Facebook has banned an extremist anti-government network loosely associated with the broader “boogaloo” movement, a slang term supporters use to refer to a second Civil War or a collapse of civilization. But the platform didn’t try to name the group, underscoring the difficulty of grappling with an amorphous network linked to a string of domestic terror plots that appears to obfuscate its existence. Among other complications, its internet-savvy members tend to keep their distance from one another, frequently change their symbols and catch phrases and mask their intentions with sarcasm. The move by Facebook designates this group as a dangerous organization similar to the Islamic State group and white supremacists, both of which are already banned from its service. The social network is not banning all references to “boogaloo” and said it is only removing groups, accounts and pages when they have a “clear connection to violence or a credible threat to public safety.”  The loose movement is named after “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” a 1984 sequel to a movie about breakdancing. Boogaloo supporters have shown up at protests over COVID-19 lockdown orders, carrying rifles and wearing tactical gear over Hawaiian shirts – a reference to “big luau,” a homophone for “boogaloo” sometimes favored by group members. Facebook said that the movement dates to 2012 and that it has been tracking it closely since last year.  FILE – Steven Carrillo is seen in a booking photo from the Santa Cruz County (California) Sheriff’s Office, June 7, 2020.Earlier in June, Steven Carrillo, an Air Force sergeant with ties to the boogaloo movement, fatally shot a federal security officer and wounded his partner outside a U.S. courthouse, ambushed and killed a California sheriff’s deputy, and injured four other officers in Oakland, California. According to the criminal complaint, Carrillo posted in a Facebook group, “It’s on our coast now, this needs to be nationwide. It’s a great opportunity to target the specialty soup bois. Keep that energy going.”  The statement was followed by two fire emojis and a link to a YouTube video showing a large crowd attacking two California Highway Patrol vehicles. According to the FBI, “soup bois” may be a term that followers of the boogaloo movement used to refer to federal law enforcement agents.  While the term “boogaloo'” has been embraced by white supremacist groups and other far-right extremists, many supporters insist they aren’t racist or truly advocating for violence. As part of Tuesday’s announcement, Facebook said it has removed 220 Facebook accounts, 95 Instagram accounts, 28 Pages and 106 groups that that comprise the violent Boogaloo-affiliated network. It also took down 400 other groups and 100 pages that hosted similar content as the violent network but were maintained by accounts outside of it. The company said it has so far found no evidence of foreign actors amplifying boogaloo-related material. Social media companies are facing a reckoning over hate speech on their platforms. Reddit, an online comment forum that is one of the world’s most popular websites, on Monday banned a forum that supported President Donald Trump as part of a crackdown on hate speech. Live-streaming site Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, temporarily suspended Trump’s campaign account for violating its hateful conduct rules. YouTube, meanwhile, banned several prominent white nationalist figures from its platform, including Stefan Molyneux, David Duke and Richard Spencer. Civil rights groups have called on large advertisers to stop Facebook ad campaigns during July, saying the social network isn’t doing enough to curtail racist and violent content on its platform, and several major advertisers have signed on to the boycott.  Violent and extremist groups are increasingly turning to encrypted communications networks and fringe social platforms with no content moderation, which makes them more difficult to track.  
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For years, social media platforms have fueled political polarization and hosted an explosion of hate speech. Now, with four months until the U.S. presidential election and the country’s divisions reaching a boiling point, these companies are upping their game against bigotry and threats of violence. What’s not yet clear is whether this action is too little, too late — nor whether the pressure on these companies, including a growing advertiser boycott, will be enough to produce lasting change. FILE – Reddit employees work at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, California, April 15, 2014.Reddit, an online comment forum that is one of the world’s most popular websites, on Monday banned a forum that supported President Donald Trump as part of a crackdown on hate speech. Also on Monday, live-streaming site Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, temporarily suspended Trump’s campaign account for violating its hateful conduct rules. YouTube, meanwhile, banned several prominent white nationalist figures from its platform, including Stefan Molyneux, David Duke and Richard Spencer.  Social media companies, led by Facebook, now face a reckoning over what critics call indefensible excuses for amplifying divisions, hate and misinformation on their platforms. Civil rights groups have called on large advertisers to stop Facebook ad campaigns during July, saying the social network isn’t doing enough to curtail racist and violent content on its platform.  Companies such as the consumer goods giant Unilever — one of the world’s largest advertisers — as well as Verizon, Ford and many smaller brands have joined the boycott, some for the month of July and others for the rest of the year. New companies have been signing on to the boycott almost every day. While some are pausing ads only on Facebook, others have also stepped back from advertising on Twitter and other platforms. On Monday, Ford Motor Co. put the brakes on all national social media advertising for the next 30 days. The company says hate speech, as well as posts advocating violence and racial injustice, need to be eradicated from the sites. FILE – The Twitter and Facebook logos are seen with binary cyber codes in this illustration, Nov. 26, 2019.While the ad boycott has dinged Facebook’s and Twitter’s shares, analysts who follow the social media business don’t see it as having a lasting effect.  Raymond James analyst Aaron Kessler noted that YouTube has faced several ad boycotts in the past over hate speech and other objectionable material. Each time, it adjusted its policies and the advertisers returned. In addition, July is generally a slow month for advertising. Companies have also been cutting their ad budgets due to COVID-19, so the spending declines are not a surprise for investors. Kessler called Facebook’s stock pullback — its shares fell more than 8% on Friday, then rallied a bit Monday — a “buying opportunity.” Reddit’s action was part of a larger purge at the San Francisco-based site. The company said it took down a total of 2,000 forums, known as the site as “subreddits,” most of which it said were inactive or had few users.  The Trump Reddit forum, called The_Donald, was banned because it encouraged violence, regularly broke other Reddit rules, and defiantly “antagonized” both Reddit and other forums, the company said in a statement. Reddit had previously tried to discipline the forum. “We are cautiously optimistic that Reddit is finally working with groups like ours to dismantle the systems that enable hateful rhetoric on their platform,” Bridget Todd, a spokeswoman for the women’s advocacy organization UltraViolet, said in an emailed statement.  The group said its members met with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman via Zoom last week, encouraging him to address racism and hate speech on the platform. Despite optimism from some critics, others said it is not clear if such measures will be enough. For years, racist groups “have successfully used social media to amplify their message and gain new recruits,” said Sophie Bjork-James an anthropology professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in white nationalism, racism and hate crimes.  “However, limiting access to a broader public will have unintended negative consequences. Far-right and white nationalist groups are increasingly gathering on encrypted apps and social media sites that do not monitor for offensive speech or violent content,” she added. “This shift allows for coordinating more violent and radical actions.” The algorithms tech companies developed to keep users glued to their services “have provided perhaps the biggest boon to organized racism in decades, as they help racist ideas find a much larger and potentially receptive audience,” Bjork-James said, adding that she is hopeful that the same companies that “helped this anti-democratic movement expand” can now help limit its impact. For its part, Twitch pointed to comments the president made at two rallies, videos of which were posted on the site.  Supporters of President Donald Trump cheer as he arrives on stage to speak to a campaign rally at the BOK Center, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.In one, a live stream of a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trump talked about a “very tough hombre” breaking into someone’s home. The other was from a 2015 campaign rally that was recently posted on Twitch, in which Trump said Mexico sends rapists and criminals to the U.S. Twitch declined to say how long the suspension will last. The White House referred a request for comment to Trump’s reelection campaign. Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s director of communications, said that people who want to hear directly from the president should download the campaign’s app. Reddit has  tweaked its rules and banned forums  for white nationalists  over the years in an attempt to rid its platform of vitriol, sometimes producing significant user backlash as a result. CEO Steve Huffman said earlier this month that Reddit was working with moderators to explicitly address hate speech. 
