Toyota, Nissan, Honda and other Japanese automakers scrambled on Monday to assess the production impact of a fire at a Renesas Electronics automotive chip plant that could aggravate a global semiconductor shortage. “We are gathering information and trying to see if this will affect us or not,” a Honda spokesperson said. Other car makers including Toyota and Nissan said they too were assessing the situation. The effect on car makers could spread beyond Japan to other auto companies in Europe and the United States because Renesas has around a 30% global share of micro control unit chips used in cars. Renesas said it will take at least a month to restart production on a 300 mm (millimeter) wafer line at its Naka plant in northeast Japan after an electrical fault caused machinery to catch fire on Friday and poured smoke into the sensitive clean room. Two-thirds of production at the affected line is automotive chips. The company also has a 200 mm (millimeter) wafer line at the Naka plant, which has not been affected. Concerns on the impact of the fire on production sent auto shares sliding in Tokyo on Monday, with the big three, Toyota, Honda and Nissan, down more than 2% by the midday break. Renesas shares tumbled as much as 5.5% and were down 3.9% midday. The benchmark Topix index shed 1.1%. “It will probably take more than a month to return to normal supply. Given that, even Toyota will face very unstable production in April and May,” said Seiji Sugiura, senior analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute. “I think Honda, Nissan and other makers will also be facing a difficult situation.” Semiconductors such as those made by Renesas are used extensively in cars, including to monitor engine performance, manage steering or automatic windows, and in sensors used in parking and entertainment systems.An employee wearing protective equipment pushes a cart at a semiconductor production facility for Renesas Electronics during a government organized tour for journalists in Beijing, May 14, 2020.Nissan and Honda had already been forced to scale back production plans because of the chip shortage resulting from burgeoning demand from consumer electronic makers and an unexpected rebound in car sales from a slump during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. Toyota, which ensured parts suppliers had enough stocks of chips, has fared better so far. “It could take three months or even half a year for a full recovery,” said Akira Minamikawa, analyst at technology research company Omdia. “This has happened when chip stockpiles are low, so the impact is going to be significant,” he added. Government promises help Renesas said it customers, which are mostly automotive parts makers rather than the car companies, will begin to see chip shipments fall in around a month. The company declined to say which machine caught fire because of the electrical fault or which company made it. The Japanese government promised help for the auto industry. “We will firmly try to help the Naka factory achieve swift restoration by helping it quickly acquire alternative manufacturing equipment,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a regular news conference on Monday. The latest incident at the Naka facility comes after an earthquake last month shut down production for three days and forced Renesas to further deplete chip stocks to keep up with orders. The plant was closed for three months in 2011 following the deadly earthquake that devastated Japan’s northeast coast.
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U.S. President Joe Biden announced Friday he plans to nominate former U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson to lead the U.S. space agency, NASA.In a statement, the White House says as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a three-term senator from Florida, Nelson, a Democrat, chaired committees on space, science and transportation. They also note he co-authored the landmark 2010 NASA bill which set the current path of private-sector partnership. In the statement, the White House notes Nelson, as a congressman in 1986, even flew on a six-day space shuttle mission. He currently serves on the NASA advisory council.Nelson, if approved by the Senate, would take over the agency as commercial space projects are already shuttling supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station.NASA is also preparing to return astronauts to the moon in the next four years.Nelson’s nomination has already received the endorsement of Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican.“I cannot think of anyone better to lead NASA than Bill Nelson,” Rubio tweeted on Thursday.
If approved, Nelson would be NASA’s 14th administrator, and would take over from the Trump administration’s appointee, former Oklahoma congressman Jim Bridenstine.
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Twitter on Friday began a survey of global users about platform rules for world leaders while consulting human rights and academic specialists on its next policy steps.The announcement comes after Twitter joined other social networks banning then-president Donald Trump for his comments seen as inciting the violent attack on the US Capitol in January.The ban was criticized by Trump supporters while others had argued Twitter should have taken action earlier despite its policy of allowing leeway for world leaders and newsworthy posts.”Politicians and government officials are constantly evolving how they use our service, and we want our policies to remain relevant to the ever-changing nature of political discourse on Twitter and protect the health of the public conversation,” the Twitter safety team said in a blog post.”That’s why we’re reviewing our approach to world leaders and seeking your input.”Twitter will be asking users their views in a survey in 14 languages, from Friday until April 12.”Generally, we want to hear from the public on whether or not they believe world leaders should be subject to the same rules as others on Twitter. And, should a world leader violate a rule, what type of enforcement action is appropriate,” the statement said.”We’re also in the process of consulting with a range of human rights experts, civil society organizations, and academics worldwide whose feedback will be reflected in forthcoming revisions to the policy framework.”
