naked, sex-Obsessed Women
Fitness App Users Visually Assaulted by Half-Naked, Sex-Obsessed Women

Up to 28 million sports enthusiasts, including professionals and amateurs, use the Strava sports application to track their distances and times, and share them with friends and family; however, many joggers and cyclists are complaining about an onslaught of pornographic advert pop-ups.
One of them is Nicholas Clifton. He told the Sun that he was initially surprised to receive a thumbs-up from Strava accounts featuring half-clad women. The 33 year-old sports enthusiast from Bournemouth in Dorset said that as an all-time user of the Strava application, he is now targeted by hordes of women approaching him for sex.

"Their profile pictures are pretty pornographic and they made it clear they are looking for far more than a spot of friendly competitive cycling," he said. He was virtually stunned to learn that genuine sports fanatics who "ride 50 miles on a bike" make good targets for such presumably fake accounts.

Another user also reported that he had received his first "soft porn" spam from Strava, while others joked about "good looks" that perhaps attracted all those ladies.

San Francisco-based Strava, one of the world’s top networks for athletes, has acknowledged that it is aware of the problem and putting a great deal of effort into resolving it. It also said it will remove all controversial profiles from the platform.

 

[Ca.]

Abby Martin interview critical of Israel is blocked by YouTube in 28 countries
Published time: 6 Apr, 2018 00:12
Snip: Video / 28:10

An episode of Abby Martin’s Empire Files, featuring journalist Max Blumenthal and spotlighting rising militarism in Israel, has been blocked by YouTube in 28 countries, including Israel and the UK, for violating “local laws.”
“Just notified by YouTube that Abby Martin’s interview with Max Blumenthal has been blocked from being viewed in 28 countries (including Israel) to ‘comply with local laws.’ Actions disabled & warnings for viewers elsewhere,” the program’s official Twitter account related on Thursday.
Entitled “Jewish-American on Israel's Fascism: ‘No Hope For Change From Within',” the episode featured a discussion between Martin and journalist Max Blumenthal about the increasingly militaristic, racist attitude of Israel towards Palestinians.

 

[angelburst29]

06.04.2018 - Google vs Pentagon: Without Military Spending, High Tech wouldn't exit - PhD
Google vs Pentagon: Without Military Spending, High Tech Wouldn’t Exist - PhD

Over 3,100 Google employees, including the company’s senior staffers, demanded that the management curb Google’s current involvement in an artificial intelligence project conducted by the Pentagon, The New York Times reported. Dr. Belinda Barnet, a senior lecturer at Swinburne University in Hawthorn, Australia, has given her take on the move.

"I am happy to see that the employees of Google are expressing their opinion. If I worked there I would be saying the same thing and would be protesting," she wrote in comments to Sputnik.

Nevertheless, she conceded that the worldwide web and many other contemporary technologies “wouldn’t exist without military spending,” adding that there has always been some interconnection between the military and academic spheres:

"Like the microchip or ARPANET (the Internet). There's a long history of cooperation between universities, companies, and the military."

The fact that Google employees now take a stand against Project Maven, aimed at devising what they have labelled as "warfare technology" is an indicator that "they don’t want this particular relationship at this point in history," she said, adding that Google notably had cooperated with governments in the past.

The risks, or rather dangers that come with the project have to do with the exposure of Google’s vast expertise in IT sphere, Dr. Belinda Barnet remarked:

"The risks are that highly advanced technologies are developed that don't exist yet, using Google's existing expertise in the area."

When asked about the potential response to the petition from the tech giant’s top management, Dr Belinda Barnet underscored that Google had previously met the staffers' demands:

"In the past Google has listened to its employees. I can't predict what will happen in this instance."

The program that Google’s personnel is up in arms against involves the development of AI software for breaking down drone footage, to thereby replace human analysts. The umbrella term for the venture is Project Maven, also know as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team.

Unveiled in April 2017, it aims to boost the Pentagon’s integration of massive data, which humans find hard to cope with, and machine learning.

"We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy of stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology," the employees’ letter said.

Under Project Maven, Google is tasked with developing robots that will assist in identifying various objects in drone footage with the help of cutting-edge computer vision.

 

[angelburst29]

06.04.2018 - Zuckerberg: Facebook Backs Honest Ads Act, US Proposal to Regulate Political Ads
Zuckerberg: Facebook Backs Honest Ads Act, US Proposal to Regulate Political Ads

Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has voiced support for new regulations in the United States that would require people running political ads on the platform to clearly identify themselves and their location.