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With social distancing as the new pandemic normal, U.S. presidential campaigns were faced with an unprecedented situation. They no longer were able to send out organizers and volunteers to connect with potential voters face-to-face. Intimate, high-dollar fundraising events were also out of the question. “The coronavirus pandemic shifted things overnight. It was a sudden and instant transformation to 100% virtual campaigning, just like the pandemic disrupted everyone else’s daily life. The same is true of our campaigns,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist and director of the Center for Campaign Innovation. “You’re just seeing a lot more creativity in terms of how and where the campaigns are finding the voters they need to get their message across to,” said Tara McGowan, CEO and founder of Acronym, a progressive nonprofit organization and head of the political action committee Pacronym.  Lally Doerrer, right, and Katharine Hildebrand watch Joe Biden during his Illinois virtual town hall, in Doerrer’s living room March 13, 2020, in Chicago.Politics as entertainment Most voters are consuming politics as entertainment, Wilson said. Since the start of social distancing orders in March, the Trump campaign launched, on social media such as Facebook and YouTube, a daily talk show-style broadcast with a host and guests. “That’s one of the biggest kind of innovations we’ve done, are these original seven-nights-a-week online broadcast. We really touch on loads of different dynamics and different messaging opportunities,” Erin Perrine, director of press communications for the Trump campaign, said.  Prominent Republicans and President Donald Trump’s children have been either guests or hosts on these shows. In one program, hosted by Donald Trump Jr., the guest being interviewed was his father, who is running for a second term against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden.  The Biden campaign is also tapping into social media. Biden is using Instagram for live conversations with social media influencers, celebrities and past Democratic presidential candidates such as entrepreneur Andrew Yang.  Last week, Biden raised more than $11 million during a joint virtual fundraising event with former President Barack Obama.President Donald Trump speaks during a Fox News virtual town hall from the Lincoln Memorial, May 3, 2020, in Washington, co-moderated by FOX News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.Digital advertising, apps and engagement Digital ads have become another way for campaigns to reach potential voters and build a database of information.  “What the campaign is trying to do is if somebody engages the ad, clicks on the link, goes then to the website, then the first thing the campaign says is, ‘Hey, give me your email address,’ and if you do give your email address, they also then typically ask you for your name and maybe your address or your zip code,” Stromer-Galley said.  “Now they can start to get a profile of who you actually are and then maybe potentially marry that to other data that they have about that email address, whether they’ve purchased that list or are building it organically.”  With a potential supporter’s profile, campaigns can create ads on Facebook that target a specific demographic of users. “We run a lot of ads on Facebook continuously,” Perrine, of the Trump campaign, said. “Our digital team says it’s like high, high-volume trading on the stock market. We do a bunch of them and those that are doing well, we’ll put more money behind and continue to push those, then others that aren’t, you can pull them off the platform.”  Stromer-Galley said Facebook is a useful tool for campaigns because “Facebook has built an algorithm that predicts if you’re politically interested. They have an algorithm that predicts if you’re likely a Democratic supporter or a Republican supporter.” Both campaigns also have apps as ways of engaging supporters, fundraising and encouraging users to conduct peer-to-peer organizing. “If you’re one of my friends, and I know that you’ve not decided on who you’re going to vote for, I can reach out directly to you and say, ‘Hey, here’s who I’m supporting, here’s what I think matters to you, and I would send you a text message or a Facebook message, however we normally communicate,” said Wilson, the Republican strategist.   To encourage supporters, Trump’s app is gamified, where users can earn points by sharing a post or liking something on social media and making phone calls for the campaign. The points get aggregated, and they can be used to gain early entry into rallies, a discount code for buying campaign merchandise, and with enough points, a supporter can meet Trump.  The reason why campaigns want people to engage digitally is to “glean data, is to get more information on voters, how we can stay in contact with them, because you want these people to become volunteers, you want them to stay engaged and become part of the movement. But, ultimately, we want them to show up on election day,” Perrine said. “When I downloaded them to my phone, the first thing it asks — after some personal information about me, like my address, some demographic information, my name, my email address — it then asks if the app, the mobile app can access my contacts, my photographs,” said Stromer-Galley, who downloaded the Trump and Biden apps for her research. McGowan, of Pacronym, and her staff are separate from the Biden campaign. They  have been running their own digital advertising to support Biden on nontraditional platforms, such as streaming apps like Hulu and Roku, on gaming devices such as Xbox, and on streaming radio, including Pandora and Spotify.  McGowan said ads are no longer one-size-fits-all and have to be tailored for the various unique platforms available to consumers today. “It’s become such, just a diverse media landscape today. So you really have to sort of stay ahead of the curve. You really can’t rest on your laurels, and it’s a real challenge for campaigns,” she said.  Digital campaign contest With a bigger war chest, analysts of digital campaigns say Trump started the 2020 digital campaign with a huge advantage, both as the incumbent and with a database of supporters from his last presidential race.  “Trump has been very effective at blurring his presidential messaging and his campaign messaging on Twitter, and so as a journalist or as a member of the public, you can’t help but sort of get both at the same time when you’re watching him,” Stromer-Galley said. “Biden doesn’t have that advantage because he’s not the incumbent. He doesn’t have the presidency. He’s issuing formal statements. He’s doing YouTube videos. He is holding online events, but they don’t get the same traction,” she added. By numbers alone, Trump has more than 82 million followers on Twitter and Biden has just over 6 million. There are close to 30 million followers on Trump’s campaign Facebook page compared to just over 2 million followers on Biden’s Facebook page.  Trump’s campaign has outspent Biden on Facebook ads. “With online marketing, it’s a lot like compound interest. It pays more dividends the sooner you get it into the bank, and so the fact that the Trump campaign was able to get started building their digital infrastructure so early, it gives them a huge head start,” Wilson said.  As an example, he pointed to Trump’s decision to name Brad Pascale, his 2016 digital strategist, as his 2020 campaign manager as a sign that Trump understands the importance of having a strong digital presence in a campaign. Although Biden has been in politics much longer, “all of the campaign experiences can be a curse because you think you know how things should be done,” Wilson said. He further described the Biden campaign as “a traditional legacy style of campaign first, with digital operations as an add-on, and that’s not the way campaigns should be run in 2020.” The Biden campaign did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. However, McGowan countered, saying Biden has experience with digital campaigning while running as Obama’s running mate. “The Obama campaigns really drove a lot of the innovation in campaigning and bringing campaigning online. Online fundraising, advertising, and so Vice President Biden is no stranger to digital campaigning or strategy,” McGowan said. Earlier in June, the Biden campaign spent $15 million on advertising across media platforms.  “The Biden campaign has very quickly adapted to this moment. They’re continuing to grow and pivot, and I really believe that they are closing the gap,” McGowan said.  Since the pandemic, the Democratic National Committee has sent more than 4 million text messages to get people to sign up to vote by mail and held 82 training sessions on digital organizing since March, compared to 14 training sessions in 2019.  “The way that people have shown up in droves for them has been a really important thing,” Meg DiMartino, Democratic National Committee digital organizing director, said with more than 11,500 people signing up across all of the trainings. The key to a successful digital campaign is to reach “the right voters with the right message at the right moment on the right platform from the right messenger,” strategist Wilson said. That largely means meeting potential voters in the digital world during the 2020 pandemic. 
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India has banned the use of 59 Chinese-owned apps, including TikTok, citing security concerns Monday, as relations between the two neighbors worsen. In a statement, India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT said it “has decided to block 59 apps since in view of information available, they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of state and public order.” TikTok, a popular video application owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, counts India as its biggest market. It was not immediately clear how the “ban” would be enforced and whether mobile companies were expected to comply. As of Monday evening, the banned apps were still available on Google’s Play store and the Apple App store in India, according to Tech Crunch.The announcement from Delhi comes amid rising tension between the two countries, weeks after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in clashes with Chinese forces along the border in the region of Ladakh. The Chinese government did not release figures on how many of its own soldiers were injured or killed. 
 