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The FBI says it received a record number of complaints from the public last year about cybercrimes, including scams related to the COVID-19 pandemic, costing Americans a staggering $4.2 billion in losses.The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received 791,790 complaints in 2020, an increase of 69% over 2019 and the largest number since the center was created two decades ago, the bureau said in a report released Wednesday.By comparison, the total reported losses were $3.5 billion in 2019 and $1.5 billion five years ago, according to the report.The type of online scam known as Business E-Email Compromise (BEC) remained the costliest category, the report said, resulting in losses of about $1.8 billion. Once a fraudster gains access to a business’s email account, he or she makes unauthorized fund transfers.The COVID-19 outbreak gave scammers new opportunities to steal. The FBI internet crime center received more than 28,500 complaints related to people struggling to cope with the pandemic, the report said, without putting a dollar figure on the losses.Most vulnerable are targeted“These criminals used phishing, spoofing, extortion, and various types of Internet-enabled fraud to target the most vulnerable in our society — medical workers searching for personal protective equipment, families looking for information about stimulus checks to help pay bills, and many others,” the report said.The center received thousands of complaints related to COVID-linked unemployment benefit and small business loan programs Congress created last year.FILE – This graphic shows an excerpt from a U.S. Department of the Treasury Paycheck Protection Program FAQ document.The congressionally funded Paycheck Protection Program has proven a magnet for fraudsters. Congress created the program last March with an initial authorization of up to $349 billion in forgivable loans to small businesses that keep workers on their payrolls. The Justice Department has charged numerous individuals with defrauding the program by setting up shell companies and other schemes.In the latest case, tech executive Mukund Mohan pleaded guilty on Monday of wire fraud and money laundering in connection with his scheme to obtain over $5.5 million in PPP loans and launder the proceeds.The top three crimes reported to the FBI’s internet crime center last year were phishing or password theft scams, nonpayment/nondelivery scams and extortion, the report said.In a nonpayment scheme, goods and services are shipped but payment is never made. A nondelivery scheme involves receiving payment without supplying goods and services.Identity theft utilizedIn several states, fraudsters filed illegal unemployment benefit claims using stolen identities, according to the report.“Many victims of this identity theft scheme did not know they had been targeted until they attempted to file their own legitimate claim for unemployment insurance benefits,” the report said.In recent months, a slew of new scams related to COVID vaccines has emerged: schemes asking people to pay out of pocket to receive a vaccine, put their names on a vaccine waiting list or obtain early access.“Fraudulent advertisements for vaccines popped up on social media platforms, or came via email, telephone calls, online, or from unsolicited/unknown sources,” the report said.The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center was set up in 2000 as part of the bureau’s effort to combat cybercrime. It has received 5.8 million complaints, some of which have been referred to law enforcement agencies for investigation.
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Facebook has reached an agreement with Australia’s News Corp under a new law that makes social media giants pay domestic news outlets for their content.The terms of the multi-year deal were not disclosed in Tuesday’s announcement. The deal comes nearly one month after Australia’s parliament approved a law that would allow a government arbitrator to decide the price a digital company should pay news outlets if the two sides fail to reach an agreement.News Corp Chief Executive Officer Robert Thomson said the agreement “is a landmark in transforming the terms of trade for journalism, and will have a material and meaningful impact on our Australian news businesses.”According to Facebook’s head of news partnerships in Australia, Andrew Hunter, the deal means the social media giant’s 17 million users in the country “will gain access to premium news articles and breaking news video from News Corp’s network of national, metropolitan, rural and suburban newsrooms.”The law’s passage occurred after a bitter standoff between U.S.-based Facebook and News Corp, owned by global media mogul Rupert Murdoch, that culminated with the social media giant blocking all Australian news content from the site, as well as the websites of several public agencies and emergency services, including pages that include up-to-date information on COVID-19 outbreaks, brushfires and other natural disasters.The situation was resolved after negotiators for the government and Facebook reached an agreement on a set of changes to the legislation before its final passage.News Corp says its Australian subsidiary, Sky News, had also reached a separate deal with Facebook that extends an existing agreement.Australian media companies have seen their advertising revenue increasingly siphoned off by big tech firms like Google and Facebook in recent years.Google had also threatened to block news content if the law were passed, even warning last August that Australians’ personal information could be “at risk” if digital giants had to pay for news content.But the company had already signed a number of separate agreements with News Corp and other Australian media giants such as Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media.Nine Entertainment and Seven West have said they have signed letters of intent with Facebook on a potential deal.