"Election interference is a problem that's bigger than any one platform and that's why we support the Honest Ads Act," the executive wrote in a Facebook blog post Friday.

Zuckerberg's endorsement of the Honest Ads Act comes days before he is slated to testify before Congress on April 11 about the company's use and distribution of people's data. The proposed bill regulates political ads online the same way as if the ad appeared on television, in print, or on the radio.

This week, Facebook announced that up to 87 million people's data had been harvested by third parties as a result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

"With important elections coming up in the US, Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan and more countries in the next year, one of my top priorities for 2018 is making sure we support positive discourse and prevent interference in these elections," Zuckerberg said Friday.

Moving forward, the company will require people who want to run political ads to be verified with Facebook. "Any advertiser who doesn't pass [the test] will be prohibited from running political or issue ads. We will also label them and advertisers will have to show you who paid for them. We're starting this in the US and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months," Zuckerberg wrote.


06.04.2018 - Facebook CEO Zuckerberg's Messages Exclusively Deleted from Other People's Chats
Facebook CEO Zuckerberg's Messages Exclusively Deleted From Other People’s Chats

One of the most popular social networks, Facebook, could grant its chief Mark Zuckerberg and other executives an opportunity, all other users don’t have. His messages are said to disappear from the inboxes of users, he once wrote to, for security reasons.

The tech giant’s users, who chatted with Mark Zuckerberg via Facebook, have reported that the messages from the head of the social work disappeared from their inboxes, according to TechCrunch.

Their own letters are still available in the network’s chat logs, as well as the materials from Facebook’s Download Your Information tool. However, some messages sent earlier than 2014 have not been removed, according to the Facebook employees.

The tampering wasn’t publicly announced; the users weren't individually informed, either. According to company rules, regular users can delete messages only from their own threads, but not from in their recipients’ inboxes.

When the media asked for the explanation of such exceptional treatment, the social net claimed this was done for security reasons after the breach of Sony Pictures, when more than emails were hacked, including the executives’ ones.

“After Sony Pictures’ emails were hacked in 2014, we made a number of changes to protect our executives’ communications. These included limiting the retention period for Mark’s messages in Messenger. We did so in full compliance with our legal obligations to preserve messages,” reads the statement published by TechCrunch.

In 2014 Sony Pictures, part of the Japanese-based Sony conglomerate, suffered a massive cyberattack which closed down much of its computer network and allowed hackers to access sensitive information. The attack affected both ordinary employees and top-managers. Some of the data was released online.

However the recent Facebook step followed the Cambridge Analytica uproar. The information of up to 87 million people was distributed to this FB affiliated company, which purports to help political candidates win elections with targeted digital ads.

CA was initially funded by billionaire GOP donor Robert Mercer. The company was also one of the principal firms directing Donald Trump's digital strategy during the 2016 US presidential elections.


07.04.2018 - US Homeland Security Planning Database to Track Journalists, Monitor Sentiment
US Homeland Security Planning Database to Track Journalists, Monitor ‘Sentiment’

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is in search of a contractor to build a database and dashboard to monitor hundreds of thousands of news organizations and journalists - and even to determine their “sentiment.”

An April 3 contract listing on a government-run federal business opportunities website seeks "media monitoring services" for the DHS. Already, at least seven companies have applied for the DHS contract. It is unclear how much the contract pays.

Services shall enable NPPD/OUS to monitor traditional news sources as well as social media, identify any and all media coverage related to the Department of Homeland Security or a particular event," the RFI reads. "Services shall provide media comparison tools, design and rebranding tools, communication tools and the ability to identify top media influencers."
The contract seeks applicants to complete five tasks: monitoring online activity and social media; creating a media intelligence and benchmarking dashboard platform; setting up an individualized email alert system; creating a password-protected mobile app for DHS personnel; and developing functionalities for engagement with the media. The RFI elaborates on each task.

The statement of work for the media monitoring services contract includes the requirement that its applicants are able to track more than 290,000 global news sources from media including online, print, broadcast, radio, trade and industry publications, local sources, national/international outlets, traditional news sources and social media. DHS also aims to be able to track such coverage in more than 100 languages and to have a function which can translate them immediately.

Sputnik spoke with CIA agent-turned whistleblower John Kiriakou, who co-hosts Loud & Clear on Radio Sputnik, about DHS's planned database. "This sounds like something offensive," Kiriakou said, questioning why DHS, a law enforcement agency, is in the business of "tracking media outlets and bloggers. What's the purpose when it's already done in government, in the intelligence community?