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Facebook says it will flag all “newsworthy” posts from politicians that break its rules, including those from President Donald Trump.  CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously refused to take action against Trump posts that suggested mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud. Twitter, by contrast, slapped a “get the facts” label on them.Facebook is also banning false claims intended to discourage voting, such as stories about federal agents checking legal status at polling places. The company also said it is increasing its enforcement capacity to remove false claims about local polling conditions in the 72 hours before the U.S. election.Earlier Friday, shares of Facebook and Twitter dropped sharply after the giant company behind brands such as Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Dove soap said it will halt U.S. advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram through at least the end of the year.That European consumer-product maker, Unilever, said it took the move to protest the amount of hate speech online. Unilever said the polarized atmosphere in the United States ahead of November’s presidential election placed responsibility on brands to act.Shares of both Facebook and Twitter fell roughly 7% following Unilever’s announcement.FILE – The Unilever headquarters is seen in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Aug. 21, 2018.The company, which is based in the Netherlands and Britain, joins a raft of other advertisers pulling back from online platforms. Facebook in particular has been the target of an escalating movement to withhold advertising dollars to pressure it to do more to prevent racist and violent content from being shared on its platform.”We have decided that starting now through at least the end of the year, we will not run brand advertising in social media newsfeed platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the U.S.,” Unilever said. “Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society.”On Thursday, Verizon joined others in the Facebook boycott.Sarah Personette, vice president of global client solutions at Twitter, said the company’s “mission is to serve the public conversation and ensure Twitter is a place where people can make human connections, seek and receive authentic and credible information, and express themselves freely and safely.”She added that Twitter is “respectful of our partners’ decisions and will continue to work and communicate closely with them during this time.”
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Microsoft Corp said on Friday it would close its retail stores and take a related pre-tax asset impairment charge of $450 million in the current quarter.The Redmond, Washington-based software giant said would continue to serve customers online, with team members working remotely from corporate facilities.It was not immediately clear if Microsoft’s move would lead to any layoffs.The company also said it will rethink other spaces that serve all customers, including operating Microsoft Experience Centers in London, New York City, Sydney, and Redmond campus locations.”This is a tough, but smart strategic decision for (CEO) Nadella & Co. to make at this point. The physical stores generated negligible retail revenue for Microsoft and ultimately everything was moving more and more towards the digital channels over the last few years,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note.Retailers, whose stores shuttered in mid-March due to coronavirus-led lockdowns, have seen a huge surge in online demand amid stay-at-home orders.
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The Boston City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to pass a ban on the use of facial recognition technology by city government. The move makes Boston the second-largest U.S. city after San Francisco to enact a ban. The city joins several other Massachusetts communities that passed similar bans, including Cambridge, Springfield, Northampton, Brookline and Somerville. “Boston should not use racially discriminatory technology that threatens the privacy and basic rights of our residents,” At-Large Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu said in a statement. “Community trust is the foundation for public safety and public health.” The push against the technology is being driven both by privacy concerns and after several studies have shown current face-recognition systems are more likely to err when identifying people with darker skin. “While face surveillance is a danger to all people, no matter the color of their skin, the technology is a particularly serious threat to Black and brown people,” Councilor Ricardo Arroyo said in a statement. The American Civil Liberties Union-Massachusetts has been pushing a bill on Beacon Hill that aims to establish a statewide moratorium on the government use of facial surveillance and other remote biometric screening technologies until the Legislature imposes checks and balances to protect the public’s interest. The Boston measure is now sent to Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh’s desk. If he takes no action in 15 days, it will automatically become law. 
 