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U.S. automaker General Motors Corporation announced Monday it will build certain 2021 light-duty full-size pickup trucks without a fuel management module due to the global semiconductor chip shortage.In an email to the Reuters news agency, GM spokeswoman Michelle Malcho said the decision will lower the fuel economy slightly in those models effected by the decision, including the Chevy Silverado and the GMC Sierra.Malcho emphasized all trucks are still being built, something GM has repeatedly stressed it would try to sustain as pickups are among GM’s most profitable models. She declined to say the volume of vehicles affected.The change runs through the 2021 model year, which typically ends in late summer or early fall, she said.Malcho said it would not have a major impact on the Detroit automaker’s U.S. corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) numbers.Other automakers around the world, including Ford and Nissan, have had to make production adjustments because of the microchip shortage.Industry observers say the shortage has been driven by the pandemic in a number of ways, including a surge in demand for consumer electronics, as more people work and study from home. Automakers, meanwhile, expecting lower sales, cancelled orders for chips last year, only to see sales rebounding, catching suppliers unprepared.
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Facebook has scrapped plans to connect California, Taiwan and Hong Kong via a 12,000 kilometer underwater cable, citing tensions between the U.S. and China.
The social media giant told the Wall St. Journal, which broke the story, it was halting the project due to political pressure from the U.S. government, which noted potential national security concerns.
“Due to ongoing concerns from the U.S. government about direct communication links between the United States and Hong Kong, we have decided to withdraw our [Federal Communications Commission] application,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “We look forward to working with all the parties to reconfigure the system to meet the concerns of the U.S. government.”
Facebook, along with several Chinese companies including China Telecom, applied for permits to start the cable in 2018. The cable would have sped up the flow of data across the Pacific.
This is not the first time a Pacific cable that included Hong Kong has been placed on hold. In September of 2020, Google and Facebook shelved the Pacific Light Cable Network that would have linked the U.S. with Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Around the same time, Facebook and Amazon ditched a proposed cable link between San Francisco and Hong Kong called the Bay to Bay Express Cable.
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Russia’s Internet regulatory body, Roskomnadzor, announced it had slowed down Twitter’s ability to function in Russia effective Wednesday — part of what authorities said was an initial penalty for the American social media platform’s failure to delete illegal content inside the country.According to a statement posted on Roskomnadzor’s website, 100 percent of mobile devices and 50 percent of stationary devices using Twitter would face a disruption in service in an effort to “protect Russian citizens.””The mechanism envisions slowing down the transfer of photo and video content without any limitations on text messages. Users will be able to exchange messages freely,” Roskomnadzor official Vadim Subbotin later clarified in comments to reporters.Subbotin added the restrictions would remain in place until Twitter complied with the request to remove offending content.Failure to do so, added Subbotin, could lead to a full blockage of Twitter inside the country.In its statement, Roskomnadzor said Twitter had failed to remove 3,168 tweets promoting drug use, child pornography, and teenage suicide and ignored “over 28,000 initial and repeated requests” to address content violations.There was no immediate comment from Twitter about the new restrictions.“Nobody has any desire to block anything,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov when asked about the issue in his daily call with journalists.“But taking measures that force the company to fulfill our laws is completely justifiable.”President Vladimir Putin had criticized the internet for preying on Russian youth during a meeting with young volunteers last week.“We all unfortunately know what the internet is and how it’s used to spread entirely unacceptable content,” said Putin, who argued the Web should be bound by “moral laws.”Kremlin(ru) goes darkThe moves against Twitter were quickly followed by news that a series of key Russian government websites — including the Kremlin’s main portal — were inaccessible to users.Other state websites that appeared to experience problems included the Interior Ministry, Russia’s Federal Council and Duma, the Ministry of Economic Development and even Roskomnadzor — the Internet governing body that announced the penalties against Twitter to begin with.Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development later clarified the problems had nothing to do with the actions against Twitter but were caused by technical issues at the state service provider Rostelecom.Yet it was an explanation that did little to tame speculation that something larger was unfolding online.The coming cyberwar?The move against Twitter marked the latest in a simmering battle between Russia’s government and global tech companies.The Kremlin has alleged that Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube are platforms that promote content supportive of Russia’s opposition while penalizing Russian state media content.Earlier this month, Russia announced it was suing Twitter and four other global tech companies for failing to delete posts expressing support for protests against the jailing of opposition leader Alexey Navanly.Meanwhile, the problems with Russian government websites follow reports the Biden administration was preparing a cyber response —- both overt and covert — to what it insists is the Kremlin’s responsibility for the massive SolarWinds hack of U.S. government agency websites in 2020.Concerns over cyberattacks, and their fallout, have been a contentious aspect of the U.S.-Russian relationship since the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign — when the U.S. accused Russia of using cyber tools to interfere in the race. In 2019, Russia passed a law in defense of a “sovereign internet” — a measure that includes a “kill switch” intended to isolate Russian infrastructure from the worldwide web, if attacked.Internet activists argue the action is just the latest in a series of laws intended to tighten government control of the internet and clamp down on free speech.But experts have long questioned whether Russia’s internet governing body was capable of carrying out its threats to block big tech or the internet as a whole.In 2019, Roskomnadzor was widely mocked for botching its efforts to block the social message app Telegram. The effort to kill the service in Russia ended up disrupting service for hundreds of websites and commercial services, even as the app continued to function. On Wednesday, analysts suggested a similar dynamic was at play in the new fight between Russian censors and Twitter.“Russia’s slowing down of Twitter caused the outage of government websites,” explained Andrei Soldatov, a leading expert on Russian cybersecurity in a post to social media.“What was meant to be partly a nationwide test of the Sovereign Runet infrastructure, partly a warning to global platforms, (and partly a soothing message to Putin getting emotional), failed on all fronts.”As if to underline that fact, his message was posted to…where else? Twitter.Russia’s slowing down of Twitter caused the outage of govt websites.
What was meant to be partly a nationwide test of the Sovereign Runet infrastructure, partly a warning to global platforms, (and partly a soothing message to Putin getting emotional), failed on all fronts.
— Andrei Soldatov (@AndreiSoldatov) March 10, 2021
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The White House on Sunday urged computer network operators to take further steps to gauge whether their systems were targeted amid a hack of Microsoft Corp’s Outlook email program, saying a recent software patch still left serious vulnerabilities.”This is an active threat still developing and we urge network operators to take it very seriously,” a White House official said, adding that top U.S. security officials were working to decide what next steps to take following the breach.CNN reported Sunday that the Biden administration was forming a task force to address the hack. The White House official, in a statement, said the administration was making “a whole of government response.”While Microsoft released a patch last week to shore up flaws in its email software, the remedy still leaves open a so-called back door that can allow access to compromised servers and perpetuate further attacks by others.”We can’t stress enough that patching and mitigation is not remediation if the servers have already been compromised, and it is essential that any organization with a vulnerable server take measures to determine if they were already targeted,” the White House official said.A source told Reuters that more than 20,000 U.S. organizations had been compromised by the hack, which Microsoft has blamed on China, although Beijing denies any role.The server vulnerabilities can impact credit unions, town governments and small business, and have left U.S. officials scrambling to reach victims, with the FBI on Sunday urging them to contact the law enforcement agency.Those affected appear to host Web versions of Microsoft’s email program Outlook on their own machines instead of cloud providers, possibly sparing many major companies and federal government agencies, records from the investigation suggest.A Microsoft representative on Sunday said it was working with the government and others to help guide customers, and the company urged impacted clients to apply software updates as soon as possible.Neither the company nor the White House has specified the scale of the hack. Microsoft initially said it was limited, but the White House last week expressed concern about the potential for “a large number of victims.”So far, only a small percentage of infected networks have been compromised through the back door, the source previously told Reuters, but more attacks are expected.