It seems to me that this could be used to intimidate people, especially people without the resources to defend themselves." Beyond just tracking the news, DHS plans to monitor it with a dashboard platform. Such a platform would help organize the news based on "beat, location, outlet type/size and journalist role." It would also analyze media coverage "in terms of content, volume, sentiment, geographical spread, top publications, media channels, reach, AVE, top posters, influencers, languages, momentum [and] circulation."

The database would also include "present contact details and any other information that could be relevant, including publications this influencer writes for and an overview of the previous coverage published by the influencer," for each "influencer" tracked by the system.

"My guess is that this is something that could end up being decided in the courts," Kiriakou told Sputnik.

"I don't believe it's standard. Certainly this is not something that was done when I was in government. This is new," Kiriakou said in response to DHS spokesperson Tyler Houlton's statement on Twitter. "What is standard is opensource.gov, formerly known as the Federal Broadcasting Information Service. It's a component of the CIA that deals only in open-source intelligence. And what they do is they have translators all around the world that translate foreign newspapers, radio and television broadcasts, things like that, for the purpose of then disseminating that information, those translations, to the intelligence community so that analysts can better analyze the issues that they cover," Kiriakou said, adding that "this sounds like something different."

DHS also requires the contracting company to create a platform with the ability to "export the contact details of the media influencers."

Many of the services that the department is seeking were once available to them, including real-time tracking. Dataminr, a Twitter-owned news discovery tool that combs through billions of tweets in real time, "senses critical events as they happen and alerts professionals in news, finance, public sector, corporate security and communications faster than traditional sources," according to Dataminr. It's able to do all of this with the help of artificial intelligence and Twitter's Firehose, which is the only way to access 100 percent of tweets on the platform in real-time.

Dataminr nixed their contract with DHS in December 2016, cutting off dozens of fusion centers from real-time analytics from their platform after Twitter said its platform wasn't meant for surveillance. Dataminr also dropped their contract with the CIA, as it is technically an intelligence agency, but not the FBI, as it is technically a law enforcement agency.

 

[angelburst29]

April 5, 2018 - Facebook a big contributor to the committees in Congress that will question Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook a big contributor to the committees in Congress that will question Mark Zuckerberg

Members of the House and Senate committees that will question Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about user privacy protection next week are also some of the biggest recipients of campaign contributions from Facebook employees directly and the political action committee funded by employees.

The congressional panel that got the most Facebook contributions is the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which announced Wednesday morning it would question Zuckerberg on April 11.

Members of the committee, whose jurisdiction gives it regulatory power over Internet companies, received nearly $381,000 in contributions tied to Facebook since 2007, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The center is a non-partisan, non-profit group that compiles and analyzes disclosures made to the Federal Election Commission.

The second-highest total, $369,000, went to members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which announced later that it would have a joint hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Zuckerberg on Tuesday. Judiciary Committee members have received $235,000 in Facebook contributions.

On the House committee, Republicans got roughly twice as much as Democrats, counter to the broader trend in Facebook campaign gifts. Of the $7 million in contributions to all federal candidates tied to the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social network, Democrats got 65% to Republicans' 33%.

Of the 55 members on the Energy and Commerce Committee this year, all but nine have received Facebook contributions in the past decade. The average Republican got $6,800, while the average Democrat got $6,750.

Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., received $27,000, while Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the top-ranking Democrat, got $7,000.

Walden and Pallone jointly announced that the committee on April 11 will question Zuckerberg "to shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online."

The two congressmen said they "appreciate Mr. Zuckerberg’s willingness to testify."

A Facebook spokesman responded to questions about the contributions by pointing to an April 2017 statement the company issued to employees about "political engagement." It said it is important for the company to "develop relationships with elected officials ... who share our vision of an open Internet."

The statement described the company's PAC and said decisions about which candidates get support are based on whether their policy positions are consistent with the company's "and whether the candidate holds a key committee or leadership position."

A spokesman for Democrats on the House committee, C.J. Young, said he could not discuss campaign contributions.

"But the premise that Facebook is getting softballs from the committee isn’t grounded in the facts," Young said, citing Walden's and Pallone's insistence that Zuckerberg appear at a public hearing to address user privacy.