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Google is tweaking its privacy settings to keep less data on new users by default.  The search giant said that starting Wednesday, it will automatically and continuously delete web and app activity and location history for new users after 18 months.  Settings for existing users won’t be affected but the company will send reminders about the feature.The change comes after Google added new controls last year that allow users to effectively put an expiry date on their data, by providing the option to auto-delete location history, search, voice and YouTube activity data after three or 18 months.  The company is also making it easier to toggle in and out of incognito mode while using its Search, Maps and YouTube mobile apps by doing a long press on the profile photo. In incognito mode, Google doesn’t remember any activity during online browsing.  In another change, users will get easier access to their controls when doing Google searches. If they’re signed into their Google accounts and search for terms like “Google Privacy Checkup,” they will see a box only visible to them with their privacy and security settings. 
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 Twitter has launched a new prompt to fight gender-based violence in response to a surge in sexual assaults and domestic attacks during lockdown, a company official said on Wednesday.
 
The social network said the feature, currently available in 11 countries, directs users to local helpline services if they search for terms such as “domestic violence” or “sexual assault.”
 
“This is the first time that this notification prompt has been made available in multiple locations in multiple languages,” said Kathleen Reen, a senior director of Twitter in Asia-Pacific.
 
The prompt was introduced across Asia last week, then expanded to the United States on Wednesday, with notifications in English and Spanish. Next step: Europe and Latin America.
 
“Twitter is a very popular service during crisis. People come to find out what’s happening, what’s breaking and to get key information on real-time basis,” Reen told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
 
The initiative came after the United Nations warned there had been a “horrifying global surge” in domestic violence, with calls to helplines doubling or tripling in some countries, as lockdowns trapped many women indoors with their abusers.
 
The feature is an expansion of Twitter’s #ThereIsHelp initiative, which provides similar notifications on issues such as suicide prevention and vaccinations.
 
U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has called on governments to take urgent measures to tackle the spike in domestic violence and make it a part of national response plans for COVID-19.
 
More than 240 million women and girls aged 15 to 49 worldwide have faced sexual or physical violence by an intimate partner over the past 12 months, U.N. figures show.
 
It says the figure is likely to increase due to health and money worries ratcheting up tensions at home.
 
“Violence against women and girls across Asia-Pacific is pervasive but at the same time widely under-reported,” said Melissa Alvarado, a manager at the U.N. Women Asia-Pacific, which partners with Twitter on the latest feature.
 
“Connecting women who are feeling fearful or in danger is critical for their safety,” she added in a statement.
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Tech executives said Monday they were disappointed in the Trump administration’s decision to temporarily ban an array of work visas, including those used by the technology industry. Some vowed to open up or expand their operations overseas.  “Banning all H1B visas means CEOs like me have to open offices and hire more people in countries like Canada that allow immigration,” tweeted Anshu Sharma, chief executive of a data privacy firm in Silicon Valley.Banning all H1B visas means CEOs like me have to open offices and hire more people in countries like Canada that allow immigration. This visa ban is morally wrong, and economically stupid. What happened to being “for legal immigration”? https://t.co/R9O9Q1Ts0j— H1B immigrant Anshu Sharma 🌶 (@anshublog) June 22, 2020“Immigration has contributed immensely to America’s economic success, making it a global leader in tech, and also Google the company it is today,” Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, said on Twitter. “Disappointed by today’s proclamation.”Immigration has contributed immensely to America’s economic success, making it a global leader in tech, and also Google the company it is today. Disappointed by today’s proclamation – we’ll continue to stand with immigrants and work to expand opportunity for all.— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) June 22, 2020The executive order expanded on restrictions the White House rolled out in April. In its statement, the White House cited the current economic hardship in the U.S. where the unemployment rate is more than 13 percent.   “President Trump’s efforts will ensure businesses look to American workers first when hiring,” the White House said in a statement. “Many workers have been hurt through no fault of their own due to coronavirus and they should not remain on the sidelines while being replaced by new foreign labor.” Reliance on foreign workers  During periods of high growth, the technology industry has relied on the H-1B, a temporary work visa that brings as many as 85,000 skilled workers to the U.S. each year.  While tech companies have had layoffs during the pandemic, the labor market is still tight, said Russell Hancock, the chief executive and president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a nonprofit organization that studies the region.  “Tech is pretty much working at full employment,” he said. “The pandemic hasn’t hurt tech as it has hurt other sectors.” Silicon Valley’s foreign-born workers mostly hail from India and China. More than 60 percent of those working in computer, mathematics and engineering fields in Silicon Valley are foreign born, according to the 2020 Silicon Valley Index, produced by Joint Venture. Tech companies have argued that they need foreign-born workers – and an expansion of the temporary work visa program — because there are not enough U.S.-born workers with the skills for key roles. Opponents of the temporary visa say that the industry and large tech consultants turn to foreign workers to keep wages down.   Cutting off the ability of skilled workers to come to the U.S. will hurt the industry’s ability to stay competitive, Hancock said.  “If you talk to anyone, they will tell you we need talent and it’s not coming through our own pipelines,” he said.  It’s a point echoed by tech leaders.  “In the digital economy, you hire where the talent is,” tweeted Aaron Levie, the chief executive at Box, a tech firm. “When you restrict immigration, the jobs still get created, just somewhere else. And later down the road, when those individuals create the next Google, it won’t be here.” In the digital economy, you hire where the talent is. When you restrict immigration, the jobs still get created, just somewhere else. And later down the road, when those individuals create the next Google, it won’t be here.— Aaron Levie (@levie) June 22, 2020
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Twitter has been important in burnishing the image President Donald Trump wants to portray of a brash straight-talking politician, but the social media company has recently begun to flag Trump’s tweets when they are deemed misleading. Other online platforms like Facebook and Snap are making their own decisions about content. Tina Trinh reports.Produced by: Tina Trinh 
 
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Twitter has been important in burnishing the image President Donald Trump wants to portray of a brash straight-talking politician, but the social media company has recently begun to flag Trump’s tweets when they are deemed misleading. Other online platforms like Facebook and Snap are making their own decisions about content. Tina Trinh reports.Produced by: Tina Trinh 
 
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Activists want to ban police from using facial recognition — and now some big tech companies are scaling back cooperation with law enforcement. Deana Mitchell reports.Camera: Deana Mitchell  Produced by: Deana Mitchell 
 