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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is selling his first tweet at auction, with bidding Saturday reaching $2 million in a sign of the appetite for virtual objects authenticated through blockchain technology.”just setting up my twttr,” Dorsey tweeted on March 21, 2006.On Friday he posted a link to “Valuables @Cent,” an online marketplace for tweets where, the site says, investors or collectors can “buy and sell tweets autographed by their creators.”The top bid Saturday for Dorsey’s tweet — $2 million — came from Justin Sun, the founder of TRON, a platform for blockchain, the technology underlying cryptocurrencies. He also heads the BitTorrent streaming platform.”The creator of a tweet decides if they would like to mint it on the blockchain, creating a 1-of-1 autographed version,” Valuables explained.Buying ‘a digital certificate’Buying a tweet means purchasing “a digital certificate of the tweet, unique because it has been signed and verified by the creator,” according to Valuables.In Dorsey’s case, the tweet itself remains visible to all, so long as he and Twitter leave it online.The approach is much like the online sales of dramatic digital “moments” from National Basketball Association games; the short video sequences remain visible for free on the internet but a blockchain-backed “Non-Fungible Token” (NFT) is generated to guarantee the identity, authenticity and traceability of the video, confirming its value.Thus, a 10-second clip showing a spectacular sequence by basketball superstar LeBron James fetched $208,000 on the NBA Top Shot site late last month.Top Shot has generated more than $200 million in transactions this year, according to Dapper Labs, which partnered with the NBA to create Top Shot.In 2019, Sun paid $4.6 million in a winning bid to have lunch with billionaire Warren Buffett. Sun reportedly tried but failed to convince the elderly investor of the value of bitcoins.NFTs have soared in popularity, to the point that prestigious auction house Christie’s last month sold an entirely digital artwork.
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U.S. President Joe Biden’s order to secure semiconductor supply chains for high-tech hardware production offers a commercial boost to Taiwan, one of the world’s biggest providers of chips, and gives Taipei new weight in any free-trade talks, analysts say.Biden signed an executive order Feb. 24 for the United States to start overcoming a chip shortage that has hobbled the manufacturing of vehicles, consumer electronics and medical supplies. It will trigger a review process leading to policy recommendations on how to bolster supply chains.Taiwan comes into play as the home of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which spins out more chips than any other contract manufacturer in the world and has some of the most advanced production processes. Those advances generate semiconductors that run on relatively little power without sacrificing the speed of a device.Remote study and telework, two trends that exploded during the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, raised demand last year for chips that run notebook PCs, among other types of consumer hardware. World demand for chips should increase from $450 billion last year to about $600 billion in 2024, market research firm Gartner says.“This is good, and I think at this moment Taiwan finally can offer something concretely and to help the United States somehow, some way,” said Liu Yih-jiun, public affairs professor at Fo Guang University in Taiwan.Taiwan has tried off and on since 1994 to arrange a trade deal with the United States, which is its second-biggest trading partner after China. U.S.-Taiwan trade totaled $90.9 billion in 2020. Americans buy chips, computers and machinery, among other Taiwanese goods, resulting in a $29.3 billion trade surplus for the Asian manufacturing center last year.Starting in January, Taiwan began allowing shipments of American pork from pigs raised on the feed additive ractopamine, and U.S. officials lauded that step as progress in trade relations.The Biden administration has asked Taiwanese officials about pushing their chipmakers to step up semiconductor production amid a shortage of chips for automotive use, Bloomberg reported last month.American demand for semiconductors will help raise Taiwan’s position when negotiators meet again for trade talks, said John Brebeck, senior adviser at the Quantum International Corp. investment consultancy in Taipei.“Because of the [Sino-U.S.] trade war, and because of semiconductors, and because Taiwan did so well on COVID, and it’s a democracy they want to support, I think it moves forward,” Brebeck said.Trade talks will take place “in a much more balanced way” due to Taiwan’s weight in global semiconductors, Liu said.Trade deal or not, Taiwan’s chipmakers will get a surge in business because of the shortage, though they may struggle to prioritize customers, Brady Wang, an analyst in Taipei with the market intelligence firm Counterpoint Research, said.“There’s actually no risk to the companies, but you can say there’s the issue of how much they can spread out production and who they’re going to sacrifice,” Wang said.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. broke ground in 2018 on a $15 billion factory complex in Taiwan with volume production expected to reach full capacity this year. The complex will produce more than 1 million wafers per year and employ about 4,000 people. In December last year the 34-year-old firm got Taiwan government clearance to build a $12 billion factory in the U.S. state of Arizona. That plant will make up to 20,000 wafers per month.The project in Arizona and the new one in Taiwan are “well on track,” a spokesperson from the company’s headquarters said.Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. and United Microelectronics Corp. also make chips in Taiwan. A spokesperson for United Microelectronics said last month his company was doing all it can to meet demand for automotive chips.