Facebook estimated that as many as 87 million accounts could have had their data improperly shared by Cambridge Analytica, a political targeting firm that worked on President Trump's 2016 campaign. Facebook suspended the firm's account after concluding Cambridge Analytica obtained and did not destroy personal information from users who had downloaded a personality profile app.

A member of both of the Senate committees that will question Zuckerberg on Tuesday is Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. As an opponent of Trump in the 2016 presidential race, Cruz's campaign paid Cambridge Analytica $5.8 million. He said last month he had been assured that all the data the company provided was obtained legally.

Cruz got a $15,000 contribution tied to Facebook in 2012, but nothing since then. Rep. O'Rourke, the Texas Democrat vying to unseat Cruz, is the fourth-highest recipient of contributions tied to Facebook in this election cycle, receiving nearly $13,000.

Fred Wertheimer, founder and president of the campaign finance reform advocacy group Democracy21, said having a committee that got the most contributions from Facebook question its top executive about a national controversy demonstrates why the system needs to be changed.

“Powerful interests provide lots of money to the committees that have jurisdiction over them, and they do it to gain influence with those members of Congress,” Wertheimer said. “It’s a fundamental problem that exists throughout the system and throughout the committee structure, and it undermines public confidence that the members are going to make decisions in the best interests of the American people.”

Another giant in the tech industry, Google parent Alphabet, gave more in the 2016 presidential race, $8.8 million, than Facebook’s PAC and its employees gave in the past decade.

The top House committee receiving Alphabet contributions that year was again the Energy and Commerce Committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ data. Members of a handful of other Senate committees got more than members of the Senate Commerce or Judiciary committees, however.

The top recipient of Facebook contributions on the House commerce committee, receiving $51,050, was Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat whose district is adjacent to Facebook's headquarters and is home to many company employees. Eshoo narrowly lost a battle with Pallone for the top Democratic spot on the committee after the 2014 election.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who is not on the committee, got the most Facebook contributions in the House, totaling $55,150 since 2007.

Overall, Facebook has contributed $1.1 million to House members, split almost evenly between the parties.

On top of its campaign contributions, Facebook spent $11.5 million lobbying Congress last year, and its total spending on lobbying since 2009 is nearly $52 million.

Plus, nearly 30 members of Congress own Facebook stock, according to a story in Roll Call, including two Democratic members of the committee who will question Zuckerberg next week. Massachusetts Rep. Joseph Kennedy’s investment is worth at least $80,000 and is held in trust funds. Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader’s stake is worth at least $15,000.

 

[Palinurus]

Following an appeal by television show host Arjen Lubach, about 10,000 Dutch people closed their Facebook accounts.

Source: Dutch bye bye Facebook campaign leads 10,000 to say farewell - DutchNews.nl

Dutch bye bye Facebook campaign leads 10,000 to say farewell

April 12, 2018

Some 10,000 Dutch people have closed their Facebook accounts following a call to action by television show host Arjen Lubach, news website Nu.nl (in Dutch) said on Thursday.

Lubach, who presents the Zondag met Lubach program, had urged viewers to take part in a mass closure event on Wednesday evening in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Of the 30,000 people who signed up, Nu.nl estimates 10,000 actually shut down their Facebook accounts. The news site bases its claim on checks made on 8,200 of the accounts which were registered for the event.

Lubach said that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is unlikely to be affected by the closures.’That does not matter,’ he said. ‘Discussion has started and that is what this is about. And I do appreciate the fact so many people were prepared to join in.’

There are some 9.7 million Facebook users in the Netherlands.

 

[Ca.]

SouthFront's Webiste, Videos Are Fully Censored On Facebook
13.04.2018
Facebook is censoring SouthFront’s website and videos.

• All posts with links to southfront.org have been removed;
• All SouthFront videos released in 2018 have been removed;
• No more links to southfront.org can be posted on Facebook;

The formal reason is that southfront.org doesn’t meet Facebook’s Community Standards.

In this situation, we kindly recommend you to follow SouthFront’s news directily on southfront.org or via our accounts in Telegram SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence and Twitter SouthFront (@southfronteng) | Twitter​

Furthermore, since the start of the week, southfront.org has been repeatedly attacked. Our team is now working to repel these attacks.

The censorship on Facebook, attacks on southfront.org as well as resumed attempts to discredit SouthFront are a part of the new wave of agressive actions against the world’s alternative media.

Entirely by chance, this campaign has now been reactivated amid the growing possibility of a large-scale military conflict in Syria.​