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Twitter Inc added a ‘manipulated media’ label on a video posted on U.S. President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed on Thursday that showed a doctored news clip with a mis-spelled banner flashing “Terrified todler runs from racist baby.”The original video, which went viral on social media in 2019, showed a black toddler and a white toddler running towards each other and hugging. It was published with the headline “These two toddlers are showing us what real-life besties look like” on CNN’s website last year.The clip shared in Trump’s tweet first shows the part where one of those toddlers is seen running ahead of the other. At one point the banner reads: “Racist baby probably a Trump voter.”pic.twitter.com/vnRpk0zl5y— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020The tweeted video, with more than 7.7 million views and 125,000 retweets, then goes on to show the original video and concludes: “America is not the problem. Fake news is.””We may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context,” Twitter says in an explanation of its policies posted on its website.Twitter has been under fierce scrutiny from the Trump administration since it fact-checked Trump’s tweets about unsubstantiated claims of mail-in voting fraud. It also labeled a Trump tweet about protests in Minneapolis as “glorifying violence.”The president, who has battled Twitter and other tech companies over alleged censorship of conservative voices on social media platforms, said in late May he would propose legislation to potentially scrap or weaken the law shielding internet companies, in an extraordinary attempt to regulate outlets where he has been criticized.  
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A “sophisticated state-based cyber actor” has been attempting to hack a wide range of Australian organizations for months and had stepped up its efforts recently, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday.The attacks have targeted all levels of the government, political organizations, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure, Morrison said in a news briefing in Canberra.”We know it is a sophisticated state-based cyber actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting,” he said.Morrison said there were not a lot of state actors that could launch this sort of attack, but Australia will not identify which country was responsible.Australia’s Defense Minister Linda Reynolds said advice showed no large-scale personal data breaches from the attack, as she urged businesses and organizations to ensure any web or email servers are fully updated with the latest software and the use of multifactor authentication.An Australian government source said Morrison’s public declaration was an attempt to raise the issue with those who could be targeted.Australia’s chief cyber intelligence agency said its investigations have so far found no evidence that the actor attempted to be “disruptive or destructive” once within the host’s network.Morrison said he spoke with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday about the issue, while briefings to other allies have also been conducted.The revelation comes after Reuters reported Canberra had determined in March last year that China was responsible for a hacking attack on Australia’s parliament. Australia never publicly identified that source of the attack, and China denied it was responsible.A U.S. security ally, Australia strained ties with its largest trading partner, China, by pushing for an international inquiry into the source and spread of the new coronavirus that first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.  
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Top social media companies Google, Facebook and Twitter told U.S. lawmakers Thursday that foreign interference on their platforms has evolved significantly since the 2016 presidential election.The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence heard how these companies are adapting their approaches to combating disinformation as COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests and the upcoming 2020 presidential election present opportunities for the exploitation of partisan political differences in the United States.FILE – Nick Pickles, public policy director for Twitter, speaks during a full committee hearing, in Washington, Sept. 18, 2019.To date, Twitter has not seen signs of foreign actors attempting to exploit U.S. racial divides or differences of opinion on the coronavirus, Nick Pickles, Twitter’s director of global public policy strategy and development, told lawmakers.”We haven’t found evidence of concerted platform manipulation by foreign actors in either of those areas,” Pickles said.Facebook’s head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said his company has yet to see “coordinated inauthentic behavior on the part of foreign governments, particularly targeting voting systems or how to vote in the United States.”But in his opening statement, Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said that while social media companies have made efforts since the 2016 election to address concerns about manipulation of their platforms by foreign entities, “I can’t say that I am confident that the 2020 election will be free of interference by malicious actors, foreign or domestic, who aspire to weaponize your platforms to divide Americans, pit us against one another and weaken our democracy.”Representatives from Google, Facebook and Twitter told the panel they are seeing an evolution by many foreign actors, who are returning to methods last seen from the 1960s through the 1980s to disseminate misinformation and evade controls the companies put into place in response to concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election. FILE – Facebook Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 22, 2019.”So far this year, we’ve taken down 18 coordinated networks seeking to manipulate public debate, including three networks originating from Russia, two from Iran and two based here in the United States,” Gleicher told lawmakers.A Pew Research survey found that 44% of Americans used social media platforms as a news source during the 2016 election. Lawmakers noted contentious discussions on social media do much of the work for malicious foreign actors.”I’m pretty convinced that when this republic dies, it doesn’t happen because the Russians broke into Ohio voting machines or they managed to buy ads on Facebook or Twitter. It happens because our politics become so toxic, so polarized, we don’t recognize each other anymore as Americans,” said Representative Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat. “All it takes is a match from Russia, from Iran or from North Korea, or from China to set off a conflagration.”The House Intelligence Committee is holding virtual hearings because of continuing concerns about the threat of COVID-19. Committee Republicans have chosen not to participate in these virtual hearings this week.The committee hearing marked the second time social media companies had briefed lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee about the security threat posed by bad actors on their platforms. In 2017, the committee released dozens of Russian-linked ads that circulated on Facebook ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
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Engineers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, are developing new technology for health care workers on the front lines of fighting the spread of COVID-19. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports from Chicago, an unexpected benefit of the current pandemic is technological innovation that could have a lasting impact.Camera: Kane Farabaugh        Produced by: Rob Raffaele
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The Russian government has lifted a ban on Telegram two years after it announced attempts to restrict access to the encrypted instant-messaging app, the country’s communications regulator said Thursday.“As agreed with the Prosecutor General’s office, Roskomnadzor withdraws the demand to restrict access to the Telegram messenger,” the federal communications watchdog said in a statement.Roskomnadzor began blocking the popular app in accordance with a 2018 court order that demanded the messaging service be restricted because of its alleged use by Islamic State terrorists.Pavel Durov, the app’s Russian-born founder, was ordered to hand over the app’s encryption codes but refused, citing violations of user privacy.But even top-tier officials such as Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov continued using the app after its developers adjusted the code to slip past Roskomnadzor’s cybersecurity barriers.Its widespread use has continued, and even coronavirus task force operations in many Russian regions use Telegram for daily updates.Roskomnadzor on Thursday said it was prepared to lift restrictions because Durov, who has been living in self-imposed exile since 2014, was prepared to cooperate with Russian government counterterrorism efforts to combat extremism on the platform.Islamic State terrorists behind the November 2015 Paris attacks, which claimed 130 lives, used the app’s public channels to spread propaganda and other related content. The app shut the channels down after the attack.Telegram’s developers say that they have since increased their ability to spot and delete extremist content on the app without compromising user privacy.The Kremlin took note of Roskomnadzor’s decision and the reasoning for it, the Tass news agency reported, quoting Kremlin spokesman Peskov.Founded in 2013, Telegram now has an estimated 30 million users in Russia — nearly 20% of the population.Some information for this report came from AP and Reuters.
 
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Turkey criticized Twitter on Friday for suspending more than 7,000 accounts the social media company said were promoting narratives favorable to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and the AK Parti (AKP). The suspended 7,340 accounts were detected earlier this year “employing coordinated inauthentic activity,” Twitter said in a blog post uploaded on Friday. Republic of Turkey communications director Fahrettin Altun said the social media company was attempting to smear the government and trying to redesign Turkish politics. “This arbitrary act … has demonstrated yet again that Twitter is no mere social media company, but a propaganda machine with certain political and ideological inclinations,” Altun said in a written statement on Twitter.Statement regarding Twitter’s decision to suspend accounts in Turkey and the company’s allegations: pic.twitter.com/mi9abYDWEE
— Fahrettin Altun (@fahrettinaltun) June 12, 2020The communications director closed with a warning to Twitter. “We would like to remind this company of the eventual fate of a number of organizations, which attempted to take similar steps in the past,” Altun said. In its Friday blog post, Twitter revealed it had shared data from the account takedowns related to Turkey, as well as China and Russia, with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute  (ASPI) and Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). In what the SIO dubbed “The Turkey Operation,”  it found batches of fabricated personalities, all created on the same day. The suspended accounts were used for AKP “cheerleading,” to increase domestic support for Turkish intervention in Syria and compromised other Twitter accounts linked to organizations critical of the government, the SIO found.Twitter’s handling of the “Turkey Operation” has come to light as it removed 23,750 accounts posting pro-Beijing narratives, and 1,152 accounts engaging in state-backed political propaganda within Russia. 
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Twitter has removed a vast network of accounts that it says is linked to the Chinese government and were pushing false information favorable to the country’s communist rulers. Beijing denied involvement Friday and said the company should instead take down accounts smearing China.
The U.S. social media company suspended 23,750 accounts that were posting pro-Beijing narratives, and another 150,000 accounts dedicated to retweeting and amplifying those messages.
 