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This week a U.S.-government backed commission of technology experts completed a three-year review of the country’s artificial intelligence capabilities, urging the development of a new national technology strategy to stay competitive with China.The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) has been studying how artificial intelligence and machine learning can address U.S. national security and defense needs. It recommended spending billions of dollars more on research, diversifying the American industrial supply chain for microchips and other high-tech products, and reforming immigration policies to attract talented researchers and workers.Some of those steps are under way. Republican and Democratic lawmakers are now focusing more on ways to address technological competition with China, following years in which officials say China carried out corporate espionage and forced technology transfers to rapidly advance its technological capabilities.Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., talks to reporters on Jan. 28, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington.On Thursday, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation aiming to help the U.S. government develop more technology partnerships with allies to counter China’s rise in artificial intelligence, 5G, quantum computing and other areas.The bill, led by Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner, a former technology entrepreneur, would create a new interagency office within the State Department focusing on coordinating tech strategies with other democratic nations. It would also create a $5 billion fund supporting research projects between government and private companies.In this image from video, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., speaks in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer urged a bipartisan effort to draft a bill investing in disruptive new technologies to challenge China.Also last week, President Joe Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 12, 2018.Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told VOA Mandarin he believes the bill will receive broad bipartisan support.“On the broad issue of China, supply chain is one element of it. But we are working on the broader issue of how do we both compete with China and how do we confront China,” Menendez said, “I think there’s plenty of room where there should be a common ground that we can come together.”He added that he has been discussing America’s China policy with Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and the State Department is conducting its own comprehensive evaluation on current China policies.“There’s a whole of government review vis-a-vis China, which I applaud,” Menendez told VOA.Similar efforts are ongoing in the U.S. Congress, where several Republican legislators are pushing the White House to maintain former President Donald Trump’s hardline posture on China.Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla, speaks during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill on July 29, 2020 in Washington.Representative Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, introduced the Keep Huawei on the Entity List Act on Wednesday, which would continue export controls and keep China’s telecommunication firm Huawei on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s entity list.“Huawei is one of the most powerful tools that the Chinese Communist Party can use for espionage and potential destruction against the United States,” Steube said in a statement.James Lankford, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, said that he and his colleagues have been talking with the White House about keeping some of the Trump-era policies on China.“We want to make it very clear. And that policy shouldn’t be thrown aside just because they have the name Trump in front of them,” he told VOA. “If there were good policies, and they were good policies, and they should remain.”Artificial intelligence for the futureThe artificial intelligence report recommends that the Department of Defense must have the foundations in place by 2025 for widespread adoption of artificial intelligence systems.The commission also addressed the ethics of using AI-enabled and autonomous weapons. For now, it said the Defense Department has adequate protections in place so that such weapons do not require a global ban and can continue to be used in accordance with international humanitarian law. It recommended establishing systems to build confidence in AI technology and keeping humans in the decision chain for deploying nuclear weapons.Lin Yang contributed to this report.