The network was engaged “in a range of coordinated and manipulated activities” in predominantly Chinese languages, including praise for China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and “deceptive narratives” about Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, the company said.  
The accounts also tweeted about two other topics: Taiwan and Guo Wengui, an exiled billionaire waging a campaign from New York against China’s president and party leader Xi Jinping and his administration. Most had little to no followers and failed to get much attention. The accounts were suspended under Twitter’s manipulation policies, which ban artificial amplification and suppression of information.  
Twitter and other social media services like Facebook and YouTube are blocked in China.
 
“While the Chinese Communist Party won’t allow the Chinese people to use Twitter, our analysis shows it is happy to use it to sow propaganda and disinformation internationally,” said Fergus Hanson, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre, which worked with the company on the takedown.  China denied involvement.  
“It holds no water at all to equate China’s response to the epidemic with disinformation,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily news briefing on Friday.  
“If Twitter wants to make a difference, it should shut down those accounts that have been organized and coordinated to attack and discredit China,” she added.
Twitter also removed more than 1,000 accounts linked to a Russian media website engaging in state-backed political propaganda in Russian, and a network of 7,340 fake or compromised accounts used for “cheerleading” the ruling party in Turkey.
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A popular podcasting platform, Pocket Casts, has been removed from Apple’s app store in China at Beijing’s request, according to the company’s Twitter thread. Pocket Casts confirmed Wednesday on Twitter that the request was made by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), Beijing’s top internet watchdog agency that controls which apps can be accessed on iOS and other platforms in the country. “We were contacted by the CAC through Apple around 2 days before the app was removed from the store,” it said.Pocket Casts has been removed from the Chinese App store by Apple, at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China. We believe podcasting is and should remain an open medium, free of government censorship. As such we won’t be censoring podcast content at their request.
— Pocket Casts (@pocketcasts) June 11, 2020Before Pocket Casts was removed, another podcast player for iPhone, Castro, said on June 4 that its app was also removed from the Chinese app store by Apple. Castro said about 10% of its user base is in China. Asked why its app was taken down, Castro said in a Twitter comment on June 6 that they think it might have been the company’s support of the protests in Hong Kong, but “we were not given specifics.”We think it might have been our support of the protests in the Discover tab. We were not given specifics.
— Castro Podcasts (@CastroPodcasts) June 7, 2020Pocket Casts, originally developed by an Austrian company, was acquired by a group of American public radio companies in 2018. It is currently ranked 82nd most popular in the podcast news app section on Apple’s U.S website, where the Twitter app is number one. The app was not searchable within Apple’s Chinese app store at the time of writing. Apple could not be immediately reached for comment. This is not the first time that Apple has removed an app from the app store following a request by the Chinese government. According to a Transparency Report released on Apple’s website, for the first six months of 2019, the company received 56 requests from the Chinese government seeking removal of a third-party application offered on the app store related to alleged or suspected legal violations. In comparison, it received only two requests from Vietnam and five from Russia. Apple, by its own account, took down 194 apps in mainland China, none in Vietnam and 16 in Russia. The podcast removal comes amid fresh criticism from U.S.-based Chinese activists who said that Zoom, a U.S. video communication company, censors video talks on Hong Kong protests and China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown.The video-chat app briefly blocked an account of a Chinese human rights leader and then later restored the account on Wednesday. According to The New York Times, Zoom said in a statement on Wednesday that it had been following local laws when it suspended the account. “It is not in Zoom’s power to change the laws of governments opposed to free speech,” Zoom said.
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Microsoft has become the third big tech company this week to say it won’t sell its facial recognition software to police, following similar moves by Amazon and IBM.Microsoft’s president and chief counsel, Brad Smith, announced the decision and called on Congress to regulate the technology during a Washington Post video event on Thursday.”We’ve decided we will not sell facial recognition technology to police departments in the United States until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology,” Smith said.The trio of tech giants is stepping back from law-enforcement use of systems that have faced criticism for incorrectly identifying people with darker skin. Ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd have focused attention on racial injustice in the U.S. and how police use technology to track people.Amazon Bans Police Use of its Face Recognition for a Year Civil rights groups and Amazon’s own employees have pushed the company to stop selling its technology, called Rekognition, to government agencies, saying that it could be used to invade people’s privacy and target minoritiesBut while all three companies are known for their work in developing artificial intelligence, including face recognition software, none is a major player in selling such technology to police. Smith said Thursday that Microsoft currently doesn’t sell its face recognition software to any U.S. police departments. He didn’t say if that includes federal law enforcement agencies or police forces outside the U.S.Several other companies that are less well known dominate the market for government facial recognition contracts in the U.S., including Tokyo-based NEC and the European companies Idemia and Gemalto.Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are calling on Congress to set national rules over how police use facial recognition — something that’s now being considered as part of a police reform package sparked by the protests following Floyd’s death.”If all of the responsible companies in the country cede this market to those that are not prepared to take a stand, we won’t necessarily serve the national interest or the lives of the black and African American people of this nation well,” Smith said. “We need Congress to act, not just tech companies alone.”Microsoft has spent two years warning of the potential dangers of face-scanning technology being abused to enable oppressive mass surveillance, but the company has opposed outright bans on government use of the technology passed in San Francisco and other cities. That’s led to criticism from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which says Microsoft is lobbying for weak regulations that could end up legitimizing and expanding police use of facial recognition.”Congress and legislatures nationwide must swiftly stop law enforcement use of face recognition, and companies like Microsoft should work with the civil rights community — not against it — to make that happen,” said Matt Cagle, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, in a statement Thursday. 
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Videoconferencing company Zoom temporarily shut down the account of a U.S.-based activist group days after it held an event commemorating the 31st anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square protests. Humanitarian China, an organization focused on providing relief for political prisoners and activists, held the Zoom conference on May 31. A week later June 7, the account used for the conference displayed a message that it had been shut down.  The meeting was streamed by 4,000 people and joined by more than 250 participants worldwide, including organizers of the Hong Kong Candlelight Vigil, writers and scholars, former student leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests and the Tiananmen Mothers.  The Tiananmen Square student-led protest has long been a sensitive topic in China’s political history.  30 Years After Tiananmen, Remembering a Pivotal Night

        On June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party ordered tanks and soldiers to fire at its own people gathered at Tiananmen Square, which is located in the heart of Beijing. Three decades later, the shots fired still reverberate today.The bravery of a lone man confronting a row of Chinese tanks became a symbol of the night of resistance between the people of China and the hard-liners of the Communist Party that ordered the army action. His identity remains unknown. 

On June 4, 1989, in what critics and activists call a “massacre,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ordered tanks and soldiers to fire at pro-democracy protesters. Humanitarian China is currently led by human rights activist Zhou Fengsuo, who was a student during the protests in 1989. The organization said it is “outraged” Zoom shut its account and that “it seems possible Zoom acted on pressure from the CCP.” Humanitarian China also mentioned that former Tiananmen Square protester Dong Shengkun, previously imprisoned by the Chinese government for 17 years, was detained for five days to prevent him from attending the conference live.  Zoom has since reactivated the account and released a statement explaining the shutdown. “When a meeting is held across different countries, the participants within those countries are required to comply with their respective local laws,” the company said in an emailed statement.  “We aim to limit the actions we take to those necessary to comply with local laws and continuously review and improve our process on these matters.”        
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Amazon on Wednesday banned police use of its face-recognition technology for a year, making it the latest tech giant to step back from law-enforcement use of systems that have faced criticism for incorrectly identifying people with darker skin.   The Seattle-based company did not say why it took action now. Ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd have focused attention on racial injustice in the U.S. and how police use technology to track people. Floyd died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into the handcuffed black man’s neck for several minutes even after Floyd stopped moving and pleading for air.  Law enforcement agencies use facial recognition to identify suspects, but critics say it can be misused. A number of U.S. cities have banned its use by police and other government agencies, led by San Francisco last year. On Tuesday, IBM said it would get out of the facial recognition business, noting concerns about how the technology can be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling. Civil rights groups and Amazon’s own employees have pushed the company to stop selling its technology, called Rekognition, to government agencies, saying that it could be used to invade people’s privacy and target minorities.   In a blog post Wednesday, Amazon said that it hoped Congress would put in place stronger regulations for facial recognition. “Amazon’s decision is an important symbolic step, but this doesn’t really change the face recognition landscape in the United States since it’s not a major player,” said Clare Garvie, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology. Her public records research found only two U.S. two agencies using or testing Rekognition. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon has been the most public about using it. The Orlando police department tested it, but chose not to implement it, she said.   Studies led by MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini found racial and gender disparities in facial recognition software. Those findings spurred Microsoft and IBM to improve their systems, but irked Amazon, which last year publicly attacked her research methods. A group of artificial intelligence scholars, including a winner of computer science’s top prize, last year launched a spirited defense of her work and called on Amazon to stop selling its facial recognition software to police. A study last year by a U.S. agency affirmed the concerns about the technology’s flaws. The National Institute of Standards and Technology tested leading facial recognition systems — though not Amazon’s, which didn’t submit its algorithms — and found that they often performed unevenly based on a person’s race, gender or age.   Buolamwini on Wednesday called Amazon’s announcement a “welcomed though unexpected announcement.”  “Microsoft also needs to take a stand,” she wrote in an emailed statement. “More importantly our lawmakers need to step up” to rein in harmful deployments of the technologies.   Microsoft has been vocal about the need to regulate facial recognition to prevent human rights abuses but hasn’t said it wouldn’t sell it to law enforcement. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Amazon began attracting attention from the American Civil Liberties Union and privacy advocates after it introduced Rekognition in 2016 and began pitching it to law enforcement. But experts like Garvie say many U.S. agencies rely on facial recognition technology built by companies that are not as well known, such as Tokyo-based NEC, Chicago-based Motorola Solutions or the European companies Idemia, Gemalto and Cognitec. Amazon isn’t abandoning facial recognition altogether. The company said organizations, such as those that use Rekognition to help find missing children, will still have access to the technology.   This week’s announcements by Amazon and IBM follow a push by Democratic lawmakers to pass a sweeping police reform package in Congress that could include restrictions on the use of facial recognition, especially in police body cameras. Though not commonly used in the U.S., the possibility of cameras that could monitor crowds and identify people in real time have attracted bipartisan concern.   The tech industry has fought against outright bans of facial recognition, but some companies have called for federal laws that could set guidelines for responsible use of the technology.   “It is becoming clear that the absence of consistent national rules will delay getting this valuable technology into the hands of law enforcement, slowing down investigations and making communities less safe,” said Daniel Castro, vice president of the industry-backed Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which has advocated for facial recognition providers.   Ángel Díaz, an attorney at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, said he welcomed Amazon’s moratorium but it “should have come sooner given numerous studies showing that the technology is racially biased.” “We agree that Congress needs to act, but local communities should also be empowered to voice their concerns and decide if and how they want this technology deployed at all,” he said. 
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Four Republican U.S. senators on Tuesday urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review whether to revise liability protections for internet companies after President Donald Trump urged action.Trump said last month he wants to “remove or change” a provision of a law that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users and directed a U.S. Commerce Department agency to petition the FCC to take action within 60 days.Senators Marco Rubio, Kelly Loeffler, Kevin Cramer and Josh Hawley asked the FCC to review Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and “clearly define the criteria for which companies can receive protections under the statute.”FILE – FCC Chairman Ajit Pai testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 5, 2019.Last week, an advocacy group backed by the tech industry sued, asking a judge to block the executive order.FCC Chairman Ajit Pai — who in 2018 said he did not see a role for the agency to regulate websites like Facebook Inc , Alphabet Inc’s Google and Twitter — declined to comment on potential actions in response to Trump’s executive order. He told reporters on Tuesday it would not be appropriate to “prejudge a petition that I haven’t seen.”FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said on Tuesday the order poses a lot “of very complex issues.”O’Rielly tweeted earlier “as a conservative, I’m troubled voices are stifled by liberal tech leaders. At same time, I’m extremely dedicated to the First Amendment which governs much here.” 
 