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An international advocacy group’s claim that the Vietnamese government has tapped hackers to target activists shows that the communist Southeast Asian state is widening the use of technology to quash its biggest opponents, experts believe. Ocean Lotus, a shadowy group suspected of working with the Vietnamese government, is “behind a sustained campaign of spyware attacks,” London-based Amnesty International said in a statement on February 24 following two years of research. It says the attacks surfaced in 2014 and targeted rights activists and the private sector, inside Vietnam as well as abroad. The hack attacks would signal a growing use of technology to muzzle strong vocal opponents of Vietnam’s officials, country observers say. Police already use internet trolls and authorities have been known to damage people’s Facebook accounts, said James Gomez, regional director of the Asia Centre, a Bangkok-based think tank. The FILE – Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputy spokesperson Ngo Toan Thang speaks to media in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 7, 2019.”This is groundless information,” deputy ministry spokesperson Ngo Toan Thang told a news conference in May, as quoted on the ministry’s website. “Vietnam strictly bans all cyber-attacks against organizations and individuals in any form.” The ministry’s English-language website does not address Amnesty International’s claims. Amnesty International’s Security Lab said in the February 24 statement it had found Ocean Lotus’s influence in phishing emails sent to two Vietnamese “human rights” advocates. One lives in Germany, the statement says, and the other was a Vietnamese nongovernmental organization in the Philippines. “The hacking group has been repeatedly identified by cybersecurity firms as targeting Vietnamese political dissidents, foreign governments and companies,” the statement adds. Vietnam ‘cyber-troops’French journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said in 2018 Vietnam had appointed 10,000 “cyber-troops” to fight online dissent. The journalism group called the deployment an “army of internet trolls” aimed at attacking independent media outlets. Authorities showed last year they can quickly shutter social media accounts registered in foreign countries. After Vietnamese blogger Bui Thi Minh Hang livestreamed an interview with a woman whose 3-year-old child was exposed to tear gas, her posts quickly disappeared from Facebook and YouTube and she was arrested hours later. She lost access to her accounts.Vietnam Pressures Social Media Platforms to Censor Vietnam’s laws and requests for content removal are stifling free speech, bloggers and rights organizations say Jack Nguyen, a partner at the business advisory firm Mazars in Ho Chi Minh City, suggests that internet commentators stick to issues rather than targeting the state or the Communist Party. Pollution and drought are acceptable topics, he said, and it’s even OK to suggest policy changes. “Don’t criticize the party,” Nguyen said. “You can criticize some of the policies but don’t do anything that they can say that it’s counterrevolutionary.”
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From a smart dog collar that can tell you your pet’s emotional state to toys that automatically move, the pet tech industry is growing, especially during the pandemic when many people staying at home have been adopting dogs and cats. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more on the latest tech devices for pets.Camera: Elizabeth Lee, Sam Verma
Producer: Elizabeth Lee
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A federal judge on Friday approved a $650 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users.U.S. District Judge James Donato approved the deal in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in Illinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6 million Facebook users in Illinois who submitted claims will be affected.Donato called it one of the largest settlements ever for a privacy violation.”It will put at least $345 into the hands of every class member interested in being compensated,” he wrote, calling it “a major win for consumers in the hotly contested area of digital privacy.”Jay Edelson, a Chicago attorney who filed the lawsuit, told the Chicago Tribune that the checks could be in the mail within two months unless the ruling is appealed.“We are pleased to have reached a settlement so we can move past this matter, which is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders,” Facebook, which is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, said in a statement.The lawsuit accused the social media giant of violating an Illinois privacy law by failing to get consent before using facial-recognition technology to scan photos uploaded by users to create and store faces digitally.The state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act allowed consumers to sue companies that didn’t get permission before harvesting data such as faces and fingerprints.The case eventually wound up as a class-action lawsuit in California.Facebook has since changed its photo-tagging system.
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With internet access increasing in many emerging democracies, use of social media is changing the ways that candidates and voters interact. It’s also changing how the non-profit U.S.-based Carter Center assesses elections. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, monitoring online disinformation and threats to prevent political violence is a new front in the center’s democracy initiatives and is a focus ahead of elections in Ethiopia.Camera: Kane Farabaugh Producer: Kane Farabaugh
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U.S. lawmakers launched an investigation this week into the December 2020 SolarWinds hack that included a breach of many private and U.S. government computer systems. As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, tech leaders are telling lawmakers the full scope of the breach is still not known. Camera: Adam Greenbaum Produced by: Katherine Gypson
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ByteDance has agreed to a $92 million class-action settlement over data privacy claims from some U.S. TikTok users, according to documents filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Illinois. ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the short video app that has more than 100 million U.S. users, agreed to the settlement after more than a year of litigation. “While we disagree with the assertions, rather than go through lengthy litigation, we’d like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community,” TikTok said Thursday. The settlement still requires court approval. FILE – A man opens social media app TikTok on his cellphone, in Islamabad, Pakistan, July 21, 2020.The lawsuits claimed the TikTok app “infiltrates its users’ devices and extracts a broad array of private data including biometric data and content that defendants use to track and profile TikTok users for the purpose of, among other things, ad targeting and profit.” The settlement was reached after “an expert-led inside look at TikTok’s source code” and extensive mediation efforts, according to the motion seeking approval of the settlement. Separately, in Washington the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Justice Department are looking into allegations that TikTok failed to live up to a 2019 agreement aimed at protecting children’s privacy.