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As tension grows between China and the United States, there is worry in Beijing that the conflict could end up further restricting Chinese access to American technology.Of foremost concern is that despite decades of effort, China has yet to build a homegrown operating system good enough to replace Microsoft Windows. “Our operating system market is dominated by U.S. companies such as Microsoft, Google and Apple,” a recent report by state-run Xinhua News Agency said. “To fundamentally solve the problem of ‘being choked in [the] neck’, creating a domestic operating system and supporting software and hardware ecosystem is a must.” To be fair, China is not alone. Other countries including Russia, Germany and South Korea have been trying to develop their own operating systems. But none of them have gotten very far yet. Washington has already targeted China’s technology vulnerabilities. The U.S. Commerce Department has banned FILE – In this June 19, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump, from left, and Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, listen as Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive Officer of Amazon, speaks during an American Technology Council roundtable.Decoupling fallout          Economists now talk about “decoupling” the Chinese and U.S. economies, severing supply chains and business relationships that account for trillions of dollars in trade, because of the political tensions between Washington and Beijing. “Some decoupling in the high-tech area seems inevitable and already in process,” said Doug Barry, the spokesman for communications and publications at the US-China Business Council. Driven by the U.S. campaign to restrict China’s technology giants because of threats to U.S. national security, experts say the U.S.-China decoupling could widen to include desktop computers as well.  “To keep China from using Windows would be devastating to China,” Dr. Feng Chongyi, associate professor in China Studies at Australia’s University of Technology Sydney, wrote in an email to VOA. “I am afraid this is a logical step when the Cold War II escalates to a higher level.”  China’s vulnerability Like the rest of the world, China is heavily dependent on American technology companies that design microchips and the most popular computer operating systems.According to a market report released last July by a Chinese research firm, Microsoft enjoys a dominant position in desktop and server operating systems, with nearly 90% of the market share in China. “Domestic desktop and mobile operating systems are still in their infancy, accounting for less than 1% of the domestic market share,” said the report by FILE – Edward Snowden speaks via video link as he takes part in a round table on the protection of whistleblowers at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, March 15, 2019.The need for a homegrown operating system took on new urgency inside China in 2013 after Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked evidence showing secret U.S. surveillance programs, revealed he had avoided using commercial operating systems like Windows to hide his communications from the National Security Agency (NSA). FILE – People use computers at an Internet cafe in Hefei, Anhui province, September 26, 2010.Dream of homegrown OS Building its own operating system has been one of China’s largest and longest-running technical challenges. The effort can be traced back to the late 1970s when China first began to use the Unix operating system and tried to develop its own Unix-based operating system. Creating this operating system was formally approved as a critical mission in the country’s top-level policy blueprint, the 1992 Five-Year Plan.   But almost three decades later, there’s been little success.   Over the years China has developed more than 20 operating systems with some of them being installed on computers used by the military and other sensitive government agencies. None of them has made much of a dent in the consumer market.  One of the biggest reasons, experts say, is the country does not have a so-called software ecosystem of developers creating programs to run on a new homegrown operating system. “These systems have never been accepted by a large base of software developers,” Qin Peng, a former Chinese IT consultant told VOA. “It is actually impossible for China to be in a position to have an ecosystem that is on par with the one in the U.S,” said Qin, who left China in 2014 and is now living in the U.S. where he is an independent commentator focusing mainly on IT issues. Developers are selective on which projects they spend their time and money on, and most of the time their decisions are based on how big the user base is for a particular system.   “Chinese companies have not yet built up a library of premier applications, as many of them rely on Microsoft and Google for all kinds of functions,” Qin told VOA. Liu Xinhuan, general manager of Tongxin Software Technology Co., Ltd., one of China’s major operating system makers, said in an interview with a Chinese media outlet that it could take up to 10 years before China can really compete with foreign operating systems, and the key to shorten the process “is to have a large ecosystem” of developers. All of which means if the Chinese and U.S. economies do further decouple, Beijing could be stuck with few options for replacing the operating systems they have relied on for decades.    
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A South Korean Court has rejected an arrest warrant for the heir to the legendary Samsung Group conglomerate in connection with a controversial merger.   Prosecutors have accused Lee Jae-yong, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, of stock manipulation and illegal trading involving the 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates, Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, of which Lee is the largest shareholder.  He allegedly sought to inflate the value of Cheil Industries and lower the value of Samsung C&T to give him a bigger stake in the merged company, a move that would give him increasing control of South Korea’s largest conglomerate and smooth the transition from his ailing father, Lee Kun-hee, who suffered a heart attack in 2014.    But the Seoul Central District Court ruled Tuesday that while prosecutors had amassed enough evidence against Lee in their investigation, there was not enough to justify detaining him.   The 51-year-old Lee arrived at the courthouse Monday for the hearing, which lasted nine hours, and awaited the decision at a detention center.      Samsung released a statement last week denying the allegations against Lee, who prosecutors have also accused of inflating the value of Samsung Biologics, a subsidiary of Cheil Industries.    Lee is also awaiting a retrial on his original 2017 conviction for bribing a confidante of then-President Park Geun-hye in return for Park’s support for the 2015 merger, a scandal that forced Park out of office and eventually landed her in prison. Lee served a year in prison before an appeals court suspended his sentence, but South Korea’s Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision last year.   
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Google is adding features on its Maps service to alert users about COVID-19-related travel restrictions to help them plan their trips better, the Alphabet Inc unit said Monday. The update would allow users to check how crowded a train station might be at a particular time, or if buses on a certain route are running on a limited schedule, Google said.The transit alerts would be rolled out in Argentina, France, India, Netherlands, the United States and United Kingdom among other countries, the company said in a blog post.The new features would also include details on COVID-19 checkpoints and restrictions on crossing national borders, starting with Canada, Mexico and the United States.In recent months, the company has analyzed location data from billions of Google users’ phones in 131 countries to examine mobility under lockdowns and help health authorities assess if people were abiding with social-distancing and other orders issued to rein in the virus.Google has invested billions of dollars from its search ads business to digitally map the world, drawing 1 billion users on average every month to its free navigation app. 
 
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The heir to South Korea’s Samsung empire appeared in a Seoul court Monday for a hearing to decide whether he will be arrested and jailed in connection with a controversial merger.   Lee Jae-yong was silent as he walked through an army of shouting reporters when he arrived at the courthouse. If the court approves the warrant, Lee could be detained and taken into custody. A final decision is expected late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. Prosecutors have accused Lee, the current vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, of stock manipulation and illegal trading during the 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates, Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, of which Lee is the largest shareholder. He allegedly sought to inflate the value of Cheil Industries and lower the value of Samsung C&T to give him a bigger stake in the merged company, a move that would give him increasing control of South Korea’s largest conglomerate and smooth the transition from his ailing father, Lee Kun-hee, who suffered a heart attack in 2014.   Lee is also accused of inflating the value of Samsung Biologics, which is a subsidiary of Cheil Industries. Samsung released a statement last week denying the allegations against Lee. Lee was convicted in 2017 for bribing a confidante of then-President Park Geun-hye in return for Park’s support for the 2015 merger, a scandal that forced Park out of office and eventually landed her in prison.  Lee served a year before an appeals court suspended his sentence. South Korea’s Supreme Court ordered a retrial on the original charges. 
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A Virginia NGO called Computer CORE helps low-income immigrants master using computers in order to help them find jobs. However, the coronavirus pandemic has made life hard for the organization because so few of the students have computers or an internet connection at home. VOA’s Maxim Moskalkov has the story. Camera: Sergey Sokolov      
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