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Australia has become the world’s first nation to make digital companies such as Facebook and Google pay domestic news outlets for their content.Parliament approved the law Thursday that would allow a government arbitrator to decide the price a digital company should pay news outlets if the two sides fail to reach an agreement.The final legislation includes a set of amendments as part of an agreement reached Tuesday between the Australian government and Facebook. The amendments include a two-month mediation period that would give social media giants and news publishers extra time to broker agreements before they are forced to abide by the government’s provisions.The agreements ended a stalemate that prompted Facebook to block all Australian news content last week, preventing them from being viewed or shared. The websites of several public agencies and emergency services were also blocked on Facebook, including pages that include up-to-date information on COVID-19 outbreaks, brushfires and other natural disasters.
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Facebook on Wednesday pledged to invest at least $1 billion to support journalism over the next three years as the social media giant defended its handling of a dispute with Australia over payments to media organizations.Nick Clegg, head of global affairs, said in a statement that the company was willing to support news media while reiterating its concerns about mandated payments.”Facebook is more than willing to partner with news publishers,” Clegg said after Facebook restored news links as part of a compromise with Australian officials. “We absolutely recognize quality journalism is at the heart of how open societies function — informing and empowering citizens and holding the powerful to account.”Clegg defended the U.S. social media giant in a blog post titled “The Real Story of What Happened With News on Facebook in Australia.”The social media platform came under fire after it blanked out the pages of media outlets for Australian users and blocked them from sharing any news content, rather than submit to the proposed legislation.Clegg contended in his post that at the heart of the controversy was a misunderstanding about the relationship between Facebook and news publishers.’Free referrals’News groups share their stories at the social network or make them available for Facebook users to share with features such as buttons designed into websites, Clegg noted.Facebook drove some 5.1 billion such “free referrals” to Australian news publishers last year, worth an estimated 407 million Australian dollars, according to Clegg.”The assertions — repeated widely in recent days — that Facebook steals or takes original journalism for its own benefit always were and remain false,” Clegg said. “We neither take nor ask for the content for which we were being asked to pay a potentially exorbitant price.”Clegg said that to comply with the law as originally proposed in Australia, “Facebook would have been forced to pay potentially unlimited amounts of money to multinational media conglomerates under an arbitration system that deliberately misdescribes the relationship between publishers and Facebook.”He maintained that in blacking out all news in the country, “we erred on the side of overenforcement” and acknowledged that “some content was blocked inadvertently” before being restored.
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Facebook Inc.’s oversight board has received a “user statement” for the case it is deciding about whether the social media company was right to indefinitely suspend former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, a board spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday. Facebook handed the case to its independent board in January after it blocked Trump’s access to his accounts over concerns of further violent unrest following the storming of the U.S. Capitol by the former president’s supporters. The board’s process gave administrators of Trump’s page the option to submit a statement challenging Facebook’s decision. The spokeswoman said the board would have no further comment until it had issued a decision. The appeal was first reported by the UK’s Channel 4 News. Earlier this month, the oversight board said it was extending the public comment period on the case for a week, citing “high levels of interest.” The oversight board spokeswoman said the board had received more than 9,000 comments on the Trump case, the most the board has had for any case. Several academics and civil rights activists have publicly shared their letters urging the board to ban Trump permanently. Republican lawmakers have railed against the ban and demanded Trump’s accounts be reinstated.
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The latest International Labor Organization FILE – Travelers request an Uber ride at Los Angeles International Airport’s LAX-it pick up terminal, Aug. 20, 2020.However, there are a number of downsides to this new form of work. For example, Ryder notes workers sometimes have to pay a commission or a fee just to access the digital labor market. “Workers also frequently struggle to find sufficient well-paid work to earn a decent income, and many do not have access to social protection, and this has become a particular point of concern obviously in the course of the current pandemic. Moreover, workers are often unable to engage in collective bargaining that would allow them to have the way to address some of these issues,” he said.The report finds working hours often can be long and unpredictable. It says half of online platform workers earn less than $2 per hour, women earn less than men and workers in developing countries earn about 60 percent less than those doing the same job in developed countries. Since digital labor platforms operate across multiple jurisdictions, the ILO says international labor standards governing digital platform workers must be enacted. Among its recommendations, authors of the report say self-employed platform workers should have the right to bargain collectively. They say all workers, including platform workers, should have access to adequate social security benefits.
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